 |
Business | Industries | Finance | Tax |
| Index: > A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
|
|||||
| First Prev [ 1 2 3 4 ] Next Last |
The existence of Lao Zi is historically supported by mentions of him in scrolls dating back to 400 BC, but the details of his life were not contemporaneously recorded. Chinese historian Sima Qian wrote a supposed "biography" of him in about 100 BC, indicating that his birth name was Li Erh. Studies on the language and the rhyme scheme of the work point to a date of composition after the Shi Jing or Book of Songs, yet before the writing of Zhuang Zi—some time in the late fourth or early third centuries.
Scholars debate the authorship of the current version of the Tao Te Ching. Sections of it in its current form have been found engraved on stone tablets dated to 300 BC. The 1973 archeological discovery of more or less complete Chinese "scrolls" (actually silk rolls called the Ma-wang-tui Texts after the village where they were found: Text A, with more lacunae, thought to have been written sometime before Text B which has been dated to 200 BC) reveals that our most common versions of the received text are substantially the same as that which was known in antiquity, thus limiting the time period during which the writings might have been substantially changed or contributed to.
As early as the 1930s, a way to resolve disputes over authorship without declaring who is right or wrong (a Taoist solution, if you will) may have been proposed. In an essay accompanying a translation by Wai-tao and Dwight Goddard , Dr. Kiang Kang-hu offers, "Three Taoist sages who lived two or three hundred or more years apart, according to history, are commonly believed to be the same man, who by his wisdom had attained longevity. The simpler and more probable solution of the confusion is to accept the historicity of all three but to give credit for the original writing to Lao zi and consider the others as able disciples and possibly editors. The book in its present form might not have been written until the third century BC, for it was engraved on stone tablets soon after that time". Credit for some verses might be conditionally given to later Taoists "without detracting from the larger credit that belongs to Lao Tzu".
Using around 5,000 Chinese characters, the Tao Te Ching points out some universal truths which have since been independently recognized in other philosophies, both religious and secular. Each modern language interpretation (including even interpretation of the three-character title), of which there are dozens, differs slightly or profoundly from the next.
The Tao Te Ching is written in classical Chinese, which is in itself difficult even for normally educated modern native speakers of Chinese to understand completely. Furthermore, many of the words used in the Tao Te Ching are deliberately vague and ambiguous. At the time the Tao Te Ching was written, educated Chinese who could read it would have memorized a large body of fairly standard Chinese literature, and when writing it was common to convey meaning by making allusions to other well-known works that have been destroyed or lost. Few people today have the full command of the vast body of ancient Chinese literature that would have been common in Lao Zi's day, and thus potentially many levels of subtext are lost on modern translators.
There is no punctuation in classical Chinese, and thus often no way to conclusively determine where one sentence ends and the next begins. Moving a period a few words forward or back or inserting a comma can profoundly alter the meaning of many passages, and such divisions and meanings must be determined by the translator. Some Chinese editors and some translators, indeed, argue that the text is so corrupted (as it was written on one-line bamboo tablets linked with a silk thread) that it's not possible to understand some chapters without moving sequences of characters from one place to another.
Many variations of religious Taoism are replete with polytheism, ancestor worship, ceremony of various kinds, and alchemic efforts to achieve longevity. The obscureness of the book attributed to Lao Zi allows virtually anyone to find anything in its 81 concise and poetical chapters, but scholars often agree that its content focuses mainly on mystical; political; and practical wisdom.
Many chapters advocate quietism, harmonious living, unconditional love, and altruism, in common with later systems of belief and faith. However, many of these things which are promoted as virtues throughout Taoism are said by Lao Zi to be lesser goods with their complementary evils, (see Chapter 18) and they come because of man's deviation from the original 'Way' or Tao. Above all, the book celebrates simplicity as the way, the achievement of Tao.
It can be said that Lao Zi demonstrated an understanding of such principles as these:
Behind all this, Lao Zi speaks of the ineffable Dao, or the "Way", which is described as the indivisible and indescribable unifying principle of the universe, from which all flows. It is without time, form or substance, and exterior/senior to these traits. The simpler one becomes, the greater hope one has of co-existing with the Dao, which is the only way one can truly understand it.
| Politics | Business | Finance |
 |
 |
 |
|