Abstract Translations of the Dao De Jing (chapter 53 : 4-5)
I find that my understanding (or at least my sense of understanding) of the messages in the DDJ seems to grow best through abstract relations of events that occur in real time (so to speak) to passages in the text that happen to be frequently on my mind. Chapter 15 seems to discuss the need to rely on the abstract, i.e., metaphor, in order to describe what is otherwise indescribable; it seems to me that, as a native English speaker who does not speak Chinese, there will be a need for me to rely on the abstract in that same manner. For me, relying on any direct translation as definitive just seems impossible; I’m a bit of a fiend for the granularity provided by English and, in my opinion, while English certainly has leagues of room for legerdemain, it doesn’t apply well to translating a language with about as different an origin from English as any language could have. As an example, lines 4-5 from chapter 53 have been in my thoughts often in recent weeks (perhaps months): 大道甚夷 而民好徑 The...