Interpretation of Chinese Vocabulary from the Perspective of "Taoism and Nature" —— Notes on Fu Peirong's Talking about Laozi (Ⅱ)

Fu Peirong was born in 1950. Graduated from Fu Jen Catholic University, Taiwan Province Provincial University, majoring in religious philosophy. He used to be a professor at the University of Leuven and Leiden in the Netherlands, director of the Department and Institute of Philosophy of Taiwan Province Provincial University, and now he is a professor at the Department and Institute of Philosophy of Taiwan Province Provincial University.

Interpretation of Chinese Vocabulary from the Perspective of "Taoism and Nature" —— Notes on Fu Peirong's Talking about Laozi (Ⅱ)

? Wen San Zuo chi

"Taoism is natural" comes from the twenty-fifth chapter of Laozi's Tao Te Ching. The original text said: "People abide by the law, the earth abides by the law, the sky abides by the law, and the Tao is natural." Let's look at Mr Fu Peirong's translation. "People take the law from the ground, the ground takes the law from the sky, the sky takes the law from the Tao, and the Tao takes the law from its own state." Basically, people live on the ground and need grains that grow on the ground to nourish them. The growth of ground plants depends on the favorable weather conditions of the four seasons, and the law of Heaven is based on the law of Tao. Tao is the way to adopt this state.

Let's think about how to translate "Tao, Law and Sex". Nature is definitely not nature. Tao is "the truth", while law is "taking the law" and "self-nature, self-nature", but it is also "such a state". When understanding the meaning of Chinese, especially the meaning of ancient Chinese, we must understand each word separately. The ancients cherished words as gold, and every word had its original meaning. If understood together, it is wrong. Usually, every word is made up of words. If the words in a sentence are connected smoothly, they are probably not far from the original intention. In fact, classical Chinese is not difficult to understand. And many Chinese words and idioms further condense the original text, especially when understood. If you understand the meaning of a word alone, it is easy to miss part of the meaning of the word.

A word about "nature" that we often encounter is "let nature take its course". When we think of this word, when things go wrong, of course, we don't conform to nature, but to what we are, not deliberately or forcibly.

Finally, think about words that often appear in our lives. In fact, most of them don't fully understand, such as "sports", "hunger" and "harmony". If you think about it carefully, you will find that what you often say is actually not understood in place.

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