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Tao Te Ching

I will make an effort to study this ancient text every day until I finish it.

Here is the entry in Wikipedia.

I will attempt to study these versions.

Translated by Derek Lin

Translated by J. Legge

Translated by D.T. Suzuki & Paul Carus This one has original Chinese Text.

I recalled back in the days (in high school). We tried to study the original texts. We (at least I) could not understand it. I only got the fuzzy meaning of it. Till this day, it is still fuzzy to me. The text was written in such ancient Chinese which could be written as in Greek to us. Since I am in the West now, many people here consider this as a sacred text, I will give another attempt to read it. Perhaps, with the help of multiple translations, I will finally gain some meaning of this text.


My comments:

There are 81 chapters of this book. The first chapter is the most famous one that contains this opening line "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

I have a bit trouble with chapter 3 on Keeping the people quiet. It is as if it was written purposely for a dictator who would like to control the heart and minds of his/her people. There was not Democracy back then after all. It is wonderful to see that humans actually make lots of progress in terms of equality in society.

I like this phrase in Chapter 8 Easy By Nature. "Superior goodness resembleth water. The water's goodness benefiteth the ten thousand things, yet it quarreleth not."

There is this very common theme among all the spiritual practices in chapter 12 ABSTAINING FROM DESIRE

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