Mark Saltveit

Couldn't agree more on bluegrass. It's often a bit Christy for my tastes, but you can't deny the heart and spirit. Also along those lines: the Louvin Brothers, Satan Is Real. I don't agree, but some of those songs are pure gold ( , , (covered by the Byrds), and ).

And here I am, feeling superior because I'm not posting anything. Oh, wait.....

I don't think there's any harm in talking about these things as long you remember it's always an approximation, no the real thing itself. I like maps, too but I don't try to live in them.

Soaring Crane: Nice point, and a good example. I think that Dao is in every moment and situation, though. There's a danger in reserving it for spectacular sunsets and the like. Master Dung Guo: "Where does the Dao exist?" Zhuangzi: "There is no place that it doesn't exist." MDG: "You must be more specific." ZZ: "It is in the ant." MDG: "Why so low?" ZZ: "It is in the panic grass." MDG: "Even lower?" ZZ: "In the tiles and shards." MDG: "Is this the lowest?" ZZ: "It is in the shit and piss." 22/6

In the Warring States period of China, the heart was understood to be what humans thought with. Edward Slingerland, a professor of classical Chinese, uses the term "heart-mind" when translating Daoist texts for that reason.

When I was in college, there was a man of free if not easy wandering who lived in Cambridge Commons. Known as The Tree Man because he in fact spent his day being more like a tree. I saw him often but don't recall any conversations; he was disinclined to share what he knew.

But more practical.

I'm guessing a mushroom omelet. I know it's a palindrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars It was part of the effort to consolidate the empire under the Qin by destroying dissenting voices, so they certainly would have gone to the center of the Jixia school and destroyed dissenting texts with some intensity. Nothing if not systematic, those Qin.

Buddhism was not introduced to China until about 80 C.E. There's dispute over when the Zhuangzi was pulled together, but the historical figure of Zhuang Zhou is pretty solidly pegged to the Warring States period. It's just not clear how much, if any, of the book he wrote, or if he produced a ton of rambling stuff that was later condensed into the current book.. But there are a number of references to the book in Pre-Han times -- in the Xunzi, Hanfeizi, and Lushi Chunqiu -- and two slightly later archaeological finds of fragments -- 157 - 179 B.C.E. -- so yeah, that seems pretty safe. Interestingly, almost none of those references are to the Inner Chapters, even though most people consider that the oldest, "most authentic" section of Zhuangzi. When the DDJ was in written form? Well, a lot of chapters 2-66 were written down no later than 300 BCE, and perhaps decades earlier, as we know from Guodian. That's precisely when Sima Qian says Zhuangzi lived -- during the reigns of of King Hui of Liang (r. 369-319 BCE) and King Xuan of Qi (r. 320-301 BCE), Of course it could have been much older but the only evidence of that is tradition.

Got it, sorry to be dense. Thanks.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Which version has 傾: ?

Interesting. The Guodian slips have the same character 盈 as the Mawangdui http://www.daoisopen.com/A6toA9Chapters64b37632.html

Right. It's so hard to know, between Emperor name taboos, the homonyms, the changes Liu Xiogan discusses (such as different words to match other sections, making lines more uniformly four characters, and removing a lot of the articles.) There were also some apparent ideological changes, too. The received version is more critical of Confucian thought, but the Guodian version had different characters that were less of a slap at that school. Then again, the Guodian bamboo strips were found buried with Confucian texts, so maybe they were modified that way and the received is actually true to the original? I'm wary of anyone with too strong of opinion about what these books must have been like back then. It was a long time ago.

Ah, I think we're using the word "script differently. MANUscripts are extremely important, of course. I thought you meant the type of writing (such as Seal Script). In both cases though they are not absolute proof of anything, and don't show that oral transmission stopped. (People recite the DDJ today still). For example, we have the Mawangdui silk texts, and the Beida DDJ also has the De and Dao sections in reverse order of the Wang Bi and Heshan Gong versions. But that doesn't prove there was one original like that -- these could be variations like Neanderthal Man, related to humans but died out. Obviously whoever did Heshan Gong thought the order was Dao, then De -- maybe from a different lineage of texts? Guodian for example -- it could be raw chunks that changed into the Mawandui version, or it could be a teacher's favorite selections from a bigger work. Or selections from a bunch of raw fragments. It's very hard to say. Guodian didn't have De and Dao sections at all. Were the three bundles found there three "sections" (pian) or is it just too hard to tie that many strips together, so he did smaller bundles?