Translation
Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know.
Subdue its sharpness, untie its tangles,
Soften its brightness, be the same as dust,
This is called profound sameness.
For this reason,
Unobtainable and intimate,
Unobtainable and distant
Unobtainable and favorable
Unobtainable and fearful
Unobtainable and noble
Unobtainable and humble
For this reason all under heaven value it.
1) know (realize) (者) no (not) speech (word; say; talk), speech (word; say; talk) (者) no (not) know (realize). 知者不言，言者不知。(zhī zhĕ bù yán, yán zhĕ bù zhī.)
2) defeat (frustrate; subdue; lower) his (its; their; they; that) sharp (keenr; fighting spirit), separate (divide; untie; understand) his (its; their; they; that) confused (tangled; disorderly). 挫其锐，解其纷，(cuò qí ruì, jiĕ qí fēn,)
3) gentle (kind; harmonious; peace> and) his (its; their; they; that) light (ray; brightness… naked; alone), same (similar; together) his (its; their; they; that) dust (dirt; this world). 和其光，同其尘，(hé qí guāng, tóng qí chén,)
4) <grm> is (yes <frml> this; that) say (call; name; meaning; sense) black (dark; profound) same (similar; together). 是谓玄同。(shì wèi xuán tong.)
5) reason (cause; on purpose; hence) 故 (gù)
6) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) parent (close; intimate; oneself). 不可得而亲。(bù kĕ dé ér qīn.)
7) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) thin (sparse; scattered). 不可得而疏。(bù kĕ dé ér shū.)
8) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) sharp (favorable; advantage). 不可得而利。(bù kĕ dé ér lì.)
9) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) evil (harm; calamity; impair; kill). 不可得而害。(bù kĕ dé ér hài.)
10) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) expensive (precious; noble). 不可得而贵。(bù kĕ dé ér guì.)
11) no (not) can get <conj.> and (yet, but) inexpensive (cheap; lowly; humble). 不可得而贱。(bù kĕ dé ér jiàn.)
12) reason (cause; on purpose; hence) do (act; act as; serve as; be; mean) land under heaven expensive (precious; noble). 故为天下贵。(gù wéi tiān xià guì.)
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Issues:
I’ve come full circle again… for the umpteenth time. I began the process of digging into one chapter a week thirty years ago. I began this current “work in progress” series of posts two years ago (March 2012) beginning with this chapter 56. Oddly, it seems longer ago than that this time. I suspect that it seems particularly longer because I was beginning to see this project ‘more really’ realistically (see ‘postscript‘ commentary below).
Commentary:
Two years ago I was considering changing the first line. I did go ahead and change it from Knowing doesn’t speak; speaking doesn’t know to Knower not speak; speaker not know. I’m still a little on the fence with this, but saying speaker feels more personal than speaking. Whatever word feels most personal would be the one to use… and that changes from person to person I expect. That is the true value of Word for Word; it let’s us off the hook of any particular translator’s interpretation.
Back then, I was also thinking that unobtainable and intimate could be rephrased as Unobtainable yet intimate. The character here is a conjunction, so either one works. The feeling this unobtainable and / yet evokes plunges deep. It reminds me a bit of the Schrödinger Cat quantum paradox (Schrödinger’s cat video) where the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Only when observed does it settle out into one or the other states of existence. The mystery that mind can never ‘obtain’, at least through rational means, is reality. Again, profound sameness points to and helps unravel the mystery a bit… at least for me. In a sense, it gives me some ‘thing’ to look for.
Suggested Revision:
Knower not speak; speaker not know.
Subdue its sharpness, untie its tangles,
Soften its brightness, be the same as dust,
This is called profound sameness.
For this reason,
Unobtainable and intimate,
Unobtainable and distant
Unobtainable and favorable
Unobtainable and fearful
Unobtainable and noble
Unobtainable and humble
For this reason all under heaven value it
Second Pass: Work in Progress
Knower doesn’t speak; speaker doesn’t know could be another way to say this. 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.
First Pass: Chapter of the Week
I was long perplexed by the idea that ‘one who speaks does not know‘. That seemed to negate any opinion, observation or thought that I had. Now I finally get it, I think. At least it doesn’t perplex me anymore. As I see it, there are two sides to this.
One side is about truth. From a mysterious sameness point of view, thinking and speaking can never reach the depth of all-inclusive knowing. In order to discern or say anything, I must harden, not soften its(1) brightness. Instead of seeing profound sameness, I need to discern concrete difference. Language requires this sharpness, even for the most mundane statements of ‘fact’. This results in a symbolic abstraction of experience, not extemporaneous knowing. Thinking and speaking are after-the-fact reporting of past experience—in a word, gossip. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with that, which bring me to the other side of this issue.
Gossip is a natural glue that connects social animal. Non-thinking social animals, like doges, use scent as ‘gossip’ commonly. Although bees use dance of sorts. And then elephants, whales and other big brained social animals use sounds, as rudimentary forms of speech. Speaking for us is like chirping for crickets, or tweeting for birds. It connects individuals of a social species to the group. Language connect us to our fellow humans. Knowing is not the purpose, which brings me back to the point of this chapter.
This chapter’s ‘One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know‘ highlights the view that our species has gone a bit overboard, relying to heavily on thinking and speech to know reality. Too much of a ‘good’ thing results in imbalance. In out case, heavy reliance on word and names (language) has weakened our ability to experience nature with sufficient impartiality. Our mind chatter enables us to haul around our dead and gone past, and an imagined yet unlikely future.
Nevertheless, we’re stuck with thinking and speaking. The more we believe what we think, the more we keep chasing our tail in circular rationalizations to prove the ‘reality’ of our symbolic mental world. I find it is possible to avoid some of this futile run-around by merely acknowledging that, ‘knower not speak; speaker not know’, (and by the same token, ‘knower not think, thinker not know’.
Spiritual ideas (all the way from God down to the stuff I write) reflect an irresistible and ironic attempt to speak to that which is beyond thought. I regard it all as just beating-around-the-bush. I can never put my finger on that which images the forefather of God (which makes it all the more intriguing, eh). From a symptoms point of view, I see this quest as simply the hunter- gatherer drive prodding me to keep looking for the ultimate tasty morsel of truth that can be spoken of. Everything is so much simpler than it appears in thought. That is why, to know yet to think that one does not know is best.
(1) You may wonder what the ‘its’ refers to in soften its(1) brightness. I think of ‘it‘ as a broad description of anything and everything that diverges in name as it issues forth. The actual word is qi (其) which translates as: his, her, its, their, he, she, it, they, that, such.