Geof Nanto

Many good comments here. For me I’d say one of the most important things I learnt from teachers is connection with ancient lineages of cultivation. Lineage and spiritual tradition connections give structure and depth. They’re also like a true home; a place of belonging, a family. It’s like being a part of an ancient tree deeply rooted into the depths of the earth and reaching high into the sky. Along with that, when working with a small group around such a teacher, I’ve gained massive support from group empathy and intent. So much learning is silent and absorbed like osmosis. Another important lesson I’ve learnt is that even the most gifted teacher is human and fallible. Which brings me to think of a corollary to this topic, namely the 3 most important things a teacher can never teach you.

For Jung, he explains how he needed to communicate his experiences or else face living in isolation. I think he’s done this exceptionally well and am personally grateful for his work. He gave me profound insights into my own experiences and made me feel not alone; more so than any other single teacher I’ve had. I read little of Jung now but for 30 years his collected works were a constant presence in my life. The deeper I went into my own experience, the more I was able to understand his complex writings. However, even though he was widely read and admired by many, towards the end of his life he wrote that no one he knew of fully understood the totality of his concepts of reality; of how he experienced reality. And he also notes that anyone who travels the path of individuation must experience a degree of aloneness. But Jung also notes, and I think it’s true, that whatever you feel and think that’s valid (in that it connects with deeper reality) will also be felt and thought by others throughout history. (Otherwise it is more than likely personal imbalance; that is, illness.) Of course, the challenge can be finding such connection. For Jung his greatest relief was finding connection with the lineages of both Western and Chinese alchemy. We are lucky these days in that we have so much better access to many previously obscure and even previously secret world spiritual traditions and knowledge, but obviously many difficulties remain. I hope this forum is able to provide you with contact with at least a few like-minded people amongst its lively mixture of wisdom and craziness.

The actual medication depends on which genotype ot Hep C the patient has. Mine was genotype 3 and the treatment was Sovaldi® and Daklinza® (sofosbuvir and daclatasvir) in 1 pill of each, taken once per day for 12 weeks. I checked out your link for Harvoni and note that it doesn't cover all Hep C genotypes. Also it only subsides 25% of the actual treatment cost which is over $80,000 in Australia. (I don't know what it costs in The USA.) My impression of American health care systems as regard to cost subsides is that they're patchy, even with insurance. A person can be well provided for, or not at all (and everything in between) depending on where they live, the nature of their illness, and their personal circumstances.

I'm not an American so I feel no right to criticize their system, but I'm grateful I live in a country where medical bankruptcies don't occur. As my last post spoke in general terms, I’ll add something about my specific case… About 30 years ago I needed a huge amount of support to overcome both illness related to heroin addiction and recovery from addiction itself. Without access to extensive free medical services I suspect I would not be alive today. I also needed a few years on income support and was given a rehabilitation pension. Hence, from a personal perspective, I have nothing but praise for our Australian universal health and social welfare system. (But, of course, I’m not claiming it’s perfect.) Now I rarely use the medical services and was beginning to resent the couple of thousand dollars that’s deducted from my income annually as a compulsory Medicare levy. However, last year I accessed the free program to treat the legacy Hep C infection I’d been carrying since my heroin addiction days. The old interferon based treatment had such terrible side-effects and a low success rate that I stayed clear of it. The new treatment is excellent and cleared my Hep C with virtually no side effects. The actually cost to the taxpayer for this treatment was well over $80,000 , of which my co-payments amounted to a few hundred dollars. (This almost free treatment is available to everyone with Hep C, with no other eligibility requirements.)

I’ve browsed the last few pages of discussion here and that got me doing a little of my own research. (Incidentally, I live in a country with a universal health care insurance system, namely Australia.) Detailed OECD health statistics are available here. What strikes me is how similar outcomes are for all OECD countries. For me the most significant feature is how rapidly health care costs as a percentage of GDP are escalating in all countries. The similarities got me thinking about what actually most effects health outcomes. I then checked how income effects life expectancy, especially in the USA as the only significant developed country without universal health care. Firstly, across all countries, the Preston curve indicates that individuals born in richer countries, on average, can expect to live longer than those born in poor countries. However, the link between income and life expectancy flattens out. This means that at low levels of per capita income, further increases in income are associated with large gains in life expectancy, but at high levels of income, increased income has little associated change in life expectancy. In other words, if the relationship is interpreted as being causal, then there are diminishing returns to income in terms of life expectancy.” The Association Between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014 Interestingly, it isn’t so much access to health care that impacts on life expectancy as much as lifestyle and place of residence…. “In the United States between 2001 and 2014, higher income was associated with greater longevity, and differences in life expectancy across income groups increased over time. However, the association between life expectancy and income varied substantially across areas; differences in longevity across income groups decreased in some areas and increased in others. The differences in life expectancy were correlated with health behaviors and local area characteristics.” My conclusion….. This is complex issue with a multitude of causal factors at work but basically in all developed countries health care systems are rapidly escalating into areas of diminishing returns in terms of expenditure versus health outcomes. What we are seeing is both a rapid escalation of life-style related illness and an unwillingness to accept illness and early death as a natural part of the variation of outcomes within any population. For me these are the main issues, as all developed countries have excellent conventional health care systems.

Yeah, the way this discussion is being shaped over different threads means it’s a little disjointed. Hence, I’ll add this comment from Flowing Hands as an important juxtaposition to my above post. To my mind, these are not contrary positions but a yin / yang pair.

I always like to see Daodejing discussion on Dao Bums. As far as I’m concerned, reading any version of the Daodejing is better than not reading it all. It’s something to be encouraged. Hence I’m happy for this discussion to be predominately a general one about each verse, rather than focusing on the differences in the cited translations as was the stated intention. Certainly, some differences are worthy of mention, but these are few in comparison to the similarities. For this verse all the above translations read much the same to me. (However, I suspect there will be some significant differences in future verses.) To add some mild polemic, I could argue that Jonathan Star takes the most liberties with insertions such as “opening hearts,” and by watering down the key idea of “keeping the people from knowing”. But such interpretations with their tinge of Christian- Humanist influences, obviously have strong contemporary appeal. They give the Daodejing wider appeal, and that certainly is not without merit. If the words inspire a spark of interest, then surely they’ve served a worthwhile function. The living Dao can never be expressed in words anyway, hence the words we use to evoke it must be allowed a measure of fluidity; must be allowed to move with the times. Those inspired by the Daodejing who seek more knowledge of classical Daoism will look deeper than just reading one translation. I feel drawn to much of classical Daoism with its non-patriarchal and less anthropocentric worldview, but the reality is that the Daoist vision of a simple, agrarian utopia has not eventuated. It has proved a Daoist error to impose this very human intent onto the actual processes of the eternal Dao in the world. For me, that’s paradoxical because it is precisely the strand of Daoism that advocates the letting go of all such intents that so appeals to me about the Daoism of the Daodejing and especially the Zhuangzi. On a more technical level. for his translation of this verse Red Pine notes……. Between the penultimate and final lines, the Fuyi edition and Tunhuang copy S.477 insert wei-wu-wei, "they act by not acting:' while Mawangtui B has wu-wei-er-yi, "by simply not acting." Commentators who accept such versions often quote Confucius: "To govern without effort, that was Shun. And what did he do? He simply faced south and bowed" (Lunyu: 15-4). But such an emendation, however Taoist, is superfluous here, and was probably interpolated from elsewhere in the text. This verse is absent in the Kuotien texts. Edited to fix format errors

I love doing my own building but as I live in Australia in a semi-wilderness area, my experience probably lacks relevance. Something that I image is relevant though is awareness of the qi of both the materials and the building as a whole. As a general rule I’d say that the more a building material is machine processed, the more fractured its qi. For me, in this regard and for general aesthetics, nothing compares to natural hardwood. I live in a small, pole frame, timber clad cabin. I’ve been here 19 years and it’s the most comfortable home I’ve ever lived in. Most everyone who visits comments on how good it feels inside. It’s basically one room about 7 metres by 8 metres with a sleeping loft over about a third of it. It very light and bright and has high, sloping ceilings with rafters of exposed poles. There's verandas on two sides. The flooring is hardwood, milled locally. The poles were harvested from my land and the only processing they’ve had is removal of the bark. I’ve left them visible inside; they’re neither smooth nor entirely straight. They give shape to my cabin, which, like my life, is neither smooth nor straight. Because nothing is straight or square, it’s meant I've put in many hours of hand crafted work. And for me that’s another aspect of building to consider, namely the qi of the people involved in the building work.

I regularly use the term ‘cultivation’ on this forum because it’s a standard part of Daoist vocabulary. I assumed its usage was well understood and uncontroversial. Apparently that’s not the case. I’m interested in what the term means to other people; like or dislike. Do you cultivate, and if so what do you cultivate? For me, it conveys a sense of natural growth. What I’m cultivating is my connection with the Dao. Though this connection is something we all innately possess - every living organism will grow to its fullest potential if allowed to do so – it can be obstructed. Hence, just like I’m not the one who needs to show plants how to bud and flower, my path is not something I create; it unfolds of itself if I allow it to do so. It happens ‘self-so’ (ziran 自然). What I can consciously do is remove blockages that inhibit the flow of Dao within me. For me, insight into my many inner obstructions is a slow and ongoing process of discovery. Much of it has been by trial and error. I’ve had many teachers along the way but ultimately I suspect we all must find our own unique ‘flowering’. What I do know is the more I allow myself to harmonise with the ebb and flow of Dao, the more life seems to unfold effortlessly (wu wei 無爲).

To my mind, this is an excellent post and deserves highlighting. It could well be the OP of a new topic for discussion. There's too much here to comment on specifics but I agree with the gist of what you're saying, if not the specifics of how de (te) is cultivated. (As a small criticism, I think you're perhaps applying too much light to something that must always retain darkness, to borrow from Red Pine's words I've quoted above.) It's all too easy for us Westerners to take aspects of traditional praxis (such as the ones you mention in your opening sentence) and practice them as if they're all we need to do. Unfortunately, as anyone who goes deeper eventually discovers, there's much more involved. I particularly liked David Cooper's essay I referenced above because he approaches cultivation as practiced as a whole way of life within the East Asian tradition.

Here is classical Daoist perspective on it from philosopher John Gray that follows the pattern of Mountain, No Mountain, Mountain. Chuang-Tzu (Zhuangzi) is obviously at the third stage.….. Chuang-Tzu is as much a sceptic as a mystic. The sharp dichotomy between appearance and reality that is central in Buddhism is absent, and so is the attempt to transcend the illusions of everyday existence. Chuang-Tzu sees human life as a dream, but he does not seek to awaken from it. In a famous passage he writes of dreaming he was a butterfly, and not knowing on awakening whether he is a human being who has dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he is a human being. Unlike the Buddha, Chuang-Tzu did not seek to awaken from the dream. He dreamt of dreaming more lucidly: 'Buddhists awaken out of dreaming; ChuangTzu wakes up to dreaming.' Awakening to the truth that life is a dream need not mean turning away from it. It may mean embracing it: If 'Life is a dream' implies that no achievement is lasting, it also implies that life can be charged with the wonder of dreams, that we drift spontaneously through events that follow a logic different from that of everyday intelligence, that fears and regrets are as unreal as hopes and desires. Chuang-Tzu admits no idea of salvation. There is no self and no awakening from the dream of self. We cannot be rid of illusions. Illusion is our natural condition. Why not accept it?

I like this description of cultivation from Red Pine….. Despite the elusiveness and namelessness of the Tao, Lao-tzu tells us we can approach it through Te. Te means "virtue:' in the sense of "moral character" as well as "power to act.' Yen Ling-feng says, "Virtue is the manifestation of the Way. The Way is what Virtue contains. Without the Way, Virtue would have no power. Without Virtue, the Way would have no appearance:' Han Fei put it more simply: "Te is the Tao at work.' Te is our entrance to the Tao. Te is what we cultivate. Lao-tzu's Virtue, however, isn't the virtue of adhering to a moral code but action that involves no moral code, no self, no other —no action. These are the two poles around which the Taoteching turns: the Tao, the dark, the body, the essence, the Way; and Te, the light, the function, the spirit, Virtue. In terms of origin, the Tao comes first. In terms of practice, Te comes first. The dark gives the light a place to shine. The light allows us to see the dark. But too much light blinds. Lao-tzu saw people chasing the light and hastening their own destruction. He encouraged them to choose the dark instead of the light, less instead of more, weakness instead of strength, inaction instead of action. What could be simpler?

David Cooper explores the topic of cultivation at length in his excellent essay titled, ‘Gardeners of the Cosmos’: The Way of the Garden in East Asian Tradition "The phrase ‘gardeners of the cosmos’ is one I have borrowed from a recent book on Daoism whose author explains that a ‘key metaphor’ in Daoist texts is that of cultivation. The model for Daoist sages or adepts is the responsible gardener who plants, nourishes, weeds and then lets things grow according to nature. They may be called ‘gardeners of the cosmos’, people who ‘slowly shape their life and environment’ with a right appreciation of the relation between human activity and the order of nature." ".....in the Way of the garden the dualisms central to Western conceptions of humanity and its relationship to the world are abandoned in favour of more nuanced connections. It is here that the main value of the East Asian Way of the garden is to be found. The ‘gardener of the cosmos’, to recall our opening metaphor, is not a messianic figure at the head of the charge ‘to save the planet’. He or she is someone whose own life and whose relationship to the natural environment are modelled on those of good gardener. This is a man or woman whose engagement with the living world cultivates sensibility to beauty, bodily grace and discipline, spontaneity and other virtues that enable lives to flourish, and understanding of the way, and of the mystery, of things." The Dao of the Garden.pdf

Perhaps if we replace Monkey with Rooster then the monkey mischievous preventing Dao Bums from migrating to the new software will cease.

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things. The colour of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; The mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind. ~ from 'The Tale of the Heike'

The great paradox of the Daodejing is that it’s 5000 'words' evoking something that can never be known through words. For me, it functions like the finger pointing to the moon. Dao Bums, as a word based discussion forum, tends to favour analysis of the finger; the yang over the yin. The moon can only be experienced inwardly, through silent stillness. In these discussions I contribute my often clumsy words with sincere intent. That’s our visible medium of interacting here. But my deeper interest lies in the feel of the discussion, the invisible currents, the patterns of conversation; the hidden interior behind the yang exterior. In that way my participation is an ongoing part of my personal practice. I particularly note how I feel when reading comments. Any strong emotional reaction is an immediate indicator of something hidden within me stirring beneath the surface. I just note the reaction; I don’t consciously try to analyse. I simply allow space and the willingness for new insight to be revealed in its own time. For me life experience is the greatest teacher. As someone who lives in relative isolation from people (though within an abundance of wildlife and natural process) my participation here has been a great learning experience. Difficult, rewarding, frustrating…..and more. In the back of my mind though, my more recent feeling is that I’m approaching a tipping point where the damage I sustain is being outweighed by the benefits I gain. I write these words as part of my personal practice in the hope of clearing my personal air surrounding my participation here. It’s not a criticism of Dao Bums in any way; I don’t think it’s realistically possible for a web forum to be any better than Dao Bums. I’m simply expressing a personal quandary. As the saying goes about life in general, “More will be revealed.”

Thanks for your longer reply, Flowing Hands. There's much in your words I agree with, especially that classical Daoism is of the feminine. That's a point I've made many times on this forum. I also agree that, "The Christian viewpoint affects everything even though we may not know it or realize it and it is very masculine." I'd expand it so it reads, "our conditioning affects everything even though we may not know it or realize it, and most all of our conditioning is very masculine". Hence the feminine flavour of classical Daoism makes a most welcome relief, for me at least. That's why I so greatly value it. (Edit: As an aside I'd add that mysticism in all traditions depends on the feminine, even if it's not acknowledged as such.)

Thanks for your reply, Stosh. However, it’s apparent once again how different our perspectives are to the extent that it makes finding common ground on which to build discussion difficult. For instance, you write, “He [Alan Chan] says himself ! he doesnt understand it , he writes it off as mystical clap trap, pretty , engaging , teasing etc but not having a valid point of its own.” I’m not sure how you got this impression from an essay that opens with, “The Daodejing, commonly translated the "Classic of the Way and Virtue," must be ranked as one of the most important classics in world literature” and ends with, “…...but the study and practice of the Daodejing, in the final analysis, remains a lifelong task”. To my reading Alan Chan does not favour or frown upon any of the many great and diverse traditions that the Daodejing has inspired, but treats them all with respect, whether spiritual, philosophical or religious.

Flowing Hands, your reply leaves me speechless!

You say some insightful things Flowing Hands. No doubt about it. However, I have trouble with your apparent dismissal of most all – if not all - other people interested in the Daodejing as unqualified. To me, yours is just another one of many perspectives on this ancient and ambiguous text. Your claim to have the ‘real’ Daodejing revealed to you by Laozi in spirit form is interesting. I don’t doubt you are channelling something of value – but how do you know it’s Laozi? It seems to me from reading your translation and from other comments you’ve made that you’re channelling a much more recent source of wisdom. (BTW If your comments against Christianity were directed at me, you have totally misunderstood my reference to the so-called ‘Christian-Humanist worldview’ in my above post. One of my main interests in this topic is to separate out those Christian-Humanist biases in Daodejing translations. These are not what classical Daoism is about, however the thought patterns that shape such worldviews also flow from Dao; that is, Dao in the greater sense than the conditioned teaching of Daoism. )

The Dao in words can never be the eternal Dao. Translations of the Daodejing must also always be interpretations. And these interpretations are on top of the original interpretation of Dao written in ancient Chinese script by Laozi. Hence, I totally agree with Marblehead that it’s good to “read as many different translations as we can” not only because “some people just talk better to us than do others” but also because by doing so we can gain some insight into the various biases of each translator. That’s why I also find it valuable to read what the ancients and many others have written on the Daodejing over the last two millennia. According to Daoism, Dao is eternal and unchanging. The Dao the ancients experienced is not different from the Dao of today. Basic human nature has not changed much if at all over the last few millennia; it’s only our conditioned reality and environment that’s changed. My personal cultivation aims at experiencing reality beyond conditioning. This is also the aim of many spiritual traditions and a multitude of methods are employed to this end, as I’m sure anyone who frequents this forum knows. For me, it’s proving to be an ongoing decades long gradual process of connecting with increasingly subtle ‘invisible’ reality – a reality outside and beyond words and concepts. For us educated contemporary people, one of the most basic and mundane yet essential and effective ways to gain some insight into the pervasive web of conditioned reality we are all immersed in and continually experience through the forms of our culture and societies is to read Daodejing commentary of those who lived in different cultures and in different societies. Of course, they too lived within their own conditioned realities, but referencing ourselves to their outside standpoint gives us some possibility of insight into our own conditioning. The patterns of our human behaviour and thought that continually reproduce themselves in all cultures and at all times also become apparent. These patterns, as well as the patterns that shape our natural environment, reflect the unconditioned Dao. To my observation, the current dominant Western worldview is Christian-Humanist, hence English translations of the Daodejing operate within this cultural framework; some much more so than others. For me, it’s particularly meaningful to note where that differs from the classical Daoism of Laozi. (And it’s also meaningful to note how these so-called Christian-Humanist ideas were present in seed form in ancient China - but that's another subject altogether.)

Perhaps eventually even the concepts seem like a child's game of pretense?....... Also see http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/37940-idea-traps/?p=615982

I like Dawei's summary too. Dawei's other insight that Laozi's message is all here in verse one in seed form is echoed back through the centuries with, for instance, this comment by Ming dynasty Zen practitioner Deqing: "Laozi's philosophy is all here. The remaining five thousand words only expand on this verse." As to your question: what is "enduring and unchanging name"? Is it possible to give an example of such name? The intent of these first lines of chapter one is to illustrate that no name can name the Dao, indeed all names are only arbitrary symbols for something else. As Red Pine states: "During Lao-tzu's day, philosophers were concerned with the correspondence, or lack of it, between name and reality. The things we distinguish as real change, while their names do not. How then can reality be known through names?"

Stosh, you said it was your desire to understand Laozi’s intent. I gave you a deeply researched reference work that gives an overview of 2000 plus years of insights into this very complex and multifaceted subject - and you refuse to read it. My question to you is, “what is your intent in engaging in this discussion.”

Stosh, I would ask you to read Alan Chan's essay that I referenced in the other thread. It surely answers many of your questions with the detail such inquiry deserves.