Who knew I was a Taoist all along? I thought I was a nihilist. Not the kind with black turtlenecks but another kind. I’ve always been a bit interested in Dao/Taoism but never studied. All of the western weirdos who were into Eastern philosophy scared me off. I didn’t want to turn into one of them like Steve Jobs or that hippy book about motorcycle maintenance. I believe in living in the moment and always have. Back when I was first studying Chinese I learned all the words for moving around: directions, street signs and so on because those are immediately useful. A lot of them had the character dao in them somewhere, like dadao, boulevard or daoda, arrive.
One day, I step into the vestibule of some random temple and there is a two-story high scroll of the character 到.
As I craned my neck to see the top, I said, “ooooh, I get it! Dao! The way!”
Upon seeing this, I was enlightened.
I never trust translations, sadly. Not since I saw two Harvard scholars of Chinese sing a song about how to remember the order of dynasties and they had the worst pronunciation ever. Super cringe. Knee how? Because speaking the language is beneath them.
That’s in the textbooks, too. They write them. Because obviously the only reason to learn is go go all the way to classical Chinese so you can read Tang dynasty poetry and Mencius in the original. I got all the way to the end of Book 1 of a well-regarded series and couldn’t say, “where’s the bathroom?” When I complained about this I was told off in a contemptuous tone, “buy a phrasebook, loser.”