Possibility

Why not? You seem convinced that your own experience and understanding of the world has nothing to offer these so-called experts. I’ll admit that I’ve...

I’m a middle-class, part-time professional raising two teenage children with a full-time teacher husband. We make time to read a lot, and read to our ...

I don’t have the physics background of fishfry, so I can only offer my poorly informed thoughts... I tend to think of a photon as a ‘light event’. If ...

Lisa Feldman Barrett describes an internal ‘scientific’ process of prediction, interaction, data, error and revision that is heavily influenced by aff...

I always recommend Carlo Rovelli’s book ‘The Order of Time’, which explores the changing view of time from ancient philosophy to post-Einstein physics...

Our attention and effort is naturally drawn to sensory details that differ from our predictions. So long as we find it useful to allocate attention to...

I find it curious that so many of these translations read in a subject, such as the Tao, the government or leaders, that doesn’t exist in the original...

Three useful skills: Awareness, connection and collaboration

Yes. Her older book ‘How Emotions Are Made’ also explains the body-budgeting system:

My question wasn’t to challenge this separation, but to understand the process of switching from fingers and toes to body, and to emotions and thought...

I agree, although I’m not sure what you mean by ‘good results’. Experience is about quality, not ‘qualities’ - about relational structure and process,...

I like this description. We like to think of ourselves as complete, whole, known (or at least knowable) in some substantial sense; that there exists s...

The translation choice of sh?n as ‘body’, ‘life’, ‘self’, etc highlights the flexibility and unity of this quality/character, depending on the focus o...

I think it has a lot to do with understanding the flow and distribution of energy throughout and around the body. Barrett talks in her book about the ...

I think the first two lines of this verse refer to meditative practices as a method of attaining the ‘emptiness’ observed in the old masters of the pr...

I just wanted to clarify here that I was saying I think your word of equilibrium is better than balance. I think it allows for a continual sense of mo...

English is a strange language. The origin of the word ‘pretend’ is ‘to claim’. In English, we’ve packaged this up more recently with a judgment of int...

Well, you know that our views differ on this notion of ‘act without acting’. But I don’t think the TTC was meant, originally. I think it is an express...

The names we give to these three aspects are clearly a point of contention among translations. I understand that the English words are chosen mainly f...

A fun novel exploring MWI here, in case you were interested...

I do agree that paradoxes are an important aspect of the TTC, but I think those you offer as examples demonstrate what are only apparent paradoxes - a...

Yes - I think this verse is the beginning of a new tack. First of all, these are aspects of reality that elude us in some way. Perhaps we can look at ...

I don’t have much to argue over with this translation at all, nor with Chen’s detailed comments. I can see why you use this version - its descriptions...

I don’t expect you to see things the way I do - only to explore its potential from your own perspective, to ask yourself why you don’t see fear in the...

Except you do think that Lao Tzu wrote the TTC for a specific communicative purpose, and I think you’d agree that the text uses a particular language,...

I see this reflected, too, in your personal preference for ‘self’ instead of ‘body’ in translations of this verse. It seems from what you’re saying he...

This is a common intellectual, even Western, description of ‘mindfulness’. It’s a restructuring of our conceptual reality that consolidates the mind a...

Ok - seeing through it makes sense. I just get a sense that we’re intellectually accepting these translations because they have a satisfying quantitat...

Keep reading. These incomplete perceptions are not just static images - that’s just a demonstration that she can orchestrate using a book. I will say ...

How do we ‘discard’ fear? By ignoring it? By isolating or excluding it from our reality? How can we understand the Tao without including fear? This is...

Do you really think I haven’t grasped this aspect of the Tao? These ideas I’m referring to are not ‘lofty’ in the sense that they’re unaware of a rela...

Yes - not just this versatility, but the entire structure of the language.

But shen doesn’t distinguish between self and body, anymore than jing distinguishes between fear and surprise. We can’t expect a 1:1 translation here....

Yes, it seems most translations of this second line in the verse repeat the term ‘favour’ from the first line, but they’re actually two different char...

Neither do I - but I think it’s an important aspect of this particular verse, is all. No, I’m not. My background is PR communications, and I have a pa...

I agree with most of this. I think the variability in perspective that enables us to understand ‘brain’ as either/both a thing and a process is import...

I appreciate this personal account. I think it relates to the distinction in this verse between focusing on the fear or the possibilities in life and ...

I agree that Mitchell leaves too much out, and I think that comes down to what I was saying about awareness in relation to translation/interpretation....

I think I understand what you mean. But for me, it’s a difference between quantitative distinction (thingness) and qualitative diversity (variability)...

I did say qualities, but I think it makes more sense to say quality. The Tao, for me, IS the diverse quality of the world as a relational whole, inclu...

I think referring to what the US have right now as totalitarianism is a symptom of lost faith in your democratic system. I’m not sure if you quite rea...

I see this verse a little differently. I think it has more to do with the fact that when we seek to overwhelm the senses or indulge in excess, we’re u...

You don’t really own it, though. Your possession of it is an event in which you are relating to the pitcher’s substantial potentiality (its capacity t...

This essay is very helpful - thank you. Here is a PDF version (unfortunately without the Chinese characters). An excerpt:

Yes. Your second example - “If I put it on a shelf, my house will be more attractive” - is to behold value in the substance of the pitcher, and derive...

The basic structure of English is subject-prominent, and conceals evidence of an overall subjective position. The phrase “I think/feel/believe that......

Chinese characters don’t seem to presume a particular affect, only a particular quality. There is no sense of whether it is pleasant/unpleasant, nor a...

The meaning of the characters is in our relation to their context. The idea is to always be aware of our own fluid position in relation to the text, w...