Even some of his finest scholarly translators focus on positive ethical or political values in the text, as if those were what’s important in it. The temptation is to grasp at something tangible in the endlessly deceptive simplicity of the words. Note UKLG: Everything Lao Tzu says is elusive. The whole book is both an explanation and a demonstration of it. It’s not a statement susceptible to logical interpretation, or even to a syntactical translation into English but it’s a concept that transforms thought radically, that changes minds. Note UKLG: Over and over Lao Tzu says wei wu wei: Do not do. To let go of that belief is to find safety. To believe that our beliefs are permanent truths which encompass reality is a sad arrogance. Note UKLG: One of the things I read in this chapter is that values and beliefs are not only culturally constructed but also part of the interplay of yin and yang, the great reversals that maintain the living balance of the world. I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you can see it rightly, it contains everything. Note UKLG: A satisfactory translation of this chapter is, I believe, perfectly impossible.
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