Sunday, March 20, 2011

Line by Line - Verse 25, Line 14

Heaven is great;
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

Heaven is great;
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

Heaven is great
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

Heaven's great.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
It is not infrequent to find the word heaven utilized by the ancient Taoist sages. In a nation influenced by Christianity, heaven denotes a paradise where God resides and some lucky souls go after death.

In my readings of philosophical Taoism, this is not what is referred to (though I'm sure Baroness Radon can provide a more accepted historical explanation). I think that heaven is more the implementation of the principles of life. Put another way, Tao is the process itself and heaven is the conduit of the process for the ten thousand things.

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5 comments:

  1. I'll jump in first, and baroness can correct both of us more conveniently ;)

    Tao, heaven, earth, man. That's the order, right? Man follows Earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows tao, tao follows itself. I think that's what my Steven Mitchel translation (rendition) says.

    I can only see it in my modern sense, of seeing the man living according to the earth's rules (biology, chemistry, ecology, etc), earth living and moving according to univeral rules (gravity and whatnot), and the universe moving according to the Tao.

    When all are in harmony is when things are good.

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  2. The Baroness loves a challenge!

    Brandon has it right, but I think the actual definition of "heaven" is RT's question. And I may beg to differ a little from RT's interpretation (this may run long, so I will address that in a separate comment).

    The character for heaven is "tian" (pinyin, first tone) or t'ien, in some translations. We are familiar with this word in "Tiananmen" (Gate of Heaven) and Tiantan, Temple of Heaven, the distinctive temple where the "Son of Heaven" (the Emperor) conducted rites.

    The character for tian in its ancient from depicts a frontal view of a person with an enlarged head; the crown of the head is today called tianlinggai. There is a medicine for headache called zhengtianwan, which suggests the original imaginary connection of the sky with the head. In internal alchemy, the head is the top of the energy circuit that will open up to Tao (giving birth to the "immortal fetus"). (@Brandon-- this is a "return" thing.)

    The character for prince (wang) is a vertical line connecting three horizontal lines...heaven, earth and man.

    Later the space over the head containing the sun, moon and stars was called tiankong, or sky. Tianxia is what is below heaven -- generally meaning the Chinese empire or the civilized world.

    It is tempting to call tian (heaven) the cosmos, but that is more like tiandi, heaven and earth, since earth is part of the cosmos. Also, the sky is yang/male and the earth is yin/female. This is the underpinning of Chinese creation myth...heaven and earth together give birth to the 10,000 things. Not unlike western mythology, heaven is indeed thought to be a place where dieties--the immortals--live.

    I do not think tian can be interpreted in any literal way as "implementation of principles of life."

    It is maybe not so good to pick this verse apart (because as you see earth and man are also great...through Tao.)

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  3. "...baroness can correct both of us more conveniently ;)..."

    Although the Baroness does have a fondness for black leather clothing, she is not a dominatrix.

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  4. and "follow" may mean more like imitate, or pattern itself after.

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  5. I think I will wait for the remainder of this verse to appear before I make another point. Except that for the part where "man is great"...ber in mind the character is in fact "wang", not "ren" (the common term for man or person). Wang is prince, or royalty...sometimes translated as sage...or a highly (dare I say spiritually) evolved person.

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