(conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.When pondering thoughts of the Grand Mystery, we often forget that everything around us -- all the routine mundaneness of life -- springs from the same source. The concepts of love, duty and virtue derive their existence from the same place as picking our noses or scratching our butts! ;-)
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
The named is the mother of myriad things
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
Names are for ordinary things.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
Life is the entirety of every thing, thought, whim, concept, feeling and urge. The void of nothingness binds all together into something-ness.
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
First let me say that I just love the 11:11 a.m. posting times. The oneness hour! (My car achieved oneness when the odometer reached 111,111 miles.)
ReplyDeleteI think you might also enjoy a volume by Jonathan Star, "Tao Te Ching--The Definitive Edition" which includes all the Chinese characters, the pinyin, and the possible meanings associated with each one. (If nothing else, when you read the pinyin, you can appreciate the poetic quality.) As you compare all these translations, it is enlightening to look at the original, or as close as a non-Chinese speaker can get. I highly recommend this. (Just like Biblical scholars look at the Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.)