cultivatorarchivist reviewed Lao-Tzu's Taoteching: With Selected Commentaries of the Past 2000 Years on + 16 more book reviews
Hi,
I once thought this text, its author, the tradition that it represents and the thoughts it conveys as my spiritual bread and butter. That is no longer the case. Part of the reason this text is so appealing are two reasons, as far as I can see. One, the language is simple and paradoxical. This simple fact gives people the opportunity to hang all sorts of interpretations on it, an intellectual/exegetical exercise of sorts. The text is mystical and that connotes all sorts of things, most of which seem appealing to the spiritual seeker. Attaining the Dao, going with the flow, being natural, all of these things sound appealing to the unquestioning and even the skeptical seekers alike. Most people don't go much further than reading it for their own pleasure, imagining for a moment what a natural state is like for them, sigh in contentment; perhaps make a journal entry, and go about their day.
Some people, and this is the minority, take the trouble of taking the text very seriously. Beyond their own personal fancy, they wonder what does the text says. These people go through varying degrees of seriousness, from practicing Taijiquan to studying and or practicing internal alchemy. I fall in this second category. That was my personal study for a decade and a half. I took the text very seriously and asked myself one simple question, "How real are the claims it makes?" From there I went on this experiment, using myself as my personal laboratory, to answer this simple question. Well, to make a long answer short, Daodejing's claims are unfortunately not true, and the more serious you take the text the more dangerous it is.
To be honest, the text is useful to a Westerner, or any human being for that matter, to the extent that it states truths which are universal. Or more succinctly put, it's absolutely useless. Why? In order to understand it, one must either rely on their own understanding, and or rely on another similar text that is understandable, which then can be used as a sort of commentary on the Daodejung. This project is senseless and simply discarding the Daodejing would suffice.
Or, you can do as others have done, seek someone who is an expert on the Daodejing, a Taoist and have that person explain it to you. And if everything goes well then a special relationship can be forged with this person, the kind of relationship that has no exact parallel in Western society but is becoming more common due to our cosmopolitan culture. This endeavor is actually even more senseless than the previous one for one simple reason. The soul hungers for spiritual bread and water. Those parts of the text which are appealing are so because of the starved soul and the text's universality. Well, the tragedy is that this Taoist cannot address the soul's illness any better than the fledgling reason trying understand itself. The Taoist can only impart culturally specific knowledge, thus pulling our fledging's reason further and further away from true understanding. Any wisdom that that Taoist purports to give simply does not nourish. What may seem spiritually fulfilling is actually spiritual bankruptcy.
The second reason this text is so appealing is because of its appeal to our sense of individuality. The more we embody this text, so the text tells us, the more of an individual we become and thus freer. What the soul yearns for is freedom, happiness. And the answer this text gives is freedom through individuality, singularity in fact. It is no accident that the grievest of all sins is pride, being the worst and the subtlest. And like CS Lewis once said, it sits fine with the devil if we suppress all other sins so long as we do so with the help of pride.
Beyond the tradition behind this text there is also the quality of the translation. I can also speak about this with some degree of comfort since I previously made Classical Chinese a priority in my life. The quality of the translation is wonderful. The man who wrote it, Bill Porter is a highly erudite Sinologist. He is not an official Sinologist since he did not receive his training from any graduate program; he doesn't hold a PhD in Chinese studies. What he did instead is live in China for 17 years, living in a Buddhist monastery 4 or 5 of those years. His pursuit is genuine, poor soul, and is a very kind man (I briefly communicated with him).
I once thought this text, its author, the tradition that it represents and the thoughts it conveys as my spiritual bread and butter. That is no longer the case. Part of the reason this text is so appealing are two reasons, as far as I can see. One, the language is simple and paradoxical. This simple fact gives people the opportunity to hang all sorts of interpretations on it, an intellectual/exegetical exercise of sorts. The text is mystical and that connotes all sorts of things, most of which seem appealing to the spiritual seeker. Attaining the Dao, going with the flow, being natural, all of these things sound appealing to the unquestioning and even the skeptical seekers alike. Most people don't go much further than reading it for their own pleasure, imagining for a moment what a natural state is like for them, sigh in contentment; perhaps make a journal entry, and go about their day.
Some people, and this is the minority, take the trouble of taking the text very seriously. Beyond their own personal fancy, they wonder what does the text says. These people go through varying degrees of seriousness, from practicing Taijiquan to studying and or practicing internal alchemy. I fall in this second category. That was my personal study for a decade and a half. I took the text very seriously and asked myself one simple question, "How real are the claims it makes?" From there I went on this experiment, using myself as my personal laboratory, to answer this simple question. Well, to make a long answer short, Daodejing's claims are unfortunately not true, and the more serious you take the text the more dangerous it is.
To be honest, the text is useful to a Westerner, or any human being for that matter, to the extent that it states truths which are universal. Or more succinctly put, it's absolutely useless. Why? In order to understand it, one must either rely on their own understanding, and or rely on another similar text that is understandable, which then can be used as a sort of commentary on the Daodejung. This project is senseless and simply discarding the Daodejing would suffice.
Or, you can do as others have done, seek someone who is an expert on the Daodejing, a Taoist and have that person explain it to you. And if everything goes well then a special relationship can be forged with this person, the kind of relationship that has no exact parallel in Western society but is becoming more common due to our cosmopolitan culture. This endeavor is actually even more senseless than the previous one for one simple reason. The soul hungers for spiritual bread and water. Those parts of the text which are appealing are so because of the starved soul and the text's universality. Well, the tragedy is that this Taoist cannot address the soul's illness any better than the fledgling reason trying understand itself. The Taoist can only impart culturally specific knowledge, thus pulling our fledging's reason further and further away from true understanding. Any wisdom that that Taoist purports to give simply does not nourish. What may seem spiritually fulfilling is actually spiritual bankruptcy.
The second reason this text is so appealing is because of its appeal to our sense of individuality. The more we embody this text, so the text tells us, the more of an individual we become and thus freer. What the soul yearns for is freedom, happiness. And the answer this text gives is freedom through individuality, singularity in fact. It is no accident that the grievest of all sins is pride, being the worst and the subtlest. And like CS Lewis once said, it sits fine with the devil if we suppress all other sins so long as we do so with the help of pride.
Beyond the tradition behind this text there is also the quality of the translation. I can also speak about this with some degree of comfort since I previously made Classical Chinese a priority in my life. The quality of the translation is wonderful. The man who wrote it, Bill Porter is a highly erudite Sinologist. He is not an official Sinologist since he did not receive his training from any graduate program; he doesn't hold a PhD in Chinese studies. What he did instead is live in China for 17 years, living in a Buddhist monastery 4 or 5 of those years. His pursuit is genuine, poor soul, and is a very kind man (I briefly communicated with him).
