Taoist Philosophy

[Marblehead]

[~jK~]

Edited September 12, 2009 by ~jK~

[Marblehead]

Isn't Chuang Tzu a Confucian?

 

Absolutely not!!! Chuang Tzu was 180 degrees opposite of almost all Confucian concepts.

 

Chuang Tzu was a follower of Lao Tzu.

 

Lao Tzu, Confucious and Buddha are seen as the 3 great pillars of Chinese culture.

 

I totally agree with that. Everything I intend to present here if there is enough interest will concern only Taoism (except for a few criticisms of other Chinese thinkers made by Chuang Tzu).

 

Happy Trails!

[DalTheJigsaw123]

Please, continue! This is quite interesting.

[Marblehead]

Please, continue! This is quite interesting.

 

Okay! That's one vote for.

 

Happy Trails!

[rene]

My reordering of the book and inserting support where necessary resulted in a totally different presentation. In reordering the book in the format I personally prefer,

More Marblehead Taoism I see.

 

Chuang Tzu was a follower of Lao Tzu.

The clear concepts in The Laozi were shrouded and twisted in the Inner Chapters by the (centuries later) disciples of ZZ who actually wrote them. But perhaps you are going to address this in your presentations, so I'll wait before commenting further.

[Aetherous]

I am interested to read your reinterpretation.

[goldisheavy]

Isn't Chuang Tzu a Confucian?

 

Oh my... Why can't you be bothered to just read the book? It's a short book! And you can even find free translations online. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of ignorance.

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

The clear concepts in The Laozi were shrouded and twisted in the Inner Chapters by the (centuries later) disciples of ZZ who actually wrote them. But perhaps you are going to address this in your presentations, so I'll wait before commenting further.

 

According to whom? The other chapters were written by a variety of authors centuries after Chuang Tzu, but modern scholarship has given absolutely no reason to doubt that the stories in the Inner Chapters were not transcribed from the words of Chuang Tzu by his direct students or friends. In fact, modern scholarship thinks that it is more likely that the Inner Chapters were the genuine and consistent ideas of a man named Chuang Chu than that the Tao Te Ching was written by a single real man going by the moniker of Lao Tsu.

 

There is no academic or archeological reason to doubt the validity of the Inner Chapters and there is also no real evidence of corruption in the Inner Chapters.

 

 

Also, I am very curious how you think that the Lao Tsu is clear, while the Chuang Tzu is obtuse. I have always found the exact opposite. But then, Lao Tsu speaks better to people who respond more to poetry, while Chuang Tsu speaks more to people who respond well to prose (and stories). Both are equally cryptic and equally profound.

 

To be honest, the Tao Te Ching did not really do all that much for me the first time I read it, but the Chuang Tsu flipped my neat little world upside-down.

[Sunya]

can anyone please give links for some free online sources for reading Chuang Zi?

[Stigweard]

can anyone please give links for some free online sources for reading Chuang Zi?

 

Here is one:

 

http://www.terebess.hu/english/lexikon/c.html

 

But I prefer:

 

http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/text.pl?node=2712&if=en

[Marblehead]

 

But I prefer:

 

http://chinese.dsturgeon.net/text.pl?node=2712&if=en

 

I am currently working on getting this in a clean MS Word document so I will be able to reference it. I already have Watson's version completed.

 

Okay. So it looks like there is enough interest for me to proceed. I understand that there will be questions and comments along the way and this is how it should be. And I really don't mind anyone questioning me directly.

 

Again I remind everyone that what I am going to present is what felt right to me and it may not feel that way for anyone else. But, as Zhuo Ming-Dao pointed out above, for me too, the Tao Te Ching had so much more meaning after I read the Chuang Tzu and that is why I arranged to two writings the way I did.

 

So. Here's the plan. We will leave this thread for general discussions of the relationship between Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and I will start a new thread for each of 'my' chapters for discussion of the concepts presented.

 

Happy Trails!

[Zhuo Ming-Dao]

I have always rather liked Watson's translation. He has a good feel for the flow of Chuang Tzu, while still maintaining solid clarity. He sometimes missed the lyrical mode the Chuang Tzu wrote in, though.

 

Jame Legge's pioneering work brought the Chuang Tzu to the west, but it is often often simply lacking. Legge misunderstood a good number of Classical Chinese constructions (particularly when they differed significantly from modern usage). It was necessary to have someone open up the discussion, but there have since been a lot of work in the field of Classical Chinese (and the crazy ways that Chuang Tzu sometimes used it). One of the great things about Legge, though, is that he always includes the Chinese and he walks you through many of his translation decisions.

 

Martin Palmer's work captures a lot more of Chuang Tzu's linguistic idiosyncrasies, his puns, and the strange ways that he switches between poetry and prose in his writings. While I still sometimes prefer the choices that Watson made, Palmer had a slightly different focus and did a pretty great job with it. Plus, Palmer translated everything, while Watson only did the chapters that were most likely to have been written by Chuang Tzu himself.

 

A.C. Graham is a consummate scholar, so his translation is one of the most technically precise available. While is literally accurate, it often misses the mystical implications that the Palmer translation opens up, and it is not quiet as evocative of a read as Watson, Palmer or Meir.

 

Victor Meir has a wonderful translation, which really captured some of the borderline insanity that Chuang Tzu often employs to push his readers outside of their comfort zones. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Meir worked closely with a modern Chinese Taoist and with the classical commentaries when he produced his translation. If you only had one translation and you were using it for your spiritual practice, this would probably be the one I would recommend.

 

These are probably the most common and well know translations, though there are a few others. As with all of the great Taoist writers, Chuang Tzu was a master wordsmith and as such, he is very difficult to translate. Also, he was writing multilayered allegory in a language with countless homonyms and possibilities for word puns, which he made great use of. Reading from a few translations, in addition to looking over the Chinese, is very helpful in any search for deeper penetration of a Taoist text as rich as this.

[Marblehead]

Thanks for that great post Zhuo Ming-Dao.

 

I cried a little because you didn't mention Lin Yutang's translation. Hehehe.

 

I will have to look at Meir's translation one day.

 

Happy Trails!