Witter Bynner's translation of the Tao Te Ching:
Verse Number Ten
Can you hold the door of your tent
Wide to the firmament?
Can you, with simple stature
Of a child, breathing nature,
Become, notwithstanding,
A man?
Can you continue befriending
With no prejudice, no ban?
Can you, mating with heaven,
Serve as a female part?
Can you learned head take leaven
From the wisdom of your heart?
If you can bear issue and nourish its growing,
If you can guide without claim or strife,
If you can stay in the lead of men without their knowing,
You are at the core of life.
Robert G. Henricks Translation
Verse Number Ten
In nourishing the should and embracing the One
- Can you do it without letting them leave?
In concentrating your breath and making it soft
- can you make it like that of a child?
In cultivating and cleaning your profound mirror
- can you do it so that it has no blemish?
In loving the people and giving life to the state
- can you do it without using knowledge?
In opening and closing the gates of Heaven-
can you play the part of the female?
In understanding all within the four reaches-
can you do it without using knowledge?
Give birth to them and nourish them.
Give birth to them but don't try to own them;
Help them to grow but don't rule them.
David K Reynolds Translation:
Verse Number Ten
Can you focus totally on the task at hand?
Can you see and hear and touch you surroundings with an open mind?
Can you disregard your own convenience?
Can you feel and act naturally without obsessing with ought and should?
Whatever change occurs without flying away can you sit on the eggs of Reality?
Can you see clearly enough to know when nonaction is action?
Just offering, however accepted.
Just growing vast while growing small.
Just doing Reality's work.
Recognized or not.
This was what I found on page 6 of the large book Whole World; Access to TOOLS & IDEAS for the TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY. The page itself was entitled Ancient Understandings, where three books by three different authors are quoted and cited for translating the same verses. It was hauntingly beautiful and held such great meaning that I felt I needed to share it.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Friday, November 5, 2010
babling and babling and babling awayyyyyyy...
Friday- October 5th, 2010
9:01am
Repeat after me-
"Your not alone. your never really alone."
I am talking myself down from a possible hysteria due to stress from a yet to be completed paper and lack of any sleep.
You only feel that way when your scared of the unknown, of the challenges up a head that could possibly break your heart but could just as easily make you the person you are meant to become.
How do we do it. wake up each morning, fight the urge to just stay in bed, to be imobile and wallow in our uncertainties. Somehow we are able to get up, to get dressed, to give a shit about our higine in hopes that something new and good is about to come out way, and all we have to do is make sure we're at the right place and the right time to receive it. Are all the best things in life the hardest?
How can you know the right way to live? What if you've been doing it all wrong?
Are the conversations you have with friends less precious then an academic paper because your not graded on how well you relate to people. Or are those moments where you want to cry because you feel so lucky to have someone the reason god keeps letting us breed more and more humans each day.
WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? WHAT IS OUR PURPOSE IN LIFE TO DO?
God, if your listening, i'm not expecting an answer. I just want a sign that your there. looking over us and caring. Caring if we trip and fall, crash and burn. Sending us signals that as your children, as your people and the creation of your being, you love us. Because if you don't know love from god, how can u be sure love exist amongst people?
I want to explore more of this way of thinking. Perhaps philosophy really is more my forte and therefore I should consider picking it up as my minor, if i don't decide to pursue gender studies first.
Simone De Buevere, I wonder what it felt like to be you. A brilliant feminist philosopher boning on of the most brilliant men in the world. She must have been some kind of wonderful.
I have not seen my mom in two weeks, but what feels like longer. i am crazing on of her warm soft hugs.
Truth is, i have no fucking clue what I'm doing. I'm here, at college, on my own. forming relationships i never thought I'd have, overcoming issues I never dreamed I could concur on my own. Its all the time I still have to fuck it all up that scares me shitless. I can barely catch my breath at times, and then just barely to build up enough strength to let go and breath out. I feel so very vulnerable. my biggest comfort is when I am encountered with a person who snaps me back to the reality that we are all going through this, alone, together.
These are my thoughts at college thus far.
To be continued...
9:01am
Repeat after me-
"Your not alone. your never really alone."
I am talking myself down from a possible hysteria due to stress from a yet to be completed paper and lack of any sleep.
You only feel that way when your scared of the unknown, of the challenges up a head that could possibly break your heart but could just as easily make you the person you are meant to become.
How do we do it. wake up each morning, fight the urge to just stay in bed, to be imobile and wallow in our uncertainties. Somehow we are able to get up, to get dressed, to give a shit about our higine in hopes that something new and good is about to come out way, and all we have to do is make sure we're at the right place and the right time to receive it. Are all the best things in life the hardest?
How can you know the right way to live? What if you've been doing it all wrong?
Are the conversations you have with friends less precious then an academic paper because your not graded on how well you relate to people. Or are those moments where you want to cry because you feel so lucky to have someone the reason god keeps letting us breed more and more humans each day.
WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR? WHAT IS OUR PURPOSE IN LIFE TO DO?
God, if your listening, i'm not expecting an answer. I just want a sign that your there. looking over us and caring. Caring if we trip and fall, crash and burn. Sending us signals that as your children, as your people and the creation of your being, you love us. Because if you don't know love from god, how can u be sure love exist amongst people?
I want to explore more of this way of thinking. Perhaps philosophy really is more my forte and therefore I should consider picking it up as my minor, if i don't decide to pursue gender studies first.
Simone De Buevere, I wonder what it felt like to be you. A brilliant feminist philosopher boning on of the most brilliant men in the world. She must have been some kind of wonderful.
I have not seen my mom in two weeks, but what feels like longer. i am crazing on of her warm soft hugs.
Truth is, i have no fucking clue what I'm doing. I'm here, at college, on my own. forming relationships i never thought I'd have, overcoming issues I never dreamed I could concur on my own. Its all the time I still have to fuck it all up that scares me shitless. I can barely catch my breath at times, and then just barely to build up enough strength to let go and breath out. I feel so very vulnerable. my biggest comfort is when I am encountered with a person who snaps me back to the reality that we are all going through this, alone, together.
These are my thoughts at college thus far.
To be continued...
Sunday, November 8, 2009
The Stranger gets stranger
A theory brought up to me once before was that people relate to other people more easily in times of tragedy. The being because they are vulnerable and more prone to open up.
I had this in mind as I started to read the Book The Stranger by Albert Camus, where in the first chapter, on the first page in the first sentence the main character discovers his mother is dead. Yet it doesn't phase him because, as he stated on the last page of the second chapter
"Maman was buried now, I was going back to work, and that really, nothing had changed."
Meursault is unlike most who has lost a mother because he was unaffected and unemotional about something that is dramatic to most other people.
As the book continues it is clear he is a simple minded man who likes his routine and doesn't need a lot out of like to be content. Its something I've come to conclude he was brought up to believe.
"Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student I had ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered."
It was discovered later on in the book that it was because of his mother that he had to drop out of school and get a job. He had to learn about the hardship of life in a hard way. Giving up your dreams is like giving up a part of your childhood. For a lot of people dreams is all they have to get through the difficulties of the day because you had something better to look forward to in the logn run.
But that was taken away from him, and he no longer had that string of hope that told him tomorrow would be a brighter day.
In a way, I assumed that would mean he appreciated the things he did have more. But what I came to realize thanks to class discussions and group analysis was that he only truly took notice to the objective parts of his life rather then truly valuing the people in his it. He dismisses Marie's plea that she loves him and that they should get married as if she were talking about the weather. He puts more thought into her physical attributes and how he desires to have sex with her rather then pondering about how nice it is to have her in his life. This attitude towards his life comes up repeatedly as the book continues.
In the last chapter of the first part Meursault had just murdered the man trying to attack his friend Raymond. Although he had no personal motives or reason to shoot and kill this man, he was still charged and taken to jail for murder.
In the second part of the book we have the pleasure of seeing Meursault in a different setting, which helps shed a new light on his personality.
His is locked up in a cell for a year before his trial. While in the cell he must fight the urges of physical desires like smoking a cigaret, going for a swim or having sex. He comes to conclude
I had this in mind as I started to read the Book The Stranger by Albert Camus, where in the first chapter, on the first page in the first sentence the main character discovers his mother is dead. Yet it doesn't phase him because, as he stated on the last page of the second chapter
"Maman was buried now, I was going back to work, and that really, nothing had changed."
Meursault is unlike most who has lost a mother because he was unaffected and unemotional about something that is dramatic to most other people.
As the book continues it is clear he is a simple minded man who likes his routine and doesn't need a lot out of like to be content. Its something I've come to conclude he was brought up to believe.
"Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student I had ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered."
It was discovered later on in the book that it was because of his mother that he had to drop out of school and get a job. He had to learn about the hardship of life in a hard way. Giving up your dreams is like giving up a part of your childhood. For a lot of people dreams is all they have to get through the difficulties of the day because you had something better to look forward to in the logn run.
But that was taken away from him, and he no longer had that string of hope that told him tomorrow would be a brighter day.
In a way, I assumed that would mean he appreciated the things he did have more. But what I came to realize thanks to class discussions and group analysis was that he only truly took notice to the objective parts of his life rather then truly valuing the people in his it. He dismisses Marie's plea that she loves him and that they should get married as if she were talking about the weather. He puts more thought into her physical attributes and how he desires to have sex with her rather then pondering about how nice it is to have her in his life. This attitude towards his life comes up repeatedly as the book continues.
In the last chapter of the first part Meursault had just murdered the man trying to attack his friend Raymond. Although he had no personal motives or reason to shoot and kill this man, he was still charged and taken to jail for murder.
In the second part of the book we have the pleasure of seeing Meursault in a different setting, which helps shed a new light on his personality.
His is locked up in a cell for a year before his trial. While in the cell he must fight the urges of physical desires like smoking a cigaret, going for a swim or having sex. He comes to conclude
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
The stranger; far more strange then I originally thought...
The book The Stranger by Albert Camus reveals a new perspective that adds to the concept of existentialism. It is completely different then I <3 Huckabies simply because in the movie the main character is searching for the meaning of life or any meaning in his life at all, unlike the main character Mathew in The Stranger. Many search out the answer to the mysteries of the world so they can better understand the colplexity of life. Usually, from personal experience, I have concluded that it is easier for people to reach out after tradgedies have drastically effected them. Yet Mathew lacks any shock or sorrow when he lears of the death of his mother.
I wonder why Camus decided to begin the book this way, the first paragraph bluntly stating that she was deceased. His delayed reastion of not knowing what day it even happened .
The chapter goes into discussing how he wasn't really with her in the end being that she lived in a home a town away. So it wasn't as surprising to read the last sentance of the second chapter:
"It occurred to me that one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed."
This statment makes me wonder about his relationship with his mother when he was younger and how it changed when he grew up. Even though she wasn't a significent presence in his life when he was a man, didn't they have some kind of loving relationship before that would lead him to have a little grief of loss. Orignially I figured he come o acceptance with the fact that she was gone, but for him to not go through any of the typical emotions first is odd. He is truly different frm any other character I have read about in a book, and because of that it is much harder to relate to him, something I enjoy most about nmy favoriute books.
Yet it also gives him a sort of obscurity that makes me think deeper into how he apriaches life differently then I do.
(to be continued... too)
I wonder why Camus decided to begin the book this way, the first paragraph bluntly stating that she was deceased. His delayed reastion of not knowing what day it even happened .
The chapter goes into discussing how he wasn't really with her in the end being that she lived in a home a town away. So it wasn't as surprising to read the last sentance of the second chapter:
"It occurred to me that one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed."
This statment makes me wonder about his relationship with his mother when he was younger and how it changed when he grew up. Even though she wasn't a significent presence in his life when he was a man, didn't they have some kind of loving relationship before that would lead him to have a little grief of loss. Orignially I figured he come o acceptance with the fact that she was gone, but for him to not go through any of the typical emotions first is odd. He is truly different frm any other character I have read about in a book, and because of that it is much harder to relate to him, something I enjoy most about nmy favoriute books.
Yet it also gives him a sort of obscurity that makes me think deeper into how he apriaches life differently then I do.
(to be continued... too)
Monday, October 26, 2009
I <3 Exstestential Thinking
This unit has been a pretty complex one and far more intriguing then I would have originally thought exstestentialism to be.
Its true, as Banach so nicely said, that everyone sees the world differently from one another and therefore we may all be along in our individual thoughts and different opinions. It seemed to me thoughout a lot of Banach's lecture that many of the things humans strive to accomplish were worthless since no one ever fully understands one or another or where we came from or where we're going.
But it was thanks to the I <3 Huckabies film that help me to realize that nothing is black and white, but a mixture or cynicism and optimism according to how you choose it to be.
It was Alberts concluding statement at the end of the movie that one exstestential view was too light and seemed to avoid the crulty and bad in the world, while the other was too dark and say things in too much of a negative light.
Its was interesting how as the movie progressed, one of the major arguments was how connected we are to one another in various ways. But mainly how man is able to relate to another in a time of desperation and sadness, probable because that is when man is most vulnerable.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Its true, as Banach so nicely said, that everyone sees the world differently from one another and therefore we may all be along in our individual thoughts and different opinions. It seemed to me thoughout a lot of Banach's lecture that many of the things humans strive to accomplish were worthless since no one ever fully understands one or another or where we came from or where we're going.
But it was thanks to the I <3 Huckabies film that help me to realize that nothing is black and white, but a mixture or cynicism and optimism according to how you choose it to be.
It was Alberts concluding statement at the end of the movie that one exstestential view was too light and seemed to avoid the crulty and bad in the world, while the other was too dark and say things in too much of a negative light.
Its was interesting how as the movie progressed, one of the major arguments was how connected we are to one another in various ways. But mainly how man is able to relate to another in a time of desperation and sadness, probable because that is when man is most vulnerable.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Random internet surfing...
I came across this video on Current.com and thought it was pretty funny.... enjoy!
http://current.com/16vdi4c
http://current.com/16vdi4c
Friday, October 2, 2009
Banach, banach banach. Part IX
We've all taken a lot of time to map out how we came to be who we are and what influences effected our growth. But once you've become settled with ourselves- or even before you have- we must decide who we want as our companions.
Life would not be worth living unless we had someone to share it with. To fall in love, have a strong bond and share the beauty in the world is what life is all about. But regardless of who we're friends with or not, we must always interact with people, no matter how you decide to treat them.
Since I was a child I've heard the same expression countless times from authority figures; "treat others the way you want to be treated". Banach bring up the same theme of acting the way you'd expect others to act because "to be free, then, I must follow the golden rule and act only as I would have others act." We obviously want to be treated well with respect and kindness and the only way I've ever given or received it was when there was mutual understanding. Like Banach said "we must choose courses of action that we wish all humans to take."
A majority of the time people try to be good due to their faith. Many religions say that if you pray to him and carry our his good deeds you will have a spot in heaven for eternity. That made me wonder about the people who don't follow a religion, "if god is dead (or does not exist) then all things are allowable?" People usually hold back when a higher authority is watching, so if there was no higher power monitoring our actions would we feel more compelled to act more freely regardless of the consequences?
To me, it shouldn't matter as much about preparing a long line of good deeds as proof that we are worthy of heaven. I think its more important to make the best of the time we have on earth since none of us know for sure what to expect in the after life. We must help make lives easier for the less fortunate and live life as if it were our last because we never know how long or well it can last. "To be free, we must desire the freedom of all men." This quote best embodies the golden rule I think people should like by. "
Then again, I sometimes think some of our issues can be resolved with a good hug <3
Life would not be worth living unless we had someone to share it with. To fall in love, have a strong bond and share the beauty in the world is what life is all about. But regardless of who we're friends with or not, we must always interact with people, no matter how you decide to treat them.
Since I was a child I've heard the same expression countless times from authority figures; "treat others the way you want to be treated". Banach bring up the same theme of acting the way you'd expect others to act because "to be free, then, I must follow the golden rule and act only as I would have others act." We obviously want to be treated well with respect and kindness and the only way I've ever given or received it was when there was mutual understanding. Like Banach said "we must choose courses of action that we wish all humans to take."
A majority of the time people try to be good due to their faith. Many religions say that if you pray to him and carry our his good deeds you will have a spot in heaven for eternity. That made me wonder about the people who don't follow a religion, "if god is dead (or does not exist) then all things are allowable?" People usually hold back when a higher authority is watching, so if there was no higher power monitoring our actions would we feel more compelled to act more freely regardless of the consequences?
To me, it shouldn't matter as much about preparing a long line of good deeds as proof that we are worthy of heaven. I think its more important to make the best of the time we have on earth since none of us know for sure what to expect in the after life. We must help make lives easier for the less fortunate and live life as if it were our last because we never know how long or well it can last. "To be free, we must desire the freedom of all men." This quote best embodies the golden rule I think people should like by. "
Then again, I sometimes think some of our issues can be resolved with a good hug <3
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