wandelaar

Quite a surprise to see this happening to so many Bums. Same with me: I have become very selective in what I read! But actually - apart from spiritual development - I think there are some very good reasons why this is so: - When you get older you realize that your life is finite and you haven't got all the time of the world. - You develop a sense of quality, and books of real quality are rare. - After some time you will have read enough about the things you find most interesting. - When your view of life settles your former youthful expectations of the effect of reading books disappear.

What is also important is the fact that worries and consequent nervousness as regards the reception of one's own work seriously interfere with the execution of the job.

The typical Taoist disregard for social and other external distractions (here achieved by fasting) combined with choosing the most appropriate material to work with allows the intuition (Heaven) to work wonders. The Taoist woodworker doesn't claim to have made anything of his own design, he only assisted in providing the finishing touch to the bellstand that had essentially already grown in the found tree of ultimate form. And then as OldDog aptly said all that had to be done was only to remove everything that is not bellstand.

Currently some collections of old translations of the Tao Te Ching are being being published. For instance: https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Ching-Collected-Classical-Translations-ebook/dp/B07G38H9WB/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1538515345&sr=8-3&keywords=old+translations+tao+te+ching https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Classical-Translations/dp/1499540388/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1538517025&sr=8-2&keywords=old+translations+tao+te+ching&dpID=41cQhZBcUhL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch Can we still learn something from those old translations? Or are they best left to historians of sinology?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léon_Wieger Besides, France had a strong tradition in sinology of its own: Source: Harriet Thelma Zurndorfer: China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works About China Past and ... .

Well - there is Herbert Giles and there is Lionel Giles (being father and son), and both were sinologists. The Chuang tzu translation we talked about is by the father and the Lao tzu translation I am referring to is by the son.

Well I have now looked at a lot of old translations, and there are (only) two that add something substantial to the modern ones I already bought: https://archive.org/details/TheSayingsOfLaoTzu https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-attributed-HuaiNanTzu-KuanYinTzu-TungKuChing/dp/1578631238

You seem to assume that Marblehead doesn't know what he is talking about. Why is that?

See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/#Com

It would be understandable when Giles as a pioneer made some mistakes. So I just now tried to read the article by Moeller again. But I didn't get far, it's just too much postmodern stupidity to swallow. As I said before, no decent argument is given. Giles is accused of all sorts of things by an extremely forced reinterpretation of his translation as a piece of pseudo-Chinese Western philosophy. But in fact it is Mueller who is caught in his tunnel vision from beginning to end. And to make things worse the surely biased traditional Chinese commentator Guo Xiang is presented as an example of how the Chuang tzu should be interpreted. Furthermore the translation of Giles hardly differs from those of other respected modern scholars, so are we to suppose that the "insights" of Mueller are superior to all others? No - I don't buy that.

Still no arguments are given. Apparently Giles as a Western scholar is considered guilty unless proven otherwise? Now here is Giles' translation of the dream of the butterfly (see the end of the chapter): https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chuang_Tzŭ_(Giles)/Chapter_2 Apparently Giles is describing the ideas of Chuang tzu as a form of pantheism. Now given the structure of the text all interpretations of the Chuang tzu are bound to be somewhat speculative, but I don't see why it should be ruled out that Chuang tzu actually saw the world from a pantheistic perspective. Moeller is doing both Chuang tzu and Giles a huge disservice by reducing them to exponents of their respective cultures and ignoring the sheer possibility that they had some thoughts of their own. Why are we to take an eccentric like Chuang tzu as an exponent of his own culture? More likely he had a mind of own and should be considered as such. So there is no reason to take traditional Chinese interpretations as more likely correct than the well informed Western ones.

Thank you - I will give it a look.

What do you think are better introductions?

Highlighting or just suggesting...? As the article went on and on without any decent argumentation being made I stopped reading. So please tell me: What actual arguments are presented that Giles "was unconsciously following his Western conditioning" in his interpretation of Chuang tzu? Wasn't Giles capable of doing some thinking of his own or of taking note of Eastern ways of thought?

Yes - I am considering to buy it. But I haven't too much space for still more books left now.

That's the problem with the article: Chuang tzu and Giles are only seen as exponents of respectively early Chinese thought and Western philosophy. As far as I read the article I didn't see how it proves anything. In my impression it's a typical postmodern piece of sloppy reasoning, that's why I stopped reading halfway. Or did I miss something?

Indeed - wouldn't Chinese interpreters have their own cultural biases? In my opinion each and every interpretation or translation should be evaluated on its own merits, and not on the basis of the race or upbringing of the author. I have read part of the quoted criticism of Giles's translation and found it tedious and unconvincing. Why should it be impossible that Chuang tzu wrote down some ideas that also appear in Western philosophy? In my opinion political correctness promotes a form of reverse racism that ignores the value of individual human beings and their liberty to form and express their own opinions irrespective of their race or upbringing. And that is also true.

Isn't it published as a physical book?

Yes - the title is awful! But we shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

You might be the exception to the rule (that wouldn't surprise me for an anarchist ), but as regards the overall use of social attachments modern psychology is much more positive: https://personal.eur.nl/veenhoven/Pub2000s/2008e-full.pdf

Fundamentally there is no answer to why-questions, for any supposed answer can again be questioned. Further I don't see how the question "Why are you searching?" should be any different from the question "Why do you have two legs?" (for instance). We haven't made ourselves or our propensity to ask the kind of questions we do. Both are the result of the way the world evolved, and thus a manifestation of Tao.

Already did.

Does the Ho-Shang Kung Commentary on Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching give the historically most important Neidan interpretation of the Tao Te Ching?

You don't have to! Some people like a life of extremes and/or of great accomplishments. That will naturally involve more struggle. And if you like to fight, why not? But than you're not on the Taoist way promoted by Lao tzu. When you don't need much, you will have less struggle. But as I said, when you like to fight you could chose to follow another more heroic (and less Laoist) road.

I like to buy the book, but I live in the Netherlands. I suppose you live in the US? In that case it would probably be more practical for me to buy the book somewhere in Europe... I also see on Amazon that the book comes in two versions: one with 378 pages and one with 116 pages...