dawei

Dao De Jing: The Sacred Book of the Way, transmission by Flowing Hands: CHAPTER 21 The greatest virtue is to follow the Dao and only Dao. Oh unfathomable Dao, ever elusive and intangible. But yet within, there is substance and form. It is the essence of the Ten Thousand Things. This is very real, so here lies a true path to follow. It was there at the beginning, as it shall be at the end, Thus I know the ways of creation.

Ok... I'm sold. I'm traveling most of next week. Anyone interested can try to find the book in the mean time and read ahead if they want. The book does not have the chinese so maybe ctext.org should be referenced when we start. The PDF and Notes were already mentioned above as resources. I think maybe we should name each thread as: "Mair - Wandering on the Way - Ch.1 - 1" , and increment chapter and sub-section. I'll start the first one, likely next friday or saturday

I tend to agree with your point.. start anew. While each of Mair's chapters is broken down into sub-sections, one problem is that his text is not open source. If someone doesn't have the book, then it would be hard for them to comment. So still unclear how to proceed...

If I say 'yes', how do I know you didn't plant that answer in my mind

I'm not against it but there was a section by section done with more an eye towards simply commenting on the meaning and nuisance. I'm not sure if that stuck with Legge's translation to the end. Main challenge with Mair may be getting his book... but I'll provide a hint that one can google it along with 'pdf' It would be interesting to try and work the chinese too but not sure we'd want to do sentence after sentence. Maybe we'd be better to ask folks to talk about the section and then look at chinese when applicable. Thoughts? Added: Looking at some of the past section discussions on ZZ... would it be redundant to start a new one or maybe we go back and use the existing posts and re-visit?

Sure... and I don't mind it. I have you to thank for raising, over the years, the Zhuangzi awareness in me

Please read Mair's notes I provided... he says, as is typical for books, not everything the author wants to say the publisher will put in the book. As Yueya said, Mair's is a highly regarded author and the range of his scholarship is enormous, I'll add. That being said, he is more an academic/researcher who digs deeper than most. But is that enough to unlock Zhuangzi? What might be more useful is if we did a study of Mair's book with his notes to boot... but that is quite time-consuming. I will add that when I read the OP, I thought, "Is a philosophy of 'no-philosophy' a philosophy?

Mair's notes: http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp048_chuangtzu_zhuangzi.pdf "The Tao Te Ching is extremely terse and open to many different interpretations. The Chuang Tzu, on the other hand., is more definitive and comprehensive as a repository of early Taoist thought. The Tao Te Ching was addressed to the sage-king; it is basically a handbook for rulers. The Chuang Tm, in contrast, is the earliest surviving Chinese text to present a philosophy for the individual. The authors of the Tao Te Ching were interested in establishing some sort of Taoist rule, while the authors of the Chuang Tzu opted out of society, or at least out of power relationships within society. Master Chuang obviously wanted no part of the machinery of government. He compared the state bureaucrat to a splendidly decorated ox being led to sacrifice, while he preferred to think of himself as an unconstrained piglet playing in the mud. The Tao Te Ching offers the Way as a guide for life and it propounds nonaction as a means to achieve one's purpose in the workaday world. Master Chuang believed that the Way had supreme value in itself and consequently did not occupy himself with its mundane applications. Rather than paying attention to the governance of human society (the fundamental concern of most early Chinese thinkers), he stressed the need for transcendence and the freedom of the individual from such worldly concerns. In spite of all the differences, however, Master Chuang was clearly attracted by . the doctrines of the Old Masters and many of his writings may be thought of as expanded metaphors or meditations on the brief sayings of those early Taoist luminaries whose ideas have been enshrined in the Tao Te Ching."

Bilingual Version by James Legge As an Android App by James Legge Bilingual Version by Library of Chinese Classics I like the writings by Indiana U... but this is only English.

Because they already love the fool within..

I've walked around my pond a hundred times and encountered the ducks but today was the first time I intentionally 'connected' with them... they started to yawn and flutter and then all sat down and put their heads down to sleep... I was a bit astonished. Either, I have the gift to put ducks to sleep... or They are really tired of seeing me !

And see here: http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?submitButton1=Etymology&characterInput=%E9%81%93

Very interesting connection to moon. Here I wrote the origin of Heng (replaced by Chang) and it encompassing a moon. Fourth most common word in the Mawangdui and in some ancient text it is said to be synonymous with Dao. http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/32313-heng-original-use-in-ancient-times/

Maybe Jesus was teaching the 'eternal now' to the questioner... as if to say, you look to the future but you can embrace 'now'. Embrace now and you embrace the eternal.

I can sense your seeking a path and your path is good. I'm going to connect with you and you can comment if you sense anything. If so, you're closer to direct presence and don't need to think about meditation and qigong... you would be past that...or that may be your path still.

You're lead to something more like direct presence ?

Yin is ordinary; Yang is extraordinary. They are the same yet differ in name and quality within our experience.

Then your not following Dao... but the manifestation of Dao... Man's Way (aka: Ren Dao) You're just admitting duality at work.

When you look at the flowers and weeds arise side by side... do you vent? When you see the animals loving get along and others are simply predator vs prey, do you vent? When the sun rises and then falls... or the sun vs rain vs snow comes... do you vent? It is all just ten thousand arising... now it is time to apply that to humans Each person's destiny is what they playing out... unfolding along some path. When you get to the point of recognizing it is neither flower nor weed... it is recognizing the Great Arising of the manifest world.

Split and Pit Here: http://www.thedaobums.com/topic/41000-theories-and-practices-dealing-with-yin-and-yang-energies-in-chi-split-and-pit/

For a daoist site, you're quite the legalist. LZ would never espouse your ideas because he spoke to a best practice of dao arising... but he would not deny that when beautiful arises, so will ugly. We must embrace the entire 10,000 or else we are the embodiment of racist... not law.

When I did medical Qigong, we had Yin vs Yang projections and also such methods to scan the body, and ultimately to either tonify or purge energy in another. These were subtle issues you simply felt with experience. And working on females offered an alternate understanding on who is opposite to your experience. In my more recent Light practices, the issue of gender energies has come forward. And more specifically, once my female energy came forward for the first time and ever since, I have had a re-interpretation of all things energy... and even towards an understand of those who feel their gender is not in sync with their biological start. If we could all *christmas wish* come in touch with both sides of our gender energies in a really true sense, then we would find we really don't have a primordial energy existence difference among us. Only that we are experiencing, in this manifest existence, usually one gender side more than another.

I agree that when we look at it, we see duality... versus. They are both only needed as long as we occupy form. And I mean our mental occupation too. Meaning, if they are one and the same, then we only need One to realize... both simply realizes Two. Every changing is the perspective of Two.

In a word, "surrender".

Maybe some folks are just online too much (ducking at tomatoes thrown) I've tried to impress the need to upgrade the software but I'm waiting like everyone else.