My opinion

[Philthy]

Oh certainly, by no means am I intending to gun this down... far from it.  I think the work is genius.  My only qualm (and the last post was a very longwinded way of saying this) is understandability.  I mean, I was able to pick through it some and grab out the heart of the message, but to some degree it seemed bogged down by vague-ness.  Someone who has never even heard of Taoism and is totally unfamiliar with the ideals can pick up the Tao Te Ching and read it and understand, even if it takes a few pages to begin to do so, and could develop an interest because of the book alone.  But I feel as though someone who picks up the Dude Te Ching (or Tao Dude Ching, though personally I prefer this nomenclature) wouldn't have a clue what any of it means without having seen the holy film.  Not to say this is entirely wrong, hell it may be in line with the intention, but it seems to mew that a religious text needs to be understandable to some degree in order to reach a broader audience.  If this is not the intention, then forget I said anything.

The thing to remember here is that anything religious is bound to peoples' like, opinions, man.  And interpretations.  My problem with Christianity is that a lot of the conflicts caused by it are due to the fact that the Bible is poorly interpreted.  I mean, yeah, it's not Nam and has a few rules, but for the most part the whole thing is a big story with the message of "love each other."  But it is so widely misinterpreted that it has lead to conflicts such as the most prevalent (in my mind) at the time, gay rights.  And this aggression will not stand, man.  While there always needs to be room for interpretation, there also needs to be guidance in such that misinterpretation doesn't get out of hand.  I mean shit, man, we don't need a fucking Dudeist crusade happening a thousand years from now, ya know?

I'm not saying the current document lacks this, necessarily.  Perhaps I just need it pointed out to me, as was done quite well by Forumdude's response.

I dunno man, it is morning, and due to a lack of a strict drug regimen, my mind is feeling particularly un-limber at the moment.  Maybe this afternoon I will glean greater insights.  Hell, I'm not even sure I just said what I meant to.  I'll have to come back with a more limber mind.  Sadly, I don't think I can get any sacrificial beverages until the 1st, but I certainly will have to perform the holy sacrilege and re-witness the holy film at that time.

Much love to everyone for the positive responses to criticism.  Take er easy, friends.

[greatspiritmonk]

I've got the Tao of Pooh too. Nice book, a little too long but nice anyway.

[meekon5]

Problem with the Tao of Pooh is anyone I lend it to instantly becomes a Poohist rather than a taoist.

[greatspiritmonk]

This is good man, very good. 

[greatspiritmonk]

Philthy, you are right in what you say, but the original version is there right for the sake of understanding.

The problem with Christianity is that it doesn't really exists except for a bunch of people. I'm a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ Dude, or Buddy Christ; that is the real Jesus Christ. The Bible is just a book wrote by men to justify slaying anyone, The Old Testament, or ruling to achieve Heaven, The New Testament. I'm sure Jesus will just throw it away. I guess he had no problems with gay people, well, unless they asked for adoption rights.
Nowadays there is a religion who aims at ruling the world even with the tip of a sword, what Catholics did some centuries ago. This is because very religious people usually have very big problems, almost all of them finds the female form uncomfortable for example. Maybe just one Catholic priest talked against enslaving and killing thousands of Indios or American Indians, the same number fought against Nazis. Religion is always on the side of the government, probably also because otherwise they just shut you up.
There will never be a Dudeist crusade as there was never a Taoist one. We don't care about that shit, unless someone wants to piss on our beloved carpet. Or rug. Or whathaveyou.

[meekon5]

For a book that's meant to be a direct handing down of the word from god:

The Bible comprises 24 books for Jews, 66 for Protestants, 73 for Catholics, and 78 for most Orthodox Christians. (Wikipedia), and dont get me started on the Nag Hammadi Library (http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html). 

Sorry it was the subject of my dissertation.

[greatspiritmonk]

When I want to have some inspirations I just read the Gospel of Thomas, for me the most reliable source about JCD, at least because it's the oldest and it's a real first draft. All the rest is fiction.

Btw the so called Taoist canon is made of some hundreds books.

When things get complicated everything can go wrong. Dudes.

[Peter Merel]

Hmm. "Original version". Okay ...

There are a bunch of Chinese sites - chinapage.org is the best - that use my translation as their translation. But when Oliver asked to put it in with his religious version I thought that was a very cool idea. And also traditional.

See, part of the reason we have a Lao Tzu is because it was propagated by religious Taoism - "Tao Chiao". The other kind of taoism, Tao Chia which means philosophical Taoism, hid inside the religion because that was the best way to make certain the dynastic book burners couldn't destroy it. And they couldn't, which was cool too.

But as for "Original Version" ... the hundreds of English translations falling into two broad schools of interpretation. The literal, exemplified by Henricks and Mair, and the poetic, exemplified by Mitchell, Red Pine, and, of course, our Oliver.

I see the literalists labouring under a misapprehension that there was a single historical Chinese poem, or at least a small cabal of Chinese people working together at the same point in history compiling a single anthology. This illusion is dispelled by the sharply abbreviated content of the Guodian texts, the oldest recorded Lao Tzu, and by Prof. Victor Mair?s work revealing clear textual relations between Laozi and the Sanskrit Gita.

But the modern poets not only credit this assumption of a single origin, they also fall for the idea that comparing multiple English translations will divine the mythical original. My GNL translation fell squarely into this second trap. It ignored the fact is that both the text of Laozi and the underlying meaning of its words change from culture to culture over the millennia. As Crowley confesses up front in his translation, a modern poet cannot say that what they write is what Laozi means. It?s what they themselves mean.

So in the 20 years since the translation in Oliver's book, I decided to try something new, a scientific approach to the problem. It's up at unlocktao.com . I still take pains to be faithful to the historical texts. But I've worked to develop a simple, systematic theory of reassembly of the whole magilla. And I've had the temerity to re-order lines and chapters to make them make sense in the context of a whole. With a healthy skepticism concerning both English and Chinese dictionaries, I have also made novel but plausible word choices in the new edition.

Perhaps not quite so novel but hopefully more plausible than Oliver's "Fucking Toe!"

Anywho ... since you guys picked up on chapter one, here's my new version of that from unlocktao.com/category/unlocked-chapters :

Life is not the life you live,
Nor mind the thoughts you think;
Mind is the course of all thoughts,
Life, the source of all forms.

Releasing thought yields the formless.
Responding to thought bears form,
Form and thought generating each other
As waves on the surface of mind.

Beneath this surface flows life
Ever deeper and more subtle than thought.


Lebowskifying that I leave to the Lama.

[cckeiser]

Anywho ... since you guys picked up on chapter one, here's my new version of that from unlocktao.com/category/unlocked-chapters :

Life is not the life you live,
Nor mind the thoughts you think;
Mind is the course of all thoughts,
Life, the source of all forms.

Releasing thought yields the formless.
Responding to thought bears form,
Form and thought generating each other
As waves on the surface of mind.

Beneath this surface flows life
Ever deeper and more subtle than thought.

Damn, sounds like fuckin' quantum something or other to me dude.
Thanks for the Heads Up and welcome to our nice quiet beach community!

[Peter Merel]

It's the big picture all right. Pond scum creates the stars. Aliens from outer space inhabit every patch of moss. Carl Sagan got it fuckin' WRONG, dude - we're in every fuckin' pixel in his picture.

Plus the sucker deleted pussy from the Voyager message. I mean that's just a fuckin' disaster waiting to happen. Imagine some nanobot civilization finds the thing and thinks it's a request? Paf, every pussy in the world gets deleted. Sagan needed to get out more, dude.

Anyway, yeah, excellent insight, Chapter 2 on the Unlocking blog is gonna be all about quantum, fractal fuckin'. And how every math class you ever slept through got it wrong, too. There are no fuckin' real numbers, complex numbers, number lines - they're a lie, dude.

And later on, sure, dudes evolved on the fuckin's beach. That's why we're happiest there. And why we got noses and dig oysters.

[cckeiser]

It's the big picture all right. Pond scum creates the stars. Aliens from outer space inhabit every patch of moss. Carl Sagan got it fuckin' WRONG, dude - we're in every fuckin' pixel in his picture.

Plus the sucker deleted pussy from the Voyager message. I mean that's just a fuckin' disaster waiting to happen. Imagine some nanobot civilization finds the thing and thinks it's a request? Paf, every pussy in the world gets deleted. Sagan needed to get out more, dude.

Anyway, yeah, excellent insight, Chapter 2 on the Unlocking blog is gonna be all about quantum, fractal fuckin'. And how every math class you ever slept through got it wrong, too. There are no fuckin' real numbers, complex numbers, number lines - they're a lie, dude.

And later on, sure, dudes evolved on the fuckin's beach. That's why we're happiest there. And why we got noses and dig oysters.

I want some of whatever you're smoking dude!
A little something for your entertainment:

http://youtu.be/tw-IATxGmis

[Outer Element]

I guess he had no problems with gay people, well, unless they asked for adoption rights.

Could you explain?

[Peter Merel]

@cckeiser,

Thanks for the link, dude. Nice music. Who is that?

As for polysipsism, here's to it from Unlocking chapter 25:

There is a mystery
Without form,
Silent, depthless,
Alone, unchanging,
Ubiquitous and liquid,
The mother of nature.

It has no form, but I call it "formless";
It has no limit, but I call it "limitless".
Being limitless, it expands away forever;
Expanding away forever it returns to myself:

As life is limitless,
So mind is limitless,
So nature is limitless,
And so I am limitless.

For I am a form of nature,
Nature of mind,
Mind of life,
Life of no form.

Dig?

[cckeiser]

@cckeiser,

Thanks for the link, dude. Nice music. Who is that?

As for polysipsism, here's to it from Unlocking chapter 25:

There is a mystery
Without form,
Silent, depthless,
Alone, unchanging,
Ubiquitous and liquid,
The mother of nature.

It has no form, but I call it "formless";
It has no limit, but I call it "limitless".
Being limitless, it expands away forever;
Expanding away forever it returns to myself:

As life is limitless,
So mind is limitless,
So nature is limitless,
And so I am limitless.

For I am a form of nature,
Nature of mind,
Mind of life,
Life of no form.

Dig?

I dig your style dude.

Music:
Rigo's Blues
Back Porch Blues:
http://www.rigomania.com/back_porch_blues_page.htm
Tom Rigney and Flambeau
http://www.tomrigney.com/flambeau_page_html_9-02.htm

[Abideist]

What in gods holy name are you blathering about