Mair 2:8

[Geof Nanto]

I don't really get off on disputing interpretations of the Zhuangzi, but I do like to read alternatives. Hence a slightly different translation and significantly different interpretation of this paragraph that Taoist Texts references above…..

 

From A. C. Graham, Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters

 

Now that we are one, can I still say something? Already having called us one, did I succeed in not saying something? One and the saying makes two, two and one make three. Proceeding from here even an expert calculator cannot get to the end of it, much less a plain man. Therefore, if we to step from nothing to something we arrive at three, and how much worse if we take the step from something to something! Take no step at all, and `That's it' which goes by circumstance will come to an end.

 

From Brook Ziporyn,  Zhuangzi: Essential Writings

 

But if we are all one, can there be any words? But since I have already declared that we are "one," can there be no words? The one and the word are ready two, the two and the original unnamed one are three. Going on like this, even a skilled chronicler could not keep up with it, not to mention a lesser man. So even moving from nonexistence to existence we already arrive at three—how much more when we move from existence to existence! Rather than moving from anywhere to anywhere, then, let us just go by the rightness of whatever is before us as the present "this."

 

Graham notes the following and Ziporyn emphatically agrees with him…

 

NOTE Hui Shih [Huizi] had said that 'Heaven and earth are one unit' (see chapter 33). At first sight one might expect Chuang-tzu to agree with that at least. But to refuse to distinguish alternatives is to refuse to affirm even 'Everything is one' against 'Things are many'. He observes that in saying it the statement itself is additional to the One which it is about, so that already there are two (Plato makes a similar point about One and its name in The Sophist). It may he noticed that Chuang-tzu never does say that everything is one (except as one side of a paradox (chapter 5)), but rather always speaks subjectively of the sage treating all things as one.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Yueya

[Marblehead]

On these paradoxes

 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-names/

 

 

Very good article.  I specially enjoyed the last section: A Daoist Critique.  It added an additional perspective to my understandings.

Edited August 29, 2016 by Marblehead

[Marblehead]

And so we are back to the Ten Thousand Things and these are what we interact with on a daily basis.  We can't even interact with "One", can we?

[Marblehead]

My hard copy of both Watson's and Palmer's translations arrived in the mail today.

 

But I'm still working on my MSWord version of Mair's translation.  I'm up to the Miscellaneous Chapters.  Making progress.

[smallsteps]

I think Zhuangzi’s easy delight in all aspects of existence is a privilege of old age. That’s how it is for me anyway (for some of the time, at least). I’ve had to work my way through material struggles, love & loss, success & failure, words and concepts, in order to build a suitable basis – a small boat, to use a Daoist image – able to float and drift in harmony with the flow of things. And the flow of things I’m referring to is not congruent with the flow of human society – for me it’s outside and beyond societal conditioning.

 

That’s the struggle – to free oneself from societal conditioning and the dominance of a personal ego. Only then do I have appropriate de to be able to spontaneously interact in harmony with the yin and yang forces of both human society and nature at large.  

 

This is beautifully said. Thank you.

 

I wish I had a better command of english so that I could participate more to the thread.

[Marblehead]

 

I wish I had a better command of english so that I could participate more to the thread.

You're doing fine.  At least you are here.  That's good.