Apech

It is a tradition of all (nearly all?) cultures that the sage advises the king e.g. Merlin and Arthur ... and so on. There is nothing so strange for Lao Tzu to do the same. All Shakespeare's history plays can be seen as a kind of dialogue about power and responsibility. Even today in our so-called democracies we still invest in our elected leaders the awful responsibility of life and death. Bush and Blair committed many to death - both our own and our 'enemies' and also the innocent. We cannot pretend that that these things do not exist or bury our heads in the sand. Lao Tzu is talking about the real world not a politically correct one.

You are right on the subject matter to a certain extent - although 'totalitarian' is almost an anachronism as the vast majority of rulers in the ancient world assumed the absolute power of kingship or similar ... I don't think anyone is refusing to acknowledge this - its just that the wisdom which Lao Tzu imparts can be applied as much to the individual as it can be to a king in terms of the right way to be and live. In giving a 'management' example I was trying to show that the same Taoist view can apply to the kind of circumstances we might find ourselves in, as much as to a king in the middle of warring factions. Like it or not we do have to manage and 'rule' our lives and we do (unless we are hermits) have to interact with others. Of course Chuang Tzu applies Taoist wisdom in a different way. Richard John Lynn says this when comparing Lao Tzu to Chuang Tzu: "The two texts have a very different emphasis ... whereas the Laozi is primarily addressed to the ruler who would be a sage-king and is mainly concerned with achieving the good society through harmony with nature, the Zhuangzi is contemptuous of rulership - in theory and practice - and indifferent to social life in general and instead focuses almost exclusively on personal self-realization and the quest for happiness through the individual's integration with nature."

I'd like more on Chuang Tzu - if poss.

Links on Neo-Taoist scholar Wang Bi Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/wangbi/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanfor...ies/neo-taoism/ courtesy of Dawei

More resources: The Big View pdf downloads of T. McCarrel and Feng/English translations. Underdog Way free pdf download of a compendium of translations (including Russian). Translations site with many translation in various languages (I posted this before).

Ok excellent .... thanks for those links - I see where you are coming from now.

Actually I would like to remove the discussion and just leave the resources - which then could be added to. They are going to be harder to find if people have to scroll through min-debates ... what do you think????

More resources: The Big View pdf downloads of T. McCarrel and Feng/English translations. Underdog Way free pdf download of a compendium of translations (including Russian). Translations site with many translation in various languages (I posted this before).

2011 - a great year, everyone happy, lots of dancing and singing, global economy booms, happiness and international friendship abound, a man in Tehran dies from laughing too much - everyone mourns and then returns to celebration of life, all American's feeling so well they don't need to use health insurance, millions spontaneously enlightened, Pope issues free condoms in St. Peter's square, Putin looses Judo contests and sobs like a baby so everyone knows he has a soft generous heart really, Royal wedding in UK .... er well ... someone had to spoil it all.

I've read Richard John Lynn's translations of both DDC and I Ching both of which include Wang Bi's own writing e.g. introduction to Loazi and also his biography. Although he was a scholar living at a time when Confucian thinking was prevalent to say he was 'a Confucian' is misleading. It is clear that he embraced and understood the Tao. I agree it is good to go back to source texts for some pure or original messages but I don't agree that you can ignore what Taoism became (if you like) or discount Wang Bi's commentaries as not being relevant to the core truths. Wang Bi achieved a lot in his short life and was actually attacked by Fan Ning (a strict Confucian advocate) for what he regarded as rampant nihilism and libertinism.

Welcome back.

Grrrrrrrrr !

This is off the top of my head - for discussion. OK without watering down the words on meaning of this difficult section I would say this. Imagine you are managing a group of people. Some of them are talented and resourceful, others are average performers and some are quite useless. What do you do to get the most out of everyone? 1) Don't heap too much praise on the best because the others will get resentful and cause trouble. 2) Don't make the rewards of work too distant and unachievable for the less good because they might get desperate and try to take what they are not entitled to. 3) Don't flaunt what you've got because it will upset people when they would otherwise be happy in their work. Is this manipulation? or just common sense?

Hi Aaron, I don't think our wavelengths are that far apart. Sometimes its more interesting to talk about differences than samenesses don't you think? I like what you are doing on TTBs since you arrived. A.

Hard questions arise. Though I feel just soft boiled, for Three or four minutes. (to carry on the egg theme)

down below, darkness are you saving the planet? or just feeling low.

Wang Bi says: when commenting on this section of the TTC. He is not saying don't judge as in do not discriminate between one quality and another - in fact he is saying it all in the mix of nature if you like. He is saying don't prefer the beauty and reject the ugly because both are aspects of the non-dual Tao. You can gaze on the Grecian Urn and swoon at its beauty but next time you pass a pile of horse poo you have to accept that that also is also part of reality and I suppose has its own (from the eyes of a blow fly) beauty. Its all ziran, all Tao. What would happen if the whole world stopped judging? ... I can't answer that ....

Hi Stig, Thanks for this. Maybe you should move it to the TTC sub forum cos it will sit nicely beside the other discussion. Just a couple of comments. I see why you have gone for 'collective view' but my first reaction was that it sounds a little like modern psycho-jargon. I can't suggest an alternative - its just how I reacted. At the end you use 'themselves' for sage ... shouldn't it be "himself" or are you being politically correct so you don't have to put him/herself ??? "Truly, the sage never fixates themselves," that reads a bit odd because the verb is in the third person singular ... 'he/she/it fixates' Truly, Sages never fixate themselves ... would be better maybe. BUT ... good job I think it is excellent!

Aaron, You can be as harsh as you like - I won't be offended. Please express yourself freely I enjoy the debate. Maybe I didn't make my point properly. I think these relative judgments are important because this is what we tend to do all the time. In the West for centuries people (poets and philosophers) have been talking about beauty, goodness and truth. This gives rise to the idea that there is perfect beauty, perfect goodness and perfect truth. If one is religious then these qualities are often assigned to God. Keats in his Ode to Grecian Urn said "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." So there is a kind of elegant harmony in form which is 'true' and 'beautiful' - as if there is some essence in the thing that makes it so. Lao Tzu says "Once all under Heaven knew beauty as "beauty"; at that moment "ugliness" was already there" (Richard John Lynn trans.) What I take from this is that the idea of the perfect diamond (or anything) is an abstraction while the Tao is not an abstract. Tao follows its own nature (or some say Tao follows nature) so Tao is natural and the sage follows this by not using judgments ... or "Therefore the Sage [sheng] tends to matters without conscious effort" (same trans.). If you think the world is abstract then you are starting to sound a little Buddhist. I tend to use the Taoist version - to paraphrase : man follows earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows Tao and Tao follows its own nature [ziran]. Nothing abstract about that.

This rings true - the Egyptians said "the buttocks are the buttocks of the eye of Horus" so there is a relation with the lower body. Can you explain more as to what Crowley and Regardie said?

Some people have said that they want a separate forum for discussing the TTC. Do you think it would be a good idea? Please post your observations as well. Thnks A.

In the real world the flawless diamond like the perfect circle does not and cannot exist. The Tao is a real Tao not an abstract Tao - while being perfectly Tao it not perfect-Tao which would be an abstraction. Despite this we all know what a perfect circle is. We do geometry based on it ... even though such a thing cannot be ever drawn in the real world.

Evidence of telepathy surely.

Ahhh that's an old one - we have discussed this at length on previous threads. Marblehead has a very good take on this.

Forget the poll it is already there!!!!!