There are many ways to live and die. We can pass through in a daze or in endless confusion or we can dedicate this time to something that we deem worthwhile. Nowadays there are many people whose lives have never been grabbed by anything. This may, in
Read more…Perception
When you look at something, there is central vision and there is peripheral vision. Central vision is clear, bright and colourful. It is the focus of attention. Peripheral vision is vague, evanescent and has no particular edge. When someth
A Chinese Slogan
Fo Tao Li are three Chinese words, none of which have exact equivalents in standard English, except that we have now imported the word Tao itself, and, from sanskrit, ’Buddha’ for Fo.
Li is a key term in Confucianism, meaning correct
Read more…Liberate Your Mind
To meditate, in standard English, means to think about or reflect upon. The usual usage nowadays is spiritual, so we can say to think about spiritual things or to reflect upon them. It is to muse. The thinking implied in the word m
Here is my work on translating and commenting on Chapter Five of the Tao Te Ching.You can see the earlier chapters here.
Chapter Five is partly controversial for its inclusion of the image of "straw dogs" which came to public attention through the 19
Read more…So here is my complete commentary on Chapter four...
LAO TZU: TAO TE CHING: Chapter 4
TEXT:
道 沖 ， 而 用 之 或 不 盈 。
淵 兮 ， 似 萬 物 之 宗 ﹔
挫其鋭，解其纷，和其光，同其尘。
湛 兮 ， 似 或 存 。
吾 不 知 誰 之 子 ， 象 帝 之 先 。
The Tao flows out, and yet use will never exhaust it.
Ho
I am gradually doing translations of the Tao Te Ching. The first three chapters have already appeared in this page. I am very much enjoying this work when I get time for it. The Chinese language is written in characters that are essentially pictures.
Read more…The first two hexagrams of the I Ching are also a pair of opposites, just like the last two. To change one of these into the other you would have to change every line. However, unlike the final two, there is no natural tendency for them to change int
Read more…Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: Chapter 3
老 子: 「道 德 經」 : 第 三 章
Text:
不 尚 賢 ，
使 民 不 爭 ﹔
不 貴 難 得 之 貨 ，
使 民 不 為 盜 ﹔
不 見 可 欲 ，
使 民 心 不 亂 。
Not esteeming the clever and good, keeps the people from contention.
Not valuing what is hard to obtain keeps the people from t
The last part of Chapter Two is as follows
Therefore, the sage,
makes not acting his thing
and not speaking his religion,
makes myriad things, but wit
The I Ching is the book of change. So it is about the patterns of change and what we can learn from studying those patterns. The basic unit of the book is the hexagram. This diagram of six lines mutates in a variety of ways. Six is 1x2x3. In other wo
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天 下 皆 知 美 之 為 美
斯 惡 已 。
皆 知 善 之 為 善
斯 不 善 已 。
That everybody sees beauty as beautiful
is not beautiful.
That everybody sees goodness as good
is not good.
Old Chinese is very succinct and therefore, to an extent, ambiguous. Several other ways in
Read more…I wanted to explain more about the I Ching, So I thought the best way was to let the oracle speak for itself.
To use the oracle, one casts a hexagram. There is a complex method using yarrow stalks and a simpler method using coins. I always use the
道 可 道 ， 非 常 道 。
名 可 名 ， 非 常 名 。
The tao that you can tao is not the enduring Tao
Names that you can name are not the enduring Name
無 名 天 地 之 始
有 名 萬 物 之 母 。
Without name is the origin of Heaven and Earth
Having names is the mother of the myriad thi
The I Ching is one of the oldest books in the world. It is a book of divination that has been used throughout Chinese history. It is important to Taoists and Confucians especially. The book embodies a traditional wisdom and has an uncanny ability to
Read more…I'm giving a talk on 'going with the flow' tomorrow evening, some of which comes out of my thinking around Taoism and the questions that asks of Pureland Buddhism. That raised some thoughts which I thought I'd share here.
The Tao is the mother of Hea
Read more…Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu is regarded as the founder of Taoism. According to tradition, he was an older contemporary of Confucius, and, perhaps, also of Buddha. Lao Tzu and Confucius are considered the two greatest sages of China and tit is recorded that they m
