reading ttc backwards

[Mr. T]

hey folks!

 

this came up in another thread, and really caught my attention. i am curious about people reading the ttc backwards. do you do it? why? do you only reverse the lines, or do you read the chapters in reverse as well?

 

i have seen this one other time and both times i thought it was a really intriguing idea, and sort of forgot about it until i read that post. curious to hear some opinions and different approaches to the text. thanks!

[Aaron]

hey folks!

 

this came up in another thread, and really caught my attention. i am curious about people reading the ttc backwards. do you do it? why? do you only reverse the lines, or do you read the chapters in reverse as well?

 

i have seen this one other time and both times i thought it was a really intriguing idea, and sort of forgot about it until i read that post. curious to hear some opinions and different approaches to the text. thanks!

 

 

Hello Mr T,

 

I've never read the Tao Teh Ching backwards, but I sort of feel that it can be read in any order and still retain the same message. Now that you mentioned it, I might have to look further into the idea to see if there's anything to it. If anyone else has further insight, I would also love to hear it.

 

Aaron

[Marblehead]

Yes, my attention was caught by that post as well. No, I have never done so but I can see where many of the verses of the TTC can effectively be read that way. There are quite a few verses that hold to the concept of 'cause and effect' so it would be easy to see these verses in the order of 'effect resulting from cause'.

[Mark Saltveit]

Reverse lines, or reverse the words? I wonder how it would read backwards in the original Chinese characters. It would be funny if it turned out the book isn't mysterious or even spiritual at all, people have just been reading the characters the wrong way. And it's actually a farming manual.