Question to you translator types about conscience

[bruce]

I?ve read that the individual Dao is expressed through conscience. Since my (western) understanding of the word ?conscience? includes learned patterns of right and wrong - such as those imposed by various religious establishments - I?m not entirely comfortable with the word ?conscience? as defining personal Dao.

Can someone illuminate this matter?

 

[jesed]

Hi Bruce

Well, "learned patterns of right and wrong - such as those imposed by various religious establishments" is not the only (neither the better) way to understand "conscience".

I share the traditon I had learned, in case it could be useful

1.- Men/Women have BODY/SOUL/SPIRIT

2.- BODY is not only the phisical body. Includes Mind and "energetical" body

3.- MIND includes 2 kind of "Mind". Artificial Mind and Natural Mind

4.- When Lao Tze speaks against "knowledgement", he is speaking of Artificial Mind; when he speaks of "non-know", "non-act" is speaking of Natural Mind

5.- Meditation (real meditation) helps to achieve Natural Mind. Without natural mind, one cann't follow Tao.

6- "patterns of right and wrong - such as those imposed by various religious establishments" belongs to artificial mind. That's why Lao Tze speaks against "religion"; because is a substitute for natural way.

7.- "Conscience", in its higher meaning, is the Natural Mind. That's why the individual Tao is expressed through conscience=natural mind.

8.- With a Natural Mind, on can find what is the Own Nature, and the Rol to play in the world. And following that (individual Tao) one can fulfill the return to Tao.


Best wishes

 

[bruce]

Hi Jesed,

I agree with everything you've said. Natural mind, or innocent mind, feels correct in connection with what "I think" is the intended meaning of "conscience"

What I'm curious about here is, if there is a literal translation that may offer a clearer definition than the word "conscience". It seems to me that the word(s) "innocence" or ?original nature? might be more suitable. But I?m really mining for the literal Chinese word used for it as it relates to the individual Dao.

 

[bruce]

Also if there is a connection to Wu Wang.

 

[bradford_h]

Hi Bruce

There are places in the Yi where I've seen Conscience as a valid translation of Xin1, the heart radical, normally rendered as heart or mind. I only used it in the Matrix though. In modern Chinese conscience is Liang Xin.

I found something interesting lately in starting to learn Portugues. Maybe a Brasilian reader could help here. The word "consciencia" doesn't make a very sharp distinction at all between Conscience, Conscientiousness and Consciousness. This sort of implies that knowing right from wrong and taking care in what you do is a function more of waking up than of what rules you've been taught.

For me the word conscience refers to something much more "Wu Wang". I use the word Morality to refer to the societal mores we've adopted with or without question. And the word Ethics, being a branch of philosophy, to refer to a set of personally held tenets that has been examined in some depth, especially if personalized or customized. What Gandhi had I call Conscience. But he called it Satyagraha, "holding to truth", which to him too was a function of consciousness.

 

[bruce]

Hi Brad,

The Portuguese definition makes a great deal of sense to me, ie: Conscience/Consciousness. The OT Bible speaks of 'the laws written upon the heart of man?, which also makes sense. I've adopted similar definitions of morality and ethics from an earlier discussion on this board, where you made the distinction.

It?s a fine line, though, because as soon as the premonition of conscience arises (in the more typical sense), we attach learned thinking, which becomes believing, and that too, then, becomes a part of our conscience and our consciousness. I think we have to be strict in acceptance of anything which claims to represent the Dao, but which in fact has been integrated into our consciousness from external influences, and which exhibits contradictions to the Dao.

Thanks

 

[nicky_p]

Hello,

The Portuguese language is a romantic language meaning that it has developed from Latin which also is one of the foundations of modern day English.

What I found interesting was a Latin word for consciousness: animus with the other possible translations as; character, intellect, memory, courage, vivacity, bravery, will, spirit & soul.

One of the problems I find with English (as well as one of the joys!) is that because it's what is known as a 'borrowing' language it has one of the largest vocabularies - with many words that originally were only 1 encompassing the whole meaning. A problem of over-specialisation?

I don't know very much about Chinese but it seems to be a very symbolic language also encompassing great meaning within one character.

To me there seem to be a lot of similarities between Latin and my perception of Chinese as it stands - the communication seems less of a verablisation and more of an understanding or maybe visualisation.

Love
Nicky
xx

 

[bradford_h]

Hi Nicky-
I only know the older Chinese, from the Han Dynasty, and this is not very similar to Latin. Latin (and Portugues) are very rule bound grammatically. Declensions, conjugations, gender, tense are all tightly specified. This is the opposite of Chinese, in which you have to infer part of speech, gender, plurality, tense, mood - just about everything - from the character's place in the pattern of characters that make up a sentence. Actually, if this resembles any language we came up with in the West it's Tarot Cards.
You are so right about English as a borrowing language with a huge vocabulary, hundreds of thousands of words. Compare this to Chinese, with only 10,000 characters. So each character had to have a huge range of meanings to cover the whole of existence. This is a main reason why it's so poetic and evocative. This became intolerable in China as life got more complex - that's why most concepts seen to be named or conveyed these days with multiple characters - more combinations available.

 

[nicky_p]

Hi Brad,

Thank you for the information on chinese characters. If I may I'll try and explain where I see the similarities:

the meaning of latin words is also drawn from positioning. A Latin word is made up of a root and various affixes which can be at the beginning, end or even in the middle of the root by which sex, tense etc is derived. A Latin word also derives meaning from where it is in a sentence - depending on the clause in which a noun arrives shows whether it is the subject or object of the sentence - Latin sentences are structured differently from English - subject, object, verb. I order to understand a language such as this the grammatical rules have to be known whereas English grammer is very open. In English, wherever a 'rule' comes up a whole list of exceptions is produced beside it! It does mean that it is a beautiful language with a lot of immagery and variety but it can be hard to 'understand' even when it is your first language!

Love
Nicky
xx

 

[nicky_p]

Hi Brad,

I had to run last night in the middle of my thoughts but I'd thought I'd return to it if that's OK.

The beauty of modern languages is that they are living and so forever changing. The grammatical rules of English and Portuguese, whilst there, are not always 'followed' in every day use of the language. In Portuguese the vobabulary is directly derived from Latin and grammer for the inter-relation of verbs and nouns etc is very similar with the exception of the word order - which follows along the English of subject, verb, object. This lends itself to the disregard of certain grammatical rules as an affix is no longer needed to ascertain the the semantic meaning. The 'rule' book hasn't really been updated on this though making written Portuguese and spoken Portuguese quite different. I suppose what we would call slang but slang is making its way into the dictionary.

I think that in order to work out where languages are going and their meaning it helps to know about where it has come from.

Latin is a 'dead' subject - writings are preserved along with the grammatical rules.This enables us to analyse it to derive it's 'meaning' in relation to English. I'm guessing that this is also similar to old Chinese.

I hope that I've made sense - English is quite a scientific language and so you can get lost in jargon and explaining it.

Love
Nicky
xx