David Hinton's ontological interpretation of Taoism / Chan

[Tom Morton]

Hey people,

Are any of you aware of the work of David Hinton, translator of chinese literature? He has translated the Tao Te Ching, book of Chuang Tzu, as well as collections of koans and zen poetry. His "thing" is a return to an ontological / cosmological interpretation of Taoism and Zen, which he argues was its original meaning (which became lost or obscured in its transmission to Japan and the west). Some of his descriptions of this ontological Tao are profoundly beautiful and I think would resonate deeply with anyone who is at home with Kastrup's philosophy.

I think the only place Kastrup and Hinton are not in considerably consonance is regarding meaning, where Hinton gives an incredible poetic and naturalistic defense of meaning as rooted in the meaningless:

"It may seem unlikely that our trivial and obsessive train of though is the movement of the Cosmos/Tao, the Cosmos thinking itself: deep philosophy perhaps, but everyday trivia? And yet, isn't that typical of the Cosmos? It's mostly trivial and repetitive: same galaxies, starts, and planets over and over, same seasons and grasses and insects, same days and nights and... same thoughts and feelings."
- David Hinton - China Root (part 3: meditation)

"If we are unborn, whatever meaning we create is also unborn. Meaning is the Cosmos orienting itself. It is not a separate transcendental realm, a stable outside measure of existence. It is the Cosmos's way of knowing itself; and so, is no different than any other meaningless twist in the vast movement of the Cosmos: the twist of galaxies, the tectonic upthrust of mountain ranges, seasons, egrets hunting river shallows all patience. Meaning is meaningless, a principle informing the concept of ch'i - thought/mind - the "intentionality/desire/intelligence" that shapes the ongoing cosmological process of change and transformation, and of which human intelligence is one particular manifestation. The Cosmos shapes itself into mountain and river, egrets startling up into flight and pear blossoms tumbling in the evening wind, and they explain nothing, mean nothing. It shapes itself into linguistic meaning the same way, and meaning explains nothing."
- David Hinton - China Root (part 3: Unborn)

Anyway, I cannot recommend enough the work of David Hinton. He is most definitely someone who "gets it", and manages to put the central insights into such clear and beautiful words.

[Ben Iscatus]

Thanks for the recommendation, Tom. Does Hinton go into social responsibility, or is he only into individual enlightenment?

[Tom Morton]

Hi Ben,

In the forewords of his compilation of translations, "The Four Chinese Classics: Tao Te Ching, Analects, Chuang Tzu, Mencius", he discusses the different attempts by Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu and Confucius to offer moral/social guidance grounded in the Tao cosmology/ontology. As far as I'm aware, Hinton has not published his own thoughts on social responsibility.

[Lou Gold]

Thanks for the recommendation, Tom. Does Hinton go into social responsibility, or is he only into individual enlightenment?

Ben,

I haven't read Hinton but I think Taoism weaves together social responsibility and individual enlightenment as sort of a "package deal". Here's Hinton's translation of a famous chapter of the Tao de Ching:

17.
When a Master takes charge,
hardly anybody notices.
The next best leader
is obeyed out of love.
After that,
there's the leader obeyed out of fear.
The worst leader is one who is hated.

Trust and respect people.
That's how you earn
their trust and respect.
The Masters don't give orders;
they work with everybody else.

When the job's done,
people are amazed
at what they accomplished.

[AshvinP]

"It may seem unlikely that our trivial and obsessive train of though is the movement of the Cosmos/Tao, the Cosmos thinking itself: deep philosophy perhaps, but everyday trivia? And yet, isn't that typical of the Cosmos? It's mostly trivial and repetitive: same galaxies, starts, and planets over and over, same seasons and grasses and insects, same days and nights and... same thoughts and feelings."
- David Hinton - China Root (part 3: meditation)

"If we are unborn, whatever meaning we create is also unborn. Meaning is the Cosmos orienting itself. It is not a separate transcendental realm, a stable outside measure of existence. It is the Cosmos's way of knowing itself; and so, is no different than any other meaningless twist in the vast movement of the Cosmos: the twist of galaxies, the tectonic upthrust of mountain ranges, seasons, egrets hunting river shallows all patience. Meaning is meaningless, a principle informing the concept of ch'i - thought/mind - the "intentionality/desire/intelligence" that shapes the ongoing cosmological process of change and transformation, and of which human intelligence is one particular manifestation. The Cosmos shapes itself into mountain and river, egrets startling up into flight and pear blossoms tumbling in the evening wind, and they explain nothing, mean nothing. It shapes itself into linguistic meaning the same way, and meaning explains nothing."
- David Hinton - China Root (part 3: Unborn)

Anyway, I cannot recommend enough the work of David Hinton. He is most definitely someone who "gets it", and manages to put the central insights into such clear and beautiful words.

Tom,

It appears Hinton is 'stuck' at the mythic stage of understanding where the Cosmos is perceived entirely circular (polar). It is quite literally a 2-D representation of the Cosmos when we have already gone through the 3-D representational stage and are moving into 4-D 'aperspectival mutation' of Time-consciousness (Imaginative cognition). There is genuine novelty in the Cosmic evolution precisely because our Self-awareness is manifesting through it. The planets and stars we perceive now are not the exact same as those perceived by our ancient ancestors in India or China. Consider this quote from Gebser's The Ever-Present Origin.

The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual....

Two apocryphal statements of Christian doctrine clarify in their way what is meant here: “This world is a bridge, cross it but do not make of it your dwelling place,”2 and “I have chosen you before the earth began.”3 They point to the spiritual origin prior to all spatio-temporal materialization. We may regard such materialization as a bridge that makes possible the merging or coalescence, the concrescere of origin and the present. The great church father Irenaeus presumably had these sayings in mind when he stated: “Blessed is he who was before the coming of man.”4 We have seen him; he revealed himself in space and time. In his departure he was beheld by his disciples in his transparency, a transparency appropriate only to the spiritual origin (if anything can be appropriated to it), the transparency which a time-free and ego-free person can presentiate in the most fortunate certainty of life. The grand and painful path of consciousness emergence, or, more appropriately, the unfolding and intensification of consciousness, manifests itself as an increasingly intense luminescence of the spiritual in man.

Throughout the millennia the traditionalists, the “initiates,” have seen man’s previous journey as a decline, a departure from the affinity to and a distanciation from origin. Painful as this distanciation may be, it has served the requisite intensification of consciousness. Only distanciation contains the possibility for the awakening of consciousness. The phenomenon releasing origin is spiritual, and with each consciousness mutation it becomes more realizable by man. With respect to the presently emerging mutation we may speak of a concretion of the spiritual.

[Ben Iscatus]

When a Master takes charge,
hardly anybody notices.

Lovely stuff, Lou.

[Lou Gold]

When a Master takes charge,
hardly anybody notices.

Lovely stuff, Lou.

OOPS! The translation I posted is NOT by Dave Hinton. This one is by Ron Hogan. There are some 250 translations of the Tao Te Ching into Western languages. Interestingly, the Tao Te Ching is globally second only to the Bible in its number of translations. And this without a global missionary structure pushing it. Obviously, it's got a deep appeal.

Thanks to the turn on from Tom Morton, I've added Dave Hinton to my Kindle collection.

Here is how he translates Chapter 17:

The loftiest ruler is barely known among those below.
Next comes the rule people love and praise.
After that, the one they fear,
and then the one they despise.

If you don't stand sincere by your words
how sincere can people be?
Take great care over words, treasure them,

and when the hundred-fold people see
your work succeed in all they do
they'll say it's just occurrence appearing of itself.

[Lou Gold]

When a Master takes charge,
hardly anybody notices.

Lovely stuff, Lou.

It's interesting to contemplate the many translations. Here are 170 translations of Chapter One. I get a kick out of Ron Hogan's less scholarly, less reverent but enjoyable approach:

If you can talk about it, it ain’t Tao.
If it has a name, it’s just another thing.

Tao doesn’t have a name.
Names are for ordinary things.

Stop wanting stuff. It keeps you from seeing what’s real.
When you want stuff, all you see are things.

These two statements have the same meaning.
Figure them out, and you’ve got it made.