Thank you for introducing Tao Te Ching so much! Luckily I can read your blog in comparison to its Chinese version, which helps me understand the content better. (After all, the original Tao Te Ching was written about 2,000 years ago in ancient Chinese, instead of modern Chinese. So it is explained in different modern Chinese versions, too.)
The whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful, yet this is only the ugly;
I notice in Chinese version it shows " Just because of the existence of the ugly, the whole world recognizes the beautiful as the beautiful." In my mind, Taoism is regarded as a kind of dialectical philosophy: if without the ugly, without the beautiful!
I've read a little bit of Tao Te Ching before. However, isn't it very interesting for me to learn and digest it by following a western poet？
I'm also really glad that I've learned a new buddism term: finger pointing to the moon from this blog. (God knows how I especially checked the information about it online.)
Hi @kaixin
It's the one thing I regret that I can't read the Tao Te Ching in its original language.
The Tao was my first introduction to ancient wisdom as I found a copy of an English translation of it in my mother's book collection when I was about 17 years of age. Even then it had an effect on me, although I didn't fully understand the ethemiral nature of its philosophy back then.
I read it again in my early 20's and understood it better I think. At the time I had just discovered meditating as a tool to help me combat depression, and that second reading of the Tao Te Ching resonated with the practice of meditation like the ring of a tuning fork.
I agree. The many 'seemingly' paradoxical statements in the Tao Te Ching serve as a kind of linguistic mental gymnastics to point at concepts that are beyond language.
That's why I used that Buddhist metaphor of the finger pointing to the moon. It's truly wonderful when the majesty of the moon becomes apparent. When the 'seemingly' nonsensical words point you to the knowing that is at the heart of the Tao. It's the same feeling I get when I stare at a tree swaying in the wind and feel a deep peace descend. The writer in me likes to believe it's the tree's spirit communicating with me, but it could just as equally be me feeling the silent observant nature of the tree.
Anyway, I've started to ramble 😂
Thanks for your thoughtful comment👍🙂