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Daode jing: A Daoist Contemplative Translation
238 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2024
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About the author
Louis Komjathy
35 books16 followersLouis Komjathy 康思奇 (Ph.D., Religious Studies; Boston University) is an independent scholar-educator and translator (www.louiskomjathy.org). He researches and has published extensively in Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies, and Religious Studies, with specific interests in contemplative practice, embodiment, and mystical experience. He is founding Co-chair of the Daoist Studies Unit (2004-2010) and Contemplative Studies Unit (2010-2016) in the American Academy of Religion, and founding Co-director of the Daoist Foundation (www.daoistfoundation.org). In addition to nine books to date, he has contributed chapters to _Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies_ (2011), _Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality_ (2011), _The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions_ (2012), _The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion_ (2014), _Religion: A Next-Generation Handbook for Its Robust Study_ (2016), _Teaching Interreligious Encounters_ (2017), _Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion_ (2017), and _Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions: Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies_ (2020), among others. His current work explores cross-cultural and perennial questions related to aliveness, extraordinariness, flourishing, transmutation, and trans-temporality. He lives in semi-seclusion on the Northshore of Chicago, Illinois.
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December 8, 2024
This is a substandard translation of the Daodejing with an almost hilariously pretentious introduction. The person responsible has turned himself into a sort of Daoist paper mill, emitting a number of generously priced works for our enlightenment. A look at this has convinced me to be very cautious about investing any further in his view of the case.
The author appears to be able to understand the original Classical Chinese text on a basic level, but his style is painfully clumsy and he makes a number of easily avoided errors. He soft-pedals some of the most obnoxious features of the text, for instance translating Verse 65 as "allowed them [the commoners] to remain ignorant" when it should read "make them ignorant" (the author of the Daodejing was not inclined to allow the commoners to do anything that he did not want them to do). Again, he completely misunderstands and mistranslates Verse 50 because he is apparently ignorant that si di 'death ground' is a technical military term defined in Master Sun's Art of War. He is very prone to turning the Chinese original into a sort of windy nonsense, as with the last line of Verse 25, "And the Dao emulates its own suchness," where the "its own" is an unjustified and misleading addition of his own; it should be "The Dao emulates the way things are of themselves (ziran)." And as one might expect, he mangles the translation of Verse 80, the "utopia" passage, concealing such inconvenient facts as the determination to render the commoners illiterate and immobile.
The author appears to be something thankfully not seen for a number of years in Chinese studies, the convert who is determined to be more Catholic than the Pope. He sputters insults like "colonialist" and "Orientalist" at those who disagree with him; there are a number of things that I would say about people like Chen Guying, doyen of Daoist studies in Mainland China, but "colonialist" is almost surreal. The philosophical approach to the text by such scholars as Roger Ames invites his fury and contempt; again, there are many points where I do not agree with Ames, but he never comes close to rivalling the oddity of parts of the discussion here. The author apparently thinks that Zhuang Zhou was a stenographer and that his fantastic tales of discourse between weirdly named Daoist worthies reflect reality; I don't think so. He puts forward nine chapters that he insists are the heart of the text's message, not explaining why this 12% of the content is to be favored over the rest. Possibly his longer version of the translation explains some of these moves, but I decline to pay a much greater price (for a self-published book) to find out.
The Daodejing can indeed be approached as a meditation manual. It can also be approached as a sex manual, for that matter. But what it began as was a manual of government; the bulk of its text deals with the ruler and how he should rule himself and the people that he has presumed to dominate (he is to deceive them, for instance). It is quite possible to translate the Daodejing as something different from this, following later commentaries, and this is unquestionably valuable for students of the periods concerned. But this does not change its original motivation for being assembled and put forth, which was political and social. It may have become a religious text, but it did not begin as a religious text, no matter how much the author of this work wishes it had been.
At one point, the author complains, "the Daodejing has been translated excessively" (p. 18). This publication is ironic proof of that assertion. While it is by no means the worst translation of the canon in circulation, it remains eminently forgettable. In another place, he suggests that "the book may also be satchelled and disseminated as a companion for self-study and backcountry travel" (page x). I disagree; it is not good enough to deserve reading but not bad enough to be used to start a campfire. Pack a few firestarters, and leave this behind to languish on the bookstore shelf until it is pulped.
The author appears to be able to understand the original Classical Chinese text on a basic level, but his style is painfully clumsy and he makes a number of easily avoided errors. He soft-pedals some of the most obnoxious features of the text, for instance translating Verse 65 as "allowed them [the commoners] to remain ignorant" when it should read "make them ignorant" (the author of the Daodejing was not inclined to allow the commoners to do anything that he did not want them to do). Again, he completely misunderstands and mistranslates Verse 50 because he is apparently ignorant that si di 'death ground' is a technical military term defined in Master Sun's Art of War. He is very prone to turning the Chinese original into a sort of windy nonsense, as with the last line of Verse 25, "And the Dao emulates its own suchness," where the "its own" is an unjustified and misleading addition of his own; it should be "The Dao emulates the way things are of themselves (ziran)." And as one might expect, he mangles the translation of Verse 80, the "utopia" passage, concealing such inconvenient facts as the determination to render the commoners illiterate and immobile.
The author appears to be something thankfully not seen for a number of years in Chinese studies, the convert who is determined to be more Catholic than the Pope. He sputters insults like "colonialist" and "Orientalist" at those who disagree with him; there are a number of things that I would say about people like Chen Guying, doyen of Daoist studies in Mainland China, but "colonialist" is almost surreal. The philosophical approach to the text by such scholars as Roger Ames invites his fury and contempt; again, there are many points where I do not agree with Ames, but he never comes close to rivalling the oddity of parts of the discussion here. The author apparently thinks that Zhuang Zhou was a stenographer and that his fantastic tales of discourse between weirdly named Daoist worthies reflect reality; I don't think so. He puts forward nine chapters that he insists are the heart of the text's message, not explaining why this 12% of the content is to be favored over the rest. Possibly his longer version of the translation explains some of these moves, but I decline to pay a much greater price (for a self-published book) to find out.
The Daodejing can indeed be approached as a meditation manual. It can also be approached as a sex manual, for that matter. But what it began as was a manual of government; the bulk of its text deals with the ruler and how he should rule himself and the people that he has presumed to dominate (he is to deceive them, for instance). It is quite possible to translate the Daodejing as something different from this, following later commentaries, and this is unquestionably valuable for students of the periods concerned. But this does not change its original motivation for being assembled and put forth, which was political and social. It may have become a religious text, but it did not begin as a religious text, no matter how much the author of this work wishes it had been.
At one point, the author complains, "the Daodejing has been translated excessively" (p. 18). This publication is ironic proof of that assertion. While it is by no means the worst translation of the canon in circulation, it remains eminently forgettable. In another place, he suggests that "the book may also be satchelled and disseminated as a companion for self-study and backcountry travel" (page x). I disagree; it is not good enough to deserve reading but not bad enough to be used to start a campfire. Pack a few firestarters, and leave this behind to languish on the bookstore shelf until it is pulped.
Displaying 1 of 1 review