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Title: Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Edgar Neville ISBN: 0-8112-0103-1 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: March, 1988 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Superb Work
Comment: This work is incredibly fascinating. What Merton did here was craft a translation of already existing translations, picking out those sayings he held close to heart. Now after Lao Tzu, as far as early Chinese Taoism is concerned, follows Chuang Tzu concerning his impact and influence on the "religion." Like Socrates exists largely because of the writings of Plato, so too did Lao Tzu exist as a result of many of Chuang Tzu's writings. This work, or any work involving Chuang Tzu, is a terrific friend for anyone endeavoring to study the Tao Te Ching. Thomas Merton keeps Chuang Tzu's poetic approach intact throughout this piece, while at the same time even he would confess (I'd suspect) that he was giving his own personal version to us readers. In fact he alludes to this in the introduction of this fine book. The connotations being not necessarily word for word literal accounts.
Chuang Tzu was a fascinating, prolific, and witty ancient Taoist master. One could even go so far as to say he was essentially a Zen master. And that Zen masters are Taoist masters. Of course the whole point of this review being----
BUY THIS BOOK!
Rating: 5
Summary: The Way of Thomas Merton
Comment: ~
I used this as a text in a highschool class on meditation. I chose it after looking at all the translations I could get my hands on (my Chinese, alas! is not yet up to reading the original.) Other translations were sometimes more literal and accurate, and some did a better job of conveying Chuang's brilliant word-play, but the overall impression they left of Chuang was either of a pedant (the older translations) or a sneering, bitter stand-up comic (the newer ones). This is much more deeply untrue to Chuang-Tzu than any passing inaccuracy or missed word-play could ever be.
There is only one way in which Merton is more qualified than Chuang's other interpreters: he, like Chuang, was a serious, long-time contemplative, a person who spent hours a day at meditation and prayer. But this qualification seems to me to have trumped all others. Merton and Chuang were brothers: no matter that they were two millenia and half a world apart. Somewhere right now they are walking together at a river's edge, watching the fish leap.
"I know the joy of fishes
In the river
Through my own joy, as I go walking
Along the same river"
My students, by the way -- rather to my surprise -- loved this book as much as I did.
Rating: 5
Summary: The perfect companion to the _Tao Te Ching_.
Comment: This little book is the perfect companion to Lao-Tzu's _Tao Te Ching_. Thomas Merton assembled it with admirable spiritual insight and sensitivity. Here is the path of the ancient sages. It is not a "how to" manual, for, "He who knows does not speak, and he who speaks does not know." And yet, this book somehow indirectly gives you a sense of what it is to be centered in the Tao. You get a fleeting sense of what it is like to live a life of such centerness and simplicity that it is difficult to tell where your own consciousness ends and the currents of the cosmos begin. This is the state of Wu Wei, effortless action in complete resonance with the Tao.
I suppose that what I found so refreshing during this rereading was the confirmation that men of wealth, station, and learning are not to be admired. They are the least enlightened of men. Indeed, the true man of Tao will live humble in simplicity and obscurity- and yet such beings are the true wellsprings of cosmic harmony between heaven and earth....
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Title: Zen and the Birds of Appetite. by Thomas, Merton ISBN: 081120104X Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: Mystics and Zen Masters by Thomas Merton ISBN: 0374520011 Publisher: Noonday Press Pub. Date: 29 November, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Tao Te Ching : 25th-Anniversary Edition by Lao Tsu, Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English ISBN: 0679776192 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton by Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart, Naomi B. Stone ISBN: 0811205703 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1988 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton ISBN: 081120099X Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: November, 1974 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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