The Tao = the Moon: Red Pine's translation of TaoTeChing, with commentaries

After a couple nights in my teepee-tent - the rain was now coming down with lightning - I remembered Chunyi Lin saying not to meditate during lightning - I got back onto the insulated mat - so I was no longer "grounded" - and I began reading the amazing work - Red Pine's Tao Te Ching translation with commentary

One of the best-selling English-language translations of the Taoteching.
“A refreshing new translation. . . . Highly recommended.”—Library Journal
“With its clarity and scholarly range, this version of the Taoteching works as both a readable text and a valuable resource of Taoist interpretation.”—Publishers Weekly
“Read it in confidence that it comes as close as possible to expressing the Chinese text in English.”—Victor Mair, professor of Chinese studies, University of Pennsylvania

Interview with Red Pine - from Chinese t.v.

The impressive thing about Red Pine's Tao Te Ching is that he presents the evidence that Lao Tzu was a real person - (and remember the qigong master had Lao Tzu manifest to him and touch his head.

I just opened the book "randomly" (not that I believe in randomness) - and the chapter was on the "sweet dew" from meditation. I was surprised - it was from the commentaries that this secret message was brought forth - another alchemical meditation secret right in the Taoteching. Usually the book is not considered directly about meditation.

But as Bill Porter emphasizes, the Chinese would definitely read the commentaries with the book itself - and the commentaries also add further meditation secrets.

So this translation was from 20 years ago?

The other thing that Red Pine argues is Lao Tzu came from a Miao (Hmong are a sub-group of Miao) influenced shamanic culture and the Tao actually means the Moon. Red Pine says the T'ai Chi symbol is actually the full and new moon interwoven and the meaning of Tao has the character "head" which refers to the face of the Moon.

It's a fascinating argument - he goes on to say how humans should be able to feel the moon and indeed once the "ancestral cavity" is opened - then the pineal gland has stronger magnetic bliss during the full moon. As the qigong master states, meditation is "ten times stronger 3 days before and after the full moon."

So one of the commentaries says the first number is ONE. Wang pi. I looked up when he wrote his commentaries - sometimes in the 3rd century AD. So Daoism is not based on the concept of zero or decimals, etc.

And most importantly - the first "note" of Daoist music harmonics is the note of the MOON - as I presented the evidence for this - and so the Moon is the yin qi energy.

There's a lot on youtube - on Red Pine - so people can follow the links through that first link I posted.

Red Pine talk

The Chinese have always SUNG their poetry (until modern times). fascinating. Just like the early Greeks - like Homer - the poems were SUNG originally - as http://peterkingsley.com emphasizes.

One of the customs that was common, beginning around the year 200, because Ren Jei, used to, a member of the 7 Sages, the Bamboo Grove, used to do this Daoist practice, of generating amounts of Qi, and making this Droning Sound. Now adays you would hear something reminiscent in the Tuvan, Mongol singers, that is sort of a "song version" of what these Daoists were doing 1000 years ago.... It's different from the Tuvan singing. So they would drone. They would build towers and then you could hear it for miles when they would drone, when they generate this qi from their bellies and send it out.

When it was announced last month (may 2018) that Red Pine (Bill Porter) had won the American Academy of Arts & Letters Thornton Wilder Prize for translation, his local Peninsula Daily News went out to report.
The article covers his background:

He wanted to study anthropology with Margaret Mead at Columbia and applied for financial aid.
“I noticed there was a language fellowship funded by the defense department for those who wanted to study a rare language. I had just read a book by Alan Watts called ‘The Way of Zen.’ It made wonderful sense to me and it had some Chinese characters in it. So I wrote in Chinese on a whim. They gave me a four-year fellowship to study anthropology and Chinese. Chinese was hard.
“I met a monk in Chinatown and he taught me how to meditate and I started spending weekends with him at this retreat place. I realized this is what I wanted to to. It was much more interesting than studying.
“So I quit Columbia and went to Taiwan. A fellow grad student had the address of a Buddhist monastery. I studied Chinese so I went there. I stayed at two different monasteries and studied philosophy at a Chinese university.”

And also gets into his more recent international popularity:

“In China, there is a popular program on TV, like our Sex and the City. It’s the most watched program for people aged 20-40. Last May, the male lead told his girlfriend that she had to start learning more about Chinese culture and she should start with Bill Porter’s books. Fifteen hundred million people watch this program. Boom. I’ve been getting royalties from China ever since.”
With the Wilder award, he plans to buy a new car.
Fittingly, it is an Escape.

 Red Pine hanging out in my home town Minneapolis!