If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.
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I have about 15 different translations of the Tao and there is something unique to the translator in every version. Some lines of each translation are so similar they could be exact copies of one another. Then again, some lines will jump out as renegades, as “different takes” on the central theme. And, sometimes there is a phrase that feels like a handshake between the author and the reader which becomes the “remembered one.” As I read it, Chapter 36 is about awareness of opposites explaining one another—about experience of turning the coin to see the other side and realizing the unity of a whole from two opposite sides. Hot and cold, stuffed and empty, love and hate. To know one, you have to have experienced the other. And, sometimes there are chunks of words repeated in each translation that are in agreement with one another but remain totally out of whack to my reading of the same. And, sometimes I will come across words of one author that seem to shake hands with my mind and I say, “yes”—often, the words of Ursula K. Le Guin’s translation speak clear to my understanding.
ReplyDeleteChapter 36, p.47 — “There is a third stanza in all the texts:
Fish should stay underwater:
the real means of rule
should be kept dark.
Or, more literally, “the State’s sharp weapons ought not be shown to the people.” This Machiavellian truism seems such an anticlimax to the great theme stated in the first verses that I treat it as an intrusion, perhaps a commentator’s practical example of “the small dark light.”
She simply leaves this last stanza out of her translation as she inserts a note of explanation. And, I see! I don’t need to swallow chunks of ill-fitting words just because so many others, even the experts, do.
I am the gatekeeper of my mind, no matter whose accepted words I’m reading. Freedom to read and freedom to understand leads to a self evident state of mind. I, really, cannot step further into the unknown than that stopping point during the reading of a text. But, keep the misunderstood for a possible future understanding.
This is one of my favorites. It at first seems so counter intuitive. And yet why would you change something in the first place. It must not have been what you expected or wanted. How can you get rid of something if it did not exist. How can you shrink something if it is not too large.
ReplyDeleteThe soft overcomes the hard. Used this one on Mormons. The bible has some line about the meek inheriting the earth. I pointed out to them the the grass is overcoming my brick walk. There before our eyes the perfect example.