Friday, October 28, 2011

Line by Line - Verse 49, Line 8

--and thus (all) get to be sincere.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

Because Virtue is faithfulness.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

Thus the virtue of belief
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

This is real faith.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
For Derek Lin,
The compassion of the sages is truly universal. They treat people well, whether they are deserving of kindness or not. In general, sages expect the best from everyone and get it, because people cannot help but raise their standards to live up to the bar that the sages have set for them.
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.

1 comment:

  1. "She also trusts people who aren't trustworthy.
    This is true trust."
    --Stephen Mitchell

    I've always been partial to this translation of these lines (7&8) because it puts the idea of trust (a little different than faith and belief) in such sharp focus. Trust the trustworthy. There's no risk there. Who wouldn't trust the trustworthy. But trust the untrustworthy? That's when the sage takes a risk. The sage is a model, but may also get scammed. The point is, in the end the scam doesn't matter. This says as much about the sage as it does other people. (On the other hand it sort of justifies martyrdom, which I detest.)

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