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answers (again?)From: singing ocean
Subject: General
Date/Time 2005-05-15 02:44:47
Remote IP: 154.20.44.178
Message>"Some questions shouldn't be asked. Like "What is Tao?" or "What does an >Immortal feel?" or "Do you have an empty mind?" -Max
I did not ask you any of these questions in my posts, are you referring to someone else?
>My comment about Chinese:
>"As for the chinese term of "heart" as opposed to "mind", this doen't >change the meaning of text. All the old spiritual texts are written in >special forms of Buddhist Chinese and Taosit Chinese -- all specialized >fields that take years of training each. If a person speaks and writes >Chinese and looks at those texts, they would be unable to read them. >There is a reason it is translated "mind" instead of "heart" to preserve >the best translation possible."
Many texts like the ones that we discussed such as the "Nei Yeh" (Inner Training) and The "T'ai Shang Ch'ing-ching Ching" (Lord Lao's Cultivating stillness classic) contain the chinese text as well as the english translation, all you need is a good dictionary to be able to translate the characters. As for the layered meanings and their contexts, you can infer the basic meaning of these from your training if you have a good teacher, and cross reference them from other sources such as "The inner tradition of chinese medicine" which has a good glossary of ancient terms and their meanings.
>There are only a handfull of people that can read fluently anscient >Buddhist Chinese and Taoist Chinese written hundreds if not thousands >years ago. It takes at least 5 years of specialized studies to even >scratch the basics of learning these forms of Chinese. These are the >people who will translate anscient texts into modern Chinese, so people >like Thomas Cleary will translate them into English.
I did not know there were separate forms of written chinese used by buddhists and taoists. It is true that there are many terms that the average Chinese person is not familiar with, but that is why we refer to scholars and books that explain this!
>If I say most Chinese people don't read anscient Chinese, is it a right >thought/action, wrong thought/action or neither?
No, I think it was more that you did not specify this when you said "most people cannot understand these terms", and "some questions should not be asked". It sounded more like a blanket statement that "these are high spiritual matters that are below most mortals" my mistake.
>"The Chinese term "Hsin" has many meanings. It refers to the "heart" >when it is used in the physical sense. It refers to the "mind," "will," >or "wish" when it is used in the psychological sense. It means "center" >when it is used geometrically. It means "soul" or "consciousness" when >it is used in the spiritual sense. It means "essence" or "truth" when it >is used in the philosophical sense. As it may mean something rather >opposite, its relevant meaning depends on context and should be >carefully discriminated and comprehended. For the purpose of inducing >one’s thought into the whole truth, one should take the word as a whole >with all its implications. But for other occasions, it should pertain to >its appropriate meaning in each specific instance."
The term "Hsin" will also mean something different to you depending on what spiritual methods you practice, and what your bias is!
Of course we are still human while we have our vital organ shen egos. Even when we integrate them completely into the collective consciousness of the wuji, the consciousness of nature, we cannot kill the ego! Isn't that the beauty of cultivation? Taking that individual will back to the source.
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