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#3849 -
The Nonduality
Highlights - http://groups.
Gloria Lee is on hiatus
for the week.
In this issue you'll meet
The Buddha, a dab of Enlightenment Cream, oldtimer Carlos Dwa,
and a review of Stephen Mitchell's illustrated version of the Tao
Te Ching.
The Buddha, A
Film by David Grubin
http://www.pbs.org/thebuddha/?gclid=CMWQgOKL3KACFUFM5QodygGDCQ
Premiering
This documentary for PBS
by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin and narrated by Richard
Gere, tells the story of the Buddha’s life, a journey
especially relevant to our own bewildering times of violent
change and spiritual confusion. It features the work of some of
the world’s greatest artists and sculptors, who across two
millennia, have depicted the Buddha’s life in art rich in
beauty and complexity. Hear insights into the ancient narrative
by contemporary Buddhists, including Pulitzer Prize winning poet
W.S. Merwin and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Join the
conversation and learn more about meditation, the history of
Buddhism, and how to incorporate the Buddha’s teachings on
compassion and mindfulness into daily life.
Can't find any sense or
meaning in your life? Try Enlightenment Cream!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHo6-pmPc8w&feature=player_embedded
A real hero invites the dragon to dinner and serves part of
himself as the main course.
This being doubly absurd and efficacious, being that a hero knows
that the
dragon both cannot be slain and doesn't exist, in equal measure,
like himself.
The real
art/play/work:Still serving cracks and snacks long after it seem
appropriate to those who only want to rest in peace.
-Carlos Dwa
Stephen
Mitchell's Tao Te Ching: An Illustrated Journey
Reviewed by
Rodney Stevens
http://radianceofbeing.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-review.html
There are numerous
translations of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching."
Every time I come across one that I haven't read, I go to
straight to verse 25 to see how it is rendered. No translation,
in my view, has excelled Stephen Mitchell's Tao Te Ching: An
Illustrated Journey (Francis Lincoln Publishers /1988 /$10.17
paper from Amazon). For Mitchell's interpretation of the
aforementioned verse reads, in part:
There was something
formless and perfect
before the universe was born.
It is serene. Empty.
Solitary. Unchanging.
Infinite. Eternally present.
It is the mother of the universe.
For the lack of a better name,
I call it the Tao.
Here are just a three
salutary things to consider from the above: "Formless and
perfect" points precisely to what awareness is; its being
"the mother of the universe" tells us that form arises
from the formless, and yet, remains unchanged and "eternally
present"; and a plethora of nondual exegeses and
dissertations could readily be done on that sumptuous and
pause-worthy "For the lack of a better name..."
Like the earlier Harper
& Row edition of this work, this volume contains Mitchell's
concise and informative Foreword, in which he covers everything
from Lao Tzu himself (about whom "all that has come down to
us is highly suspect") and the classic manual's style to
Mitchell's translation method (he worked from Paul Carus's
literal version and "consulted dozens of translations into
English, German, and French") and the proper way to
pronounced the title ("more or less, Dow Deh Jing").
Dr. Stephen Little, the
Pritzker Curator of Asian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,
selected the artwork. In addition to providing a "visual
foil to the text," he judiciously chose not only paintings
from practicing Taoists, but he selected works that were
"direct expressions of Taoist belief" and which
"symbolically depicts the emptiness that characterizes the
Tao itself." I was particularly moved by "Listening to
the Bamboo," [Verse 20] by Wen Cheng-ming (1470-1559), and
"Immortal's Dwelling Among Plum Trees," [Verses 46-47],
by Ch'ien Tu (1763-1844).
But nearly all of the
paintings are imbued with a beautiful and near-palpable clarity.
And this, of course, relates to the Tao itself, which
"answers without speaking a word/arrives without being
summoned."
Tao Te Ching: An
Illustrated Journey, by Stephen Mitchell may be
purchased from Amazon.com: