Re: CHAT: Tao Te Ching translations (long-ish ;)

Andy Canivet scripsit:

> Of course, I think my favorite is #65...
I won't do a whole number on this one, but just the Le Guin:

One power

Once upon a time
those who ruled according to the Way
didn't use it to keep people knowing
but to keep them unknowing.

People get hard to manage
when they know too much.
Whoever rules by intellect
is a curse upon the land.
Whoever rules by ignorance
is a blessing on it.
To understand these things
is to have a pattern and a model,
and to understand the pattern and the model
is mysterious power.

Mysterious power
goes deep.
It reaches far.
It follows things back,
clear back to the great oneness.

Le Guin's comment:

Where shall we find a rule wise enough to know what to teach and what
to withhold?  "Once upon a time", maybe, in the days of myth and legend,
as a pattern, a model, an ideal?

The knowledge and the ignorance or unknowing Lao Tzu speaks of may or
may not refer to what we think of as education.  In the last stanza,
by power he evidently does not mean political power at all, but something
vastly different, a unity with the power of the Tao itself.

This is a _mystical_ statement about _government_ -- and in our minds
those two realms are worlds apart.  I cannot make the leap between them.
I can only ponder it.

Le Guin's further comment:

A dictator and his censors migth all too easily cite from this chapter.
A democrat might agree that the more people know, the harder they are
for a ruler to govern -- since the more they know, the better they are
at governing themselves.  Anyone might agree that an intellectual
agenda pursued without reality-checking is indeed a curse on the land.
From the divine right of kings through the deadly teachings of Hitler
and Mao to the mumbojumbo of economists, government by theory has done
endless ill.  But why is Lao Tzu's alternative to it a people kept in
ignorance?  Ignorance of what?  Lao Tzu may be signalling us to ask such
questions when he speaks of "understanding these things".

For the record, my favorite chapter is 20.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_