Monday, February 6, 2012

Line by Line - Verse 58, Line 8

Shall we then dispense with correction?
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~

There is no honesty.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~

They have no determined outcome
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~

Everything is relative;
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
Everything is relative is sort of a mantra for me. We can never be sure how anything will play out. While this or that may have played out the same way a million times before, this in no way guarantees that it will come out the same way the next time around.

There are so many different variables in play and we aren't aware of most of them. If one variable that evades our consciousness changes, then all bets are off. If a supposedly sure thing doesn't go the way we expected or anticipated -- good, bad or indifferent -- we often will say it was fate or the luck of the draw, but, if we were able to pull back far enough, we would be able to see all the variables in play and know why the result was achieved.

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

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