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Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 4ggr0 10mo agoFor people who like The Big Lebowski, there's "The Tao of the Dude" https://dudeism.com/taoofthedude/ https://dudeism.com/taoofthedude/
- Noaidi 10mo agoOh please stop. Love, Someone who studied Daoism for 16 years.
- justanotherjoe 10mo agoI'm sure. But can you explain more? Share that 16 years of knowledge, even a little bit?
- o_____________o 10mo agoI picked up Tao Te Ching as an American teenager and was moved by how it cuts against the American faith in visible dominance and self-assertion, proposing a form of strength that is low, quiet, and unseen. It's much more than that of course, but that aspect had immediate impact on my thinking.
- justonceokay 10mo agoReading the Tao te Ching makes it clear why the best engineers are the soft-spoken individuals who refrain from talking until the end of the meeting.
- retrocog 10mo agoThat’s because good engineering is mostly listening to the system. If you talk too early, you end up arguing abstractions. If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves. By the end of the meeting, the quiet person isn’t trying to win the room — they’re just reporting what reality already said.
- ProllyInfamous 10mo ago>"If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves." This could be a line from [the non-existant] Tao #82.
- agumonkey 10mo agoAre they delaying to listen and have more information or out of politeness to keep others ego unharmed even though he knew the answer beforehand ?
- kccqzy 10mo agoIt’s a cultural thing. If a Chinese person steeped in that culture of “low, quiet, unseen” strength came to America as an immigrant, that person would likely not do very well. If the person immigrated as a child, schooling in America will quickly change that. I don’t doubt that the aspect had immediate impact on your thinking, but I would be very surprised if it also had lasting impact on your behavior.
- raincole 10mo agoHN seems to like Tao Te Ching. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Tao%20Te%20Ching&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- dang 10mo agoI found these. Others? Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886419 - July 2024 (118 comments) Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843 - Oct 2023 (99 comments) Tao Te Ching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 - Sept 2023 (170 comments) 175 translations of of the Tao Te Ching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945605 - July 2020 (1 comment) Translations of the Dao De Jing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16953938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16953938 - April 2018 (59 comments)
- culi 10mo agoIn one of those threads a user, thadk, posted their really cool tool that shows a side by side comparison of English translations for each verse https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,uklg,jc,rh/section:1 https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,uklg,jc,rh/... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40887305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40887305
- thadk 10mo agoGlad it was a helpful remix! Since that post, the original tool author added UKLG's full version to the tool: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg/section:26 https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg/sectio...
- culi 10mo agoAh I missed that tasuki was the original author of the tool. Thanks to both of y'all
- kittywantsbacon 10mo agoFrom the bottom: > This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898 translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude to him is unending.
- raincole 10mo agoHonestly, even if you know Chinese, it's very hard to translate Tao Te Ching into English. Hell, it's hard to translate it into Chinese. Even the first paragraph is controversial. For example this rendition says: > The name you can say > isn’t the real name. However, in a 5th century interpretation[0], it's more akin to: > The fame and wealth the mortals praise are not a natural state. (My extremely simplified paraphrasing) [0]: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=491818 https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=491818
- roromainmain 10mo agoInteresting. Your comparison reminds me of something from Lacanian psychoanalysis: the idea that people often mistake themselves for the symbolic labels they occupy, their title for instance. Like a doctor who would praise himself for being a doctor, a president a president. From that perspective, both versions of the Tao Te Ching line point to the same thing: what can be named, praised, or socially recognized isn’t the true underlying reality. Different phrasing, but the same structural idea.
- hosh 10mo agoMore generalized, any kind of symbol representing something is not the something. The social labelling is very accessible, true now and true then. There’s a Zen koan about that (with Zen coming from Chang which came from a meeting of Buddhism and Taoism in China) — about the finger pointing to the moon, and how all but one student looked at the finger. In a different example, there is the distinction of virtue signaling and virtue (the “Te” in “Tao Te Ching”)
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- robotomir 10mo agoI am just noticing how those ideas are present in Wizard of Earthsea.
- scroy 10mo agoThey're present in almost all of her work.
- hinkley 10mo agoEastern thought had quite a moment in the sun in the 60’s and 70’s. All I can say is lead poisoning does terrible things to the mind over time.
- hosh 10mo agoSounds similar to some of the historic criticisms neo-Confucian had about Taoism. Are you familiar with the Western non-dual traditions?
- hosh 10mo agoUKLG deliberately wrote Earthsea in the guise of a Western high fantasy, but its philosophical core is the Tao Te Ching. It was set in the archipelagos similar to SW Asia, with similar ethnicity. The producers who made the movie casted the crew ignoring UKLG though I think contractually, they were supposed to listen to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they swapped out the philosophical core.
- roxolotl 10mo agoThis is wonderful. Ursula K. Le Guin is a great thinker and I’d highly recommend her novels. I’ve read Ken Liu’s, who many here probably know at least from translating The Three Body Problem and Death’s End, Tao Te Ching and it was remarkably poetic. Excited to read another person’s interpretation.
- SilentM68 10mo agoAgreed! I really liked Ken Liu's translation of T3BP. I don't speak any Chinese or Asian-based lingo for that matter, but am a fan of the culture and rich history. Some of us that don't know the lingo, have issues with reading subtitled movies, for example, can only enjoy the art via audio dubbing. Godzilla Minus 1 comes to mind, as a good example of a movie that generated some controversy when translated and people claimed that it lost something in the translation. I'm sure they were right, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and was glad when it was dubbed into other languages.
- an0malous 10mo ago> I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you can see it rightly, it contains everything. I'm a simple man. I see Borge, I upvote
- scroy 10mo agoAs another comment points out, Le Guin herself does not call this a translation, so we shouldn't misrepresent it (although it might be my favorite English version). However, it's not in the public domain. Her work deserves all the attention it can get, but I'd rather not see it pirated wholesale.
- andsoitis 10mo ago> However, it's not in the public domain. Her work deserves all the attention it can get, but I'd rather not see it pirated wholesale. I don't disagree. Does github have a way to report copyright violations? I just bought the real book from Powell's. Several buying options: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching
- gessha 10mo ago> Does github have a way to report copyright violations? What would reporting this GitHub repo do? Is the late Ursula K. Le Guin going to get a check in the afterlife? Her historical stance on copyright was based on consent. What happens when the author passes away?
- andsoitis 10mo agoI was wondering whether GitHub has a process for dealing with reports of obvious copyright violations. They don’t need thr copyright owner to weigh in.
- scroy 10mo agoI think the way to do it is to notify her estate and let them pursue it or not. But I'm really just here to say how I'm happy to pay her estate and publishers and everyone else should too.
- ACow_Adonis 10mo agoWhat on earth is it about intellectual property that breaks someone's mind so much that genuinely, when presented with a translation of a 2000 year old text that itself is based on another authors translation and who's translator is now dead, they go onto a website to proclaim "it's not in the public domain!".
- adzm 10mo agoThis is one of my favorite versions, mostly for nostalgic reasons. My initial exposure to the Tao te Ching was this "rendition" and Stephen Mitchell's version. Comparing the two was always very thought provoking; the approach is very different between them. I often come to this site and compare chapters across multiple versions: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh Some are more poetic, some are more literal, and keeping with the theme, both of them are just as important.
- chrchr 10mo ago"Everybody on earth knowing that beauty is beautiful makes ugliness." That resonates with so much of the discussion on this site. We're all trying to make good technology that helps people! Why does it so often fall short?
- shashanoid 10mo agoOsho on Tao the pathless path is also pretty amazing! - https://oshoworld.com/tao-the-pathless-path-vol-1-by-osho-01-14 https://oshoworld.com/tao-the-pathless-path-vol-1-by-osho-01...
- orasis 10mo agoThis is most likely a copyright violation. I follow these translations and I’ve seen no evidence that the publisher put it in the public domain.
- terminalbraid 10mo agoI'm imagining a hoard of angry Taoists led by the ghost of Le Guin very upset that the wisdom was not paid for in accordance with the inscrutable decisions made by capitalist lawmakers.
- egl2020 10mo agoWell, her three children might care.
- terminalbraid 10mo agoin accordance with the inscrutable decisions made by capitalist lawmakers
- BiraIgnacio 10mo agoUrsula's notes really enrich the work. Fantastic ways to render insights in words.
- vrnvu 10mo agoLove this version. I quoted the chapter about Leadership plenty of times at work. `True leaders are hardly known to their followers.`
- profsummergig 10mo ago"The way you can go isn’t the real way." Nope. This ain't it. The very first sentence misses the point. (It might be a literal translation. Perhaps. But that's not the essence.) I couldn't go (pun intended) beyond the first sentence. There are much more "essential" translations out there.
- TZubiri 10mo agoI have 0 confidence that I could understand the Tao even if I read the best most classical translations available. Take the bible, which is translated from languages that are closer to mine, and which refers to a culture which is closer to mine, with family and scholars whose interpretation I can understand directly. Still I don't have much confidence that I understand the bulk of it, it takes years of reading and lived experiences to understand both the modern and past contexts in which it was written. By the same token, I'm certain actual chinese people read the Tao and are like "Lmao what does this mean", and for the most part these books are meant to be mysterious, iirc there's actual sections of the Tao that translate to "You can't understand the Tao". I don't mean to be overly religious here, it's just that the Tao happens to be religious, but consider Beowulf, which is written in an old form of the English language, surely you would be able to understand it? Not a chance, try it. But ok, surely the translators are able to understand it and provide you a translation without losing much meaning. No, not only can they not provide a translation that you can understand without losing context and signal, but they can't understand a lot of what they are reading anyways. Consider that for just the first word of the whole epic, they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means, nobody can even settle on what the first word means! Imagine the rest of the text. So to think that one has a chance to understand the Tao, or even that it is worth it at all to understand something from a culture so different. Not for me. Unless you are Asian, by all means go for it, but if you are not, I would invite you to question whether you first have any chance at understanding at all, or whether you will interpret "being like a Straw Dog" from whatever translation you chose through your own lens, like a Rorschach.
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- madhadron 10mo agoThis seems overly pessimistic. We regularly engage with other cultures and their texts and understand them, and, yes, it takes time and knowledge of context to do so. Someone needs to explain quite a bit about Roman society under Augustus for you to understand what is going on in detail in Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia. The Tao te Ching suffers from being written in a style that was very much for people in the know in a certain milieu, limited texts, and a huge amount of cultural baggage on top. The most interesting recent scholarly translation I know of is by Victor Mair, of a different, recently discovered text, and his contention is that the book is a 'mirror for princes' and not a mystical text at all. > they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means I don't think anyone is particularly fighting over what it means, just how to translate it when there isn't a parallel in modern English. My personal favorite is a translation that opens with 'Bro!'.
- eightturn 10mo agomy first exposure to the Tao Te Ching was listening to the audiobook 'the tao of pooh', which I was listening to on an airplane and found myself doubled-over gobsmacked with the simple complexity it was exposing to me, and how I had already absent mindedly followed a few of their principles, and nowadays it's all I see, is don't think, just do; go back to the beginning; become an uncarved block. it's all so great.
- treetalker 10mo agoRon Hogan's Getting Right with Tao is another interesting rendition: http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf http://www.beatrice.com/TAO.pdf
- superb-owl 10mo agoTo call Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching a translation is misleading—she knew little Chinese. Le Guin leaned heavily on existing translations, alongside her intuition for Taoist philosophy. From the her postscript: > This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898 translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude to him is unending. For the interested, the original paperback contains diligent notes about her sources and word choices. I also reference Le Guin's rendition a bunch here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/taoism-minus-the-nonsense https://superbowl.substack.com/p/taoism-minus-the-nonsense
- rexpop 10mo agoThe concept of *unlearning* in Chapter 48 and the Y Combinator (YC) model represent two fundamentally opposing approaches to action, leadership, and success. While C emphasizes accumulation, urgency, and overcoming obstacles to "win," Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation of the Tao Te Ching argues that true power comes from "shrinking," "not doing," and flowing like water to avoid obstacles entirely. Chapter 48 of the Tao Te Ching draws a sharp distinction between conventional learning and the Way. Le Guin translates this as: "Studying and learning daily you grow larger. / Following the Way daily you shrink". Y Combinator exemplifies "growing larger." It describes a process where founders "work intensively," "compress months of growth into weeks," and strive to build companies into massive entities like OpenAI ($500B) and Airbnb ($100B). This aligns with the worldly pursuit of accumulation and "being bright" or "keen," which Le Guin notes leads to the "greatest evil: wanting more". Le Guin argues that to follow the Way, one must "get smaller and smaller" until arriving at "not doing". This "unlearning" is the removal of the "fuss," desire, and intellectual rigidity that creates resistance. The relationship between Unlearning and Not Doing is that unlearning strips away the ego-driven need to force outcomes. The YC text quotes Paul Graham defining a formidable founder as "one who seems like they’ll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way." This defines success as the imposition of will upon the world—an act of force. In contrast, Le Guin’s commentary states that wei wu wei (Action by Inaction) is "power that is not force". A Taoist leader does not overcome obstacles by crashing through them; rather, like water, they go "right / to the low loathsome places, / and so finds the way". To the Taoist, the "formidable" approach of forcefully removing obstacles is dangerous because "Those who think to win the world / by doing something to it, / I see them come to grief". The YC website highlights that "the sense of urgency is so infectious among founders" that it creates maximum productivity. Le Guin’s translation warns explicitly against this state—she writes: "Racing, chasing, hunting, / drives people crazy". Le Guin notes that "To run things, / don't fuss with them," and that "Nobody who fusses / is fit to run things". The "fuss" (or shi) is interpreted by Le Guin as "diplomacy" or "meddling"—essentially, the intense activity and "doing" that YC celebrates. Instead of infectious urgency, the Taoist relies on "doing without doing," which Le Guin describes as "uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment". The YC website describes "formidable founders" who do—they build, pivot, and acquire vast valuations through intense effort. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching suggests that this is the path of "growing larger". In the Taoist view, these founders are "doing something to" the world, which is a "sacred object" that should not be seized. While YC founders "get what they want," Le Guin observes that "the ever-wanting soul / sees only what it wants," blinding them to the "mystery" and the true nature of the Way. Unlearning, therefore, leads to not doing by dismantling the very ambition that drives a founder to become "formidable" in the first place. Edit: TBH, IMHO, "the low loathsome places" are not dissimilar from the indignities which a founder should be prepared to suffer, and so maybe startups aren't completely anathema to the Dao.
- theli0nheart 10mo agoWhat a crazy coincidence seeing this on HN; I just started reading this today!
- andsoitis 10mo agoIdeas have people
- ProllyInfamous 10mo agoJust read one per day. Some days it will feel "too simple" — others "too much." Enjoy your bedtime Tao.
- jp57 10mo agoIs this not under copyright?
- tasuki 10mo agoHey, the last commit there is mine, fixing the line endings! FWIW, I also made a website with comparison of the different translations/renditions of the Tao Te Ching, including the one by Ursula K. Le Guin[0]. [0]: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh,uklg
- dmwood 10mo agoThank you for your website.
- xiaodai 10mo agowe have a tendency to look thousands of years in the past for wisdom. weird.
- andsoitis 10mo agoIsn’t that because wisdom is mostly informed and validated through experience?
- AdmiralAsshat 10mo agoWhat would be the easiest way to get this into an EPUB?
- drewchew 10mo agoHad to share the creation of Ea from the Earthsea cycle… very Tao… “Only in silence the word, Only in dark the light, Only in dying life: Bright the hawk’s flight On the empty sky. “The Creation of Éa,” Ursula K. Le Guin
- Barrin92 10mo agoI really liked Brook Ziporyn's translation of the Dao and particular his deep dive into the A / B / True A move that the Dao does all the time. There's a nice small lecture on YT on this as well: https://youtu.be/EJ1bB2w2gBk https://youtu.be/EJ1bB2w2gBk
- ProllyInfamous 10mo agoI have the physical book, translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English. Every night, I read one new passage — then every morning, I read that same passage again. Presuming you miss a few readings, you can then complete the entire Tao in less than three months (or: four times per year, cyclically). This gives you time to digest each passage, be it in dreams or daytime. Nobody will ever fully understand these texts. >#23 — "he who does not trust enough will not be trusted" For my next read-through, I will paste Ursula's words alongside Ms. English's. ---- If you have not read The Dispossessed, this is a great intro to LaGuin's perspectiveS.
- bamboozled 10mo agoDoes the book describes binary mathematics (via the ying and yang) and how it can be used to describe basically all complexity and complex interactions ? Have you read that bit? I heard Alan Watts mention it and I thought it was interesting.
- ProllyInfamous 10mo agoFrom Tao #42 >The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang. >They achieve harmony by combining these forces. ... >For one gains by losing. >And loses by gaining. ---- From Tao #28 >Knowing light and staying dark, be a pattern to the world. >Being the world's pattern of eternal unerring power is to go back again to boundlessness.
- SolubleSnake 10mo agoThe Tao Te Ching is sort of impossible to translate into modern English. I don't really understand it but I can speak and read Chinese and it doesn't make much sense to Chinese people either. It is the weirdest thing that it has become famous. This is kind of how it translates in English: 'Light light moon green grass mountain snow sun together' For an entire book. It's totally nonsensical but the writing in Chinese at that time was just a bit like that. Classical Chinese sort of seems to have been written more like the way rappers put together their battling rhymes sometimes - you aren't meant to understand it
- ProllyInfamous 10mo agoNote from UKLG (Tao#28): >"The simplicity of Lao Tzu's language can present an almost impenetrable density of meaning. The reversals and paradoxes in this great poem are the oppositions of the yin and yang — male/female, light/dark, glory/modesty — but the knowing and being of them, the balancing act, results in neither stasis nor synthesis ... reversal, recurrence, are the movement, and yet the movement is onward." Thanks for your literal character interpretation / perspective.