Mair - 2:2

[Shidifen]

Mair 2:2

 

Great knowledge is expansive;
Small knowledge is cramped.

Great speech blazes brilliantly;
Small speech is mere garrulousness.

When people sleep, their souls are confused; when they awake,
their bodies feel all out of joint.

Their contacts turn into conflicts,
Each day involves them in mental strife.

They become indecisive, dissembling, secretive.

Small fears disturb them;
Great fears incapacitate them.

Some there are who express themselves as swiftly as the release of a crossbow mechanism, which is to say that they arbitrate right and wrong. Others hold fast as though to a sworn covenant, which is to say they are waiting for victory. Some there are whose decline is like autumn or winter, which describes their dissolution day by day. Others are so immersed in activity that they cannot be revitalized. Some become so weary that they are as though sealed up in an envelope, which describes their senility. Their minds are so near to death that they cannot be rejuvenated.

Pleasure and anger; sorrow and joy; worry and regret; vacillation and trepidation; diffidence and abandon; openness and affectedness. These are all like musical sounds from empty tubes, like fungi produced from mere vapors. Day and night they alternate within us, but no one knows whence they arise. Enough! Enough! The instant one grasps this, one understands whence they arise!

 

 

 

 

 

[Marblehead]

So are we talking here about the dualities of life?  I won't believe that he is intentionally being critical of people one way or another.  Just stating facts.  And if we look close enough, that's all he is doing.  Stating facts.  And perhaps an unsaid suggestion for us to examine our own life to see if any of these conditions apply to us, the individual.

[Daeluin]

 

 

A large consciousness is idle and spacey; a small consciousness is cramped and circumspect. Big talk is bland and flavorless; petty talk is detailed and fragmented. We sleep and our spirits converge; we awake and our bodies open outward. We give, we receive, we act, we construct: all day long we apply our minds to struggles against one thing or another - struggles unadorned or struggles concealed, but in either case tightly packed one after another without gap. The small fears leave us nervous and depleted; the large fears leave us stunned and blank. Shooting forth like an arrow from a bowstring: such is our presumption when we arbitrate right and wrong. Holding fast as if to sworn oaths: such is out defense of our victories. Worn away as if by autumn and winter: such is our daily dwindling, drowning us in our own activities, unable to turn back. Held fast as if bound by cords, we continue along the same ruts. The mind is left on the verge of death, and nothing can restore its vitality.

 

Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, plans and regrets, transformations and stagnations, unguarded abandonment and deliberate posturing - music flowing out of hollows mushrooms of billowing steam! Day and night they alternate before us, but no one knows whence they sprout. That is enough! That is enough! Is it from all of this, presented ceaselessly day and night, that we come to exist?

 

[Here Ziporyn continues to complete a paragraph where Mair ends a section.]

 

 

 

In the beginning we are shown the big and the small. And then, increasingly, we dwell upon the small, and it all just keeps constricting upon us, forced by a momentum we cannot escape! That is enough! That is enough!

 

Then perhaps is posed a question: Is it from all of this, presented ceaselessly day and night, that we come to exist?  And then we begin to explore this question, which I will continue here...

 

 

Without that there would be no me, to be sure, but then again without me there would be nothing selected out from it all. This is certainly something close to hand, and yet we do not know what makes it so. If there is some controller behind it all, it is peculiarly devoid of any manifest sign. Its ability to flow and to stop makes its presence plausible, but even then it shows no definite form. That would make it a reality with no definite form.

 

 

... in order to show the purpose of this constriction. Without there being a constriction upon the big and expansive, there would be no formation of matter to eventually yield a planet whereupon life had come to form amidst the balancing of hot and cold, the formation of atmosphere and ever evolving forms of life.

 

Too is hinted at our awareness of it all yet without truly knowing what makes it so. And then continuing the process of constriction we begin to question the nature of existence. 

[Taoist Texts]

So are we talking here about the dualities of life?  I won't believe that he is intentionally being critical of people one way or another.  Just stating facts.  

Yes just facts and observation but of own thought process.

 

Here ZZ is strugling to understand where the human thoughts come from.

 

First he describes their variety. Big knowledge small knowledge, decisive thoughts, languid thoughts, competing thoughts etc.

 

Then states that there is no way to know how the thoughts originate except to make an observation that they stream on day and night. 

 

Having said that, he exclaims Aha! ( Enough! Enough!  - Mair; That is enough! That is enough! -Zy) and heuristically concludes that the thoughts are caused by the very same passage of time  during which the thoughts flow.

[Rara]

So are we talking here about the dualities of life? I won't believe that he is intentionally being critical of people one way or another. Just stating facts. And if we look close enough, that's all he is doing. Stating facts. And perhaps an unsaid suggestion for us to examine our own life to see if any of these conditions apply to us, the individual.

Interesting. Because I would read it as critical, but perhaps that's just me because I am critical of such things...like my anxieties and goal chasing etc.

 

I always say, one's criticisms of others shows more about their own self.

 

Also because that's how I see a lot of "Taoists"...critical of the "norm" and always working towards liberating themselves from this.

 

Didn't Lao Tzu believe that such things in humans are pointless? Sorry, I'm missing a quote there, but if this is not a critical piece of philosophy here, can we suggest that Chuang Tzu was a lot more "understanding" or realistic about the ways that humans are programmed?

 

This part is more like Tao Te Ching in its style, no parables or quirky characters. Makes me wonder if this is the same author as the others in the inner chapters.

[Rara]

Having said that, he exclaims Aha! ( Enough! Enough! - Mair; That is enough! That is enough! -Zy) and heuristically concludes that the thoughts are caused by the very same passage of time during which the thoughts flow.

But also interrupting his own ponderings? Snapping himself out of it all?

[Marblehead]

Didn't Lao Tzu believe that such things in humans are pointless? Sorry, I'm missing a quote there, but if this is not a critical piece of philosophy here, can we suggest that Chuang Tzu was a lot more "understanding" or realistic about the ways that humans are programmed?

 

 

I think Lao Tzu was more definitive with what he said than is Chuang Tzu.  Lao Tzu told us how it is; Chuang Tzu tells us how it might be depending on how it is viewed.

[Daeluin]

Mrglrlglr.... I like how Zy has much of all this thinking stuff wrapped into one section, as I feel it is easier to answer the whole, all together. When we study all of these parts separately we gotta remember to put them back together again in to the whole.

 

When do we get to the bits about I can only know me from the inside out and others from the outside in, helping us remember that comparisons of things are flawed to begin with and lead to the path of constriction?

[Taoist Texts]

But also interrupting his own ponderings? Snapping himself out of it all?

could be, yes

[Stosh]

The " enough"  thing is a rejection of the self imposed dissatisfaction and restrictions. The person balks , rejecting the addition of fuel to the fire, making it worse. Driving ones-self to dissatisfaction with more grasping.

Yes , snapping himself out of his own confused flailings. 

[dawei]

IMO, ZZ is recounting the thoughts of 10,000 arising thoughts.. in dualistic thinking and arising... as if to say... ENOUGH... You forget where you come from... NON-DUAL...  go back to the mother's milk...   grasp this and...well... I better stop my story.... 

[Marblehead]

Good point though.  Chuang Tzu realized the existence of dualities and how they rule man's life.  There need not be the line of dualities; the + and the - ; the right and the wrong.  These dualities arise in the mind.  There are no dualities in Oneness.

[Old Student]

On 7/4/2016 at 7:22 PM, Shidifen said:

Some there are who express themselves as swiftly as the release of a crossbow mechanism, which is to say that they arbitrate right and wrong. Others hold fast as though to a sworn covenant, which is to say they are waiting for victory. Some there are whose decline is like autumn or winter, which describes their dissolution day by day. Others are so immersed in activity that they cannot be revitalized. Some become so weary that they are as though sealed up in an envelope, which describes their senility. Their minds are so near to death that they cannot be rejuvenated.

Pleasure and anger; sorrow and joy; worry and regret; vacillation and trepidation; diffidence and abandon; openness and affectedness. These are all like musical sounds from empty tubes, like fungi produced from mere vapors. Day and night they alternate within us, but no one knows whence they arise. Enough! Enough! The instant one grasps this, one understands whence they arise!

 

I know this thread is very old and it much predates me here at TDB. 

 

I have been slowly going through the original text in my textbook (新譯莊子讀本, published by San Min Shuzhu Yinhang in the late 70s), and having trouble understanding how Mair got the above translation.  The authors of my textbook very clearly make the "some there are" to mean some voices, not some people, and the part about "pleasure and anger;..." are voices/thoughts bubbling up inside a person that no one knows where they come from.  After the, "Enough! Enough!" the next sentence is,

旦暮得此，其所由以生乎！Which seems like it is finished by the following sentence, which Mair puts in the next section,

非彼無我，非我無所取。

The first translates to, "Dawn to dusk these come, from wherever they are born."

The second to, "Without the other there is no me, without me there is nothing accumulated."

 

I see zero reason to translate the first sentence as, "The instant one grasps this, one understands whence they arise," and think that the two sentences I put together, instead, talk about the thoughts/voices arise and accumulate continuously unless there is no me.

Which would tie everything together from the beginning of the chapter and say why Nanguozi (whom Mair calls Sir Motley of Southburb) launched into the whole thing about the pipes of man, earth, and heaven to explain his state of 吾喪我 (I ended me, which Mair translates I forgot me, either is fine) in the first place.

 

My textbook's interpretation of the pronoun 其 as the words 言 instead of as "some people" seems to make more sense, and the chapter division is puzzling to me.