Charles Muller's translation of 38 says:

Occult abilities are just flowers of the Tao
And the beginning of foolishness

Therefore the Master dwells in the substantial
And not in the superficial.
Rests in the fruit and not in the flower.

Click to expand...

The footnote says 'occult abilities' refer to fortune telling and the art of divination.

To me this is saying that life is a better teacher than the abstractions offered by the oracle. A zen focus on the present.

I've looked at a couple other translations and they don't mention the occult at all. What do you think??

Caleb

p.s. I really like Muller's translation, and you can get it for $6 at any Barnes and Noble. They picked up his translation for their "Barnes & Noble Classics" series. Greatness in an inconspicuous package, very Daoist

I looked it up and it turns out that most translators have 'foreknowledge' here instead of 'occult abilities'. But Crowley has 'understanding' and Legge 'swift apprehension'.

Feels right to me, I think it's about understanding or knowing in general, not only foreknowledge etc. Understanding/knowing this or that is at best the flower. It's not the fruit.
The fruit may not know or understand anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng-ggs0b1wQ

Gia-Fu Feng and poem 38

The lines cited are bits of the final two stanzas of poem 38 where a cascade of decay is being described. From an initial state of the truly good man is unaware of his goodness, to the various levels of foolish overreaching and decay. The poem ends with the difference between the flower and fruit--one is pretty but only the final fruit can be eaten.

Gia-Fu Feng's Taoist translation of the Tao Te Ching, published as a big coffee table book with pretty nature photos (and Chinese calligraphy) by Random House to confuse those choosing their books by their covers not their contents, tends to the Daoist perspective of making moral judgments about how one acts from inner Source and not from objective judgments of what is good or not.

Gia-Fu ends that stanza you quote with:
"Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of Tao.
It is the beginning of folly."

The next stanza starts off:

"Therefore the truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface.
On the fruit and not the flower. Therefore accept the one and reject the other."

In the context of the U.S. today, with the myopic fascination upon political polls and the minutia of campaign details... this seems to be a statement that the horse race is only of interest until the finish line and soon after it has no lasting meaning. What is important about what is occurring is not the superficial details that will be reported in tomorrow's newspaper. What matters is why? Where does this all come from and where is it going? And what does it mean for me. All these answerable by the Oracle but not by polling or statistical analysis.

Understand the real meaning, whether by occult oracle or other investigation, this will indicate what is the final result of the whole process. Something polling and most fortune telling can't do very well, though the Oracle can.

Flowers are the sex organs of plants which use them to attract pollen which is just the starting point for the reproductive process which comes to its ultimate product in the fruit (especially in human terms, where all we care about is eating the fruit around the seeds that the plant cares about).

Frank

I interpret the key lines as:
"The person involved with foreknowledge of the future is discussing a little piece of the flower, but this is a dumb place to start." and "This is a good reason to leave behind the one and embrace the other."

I'm not sure how you could have a non-prophetic translation of "the person providing that which is ahead-of-time knowledge." (qian shi zhe)

I think this is not saying that divination is worthless or foolish. It does say that if you look to fortune-telling as a glib, mindless way of trying to get an advantage while being a thoughtless, manipulative, jerk, you'll still be a mindless jerk when it's all over. If you understand the underlying deep processes of cause and effect, you can wisely penetrate to the heart of the matter, without needing to get a magical handout from a fortune-teller.

"The one" that is left behind is not the wisdom of the Yi, pursued with an open heart, but the particular person who leads the seeker astray: the shallow fortune-teller who can give an exciting prediction, but doesn't help you become any wiser.

I don't see any contradiction between studying the Tao and the Yi. Of course, I might be that shallow misleader to a more devout Taoist!

qian2 shi2 can have several meanings, including
(being) first to know
being ahead in knowledge
prior knowledge
foreknowledge

It doesn't necessarily mean divination,
although it can. It can also mean
leading with the intellect
or putting thoughts first (instead of sense)
or idealism

This is the flowery, not of the root

Idealism is indeed only another flower, along with intellect.

I discovered yesterday my plain, ordinary, retired neighbor is truly a wise man, who knows very little about ideals and intellect, but who possesses a reliable compass.

fortune telling vs.personal meaning

The essential problem with fortune telling is that such predictions at best only report tomorrow's newspaper headlines yesterday. When tomorrow comes they are irrelevant and no longer of any interest to anyone. Personal meaning, however, the best use of Yi divination becomes more valuable as time goes on since it explains why things are happening as they are.

The two images are flower and fruit. Flowers are designed to attract attention, but fruit is the final product of the plant's useful life which will seed the next generation.

Frank

That's true, Frank, flowers shouldn't be downplayed, as they play a critical role in fruit-bearing, to say nothing of awakening the senses.

What is important in a metaphor differs from reality

Hi Meng,

The use of flowers and fruit in the Tao Te Ching is a metaphor, not a statement of the inherent importance or value of either to the continued flourishing of the plant species. Flowers are vital to the reproduction of the plant, but they are only eye candy for humans looking for food to harvest.

Imagine a plant or tree with branches filled with flowers and fruit. The flowers are pretty, maybe well-scented, but they should be left alone to continue their development of fruit. The fruit needs to go somewhere to propagate the plant's seeds and might as well go to human uses where they may easily get transported to new ground to arise from the garbage heaps to grow new plants in new places.

Frank