Ren Fa Rong’s commentary (?)

It doesn’t matter if you study Mandarin or Cantonese cuz the writing is the same. Just make sure you learn traditional CHinese characters so you can read the ancient writing and commentaries, although some have been reprinted in simplified Chinese (they are about 85% same).

AFTER you learn modern Chinese, you need to learn ancient Chinese. Although the writing is the same, the language is really different. Most modern Chinese (like 99.9%) don’t understand it. They can read and get vague ideas. I don’t know if it’s more different from modern Chinese than Ancient Greek is from modern Greek, but it’s tough. It’s hard to translate into modern Chinese and even harder to translate into English.

I once asked a friend of mine to translate a passage of the Dao De Jing into modern Chinese and it had like 3 times the number of characters. Then he said it was pretty close to the meaning he thought that passage had but confessed it wasn’t completely accurate, that that was impossible to do which supports Michael’s contention that it is a meditation manual).

My choice is to LIVE the dao rather than read about it. Nature will unfold it for you. You dont need to study any languages except the language of the tao, which qi gong and nei gong will develop for you. Or whatever your path is.

You will find that you can understand dao better than the ancients because our understanding of “it” has grown and evolved. It’s also far more prevalent in the West than in China. Hell, Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith, and others were daoist in their approaches to politics and economics. Western business management that emerged from the “tech age” is far more daoist than anything in China.

Anyway, China never really embraced daoism. They always preferred Confucianism and it shows with the complex social rituals and huge bureaucratic approach to every aspect of life, from buying a piece of fruit to the government of the land.

The 80s generation, as they call it here, understands Daoism way better than their parents and grandparents. They of course will deny it. They will say they’re not interested in it and never studied it. But they live it. How could you be more daoist than that?

I don’t mean to denigrate the ancients’ contributions. Obviously a necessary and illuminating phase of evolution. All i’m saying is don’t forget to be here now and discard the contributions that have evolved since and hiding in the nooks and crannies and beneath the veneer of modern life.

Anyway, good luck with it. I’m sure there is merit in the study of the ancients otherwise i wouldn’t do it. But in the final analysis Punk Rock brought me way closer to dao than anything in china. Then of course i was led to great teachers at tracker school, healing tao and other places. but i feel at the core being a punkass bike messenger from DC did the most for me in terms of pointing the way and forming a center.