The Original Wisdom of the Dao De Jing: A New Translation and Commentary

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The Adequacy of Sufficiency

When the World has the Way,
the war horses of the nobility
are returned to manure the fields.

When the world is without the Way,
the nobility’s war horses
are bred outside [the walls of their towns].

There is no harm greater than not knowing
what is enough.
There is no fault greater than desiring gain.

Knowing the adequacy of what is enough is
constantly sufficient.

Comment: This verse links the ethic of Sufficiency to the Wisdom tradition’s ecology of renewal. The pasturing of the nobility’s horses to fertilise fields is an example of the “return” required for sustainable agriculture. This “renewal” was impaired when the horses used in war were corralled and bred outside the walls towns of the nobility. The “fault” in the desire for gain is that of excess beyond “what is enough” to assure the balance required for sustainability.

p. 61, Chapter 46, Excerpted from The Original Wisdom of the Dao De Jing: A New Translation and Commentary, by P.J. Laska.

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Description

The Dao De Jing is a classic of ancient Chinese philosophy and one of the great wisdom texts of world literature. To recover its original meaning P. J. Laska sets aside the long commentarial tradition of paradox and mysticism and re-interprets the work as a coherent natural philosophy and holistic ecological teaching concerned with the “constancy” of the life community as a whole. In this new translation and commentary the ancient “Way of the Sages” is presented as biocentric political ecology teaching that “Great governance does not cut,” but acts to protect the community of life from the “excess, extravagance and extremes” of accumulationist designs. The commentary on each translated verse is designed to convey the holistic understanding of the world-process that the ancient sages’ used to guide human designs toward simplicity and integration with nature and away from hierarchical instruments of domination.

 

About P.J. Laska:
 
Studied Russian at the Army Language School, Monterrey, CA.
 
B.A., in General Studies, University of Maryland
 
Graduate work in Philosophy, University of Cincinnati
 
Ph.D. in Philosophy, University of Rochester
 
Taught Philosophy and Humanities at York University (Toronto, Canada),
 
University of Arizona, Antioch University, West Virginia University.
 
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.
 
National Book Award Finalist for Poetry.

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