From ljm@xxxx.xxx.xxxxxx.xxxx Sun Feb 21 09:20:58 1999 X-Digest-Num: 69 Message-ID: <44114.69.351.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 01:20:58 +0800 From: Lin Zhemin I was trying to say "The real Tao cannot be discussed". Who knows if that > English was a good rendering of the original Chinese! But it sounds good > to me. I don't think so. Maybe you're acquaintant to Indian philosophy (while I don't really know). But the original text is just something like "the Dao which can be told is not the eternal Dao", which implies, the Dao that you're talking about may be right in this mean time; but it may definitly change one day. So the one you're trying to define would _never_ stand on the test of time. :-) Chinese philosophy is very logic. It just eliminated many words, many accusative words and many subjective words. It has the notion of a linear "time", which doesn't appear in Indian philosophy. (While time is like a river in Indian philosophy, it's the water in the river in Chinese one.) Hope that I'm not blowing it up! -- .e'osai ko sarji la lojban. ==> 請支持邏輯語言。 co'o mi'e lindjy,min. ==> 再見,我是林哲民。 Fingerprint20 = CE32 D237 02C0 FE31 FEA9 B858 DE8F AE2D D810 F2D9