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| ▲ | prewett 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I didn't encounter the Dao de Jing until later in life, but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me. I first saw it as "the way that can be described is not the Way", but also "the way that can be traveled is not the eternal Way". That is, the eternal (spiritual) Way cannot be concretized, just as a name is not the real thing. Or, given that this is HN, "the software development methodology that can be executed like a program is not software development methodology". ("The Agile that can be PM'd is not Agile.") However, I think it might require some life maturity to recognize that. Certainly a recovery from Englightenment rationalism. My person experience is that an understanding that "the name that can be named/identified is not the eternal Name" and "the way that can be walked is not the eternal Way" took me until around my 40s to appreciate. Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically). The book "Taoism: the Parting of the Ways" [1], by (former) Harvard Professor Holmes Welch, interprets the text as being a guide to a mystical way of living, similar to St. John of the Cross (minus the Christian part), which is fascinating. Then he describes how the two main factions took the text literally, and how that evolved. [1] I have a summary at http://geoffprewett.com/BookReviews/TaoismThePartingOfTheWay... | | |
| ▲ | mbivert 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > but the opening bit has always seemed straightforward to me the a/symmetry of the opening bits in Chinese, visually echoes a taiji: > 道可道， > 非恆道； > 名可名， > 非恆名。 given the diversity of translations available for those bits, I think it's fair to say that there's room for debate regarding their exact meaning − dare I say amusingly, by being certain one understand what it means, somehow one really does not. Lao-Tseu may have been way, way wiser than average. | |
| ▲ | anondual 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You should have posted your comment at the top. > Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically). It's incredibly ironic. To those who wonder where the irony is, imagine writing a book of poems on "freesbeing", which you describe as an ineffable experience that one gets when they play the freesbee. In your book, most passages allude to subtleties that escape any reader who isn't a freesbee enthousiast. And so, only those who pick up a freesbee and start throwing it unlock the meaning in your book. Then thousands of years later, intellectuals try to explain "freesbeing" without knowing what even is the freesbee. Daoism is a practical guide to a mystical way of life. Similar to the teachings of Buddhist mystics, Advaitist mystics, Christian mystics, Sufi mystics, and so forth. Most such teachings are very practical and somewhat point in the same (inner) direction. A shared core tenet is that experiences are infinitely more valid (i.e. true) than the content of thoughts (i.e. concepts, philosophy, beliefs, labels, words, etc) used to describe them. Said more commonly, the mind -- the craddle of thoughts, the mother of all concepts, explanations, and philosophies -- is a liar. This is peppered everywhere in the Tao Te Ching, starting from the very first line. Yet, most interpretations of it are conceptual, trying to make it into some kind of a philosophy. | |
| ▲ | panarky 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is straight-up Baudrillard simulacra/simulation. The moment you say "Dao" (or "Agile", or "methodology"), you've already moved from the thing-in-itself to a sign living inside a sign system. That sign can be useful, but it can't be identical to what it points at. > “The Agile that can be PM’d is not Agile.” That’s exactly the stages of simulacra in miniature: - Faithful copy: "Agile" names a set of lived practices that correspond to reality. - Masks/denatures: cargo-cult rituals distort it (standups-as-status-reporting). - Masks absence: the org performs Agile theater to hide that genuine agility is gone. - Pure simulacrum: "Agile" becomes a self-referential brand/signifier (certs, metrics, tooling) that relates primarily to other signs ("Agile maturity model", "story points velocity"), not to any actual working output. | | |
| ▲ | koverstreet 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's a reductionist take. For a reductionist, it might be better understood as - step outside of your usual mode of thinking. Remember that you don't know everything. Or just - take time to stop and smell the flowers. Try to spend more time noticing and less time analyzing. There are things that are difficult to communicate directly in the reductionist mode of thought - and are intended to have meaning at multiple levels of abstraction. You have to think a bit more laterally. |
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| ▲ | anthk 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In Spanish we say "caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar" (roamer, there's no path, the path it's built upon walking". | | |
| ▲ | __patchbit__ 44 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | One reading I came across claimed the author of `art of war' had his foot amputated in a form of punishment. You had to be careful with your language at court in those times. It is possible to associate passages from the Tao Te Ching to memes that just pop up in your social media feeds. A native speaker and writer will have rich associations in the language you can get a sense of in the language used to cover Chinese philosophy at the SEP entries. | |
| ▲ | Mordisquitos 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | To clarify, that sentence is not from a Spanish translation of the Tao Te Ching; it is a fragment of Antonio Machado's poem 'Caminante no hay camino': Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.
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| ▲ | roromainmain 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Interesting. Your comparison reminds me of something from Lacanian psychoanalysis: the idea that people often mistake themselves for the symbolic labels they occupy, their title for instance. Like a doctor who would praise himself for being a doctor, a president a president.
From that perspective, both versions of the Tao Te Ching line point to the same thing: what can be named, praised, or socially recognized isn’t the true underlying reality.
Different phrasing, but the same structural idea. | | |
| ▲ | hosh 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | More generalized, any kind of symbol representing something is not the something. The social labelling is very accessible, true now and true then. There’s a Zen koan about that (with Zen coming from Chang which came from a meeting of Buddhism and Taoism in China) — about the finger pointing to the moon, and how all but one student looked at the finger. In a different example, there is the distinction of virtue signaling and virtue (the “Te” in “Tao Te Ching”) |
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| ▲ | getpost 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > it's hard to translate it into Chinese. It's a text about non-duality, among other things. Like the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra, or 101 Zen Stories, it's not supposed to make sense in an ordinary way. A successful translation is, like the original, intended to catalyze a shift in awareness. EDIT: For those with a nerdy or scholarly bent, I suggest Red Pine's translation[0], which includes translation of historically relevant commentaries. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Lao-tzus-Taoteching-Lao-Tzu/dp/155659... | |
| ▲ | polotics 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Thank you, this there is the first version I see that feels like it's got solid cultural context. I like Ursula's version and have read her books over the years, but for example when she write "mystery" in there I always felt she was dropping the ball a bit. | |
| ▲ | phendrenad2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | How can something translate into both of those things? The second translation doesn't have the concept of "saying" anything and the first translation says nothing about "wealth". |
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