Tag: Sage

• March 30, 2013

  Split wood, light breathing

  The Dao has nothing to say not because it is mute, not because it is coy but because it communicates in its own way. Best, therefore, not to ask it anything but to rest–anywhere–in the light of its presence. On  this second spring, the mountains will serve that end. The Daoist Sage does everything lightly,…
• March 17, 2012

  On the ‘profound de’: An excerpt from David E. Cooper’s Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective

  The following, 10 lines down below the hash marks, is an excerpt from David E. Cooper’s Convergence with Nature: A Daoist Perspective (Green Books, 2012), pp. 76-7. In the Daoist tradition, the sage was someone who lived according to the Way (dao). But how was he to do so? The sage cultivated “profound de.” De can be…
• February 16, 2012

  Commentary on Laozi’s Daodejing, no. 34: ‘The great Way floods her banks…’

  The excerpt, below, is from Laozi, Daodejing, trans. Edmund Ryden, intro. Benjamin Penny, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 71. Bracketed numbers, e.g., [1], occurring at the end of the lines correspond to my notes following the text. Bear in mind that I have never studied Daoism and, in fact, had not picked up Daodejing…