I say SuperTao simply because I think that this book has many wise teachings and I also love how easy it is to read and to write about. Don't be fooled by this lovely introduction, although it is very short and it's easy to read it can be hard to understand. The reason it can be hard to understand is because these simple innocent lines are so deep and behind each of them is so much that needs to be analyzed that you have to read them over and over in order to understand them. Take this little fella' for example:
"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao."(1:1)
This one I had to analyze for a while since it was the first sentence and it introduced the whole Tao Te Ching. When I was done analyzing I concluded that it meant that the Tao that you hear or you tell the first time won't stay like that forever, meaning it will change. I guess the Tao would be like an oral narrative or like a legend which is told and told throughout centuries. The reason I think this is that when you tell a story orally and people keep retelling it things are modified and changed by the people who tell it, so it really never is the same and won't be eternal. Which is exactly what the sentence was referring to.
Honestly the depth of these sentences worry me. What if I don't understand something or don't analyze it correctly and get it wrong? This sucks I actually prefer longer, more simple texts.
In my opinion the Tao seems like a manual, something that tells you what to do and how to do it. It seems like a very good book with wise opinion and advice. I heard Heaven being mentioned a lot and I'm going to attempt to analyze a sentence were Heaven is mentioned, "Under Heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness."(2:1) This makes me look forward to Heaven much more than I did before. What I understand about this is that everything is so beautiful up there, that you can't even recognize beauty (ironic, huh?). The only reason the people on earth see beauty is because we have something to compare it to: Ugliness.
Yet another Heaven related sentence, "Heaven and earth last forever."(7:1) This specific sentence is way out of my league and is hard for me to interpret and analyze but, I think it's something about how good things last forever and how bad things although they seem powerful don't last very long. Although my interpretation of the book is lousy, I did notice something very particular in the sentence. Please notice how "Heaven" is capitalized and how "earth" isn't. An interesting observation don't you think? Would this mean that earth is not as important as Heaven? Well my friends, I'm done here. It's up to you to figure it out (comment below if you managed to figure it out).
I really like this entry. Many things stood out, like the citations he used and the how he says the Tao is like a "manual." I share the same opinion about it being a "manual" and I also agree that it isn't as simple as it looks. What he said about the Tao being eternal was something I hadn't noticed before.
ReplyDeleteThis blog really went deep into analysis. It’s not really all that different from mine in terms of going into deep analysis. What I did like however was the fact that he used some real nice images to emphasize his point. I really like how he got the details in his analysis and the spelling is good. For instance, he showed that some word are capitalized like "Heaven" and others like "earth" are not. This really might mean something in the book.
ReplyDeleteThe Tao Te Ching like you said is a very complex text. Each sentence can take you five minutes to completely understand. This is the beauty of the text. Lao Tzu is able to explain complex teachings in just a few sentences. This requires the reader to carefully analyze each word to get the full understanding. There could also be different interpretations which makes the Tao Te Ching even better because of the freedom you have.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you saying it is the super Tao it is hard to understand as well. What I took is from the the part were it said "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao."(1:1)` Was that you will never be able to express the Tao just by telling it because the real deepness of the book comes in the form of your thoughts which are incredibly hard to explain to other people.
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