DDC Chapter 6: 谷神不死是谓玄牝。

[Stosh]

You think I am largely wrong, like everybody else does. I didnt say anything I havent said before in smaller doses and so I know the responses that it gets. 

[Marblehead]

2 hours ago, Stosh said:

You think I am largely wrong, like everybody else does. I didnt say anything I havent said before in smaller doses and so I know the responses that it gets. 

Well, at least you got a response.  

 

But no, not largely wrong.  Just a little.  Hehehe.

 

However, I'm not going to allow anyone to perform a transgender operation on my Spirit of the Valley.  

 

And then, I will not allow anyone to reify Dao.  That's the main reason I joined this forum many years ago.  Daoism as presented by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu is not a religion, it is a life philosophy.  It doesn't need a God.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2018 by Marblehead

[Stosh]

2 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Well, at least you got a response.  

 

But no, not largely wrong.  Just a little.  Hehehe.

 

However, I'm not going to allow anyone to perform a transgender operation on my Spirit of the Valley.  

 

And then, I will not allow anyone to reify Dao.  That's the main reason I joined this forum many years ago.  Daoism as presented by Loa Tzu and Chuang Tzu is not a religion, it is a life philosophy.  It doesn't need a God.

 

 

Well , you put your finger on the central problematic issue , yin and yang are not man male and woman female.  People obviously have both aspects to their personality and behavior.  For some reason , many seem to get stuck on that wrong simplification. 

Where I come from there is a saying, ' The moon has no boobs' which really says it all in a nutshell. 

[Marblehead]

Yeah. when speaking to Yang/Yin I try to use Positive/Negative or at least Masculine/Feminine.  I agree, to relate the concept to Male/Female is an error, I think.

 

But I do refer to the Spirit of the Valley as being Feminine though as in my mind it is the place of rest.  Some people would call these places their Sanctuary. 

 

And you are correct, the moon has no boobs, only a face.

 

[Stosh]

20 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Yeah. when speaking to Yang/Yin I try to use Positive/Negative or at least Masculine/Feminine.  I agree, to relate the concept to Male/Female is an error, I think.

 

But I do refer to the Spirit of the Valley as being Feminine though as in my mind it is the place of rest.  Some people would call these places their Sanctuary. 

 

And you are correct, the moon has no boobs, only a face.

 

I'd rather stick with Yin and Yang meaning , yin and yang rather than layer another dualism on top of it. But hey, that's just me. 

 

[Marblehead]

7 minutes ago, Stosh said:

I'd rather stick with Yin and Yang meaning , yin and yang rather than layer another dualism on top of it. But hey, that's just me. 

 

I can understand that and I think it is fully acceptable.

 

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 10:44 AM, Marblehead said:

Well, from my perspective, the use of the word "God" leads to the reification of Dao, something I think should never be done.

 

And I still hold that the creative force is feminine,  "... gave birth to ...".  Feminine gives birth, masculine fertilizes the egg.

 

 

Reification of Dao or not, I cannot tell what was in Lao Zi's head. Neither of you. You guess is as good as my guess. Let's cast aside our difference. Perhaps, you can take a mental time travel exercise. This is the best piece of suggestion for you.  

 

Also, feminine or not, I cannot prove anything. It again is to my best of my understanding, the spiritual world has no gender.  

Edited March 19, 2018 by Eric Woon

[Marblehead]

No, I don't need a mental time out.

 

But I will concede that we should agree to disagree.

 

BTW  Chuang Tzu supports my understanding.

 

[Stosh]

1 minute ago, Eric Woon said:

Reification of Dao or not, I cannot tell what was in Lao Zi's head. Neither of you. You guess is as good as my guess. Let's cast aside our difference. Perhaps, you can take a mental time travel exercise. This is the best piece of suggestion for you.  

As I see it , differences are just fine , certainly better than homogeneity . I indeed can tell what was in Lao's mind , he wrote about it, I don't have to guess.

[Marblehead]

4 minutes ago, Eric Woon said:

Also, feminine or not, I cannot prove anything. It again is to my best of my understanding, the spiritual world has no gender.  

Well, Lao Tzu told us to know the masculine but to hold to the feminine.

 

Chuang Tzu held this understanding as well.

 

But I agree with you last phrase - the Spiritual (I refer to this as Chi) realm has no gender.

 

 

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 4:46 AM, dawei said:

 

I follow your point about using Dao as God and have made some similar arguments too but more to show that maybe the closest thing to Dao in the west is God.    The only issue I have with it is, God in the western idea is a spirit/deity and in the eastern idea (cosmology) that is post-Dao.

 

 

 

Maybe replace the divisions with something other than gender as gender doesn't always work on an energy/light level.  If energy is a spectrum of one extreme is transmission and another extreme is reception, then you will find such things abide somewhere along the spectrum and then can be felt as such too.   It also helps, to me, to see then how when two or more come together, they create a kind of energy loop; like an electric circuit just completed and energy flow can be felt. 

Throw you two spanners.

(1) In the Indian continent, these so called dewa, in the Indian language(s), means God. Brahman, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, Lokesvara, and etc. Btw, there is a close similarity here, Ganesha is the son of Krishna. If Krishna is God, then Ganesha refers to Lord Jesus, the Son of God. The Westerners' understanding of God is shaped by the Bible, a compilation of 66 books. The Catholics may argue, there are 72 books. Meanwhile in the Indian continent, each of these dewa or God, was mentioned in just one of the several Scriptures. Therefore, they stand alone.

(1a) Btw, there are 27 different written language in India today. How many mare written language are there in the past? I don't know.  Of course, it is almost impossible for someone to compile these scriptures which were originally, written in different languages to be compiled as one unified Scripture, like the Bible.

(1b) Likewise, over in China, of all the Scriptures  that describe God, spanning over several thousand years, no one bother to compile them as one bigger volume Scripture. Btw, it is simply impossible because the theme of each of these scriptures run on different themes.

 

(2) Like it or not, the theme of The Old Testament and The New Testament are completely different. Just to share my little understanding. The Old Testament theme runs like this, You God is not the same s my God. My God is the true God. Your God is not the true God. Whereas, in the New Testament, Lord Jesus did not differentiate between you and me So long you believe in him, gentile or not, you will be saved.     

[Marblehead]

Hi Eric,

 

If you tell me that you are a religious, alchemic or shamanic Taoist I will stop disagreeing with you immediately.

 

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 3:48 AM, dawei said:

 

From the Guodian (300 bc) which only about 31 of 81 chapters to the MWD versions (168 bc) of all 81 chapters there are obvious a big different in chapter counts but the character differences are minor, and some understandable like the taboo of using an emperor's name had to replaced with another character.   The version most know today is by Wang Bi but he seems to largely really follow Heshang Gong.  The character differences from MWD to HSG-WB are also minor but do occur.  SO all in all, most of the lines and meaning remain the same. 

 

This link is more a look at the Guodian and MWD, so providing in case anyone is interested.

A comparison of the Guodian and Mawangdui Laozi texts

I am at a total lost which version to choose from. So, I took the 81-chapter version and research on it. 9X9=81. This is a good number for the Chinese. So, breaking it up into 81 chapters make good sense too. If you were to ask me today, perhaps, I would like to break it up into more than 81 chapters. Why? For some of the chapters I found that they could be better broken up because I found more than one sub-theme in them. Let's not argue over how many chapters it should be broken up into. No one is going to be correct, or more correct than the others.   

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 4:24 AM, dawei said:

 

Am I insulted?   that's funny.

 

But I'm not seeing any proof that 无为 （Wuwei），actually is the abbreviation for 无为所欲为.  We'd need to see something that shows the latter was before the former, else we're just creating a later proverb to re-interpret a meaning to an older word that that is not always going to fit. 

 

For example, wuwei shows up in the Guodian bamboo (300 bc) 7 times as 亡为.    If one looks at ch. 37 which the received text has:  道常無為

 

I'm not seeing how 无为所欲为 applies to Dao when it says "Dao is eternally/constantly Wuwei".

 

But my point is, we'd need to see the earliest use of a proverb to know if it even captures the abbreviated use in every case.

You are right to ask for more proofs before you accept that wuwei is an abbreviation for wuweisuoyuwei. This is the key differentiation difference between Laozi originally teaching of DDJ as he wrote it as an abbreviation (my unproven claim as of now) compared to Zhuangzi who made an interpretation that keeps it to wuwei which is meaningless to me for such a great piece of work by Lao Zi.   

[Marblehead]

7 minutes ago, Eric Woon said:

... wuweisuoyuwei ...

Do you have an English translation for that concept?

 

[Eric Woon]

25 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Well, Lao Tzu told us to know the masculine but to hold to the feminine.

 

Chuang Tzu held this understanding as well.

 

But I agree with you last phrase - the Spiritual (I refer to this as Chi) realm has no gender.

 

 

Btw, to me and most Chinese readers, Zhuangzi's work is a compilation of 散文，prose or essays. Therefore, each piece of essay has its own theme. Therefore, Zhuangzi's work as a compilation has no theme at all. Everyone knows this fact. Zhuangzi only mentioned a few things (phrases) in DDJ. He did not even explain more than perhaps, 5% (this is already pretty generous) of DDJ. Why are we taking him seriously? I am definitely not going to pay any attention to Zhuangzi' work for two reasons: (1) there is no singularity in theme; (2) He could not explain more than ten words in a row from any chapter of DDJ. He did not even make a try on these 3 shortest chapters, namely chapter 6, 18 and 40.   

[Eric Woon]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

Do you have an English translation for that concept?

 

1) Whims and fancies; 2) whimsical. This is the best translation that I can think of. And I applied it in all my English translations.  

[Eric Woon]

4 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Do you have an English translation for that concept?

 

1) Whims and fancies; 2) whimsical. This is the best translation that I can think of. And I applied it in all my English translations.  

[Marblehead]

Just now, Eric Woon said:

1) Whims and fancies; 2) whimsical. 

If we talked about this I would likely end up agreeing with you but I would likely prefer different words.

 

 

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 7:27 PM, Stosh said:

I doubt they knew women made eggs ,( I'm open to being notified otherwise though). From that view, femaleness is not egg producing but the ' formless-undefined' setting in which the manifest ( male generated formed-specific) was nourished.  So the universe is formless blackness setting in which the yang-formed specific is nurtured. The creative force is male, in a setting that is female.

IMO

This obviates god , as do all the rest of the explanatory passages , because a sentient god need not be explained, in terms of rationale. 

And a non-sentient god , is the same as just saying Universe , without the non functional anthropomorphism. 

One can translate the texts in multiple ways , Like ,, 'The black recycling tortoise never gets tired ', so one needs to check which translation actually makes sense from a perspective removed from the text. You can't just plow the text back on itself and expect a single translation to stand out as the writing most perfectly rendered and go..'  AHA! '

Gods don't exist , they wouldn't have met one either, they wouldn't be more informed than us in regards to that. 

Spinning a human generated logical explanation of the universes workings , into a mythical god based pile of hocus-pocus Chinese folklore suitable for children , does a genuine disservice to the greatness of the minds who got past the superstitions to make sense of what really was going on as best they could determine . There's nothing to gain from more folklore , the world has plenty of that , in all sorts of flavors. But a fresh look at the universe mans meaning and place in it , is fertile ground. 

 Sorry , that's just how I feel about it and will drop out having said as much. 

 

It is okay for you to put your view across. Btw, to the best that I understand the early Chinese as far back as 4172 years ago, they did believe in a Creator of Heaven and Earth, and they called Him, Shangdi. In the 17th century, an Italian Jesuit borrowed this phrase Shangdi when he translated Deus (God) into the Chinese language. Perhaps, he found it best to use an old phrase that was not used since Emperor Qin Shihuang banned it around (206 B.C.).   

[Eric Woon]

6 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

If we talked about this I would likely end up agreeing with you but I would likely prefer different words.

 

 

Simple concept, indeed. All the "emperors" and right up to today, Donald Trump is nothing more than whimsical. 

[Stosh]

I'd vote for the word not-whimsical . The world is causal , things cause other things , the rules remain absolutely inviolable. While one can make a plane , it doesn't defy gravity. Gravity doesn't 'turn off' . Even classical persons wouldve noticed this. 

[Stosh]

1 minute ago, Eric Woon said:

It is okay for you to put your view across. Btw, to the best that I understand the early Chinese as far back as 4172 years ago, they did believe in a Creator of Heaven and Earth, and they called Him, Shangdi. In the 17th century, an Italian Jesuit borrowed this phrase Shangdi when he translated Deus (God) into the Chinese language. Perhaps, he found it best to use an old phrase that was not used since Emperor Qin Shihuang banned it around (206 B.C.).   

The Laoists diverged from the original mystical traditions , just as you pointed out Christianity diverged from the Old Judeo tradition of being the exclusively 'chosen people' to being an open option. This made Christianity a handy vehicle for Rome to be inclusive of its many provinces , but unifying everybody on the same page. 

[Marblehead]

4 minutes ago, Eric Woon said:

Btw, to me and most Chinese readers, Zhuangzi's work is a compilation of 散文，prose or essays. Therefore, each piece of essay has its own theme. Therefore, Zhuangzi's work as a compilation has no theme at all. Everyone knows this fact. Zhuangzi only mentioned a few things (phrases) in DDJ. He did not even explain more than perhaps, 5% (this is already pretty generous) of DDJ. Why are we taking him seriously? I am definitely not going to pay any attention to Zhuangzi' work for two reasons: (1) there is no singularity in theme; (2) He could not explain more than ten words in a row from any chapter of DDJ. He did not even make a try on these 3 shortest chapters, namely chapter 6, 18 and 40.   

Okay.  Back to this.

 

Of the Chuang Tzu, the text attributed to a person named Chuang Tzu, there are three sections to the Chuang Tzu; Inner Chapters (1-7), attributed directly to a person named Chuang Tzu; Outer Chapters (8-22), attributed to followers/students of Chuang Tzu; and Miscellaneous Chapters (23-33), attributed to various un-named individuals.

 

Many years ago I did a concordance of the work of the TTC and Chuang Tzu.  Because of something you have already mentioned I ended up with 119 Chapters.  The way I constructed it was to take a concept from the Tao Te Ching (not necessarily a complete chapter) and then followed that up with supporting sections from the Chuang Tzu.

 

The only area where Chuang Tzu had little or nothing to say to what was in the TTC was where Lao Tzu talked about government.  Chuang Tzu didn't say many nice things about government, and from my perspective, considering Chuang Tzu to have been an Anarchist, I can understand him not saying anything.

 

It is my opinion that if one has read only the TTC and not the Chuang Tzu one misses much of the meaning in the TTC.

 

[Eric Woon]

On ‎3‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 12:38 AM, Stosh said:

I'd vote for the word not-whimsical . The world is causal , things cause other things , the rules remain absolutely inviolable. While one can make a plane , it doesn't defy gravity. Gravity doesn't 'turn off' . Even classical persons wouldve noticed this. 

You are right. The last four Chinese characters mean whimsical. The first character "wu" means not.