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Yeah I'm not sure what spiritual non-religious Christmas music is supposed to be. You're on the right track with 'winter music', I think. Christmas music is either religious (Jesus, angels, donkeys), or it's popular "Xmas" music (Santa, snow, reindeer). If anyone knows of spiritual Christmas music that is specifically written for Christmas but isn't about Christmas (the birth of Jesus) I'm curious to hear it too! Anyway... no reason not to listen to beautiful music just because it's dedicated to Jesus or Allah or whoever. I love Christmas carols... Silent Night, Away in a Manger, O Little Town of Bethlehem, etc. I do have some non-religious suggestions.. but it's up to you to decide if they're spiritual or not. Johnny Mathis Bing Crosby The Pogues Enya This last is religious, but I don't understand a word so could be anything.....

Are we sure that the grammar allows for this meaning? 無名天地之始 nameless, Heaven and Earth's beginning // nameless, Heaven and Earth in the beginning 有名萬物之母 named, the mother of all things // to have a name, the mother of all things * * giving things names separates them, making them "exist“ as we perceive them

OK... good. Very good, actually. Questions though.. If we accept ch 1 as an original chapter, how do we know it came after Xunzi's writing? Then: to translate in your terms, it would be translated much the same way as many already have, but with a different emphasis on interpretation, right? Then: how does this fit with the rest of the chapter about 玄 and 妙 ?

Yes..I didn't want to go too far with a structural analysis because honestly I don't understand that kind of stuff. I do get the sense or feeling that 39 is different from many other chapters though -- and especially from those in the GD

Oh, I'm not such a huge fan of ch.1. I don't discount the possibility that it's basically nonsense, designed to be interpretable by anyone to mean anything... hence its popularity Thank you. I am trying to be honest.

Ah. The answer lies in the question: what or who is God? People generally see gods as 'who', rather than 'what' As MH has stated many times, Dao isn't personifiable. God is a person. A god is a person. Not a human, but a person -- a mask, a character, a being with feelings. In all mythologies, gods take the form of people or animals (or both). In the monotheistic religions, God is a big man in the sky, who also happens to be omniscient/omnipotent/omnipresent/omniomni... This, for me, is where all religions fall apart. They place faith in a human-shaped King of All; someone to tell them what to do because they're too afraid to figure it out for themselves. And all commands from these Kings were ultimately created by humans. In the Laozi and Zhuangzi and many other philosophical works, West and East, people have attempted to find ways to figure out how one can live without being commanded by some imaginary King Ghost; in many cases, how one can be contented by reconciling one's individual nature with the greater nature of the universe. Dao is this greater nature of the universe. It's everything. We're not truly separate from it; in some ways, it is like God, but only if everyone and everything is God. And if that's the case, there is no God, because a god needs something to be god of. ....................................... As far as the use of 神 6: so called 'valley spirit' is simply Dao 29: the word shen is used but generally taken as an adjective (e.g. sacred) 39: right here 60: as we covered recently, it does talk of spirits but quite possibly as a tool for governance I don't see any consistency... edit: I think this is what you guys mean about the consistent iteration of 'spirit' but if not, I apologise

Sorry to be obtuse, but which ones?

Conceding what now? If one were to consider the GD chapters as the only necessarily 'true' ones at that time, there would be absolutely no concession of God or gods..

I feel that it would be irresponsible not to at least suggest that auditory hallucinations could be a sign of sleep deprivation stress drug use abnormalities in the brain (psychosis) No offense intended. These are all real causes of problems.

Only in the way that certain translators translate the text You know normally I'd agree, but is your translation radically different from the others this time? Perhaps. But I won't make that the crux of my argument, cos there's no way to know for sure what happened, is there..? Actually, the Taiyishengshui being a part of the GD slips (and I haven't studied any of the non-老子 slips past this yet, but), it would seem that even the Guodian package was complete with stuff about spirits (神明) Knowing this, we know that whoever the slips were intended for or written by did not have a problem with the spirit-oriented aspect of Taoism at the time; so what reason would he have had for removing a chapter like 39? To me, this shows that at the very least the Laozi was open to selection and reshuffling, and that the only chapters we can be pretty certain were considered an "official" part of the Laozi were the ones in the 甲乙丙

I won't pretend that I'm not biased here. I have an interest in discrediting this chapter. It's one of the few where I know I'm not even trying to be objective. So.. This is a late addition chapter. -- 宁，灵，恐，歇，竭，灭，蹶，琭，珞 -- none of these appear in other chapters -- it rhymes -- it's the only chapter that (possibly) mentions gods as having any value -- doesn't appear in the GD -- it's oddly clear and easy to translate. All of these things mark it out as not an original Laozi creation.

If you truly want all people to thrive, you must recognize an undeniable fact: there is no such thing as race. It's an illusion, facilitated through our wildly insufficient language and centuries of conflict between nations & religions. People are neither purebred dogs nor mutts; we each possess our own characteristics, each of which lies somewhere on a spectrum of characteristics potentially shared by anyone else in the world. Read some science on the matter: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC515312/ http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color/modern-human-diversity-genetics Define 'race' clearly, and I'll back up. Can you show that the concept is anything other than a concept -- a way for people to defend their propensity for intolerance and prejudice against others, and their love for hatred? One time, whilst walking to work on the outskirts of Beijing, I walked past 2 elderly Chinese women. One of them pointed at me and 'whispered' loudly to the other, "洋鬼子" -- foreign devil. It didn't sound like she was very happy about it. They have for their whole lives been under the impression that there's some real boundary between China and the rest of the world. Because of my pale skin and light hair, they see that I'm different to them. The only boundary is one that we impose. There is a great deal of racism in many countries. People with white skin are as susceptible to it as people with any other shade. Much of it is to do with 'culture'. People don't want their 'culture' diluted or changed. What the crying fuck is culture? You grew up in a place. You did things a certain way. You believe that way is the best way, or at least the best for you. OK, no problem with that. I think it's ridiculous to only do things the way you've been taught from birth, but you're entitled to do things the way you want to do them. Who's stopping you? The Way is change. Life is impermanent. People are born, live out their lives the way they've been taught to, and die. Their ancestors live out life they way they are taught to. It goes on. But with each person, with each generation, things change. Does the arrival of a Muslim family in the house next door prevent you from celebrating Christmas the way you always have done? Does the increasing presence of 'white people' in Beijing or ‘Asian people' in Canada prevent people who've been born in those countries from living the way they live? It changes things, gradually, sure. The Way is change. Nothing is permanent. Just now I accidentally came across a locked & pitted thread that you started, and have seen how far your racism extends. Didn't need to warn you against starting racist threads, really, did I? The blonde in the video above is racist. The sitcom she's talking about is also racist. That doesn't make the blonde woman's racism any more palatable. None of it changes the racism endemic in modern culture, the majority of which is geared in favour of 'white people', despite what you say. The best way would be to stop trying to divide people on racial grounds. And that shouldn't be hard, because there is no actual basis for racial divide.

Perhaps this should be discussed in ttc39 but for now just wanted to point something out, based partly on your point about 靈 dawei 昔之得一者：天得一以清；地得一以寧；神得一以靈 [...] 神無以靈，將恐歇 If we take ling 靈 to mean shaman, this is essentially saying "... gods came about by way of shamans [...] without shamans there are no gods"

Argh...I'd written a response to you dawei but my browser went funny. I'd done a partial translation of this Wenzi chapter and didn't save it!! Basically, you're right: I went a little overboard with my defense of Laozi's Daoism as not creationist nonsense. Sorry. There's no mention of any gods creating anything in the TTC, and that's all I need to know. The end of this chapter could be translated: 故大人與天地合德，與日月合明，與鬼神合靈，與四時合信，懷天心，抱地氣，執沖含和，不下堂而行四海，變易習俗，民化遷善，若生諸己，能以神化者也 So if great men unite their De with Heaven and Earth, unite their brightness with that of the Sun and Moon, unite their spirit with that of ghosts and gods, unite their faith with the four seasons, embrace Heaven's heart, hold Earth's breath, follow harmony, travel the four seas without ever leaving paradise, change their customs, and convert the people to goodness, when their allotted lifespan is over they can merge with the gods

We've been agreeing a lot recently... it's weird You're aware of my view that modern science/atheism is very much like a religion? Some people use science as religious people use religion, yes. Some people claim that science & tech can solve all the world's problems and lead us into a future of peace and happiness. To me, that's clear nonsense... I don't hold modern science, and especially the technology that comes from it, up as some kind of 'answer'. I think the answer lies within each person (which, incidentally, is very much a 'mystic' way of looking at things). Having said that, every conclusion that comes from good science - i.e. every empirically proved conclusion - is more provably true than any conclusion that comes from waving one's hands around or throwing sticks in the air. Mysticism, from Google: belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender (my bold). Removing the 'Deity', this is not incompatible with modern science or my idea of Daoism. The rationale behind any system believing in deities is that there's some invisible dude over there doing crazy shit that we can't understand. How can anyone support that? As far as Dao is understandable, it's understandable from your so-called 'materialist' point of view -- because a materialist point of view is concerned with the material world, which is everything that exists. Nowhere in the TTC does it say that gods created anything. What it does say is: 又壯蟲成 Something great gave way to all form; 先天地生 Born before Heaven and Earth, 敚綉蜀立不亥 Morphing and hazy, singular and limitless, 可以為天下母 It is the mother of all things; 未智丌名 Its name is unknown, 字之曰道 We refer to it as the Way This is not entirely incompatible with modern physics. It's also interesting to note that the Greek, Norse, Taoist, and a number of other creation stories begin with a chaos/void/singularity. Even the Biblical creation story begins with a void. The Taoist one, as seen in ch.25 above, is simply one of the more sensible, avoiding the mention of big bearded men falling fully-formed out of nowhere and zapping things. Firstly, the theory of evolution isn't claimed to be 'proven'. It's widely acknowledged that we don't know how life as we know it began. That doesn't mean that creator gods like Cronus or Ymir are real. Secondly, proponents of Darwinism don't claim to know how life began -- only that it evolves. And that life evolves is patently obvious to anyone paying attention. So, evolution doesn't really have anything to do with what we're talking about, if you ask me. I also don't know how life on Earth began. The loveliest answers to me, though, are - that it formed by accident from this primordial 'soup', evolving from a simple combination of chemicals into more and more complex combinations - that it was brought to Earth from elsewhere, having evolved to a certain stage elsewhere This doesn't contradict the idea of Dao, and is (to me) far more reasonable than saying "Well, probably some invisible guy rubbed his hands together and said 'Abracadabra!' " (Where did the invisible guy come from?)

Ah...back to this again. ch4 doesn't necessarily refer to God/god. 帝，君也。 《尔雅》 And if it does, it's saying no more than "Dao came before gods", which could easily be the same as me saying "nature came before religion" ch60... we covered 60, didn't we? I personally concluded that it's not confirming the existence of gods..and possibly even denying them...though I'm not sure where you came down on that in the end. I'll have a look at ch39. As far as "materialism".. there are a few discussions on TTB about this, I'm fairly sure: many agree that many ideas expressed in Daoist, Buddhist, and Hindu philosophy can be paralleled with modern science very easily. Interestingly, Epicurus's philosophy can be paralleled with both of these -- the Cynics and Epicureans were very much similar to Laozi and Zhuangzi in spirit. And basically atheist. And I don't know what you mean about evolution... how is evolution not purely material?

Good question. OK..I don't feel well-equipped to answer but will give it a go. It depends first on what you mean by 'live harmoniously', I suppose. Laozi and Zhuangzi don't suggest running away to a cave in the mountains and living as a hermit, but neither do they suggest moving to the city and getting a high-powered job and being a 'slave to money' or becoming a power-hungry psychopath. What they suggest, in my opinion, is reconciling whatever position one finds oneself in with the eternal/void/oneness/mystery/Way / nature. Laozi suggests lessening knowledge and selfishness, and aiming for simplicity and knowing when enough is enough. Zhuangzi says, 緣督以為經，可以保身，可以全生，可以養親，可以盡年 Follow the middle as the constant and you can stay in one piece, keep yourself alive, look after your family, and live out your years. I often find myself asking the same questions you are, and haven't found a satisfactory answer yet. I often find myself dreaming of sailing off to a deserted tropical island to live out my years drinking coconuts and eating fish; but this is hardly feasible, and hardly beneficial to anyone other than ourselves (assuming we care to benefit anyone other than ourselves). I do think that knowledge/education can be used both ways. The fact that you're aware of the possible problems means that you should be able to stay aware of them and resolve them as they arise. Being like water can simply mean reacting when the time comes.

Yeah.. it just seems that, though I don't find Taoism generally at odds with modern science, I do find the tendency of science to limit and define things at odds with the (my) Taoist view that everything is a great togetherness. Perhaps chapter 32 of the TTC illustrates my point (though different translations offer different ideas)

One can find a multitude of quotes on the internet and it becomes difficult to distinguish the real from the entirely false or misattributed. Here are just a couple of things that suggest, at the least, a great deal of scepticism regarding gods... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism From Lactantius: "But if this account is true, which the Stoics were in no manner able to see, that argument also of Epicurus is done away. God, he says, either wishes to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able. If He is willing and is unable, He is feeble, which is not in accordance with the character of God; if He is able and unwilling, He is envious, which is equally at variance with God; if He is neither willing nor able, He is both envious and feeble, and therefore not God; if He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? Or why does He not remove them? I know that many of the philosophers, who defend providence, are accustomed to be disturbed by this argument, and are almost driven against their will to admit that God takes no interest in anything, which Epicurus especially aims at; but having examined the matter, we easily do away with this formidable argument. For God is able to do whatever He wishes, and there is no weakness or envy in God." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes_of_Sinope "When I look upon seamen, men of science and philosophers, man is the wisest of all beings; when I look upon priests and prophets nothing is as contemptible as man." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras "Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagoras_of_Melos

Almost everyone 'practiced' some kind of theism until fairly recently, but that doesn't mean that everyone believed in deities until fairly recently. Whilst attending a Protestant school and singing hymns and saying the Lord's Prayer every day, I decided that God didn't exist when I was around 7 years old.. what was to stop anyone from having a similar realization even two or three thousand years ago? We know that a number of Greek and Roman philosophers were either atheist or agnostic. Anyway, it surely does depend on one's perception of the LZ as a part of this 'cultural multiverse', but from our linguistic study of the LZ thus far, I'm pretty sure that LZ himself took an agnostic position in his writing. Can you point me towards rectifying or aligning this passage with any passage of the TTC?

Wa‘alaikum al-salaam (copied that from wikipedia..hope it's the correct response!) You've got an interesting 'back story' ! I'm sure many would be interested to learn more. Well, the more you read on this forum, the more you'll probably come to see that there are as many different 'Taoisms' as there are people. I just recommend starting with at least 2 or 3 different translations of the TTC (no single English translation can possibly convey all the potential meanings contained in the passages), and then maybe the Chuang Tzu / Zhuangzi. Other people might have different suggestions though... You can find loads of translations here, to test the waters: http://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html I'd suggest John Wu, Gia-fu Feng, and Stephen Addiss and then http://terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html Burton Watson's translation of Zhuangzi is pretty good. It's a wonderful book.

I don't like this... I mean, scanning it I'm fairly sure I agree with your translation, but I don't care for what it's saying. Sounds nothing like the Laozi of the TTC, does it?

Why has the conversation turned towards defining life, now? Can't remember. As "the condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter", it's not something that has strict boundaries. And for me, this inability of even modern science -- which is all about definitions and imposing boundaries -- to define 'life' is simply further evidence of the/my Taoist view that there are no real boundaries between anything. It's all a matter of perception.

I'm no biologist, but is a single 'specimen' (however we define that) of a spore or a virus not akin to a single specimen of a human? i.e. the whole species/family/group might last for a long time, as might each individual that it comprises of, but both will go through similar stages of growth and decay...? The things you mention are great examples of life being really hard to define, but do any of them last forever?

No prob. I have too, really...but I'm the type of dog who has a hard time releasing a bone. Thanks for your input... & I hope this incessant theorizing hasn't ruined the passage for you...