Sunday, December 18, 2011

Line by Line - Verse 54, Lines 8-9

The neighbourhood where it prevails
In thriving will abound;

~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

Cultivate it in the village,
And Virtue will grow.

~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

Cultivate it in the community; its virtue shall be lasting
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

If your community gets in touch
with the power of Tao,
the power will grow even stronger.

~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
Most of us like to hangout with others with whom we share some sense of commonality. Our best friends and closest associates usually are not people who possess a radically different worldview than our own. For example, I don't think you will find very many, if any, best friends in which one is a bible-thumping, fundamentalist Christian and the other is an avowed (and loud) atheist.

So, if individuals and families value the kind of virtue that Lao Tzu writes about often, they are most likely to seek out others who value this kind of virtue as well. In essence, this is one way to build a virtuous community.

To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.

2 comments:

  1. But that community can become somewhat isolated.

    Actually I have many Christian and atheist friends (albeit not militant) with whom I can usually find common ground, a kind of harmony. As for the others, avoiding pointless conflict has a mollifying effect.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And the community can become divisive and, as the Chinese say,"splittist" too. Achieving communal harmony is hard.

    ReplyDelete

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