Shidifen

Derek Lin's Youtube channel is here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsPVNGGfoy7_vqhi_lT9eVA/videos You can find videos of him going through the Dao De Jing chapter by chapter. He is now onto his second chapter by chapter explanation, which is great because a few of his videos from the first lot never got uploaded and now they're lost. Here's the playlist for his chapter by chapter translations - He also has a facebook page here - https://www.facebook.com/groups/tao.talks/

G'day. I want to share a couple of sung versions of the Qingjing Jing in Chinese that I found on Youtube. The first one is a soundtrack sung by a female singer named Jing Shanyuan. She has a very beautiful voice and the accompanying music is also beautiful. It's a slow song that pulls out the Qingjing Jing to twenty minutes. It is very relaxing and it is quite easy to read along with a pinyin copy of the Qingjing Jing. Here's a good page, which also contains a link to the page's author's rendition on mp3 - http://www.silkqin.com/02qnpu/27sjts/sj03qjj.htm The second one is sung by a Chinese bloke with a backing orchestra of traditional instruments. Its six and a half minutes long. Version one by Jing Shanyuan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9i2bWZqEqM Version two by Cantonese singer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVYjm9pXYqI

G'day everyone. I was reading a very interesting series of articles on Harmen Mesker's site (http://www.yjcn.nl/wp/) about an error in Wilhelm's I Ching. He appears to have mixed up the names the young and old yin and yang doublets. The first article is here - http://www.yjcn.nl/wp/going-back-to-the-source-the-manuscripts-of-richard-wilhelm-1/#more-2236 I was just reading through some notes I had made while reading through Legge's I Ching and I had made a note of the differences he gave to the same doublets. You'll find them on pages 58 and 423. On page 58 he called a yin line over a yang line Young Yang, but on page 423 he called the same symbol Young Yin. The same mixing up was done with the Old Yin and Old Yang symbols.

Zhou Youguang died 14-01-2017, aged 111, in Beijing. http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/zhou-youguangs-pinyin-writing-system-helped-modernise-china-20170117-gtt75i.html

I just remembered that Mair has a section in the back of his book where he put passages he doesn't consider to be genuine. The following passages have been removed from the main body of the text (where their positions are marked by ellipses) either because they are spurious or because they are later commentaries and other types of interpolations that have been mistakenly incorporated into the text. In order to provide a complete translation of the standard edition of the Chuang Tzu, however, they are recorded here. The next section goes after "When the P'eng looks down at the sky from above, it must appear just the same as when we look up..." Moreover, if water has not accumulated to a sufficient depth, it will not have the strength to support a large boat. Pour a cup of water into a low spot on the floor and you can make a boat out of a mustard seed. But if you place the cup in the water it will get stuck because the boat will be large in relation to the shallowness of the water. Similarly, if the wind has not accumulated to a sufficient density, it will not have the strength to support large wings. Therefore, only at an altitude of ninety thousand tricents, with so much wind beneath it, can the P'eng ride on the wind. With its back touching the blue sky and no obstacles in its path, the P 'eng heads for the south.

Yes, in Australia the aboriginal groups have land they fully control and they also have the legal right to access Government owned land under lease to mining companies, etc. Some of them are working toward self-sufficiency since some State Governments have decided they can no longer continue paying for water, power or phone-line access for the communities. Of course the politicians can find the money for their oversized salaries, superannuation and pensions. I have a dream of buying a few hundred acres of cheap land and randomly planting it with fruit trees and other edible plants and letting chickens run wild on it, as well as a big dam for ducks and yabbies. Then I'd build some small sheds around the place and then retire on it. Then I could just wander about, picking whatever was in season, scatter a few seeds, pick up a few eggs, catch the occasional chicken and yabby and sleep by a fire in good weather or the nearest shed in rain or cold weather. But I'd have to put a heap of money in a trust to pay for the annual rates and other Government expenses. I'd open it up to like-minded groups that want to do the same and hopefully start a new movement of people giving up a life of working for other people just to buy rubbish they don't need but everybody says they do; a life like Laozi and Zhuangzi describe. I live in a town where drug abuse and stupid violence are on the increase and I reckon a simpler lifestyle with less consumerism, and hence less money and more self-reliance, might just be the panacea. I also have a house on a few acres in a valley beside a creek, but unfortunately it gets two or three black frosts every July. It kills off the leaves of every plant and even the canetoads are snap frozen. That's not conducive to anything like self-sufficiency... Off topic, I know, but now that it's in writing my dream might come true, LOL!

The last part makes me wish it were still possible to live a simple hunter/gatherer lifestyle, without any need at all for money or any of its equivalents.

Mair 2:3 "If there were no 'other', there would be no 'I'. If there were no 'I', there would be nothing to apprehend the `other: "This is near the mark, but I do not know what causes it to be so. It seems as though there is a True Ruler, but there is no particular evidence for Her. We may have faith in Her ability to function, but cannot see Her form. She has attributes but is without form. The hundred bones, the nine orifices, and the six viscera are all complete within my body. With which am I most closely identified? Do you favor all of them equally? Or are there those to which you are partial? Assuming that you treat them equally, do you take them all to be your servants? If so, are your servants incapable of controlling each other? Or do they take turns being lord and subject among themselves? If not, do they have a True Lord over them all? Whether or not we succeed in specifying His attributes has neither positive nor negative effect upon the truth of the Lord. Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction. In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results. We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise. May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded? NOTES - 5. Her. The Chinese pronoun lacks gender.

Mair 2:2 Great knowledge is expansive; Small knowledge is cramped. Great speech blazes brilliantly; Small speech is mere garrulousness. When people sleep, their souls are confused; when they awake, their bodies feel all out of joint. Their contacts turn into conflicts, Each day involves them in mental strife. They become indecisive, dissembling, secretive. Small fears disturb them; Great fears incapacitate them. Some there are who express themselves as swiftly as the release of a crossbow mechanism, which is to say that they arbitrate right and wrong. Others hold fast as though to a sworn covenant, which is to say they are waiting for victory. Some there are whose decline is like autumn or winter, which describes their dissolution day by day. Others are so immersed in activity that they cannot be revitalized. Some become so weary that they are as though sealed up in an envelope, which describes their senility. Their minds are so near to death that they cannot be rejuvenated. Pleasure and anger; sorrow and joy; worry and regret; vacillation and trepidation; diffidence and abandon; openness and affectedness. These are all like musical sounds from empty tubes, like fungi produced from mere vapors. Day and night they alternate within us, but no one knows whence they arise. Enough! Enough! The instant one grasps this, one understands whence they arise!

ON THE EQUALITY OF THINGS (Chapter 2) The Great Clod, a metaphor for the Earth and the Way, is introduced. An extended discussion of self and other, right and wrong, affirmation and denial, ensues. Transcendent knowledge goes beyond all such dichotomies. A Sir Motley of Southurb sat leaning against his low table. He looked up to heaven and exhaled slowly. Disembodied, he seemed bereft of soul. Sir Wanderer of Countenance Complete, who stood in attendance before him, asked, "How can we explain this? Can the body really be made to become like withered wood? Can the mind really be made to become like dead ashes? The one who is leaning against the table now is not the one who was formerly leaning against the table." "Indeed," said Sir Motley, "your question is a good one, Yen. Just now, I lost myself Can you understand this? You may have heard the pipes of man, but not the pipes of earth. You may have heard the pipes of earth, but not the pipes of heaven." "I venture", said Sir Wanderer, "to ask their secret." "The Great Clod," said Sir Motley, "emits a vital breath called the wind. If it doesn't blow, nothing happens. Once it starts to blow, however, myriad hollows begin to howl. Have you not heard its moaning? The clefts and crevasses of the towering mountains, the hollows and cavities of huge trees a hundred spans around: they are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like sockets, like cups, like mortars, or like the depressions that form puddles and pools. The wind blowing over them makes the sound of rushing water, whizzing arrows, shouting, breathing, calling, crying, laughing, gnashing. The wind in front sings aiee and the wind that follows sings wouu. A light breeze evokes a small response; a powerful gale brings forth a mighty chorus. When the blast dies down, then all the hollows are silent. Have you not seen the leaves that quiver with tingling reverberations? " "The pipes of earth," said Sir Wanderer, "are none other than all of the hollows you have described. The pipes of man are bamboo tubes arrayed in series. I venture to ask what the pipes of heaven are." "As for the pipes of heaven," said Sir Motley, "the myriad sounds produced by the blowing of the wind are different, yet all it does is elicit the natural propensities of the hollows themselves. What need is there for something else to stimulate them?" Notes - 1. Sir Motley. His name may alternatively indicate that he has a sternly disciplined personality . 2. mind. The word hsin means both "heart" and "mind." We may think of it as the heart-mind. 3. Yen. Yen was apparently the disciple's real name, Sir Wanderer his sobriquet. 4. something else. Heaven is not an external agency. Rather, it is innate within everything.

I have to find some time to sit under a tree and flip through the big three Dao books... Somewhere in one of them, Zhuanzi most likely, there is something about the stupidity, for want of a better word, of cutting yourself off from the world around you. It's school holiday time here and I really wish I could be stupid...

You don't see too many Chinese on the 'World's Oldest Person' list. I'm sure there is something in the Leizi or Zhuangzi about the futility of trying to strive for immortality or extra longevity of the physical body. All the alchemy and other stuff attributed to Daoism has nothing to do with the Daoism expounded by Laozi or Zhuangzi. But Qigong couldn't hurt as long as you're not expecting some miraculous hocus-pocus to come from it. My opinion...

Mair's notes - 19. Master Hui. A friend and favorite philosophical sparring partner of Chuang Tzu, Hui Tzu was an important figure in the School of Names. 20. Viet, Ngwa. In Modem Standard Mandarin, Ngwa is pronounced Wu and Viet is pronounced Yiieh. 21. defeated them. Because his men used the ointment to protect their hands from getting chapped in the cold, wet weather.

Mair's notes - 16. Sung. In the central part of north China. 17. Viet. In the south of China. During Chuang Tzu's time, the people living here were not yet Sinicized. 18. Fen River. In Shansi province.

Mair's notes - 12. Chien Wu, Lien Shu. Two fictitious practitioners of the Way. 13. Chieh Yu. A legendary hermit of the state of Ch'u. 14. myriad things. This is a very important expression in early Chinese philosophy. "Myriad things" refers to all phenomenal existence. More literally, we might render wanwu as "the ten thousand entities." We should note that while wu is normally translated as "thing-: for consistency's sake, it also includes both the notion of "creature" and of "object." 15. Shun. Another sage-king of high antiquity.