Picking up where “Chapter of the Week” left off, I plan to start posting chapters from my Word for Word translation here regularly.
I encourage you to contribute—corrections, questions, comments, or even rewording the chapter. If anything comes to mind, please post it in the Leave a Reply box (below).
With your help, a much improved edition would certainly be possible. ‘Final draft’ print-on-demand copies of Word for Word are available (see below). Now, let’s test this out…
(Refer to the online translation or to your book as needed)
Knower doesn’t speak; speaker doesn’t know could be another way to say this. Just a minor change helps it roll off the tongue better. Today, the terseness of this helped say it all, in my mind anyway. I don’t think this is just because I wrote it either. Rather than untie its tangles, we commonly tend to make the most out of differences. We actively seek them out. To me this has to be instinctive; to be able to distinguish a crocked stick from a snake while making one’s way through the jungle requires an innate eagerness to spot difference over similarities. If the instinctive approach was to notice profound sameness right off the bat, we’d more likely step on the snake–not a survival advantage.
Unobtainable and intimate could be rephrased as Unobtainable yet intimate. Does that make any difference really? The experience is pretty much reflected in either way I say it. It speaks to the odd nature of my awareness of ‘it’. Consciousness is so close, yet so far. The two, complementary sides of what we experience. Who knows if this is how ‘it’ really is. Is this just a result of how our nervous system works, i.e., the on-off nature of how neurons function. On the other hand, the nature of emergent properties hints that our perception of ‘it’ is real, albeit Indistinct and suddenly.
One More Thing!
We are planning to try posting a live feed of our family’s weekly Taoist meeting on the Internet. I’m not sure how well this will work out, but hey, nothing ventured nothing gained. I’ll post more details as they become available.
Word for Word in Print
Order a ‘final draft’ print-on-demand copy of Tao Te Ching: Word for Word from Lulu.com for around $9—roughly at cost*. This is the print version of this site’s Word for Word Translation (with commentary). It can be especially useful when used in conjunction with your favorite translation. The word for word approach offers a way to cross check your translation with either (1) a translation more literal, or (2) actually word for word to the original Chinese.
To preview the Tao Te Ching: Word for Word, click slider-bar below picture 
* I’m selling this at cost for two reasons. First, to profit from this work oddly cheapens it somehow. Second, it will always be a ‘final’ draft’, with readers contributing whatever they can.
We’ll need to try various ways of doing the video. This plan got set in motion by a comment made after a recent 1st Sunday’s public meeting. Someone said how useful it was to hear other people’s personal take on certain parts of the chapter. It’s true!
I began holding the meeting to connect socially with others at a deeper level than usual. Having read the Tao Te Ching for some twenty years by that time, I never expected any significant increase in insight from the exchange. Was I ever wrong!
Alas, a live (or even recorded) video of the meeting will likely inhibit expression of many people’s personal take by increasing ‘public speaking’ fear. There are other technical and operational issues to deal with as well. Some options we are considering:
1) Put a live feed on the Centertao Facebook page for people ‘out there’ to watch, but not respond to concurrently. They could post their comments or question afterward, and we could respond. It could be kind of a two conversation, only viewers would type in their input, and we on the camera end would respond ‘live’. The problem with this, besides the ‘public speaking fear’, is the different time zones.
2) Use Google + Circle. Here up to 10 people could sign in and participate in a two way meeting. This would diminish the ‘public speaking fear’ angle I expect because everyone would be connected, sharing virtual space interactively. Time zone is still an issue. Speaking fear would still be a concern; it is always an issue for any meeting.
3) Recording only those who don’t mind being videoed. This would be uploaded to YouTube as Jamie suggested and watched at anytime. No time zone or public speaking problem with this, but it wouldn’t be live. People could comment or question online and others reply as desired. This is probably the best option.
So that’s all I can think of to try. Any other ideas????
Thank you for your work and willingness to make it available.
I’m very interested in the home Taoist meetings… would you upload them to Youtube so that folks like me could view it?