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I 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 lan

by TZubiri 9mo ago

I 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.

deleted 9mo ago
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madhadron 9mo ago
This 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!'.
- TZubiri 9mo ago
  >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 A relatively recent new interpretation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-research-opening-line-of-beowulf-is-not-what-weve-eternally-thunk https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-resea... >Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia. But these cultures and texts are much closer to us than the Chinese Tao te Ching. Taxonomically Latin and English have a common ancestor in ProtoIndoeuropean sure, but English and the Romances (I'm spanish native), but there's a lot of horizontal influence of Latin in English. Netwon, (and many other English writers) wrote in both Latin and English. The aphabet is the same. Regarding the Epic of Gilgamesh, I haven't read much about that, cuneiform must be insanely hard to read, even through translations, that said, the fact that it seems to be an influence for Noah's Ark story seems to bring it much closer to western culture than Asian culture. Same thing with Greek literature, it's a bit farther away, but some stuff like ficticious Oddyssey will be somewhat approachable through a translation, the rhymes and a million temporal references will be completely lost obviously. Even some Arabic math texts I would consider to be somewhat more approachable by virtue of being so foundational to maths in general. But religious Chinese? must be one of the most unapproachable combos for reading as a non native reader.
akomtu 9mo ago
Dao is the way of life, it teaches the proper way to live. This teaching exists in every culture. Westerners call it the Way, Indians call it Dharma, Chinese also call it Fa. The simpler it looks, the higher its level. Its written forms have many layers of meaning because readers are of different levels. A well known example is statements like "love your enemy." It has a surface level meaning, a deeper meaning and so on. What you can ultimately see corresponds to your character level. To raise your level you need to apply what you've learned into practice, to live in the Dao, in other words. Intellectual understanding isn't enough, it must change the way you live. Then you can read the Dao again and see a higher level of meaning.
- TZubiri 9mo ago
  I checked and "love your enemy" is not in the Tao Te Ching. Sounds very christian.
  - akomtu 9mo ago
    It's the Christian version of the Dao.
- cindyllm 9mo ago
  [dead]
fatherwavelet 9mo ago
This is nonsense. You can't understand the tao because there is nothing to "understand". That is the whole point. If you walk in the woods on a beautiful day and hear birds chirping, there is nothing to "understand". It isn't an intellectual exercise. Quibbling about translations of the Tao Te Ching is really quite comical. A better taoist "teaching" would be to throw your copy in the garbage and go for a walk in the woods. This is where the cultural problems come in though. That is not really what is meant by the English word "teaching". Then you are expecting to "learn" some kind of new symbolic representation when the whole point is to get rid of symbolic representation. The idea you can't understand concepts from other humans because you were born into a different cultures is really stupid.
- TZubiri 9mo ago
  That's exactly what someone that doesn't understand a text would say. Not saying thay you don't understand it or that your interpretation is wrong, but it is indistinguishable from misunderstanding, and you could get it from any text you don't understand. The idea that you can throw the text and still understand it just shows how connected to the text you are.

by TZubiri 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

madhadron 9mo ago

This 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!'.

TZubiri 9mo ago
>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 A relatively recent new interpretation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-research-opening-line-of-beowulf-is-not-what-weve-eternally-thunk https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-resea... >Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia. But these cultures and texts are much closer to us than the Chinese Tao te Ching. Taxonomically Latin and English have a common ancestor in ProtoIndoeuropean sure, but English and the Romances (I'm spanish native), but there's a lot of horizontal influence of Latin in English. Netwon, (and many other English writers) wrote in both Latin and English. The aphabet is the same. Regarding the Epic of Gilgamesh, I haven't read much about that, cuneiform must be insanely hard to read, even through translations, that said, the fact that it seems to be an influence for Noah's Ark story seems to bring it much closer to western culture than Asian culture. Same thing with Greek literature, it's a bit farther away, but some stuff like ficticious Oddyssey will be somewhat approachable through a translation, the rhymes and a million temporal references will be completely lost obviously. Even some Arabic math texts I would consider to be somewhat more approachable by virtue of being so foundational to maths in general. But religious Chinese? must be one of the most unapproachable combos for reading as a non native reader.

akomtu 9mo ago

Dao is the way of life, it teaches the proper way to live. This teaching exists in every culture. Westerners call it the Way, Indians call it Dharma, Chinese also call it Fa. The simpler it looks, the higher its level. Its written forms have many layers of meaning because readers are of different levels. A well known example is statements like "love your enemy." It has a surface level meaning, a deeper meaning and so on. What you can ultimately see corresponds to your character level. To raise your level you need to apply what you've learned into practice, to live in the Dao, in other words. Intellectual understanding isn't enough, it must change the way you live. Then you can read the Dao again and see a higher level of meaning.

TZubiri 9mo ago
I checked and "love your enemy" is not in the Tao Te Ching. Sounds very christian.
- akomtu 9mo ago
  It's the Christian version of the Dao.
cindyllm 9mo ago
[dead]

fatherwavelet 9mo ago

This is nonsense. You can't understand the tao because there is nothing to "understand". That is the whole point. If you walk in the woods on a beautiful day and hear birds chirping, there is nothing to "understand". It isn't an intellectual exercise. Quibbling about translations of the Tao Te Ching is really quite comical. A better taoist "teaching" would be to throw your copy in the garbage and go for a walk in the woods. This is where the cultural problems come in though. That is not really what is meant by the English word "teaching". Then you are expecting to "learn" some kind of new symbolic representation when the whole point is to get rid of symbolic representation. The idea you can't understand concepts from other humans because you were born into a different cultures is really stupid.

TZubiri 9mo ago
That's exactly what someone that doesn't understand a text would say. Not saying thay you don't understand it or that your interpretation is wrong, but it is indistinguishable from misunderstanding, and you could get it from any text you don't understand. The idea that you can throw the text and still understand it just shows how connected to the text you are.