T_Clark

Two similar ironic aphorisms come to mind: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. ...

Does that mean it would be ethical or moral to put restrictions on individuals behavior, on your behavior, if you agreed with the reasoning behind it?...

Verse 3 – Stephen Mitchell If you overesteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal. The Master leads...

I believe the government has the legitimate authority to place reasonable restrictions on people's lives in order to protect public health. Seems like...

According to Wikipedia: Tao or Dao from Chinese: ?; is a Chinese word signifying the "way", "path", "route", road It's not the way most of us perceive...

You're talking about affect and valence. What do those mean in this context? Value? Preference? Is it like one of those surveys - on a scale of 1 to 1...

My family have been going back through old family pictures over the last few months. My brothers, my cousin, and I are the only ones who remember my p...

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm having a really good time.

I've read Thomas Merton's translation of the Chuang Tzu. It doesn't work for me as well as the TTC. It's less figurative and less poetic. The stories ...

I think that rulers and bureaucrats were among the main audience Lao Tzu was writing for. So I think discussing politics makes sense. Which doesn't ch...

I just went online and looked. A lot of people have thought the same thing. Not familiar. I'll take a look More generally, most western philosophy I'v...

People like you and me make everything an intellectual exercise. Similarly, western philosophy is not capable of handling anything not intellectual. I...

I think he was saying that, sure, but I think he was saying a lot more too. The Tao is not hard to speak about. It is unspeakable. The Tao comes befor...

Seems like you didn't read my post or just decided to ignore what I said.

As I said - when I first encountered Taoism, I immediately felt at home. I still do. I don't ask for more, no matter what my physiology is. Much of we...

You doodle around for a few paragraphs then you finally get down to this. It's not that you take a chance on dying, it's that you take a chance on pas...

In some of the Abrahamic faiths, didn't they have prohibitions against speaking the name of God? The idea that the name of God is unspeakable seems si...

Sure. That's why it's good to read more than one translation. Also, I think differences in translations mirror differences in meaning in the TTC itsel...

Is that the same as objective truth and subject truth? Those are familiar concepts that seem relevant, but I'm not sure.

Did the stanza I quoted about shrinking and expanding seem relevant to this issue to you? I wasn't sure if that would make sense. As for not being abl...

Is that the same as objective truth and subjective truth? It seems like it is. I'm not questioning your terminology, just clarifying for myself.

My intention was to hold up the concepts of "objective reality" and "Tao" and compare them. Contrast them. I think the ideas of the Tao and objective ...

I guess I don't see this as a choice, at least not a conscious one. Thinking in dualistic terms happens automatically, at least in our, and apparently...

I've always thought that wu wei was action that took place, was motivated, without the interplay of opposites. Which makes me ask - are the interplay ...

I have not read Confucius. I probably should. When I've discussed it with others who have read him they have claimed, as you and Muller indicate, that...

Ok, Verse 2. Stephen Mitchell. Again – this is what it means to me, not what it means. Verse text – italics; My thoughts – normal text. When people se...

And, as I keep telling people - you can read it in an hour.

DC Lau's translation is one we used a lot in my reading group. I like it. This is a verse I haven't really thought about a lot, but I think it's an im...

I don't think understanding is what's needed, but most people can't get where Lao Tzu is going without trying to understand. It's trying and failing t...

Yes, that's true. And, no. I don't think it's intended to be allegorical at all. I think maybe Lao Tzu considered those verses the most important. Som...

I think the idea of naming is really important. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Naming is somethin...

This is just the way I feel. When I talk about what Lao Tzu is trying to do, I say he is trying to take snapshots of the Tao. If we look at all the sn...

Yes, I agree.

I like that verse from Verse 46 too. Ellen Marie Chen has a more earthy translation: When the world practices Tao, Fast horses are used for their dung...

I took a quick look. "Markov blanket" looks like an interesting concept, but I don't see how it is relevant. Let's not go down that path here. I'll ta...

This is really good. I don't think I'd thought it through as well as this. Another thought, which may not be in the text - Lao Tzu doesn't talk about ...

I took my best swing at it up in my second post. Bedtime.

In a post on another thread, @"Olivier5" provided a link to a podcast on Collingwood on "The Philosophers Zone," which is a very good show with lots o...

One of the confusing aspects of the TTC is that it mixes cosmology, physical reality, morals, and politics all into one bowl. The idea that all of the...

What translation did you use? In a thread a couple of years ago, I put forth the idea that the Tao is analogous to objective reality. In my understand...

I've struggled with "heaven and earth" and where they fit into the Taoist vision. They're somewhere on the ladder between the Tao and the 10,000 thing...

I don't read much western philosophy, but once I was reading some Kant. His idea of "noumenon" seemed similar to me, although very clunky and mixed up...

To get started - the Tao. Here are some definitions and quotations about the Tao from various sources, including me: The ground of being The Tao that ...

Talking about that here would really be shanghaiing the thread. I'm skeptical that a thread just about the Tao Te Ching would be of interest to enough...

Yes. I've made your argument many times. Usually I am ineffective in getting the point across. It comes up a lot in discussions about the multiverse.

That's one of my favorite verses and Mitchell is the translation I read first. It's probably the most accessible for modern English speakers. The idea...

The link you sent goes to an error page. Here's another link: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.187414 Suggest you limit the reading to Pa...

I forgot to get back to you on this. I read your essay. I enjoyed it. You and I definitely see the world differently. But then, that's no surprise.

I don't think the health care system would mind you doing that, they just won't pay you for it. I don't begrudge you your principles or your life. It ...

Can you describe how you live your life to minimize their omnipresence/omnipotence.