Daozang for non-chinese speakers?

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Hi!

 

Idk if this is a silly query but could anyone point me towards english translations of texts from the Daozang?

I’ve been reading a little from ”Daoist Master Chuang” and my interest has reached new peaks, i’d like to at least glance at some of the material talked about in relation to orthodox Taoist practices.

 

I found this:

http://hanji.sinica.edu.tw/

 

while leafing through Pregadios index paper but it is wholly in chinese from what i can see.

Any indications towards translations or texts detailing of the teachings of the three caves would be met with gratitude and joy!

 

Peace!

 

 

[Taoist Texts]

2 hours ago, Rocky Lionmouth said:

english translations of texts from the Daozang?

you may wanna get acquainted with the catalog of it first

 

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo3533948.html

 

the majority of texts in it are prayer and ritual instructions, and as such are not really translatable or readable.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

On 2018-06-26 at 6:09 PM, Taoist Texts said:

the majority of texts in it are prayer and ritual instructions, and as such are not really translatable or readable.

Thanks for the link!

 

Well, ritual instruction and prayer as far as translateable go a long way to understand certain things, as i’m interested in gleaning some ideas behind more orthodox practices and liturgy. Not for use but context.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Also available at:

 

Archive.org Daozang

 

The material in the books is an excellent guide, but you really need to bring knowledge to it, to know where to mine more knowledge out of it.  At some point I will have to make a recommended reading list, but Saso's work would be on it, as well as others.

 

ZYD

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Please do ZYD! 

I’m delighted trying to digest Saso one subchapter at a time, that stuff is pretty dense already!

 

[exorcist_1699]

Difficulties in reading the  original Taoist canon are :

 

1) They are in classical Chinese , not modern Chinese;

 

2) Many are without punctuation !  ( that means your reading ability must be very high so as to separate the sentences/phases)

 

3) In the texts,  there are  lot of strange jargons , making them nearly not  readable ;

 

 

[Rocky Lionmouth]

On 2018-08-22 at 8:43 AM, exorcist_1699 said:

Difficulties in reading the  original Taoist canon are :

 

1) They are in classical Chinese , not modern Chinese;

 

2) Many are without punctuation !  ( that means your reading ability must be very high so as to separate the sentences/phases)

 

3) In the texts,  there are  lot of strange jargons , making them nearly not  readable ;

 

 

 

This much i have gathered. Sasos book references a lot of the texts being in need of the oral transmissions to be comprehensible, besides holding high skill in classical chinese and context and terminology.

Wishing my teenage self had stood his ground and taken mandarin or cantonese as special language ed. Alas, he bowed to his parents will and took  german. Go figure.

[Nintendao]

I started to see why time and place have such a heavy bearing on the amount of worthwhile translatable meaning, at least without involving lots of historic anthropology side-tracking. Especially if the chant was only a shorthand recording of some practice.. one that could be perfectly demonstrated in mere seconds, vs. painstakingly inscribing each actual detail.

 

For example, I just invented a move called "the eagle has landed." That is to say I've artfully balanced a silver dollar on the top of my head. Now, if you did not happen to know that I presently have a 25 gram disc of alloyed metals, i.e. a $1 coin from 1972, illustrated with an actual eagle landing on the Moon, then the name of the move becomes unnecessarily mysterious.

 

 

Even if I changed the name to the less poetic yet more descriptive "holding a dollar coin atop the head," depending on how it then gets miscontextually translated literally and culturally somewhere down the line, sure they could end up way off and thinking i meant i have "my money on my mind."

 

The real trick is, you don't even need any coins to do this move. If you simply imagine picking up a 1.5 inch diameter coin with your fingertips, the hand naturally takes on a kind of expanding version of the Beak-hand/Mukula-mudra (synchronicity bonus: eagles have beaks.) Now gracefully raise the arm and rest the five fingertips in a circle around Bai Hui (Du Mai 20). The skull and the hand become respectively reminiscent of the Moon and the Apollo ll lunar lander at the moment in 1969 when the pilot radioed mission control that "the eagle has landed."

 

[dosa]

What is 道
We don't know it in the language. 

[Nintendao]

道(dào) ≈ MOVEMENT AHEAD

 

 

Step and stop to move a head. (chì zhǐ, chuò shǒu.)
Dig my toes into the gravel to rest.

A river flows over my face.

 

[Shubin]

On 6/26/2018 at 10:02 AM, Rocky Lionmouth said:

Hi!

 

Idk if this is a silly query but could anyone point me towards english translations of texts from the Daozang?

I’ve been reading a little from ”Daoist Master Chuang” and my interest has reached new peaks, i’d like to at least glance at some of the material talked about in relation to orthodox Taoist practices.

 

I found this:

http://hanji.sinica.edu.tw/

 

while leafing through Pregadios index paper but it is wholly in chinese from what i can see.

Any indications towards translations or texts detailing of the teachings of the three caves would be met with gratitude and joy!

 

Peace!

 

 

 

It looks like that some people already translated a small part of  Daozang into English. 

http://dztranslation.org/index.html

 

I have not gotten a chance to take a closer look on it, but their work already earned my respect.

 

 

[Rocky Lionmouth]

@shubin you sir, are a hero.

[Shubin]

Not me, I hope I could have such courage and patient to do amazing things like that.

[exorcist_1699]

Another sad thing is that you can't use Google 's translate to help ,  even partly to lessen the difficulties of the job .  AI  scientists always like to bullshit people about the coming of  Singularity   as  super AI  is going to access  all knowledge through the world wide net and understood all  different languages  through Machine Learning  and NLP ..etc,  yet two huge archives ( millions volumes of them in Chinese  ) of Daozang  and Fozang (" 佛蔵"  , Buddhist sutra in Chinese ; in fact, nobody knows how huge  a volume it is ..  )  are there talking about deep knowledge of jing, qi,  shen , time, consciousness ..etc ,  so important  to human'  intelligence , are even not mentioned by those  AI scientists;   Writing to this point, it makes me  think of a Chinese saying  you can always come across online :   " 無知者無懼   "   ;

 

" Those  who are so brave to claim  intelligent , unfortunately are those who are so ignorant  ( of what human intelligence  really is )  "

 

Edited October 10, 2018 by exorcist_1699

[Shubin]

7 hours ago, exorcist_1699 said:

Another sad thing is that you can't use Google 's translate to help ,  even partly to lessen the difficulties of the job .  AI  scientists always like to bullshit people about the coming of  Singularity   as  super AI  is going to access  all knowledge through the world wide net and understood all  different languages  through Machine Learning  and NLP ..etc,  yet two huge archives ( millions volumes of them in Chinese  ) of Daozang  and Fozang (" 佛蔵"  , Buddhist sutra in Chinese ; in fact, nobody knows how huge  a volume it is ..  )  are there talking about deep knowledge of jing, qi,  shen , time, consciousness ..etc ,  so important  to human'  intelligence , are even not mentioned by those  AI scientists;   Writing to this point, it makes me  think of a Chinese saying  you can always come across online :   " 無知者無懼   "   ;

 

" Those  who are so brave to claim  intelligent , unfortunately are those who are so ignorant  ( of what human intelligence  really is )  "

 

 

I see your points. Talking about Daozang  and Fozang, it may be impossible to get 100% correct result from Google or other translating tools.

It seems for me that a lot of people do not need 100% correct content if they are not practicers. Sometimes 80% correct content is good enough for them to make simple decisions or to get feels/verviews, etc.

 

I found a tiny piece of Daozang from scanned original copies that printed a few hundreds year ago, so I am sure the copies are genuine. If I do a quick browse on 10 pages of them, about 2,000 characters total, could I understand all content of them? Could I get basic ideas 100% correct from the 10 pages?  

Edited October 10, 2018 by Shubin

[Walker]

On 10/10/2018 at 7:48 PM, Shubin said:

I see your points. Talking about Daozang  and Fozang, it may be impossible to get 100% correct result from Google or other translating tools.

It seems for me that a lot of people do not need 100% correct content if they are not practicers. Sometimes 80% correct content is good enough for them to make simple decisions or to get feels/verviews, etc.

 

I'm sorry, got to strongly disagree with you here. I think you would be lucky to get 10% correct by plugging Buddhist or Daoist canonical works into Google translate, and there's no way for anybody who doesn't smoke as much meth as the Google translate bot evidently does could make decisions on the basis of this stuff.

 

Let's use the Heart Sutra as an example. Here's what Google gives you:

 

View the self-Buddhist. It’s as long as a lot of time. See the five elements are empty. All the bitterness. Relics. Color is empty. It’s not empty. The color is empty. Empty is the color. I am thinking about it. It is also true. Relics. It is the empty space of the laws. Not born or not. Not dirty. No increase or decrease. It is colorless in the air. Nothing to think about. No eyes and ears. Colorless sound and fragrance touch. No vision. Even the unconscious world. No ignorance. There is no clearness. Even no death. There is no old death. No bitterness. No wisdom or no. No income. Bodhi. According to Prajna Paramita. Innocent. Nothing. No horror. Stay away from reversing your dreams. Nirvana. The Three Buddhas. According to Prajna Paramita. Aunt Doro, Sancha, and Bodhi. I know that Prajna Paramita is more. It is a great curse. It is a big mantra. It is a curse. There is no curse. Able to eliminate all pain. Really worthwhile. Therefore, it is said that Prajna Paramita is a curse. That is to say cursing.
Uncovering and revealing, Balo’s discovery, Boluo’s discovery, Bodhisattva

 

"Therefore, it is said that Prajna Paramita is a curse. That is to say cursing." Yeah, um, ok. 

 

Now here're the last few lines from an important neidan poem called 《金丹詩訣》 by Chen Nan: 

 

Once the work is done with sincerity, the spirit is so solid and solid, Yan Rongru is not hungry and thirsty, and Fang Xian Jin Dan is a success. Cui Wei's independent crystal palace, the body is very intentional, in the middle of the night, Huang Po came to the door, as a medium to marry and Jin Gong. Taiyi Xuanzhu Jin Liquid Dan, also returned to the local children's face. If you want to hear a new teacher's language, you can teach him to see a class. In the night, a Büfu 蕖, there are red pills dropping beads, dripping Huachi is Shenshui, Dantian gathers for Danshu. It is called the water and fire essence, this is the two dragons and scorpions, but take the sacred point away from the hole, pure dry can take the flight.

 

There's a point at which 10% correct is actually just 100% incorrect, because all you can do with stuff like this is waste precious, precious time that could be better spent reading books written or translated by people who actually care about helping you "awaken to reality," instead of a computer program. 

 

That is, of course, unless "this is the two dragons and scorpions, but take the sacred point away from the hole, pure dry can take the flight" makes sense to you! So solid and solid!

 

On 10/9/2018 at 9:17 PM, Shubin said:

 

It looks like that some people already translated a small part of  Daozang into English. 

http://dztranslation.org/index.html

 

I have not gotten a chance to take a closer look on it, but their work already earned my respect.

 

Unfortunately what I looked at is so deeply riddled with mistakes as to be close to useless. 

 

~80% of the content in the Daoist Canon is about ritual, btw. 

[Shubin]

It is good to see different views, and you may be right.

For poems, I do not think any translating tools can do good jobs. For Neidan related poems,  It is very hard for any people or professional translators to get a 1,000 years old poem translated 100% correct.

 

BTW, I tried the first poem of《金丹詩訣》with Google Translate, and the result is not too bad.

 

半斤真汞半斤铅，隐在灵源太极先。须趁子时当采取，炼成金液入丹田。

Half a catty of mercury, half a catty of lead, hidden in the source of Taiyuan.

When it is necessary to take it, it will be converted into gold liquid into Dantian.

 

Edited August 4, 2019 by Shubin

[alphone]

Hello friend of Tao,

 

This is my blog where you can find some English translations of Taoist scriptures :

https://universalalphaomega.blogspot.com

I had a Taoist website that focuses on English translation of Taoist scriptures. The site was shut down, but you can still access its contents through an archived version of the site  :

https://web.archive.org/web/20170517120411/http://www.taoistresource.net/doe_idx.htm