The kingdom is a spirit-like thing, and cannot be got by active doing.While each of the above translations say roughly the same thing, I like Ron Hogan's rendition best. It may be a bit crude, but it gets to the heart of the matter!!
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
The world is a sacred instrument
One cannot control it
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
The world's a holy place.
You can't just fuck around with it.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
As indicated yesterday, the laws of nature are immutable. Every time humankind tries to manipulate or subvert them, things go awry. We often compound the original problem with our misguided attempts to rectify the situation.
We would be far better off IF we simply could learn to leave well enough alone. Mother Earth and the cosmos managed things quite well before humans arrived on the scene and my guess is that the same will be true once our kind is dead and gone.
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.