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Medical and Spiritual Qigong (Chi Kung)
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Home › Forum Online Discussion › General › Different versions of the Tao Te Ching?
Which one do you like best, or think it is the most correct translation?
I found two versions on the internet, and already in the first stanza (?) they seem quite different.
First version from http://www.wam.umd.edu/~stwright/rel/tao/TaoTeChing.html
The tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.
Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery.
By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real.
Yet mystery and reality
emerge from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness born from darkness.
The beginning of all understanding.
The other version from http://www.chinapage.com/gnl.html
The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not true.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.
To experience without intention is to sense the world;
To experience with intention is to anticipate the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.
Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.
So which one do you feel is more correct out of these two? If it is even possible to say that one version is more correct than the other.
The chapters are brief, poetic, and contain Chinese. Here is the first chapter.
Tao k’o tao fei ch’ang tao
TAO called TAO is not TAO
Names can name no lasting name
Nameless: the origin of heaven and earth
Naming: the mother of ten thousand things
Empty of desire, perceive mystery
Filled with desire, perceive manifestations
These have the same source, but different names.
Call them both deep–
Deep and again depp:
The gateway to all mystery.
wonderful nn