道知 Tao Awareness #2

Pattern: 8 Days Zen Guqin.

Larry Neal Gowdy

Portion of Daodejing #36: 將欲廢之必固興之. A quick, uncareful, draft, knee-jerk translation... 'Would intend abandon it, will solidify interest it'.

All individuals, able to think... able, self-aware... able, self-observe... able, describe... already know what the words imply. Many times in the past, I have written of similar... a person cannot abandon unwanted bad thoughts, if the person is always striving to rid one's self of the unwanted bad thoughts.

When, focusing to abandon a thing, the focus then itself becomes a heightened interest in the thing... and for the rest of the person's life will the heightened interest remain, until, the unwanted thing is no longer strived against...

Quicksand... the more one struggles, the deeper one sinks...

The way, to only have goodness within one's heart and mind, is to fill the heart and mind with goodness... leave no room for badness...

Make, a disharmonious song, harmonious, by choosing to only have harmonious notes... the disharmonious notes, then, no longer exist...

Recognize the bad... be aware of the bad... then, choose... choose, only good... the bad goes away by itself... a similar idea is spoken of in other ancient Chinese texts... not a new thing, not a thing to be learned from books... a thing, to learn by one's self... it is called, 'thinking'.

Some beliefs, teach to always be on guard, to not have bad thoughts... but, if always wanting to not have the bad thoughts, then, the bad thoughts remain... cannot let-go of a bad thing, if always fighting the bad thing... cannot stop complaining about the painful thorns, until letting-go of the rose stem... the beliefs' teachings, are wrong...

A trap... has a hole, barely large enough for a hand to enter... inside the trap, is an apple. When the hand is passed through the hole, and then holds the apple, the hand is then too large to exit the hole. The trap is very effective... the trap almost always catches the intended victim... the intended victims cannot think... the intended victims, too greedy to think... the intended victims, are monkeys...

People, trap themselves... too greedy... cannot think...

Legge translation: "When he is going to overthrow another, he will first have raised him up".

Goddard translation: "That which shows a tendency to destroy itself must first have been raised up".

Suzuki translation: "That which is about to fall has surely been raised".

Give notice, that the common translations, only speak of outside things... never, speak of inside things... the translations, describe, not knowing self... and if not know self, then cannot know anything...

Eight (8) original words... Legge, fourteen (14) words... Goddard, fourteen (14) words... Suzuki, ten (10) words...

Makes little difference, how the eight words are translated... words, are mere words... mean nothing anyway... but, by how the translated words are chosen, illustrates from where the translator's mind resides... as well as where the reader's mind resides...

The many known translations available to the public, all, all of them, speak of crazy things... crazy things that do not, and cannot, occur in Nature... things, that are crazy, because, they do not agree with Nature's way...

Nature is the standard, of what is correct, and, if a thing is not correct, not in agreement with Nature's way, then the thing is crazy... no quantity of crazy words, are able to supersede Nature's standard.

If, an individual does not immediately see the absurdities within the common translations, then, no thinking... and no self-observation... no, self-aware... cannot think.

If most people could think, then there would not exist writings of Zhong Yong, nor Da Xue, nor of Daodejing. The writings exist. The writings exist, because, thinking is rare.