[bravura]

'At the time, I was newly infatuated with the writing of Quentin Tarantino and David Mamet, so my dream version of a TTC reflected the simplicity and grit of their dialogue.'

Here is how Hogan translates the first lines of the Tao Te Ching:

If you can talk about it,

it ain't Tao.

If it has a name,

it's just another thing.

[pringk02]

Personally, as someone who has read (and often rereads) the Tao in the original Chinese (with a lot of assistance and references!). I actually really like Hogan's translation. I don't think it holds as the only translation you need, but I feel a lot of translators become fixated on trying to capture the mystic poetic-ness of the Tao, but it is impossible to render this in English without loosing one of its most important stylistic elements: it's extreme terseness.

Hogan's translation misses a lot of "meaning", but you're missing the point if you want the specificity of the word choice translated for you.

[__rito__]

These ideas are very much reflected in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

What enters your mind and goes through a function of complete rational cognition- cannot be the ultimate truth.

And we repeatedly see in Zen koans, also mentioned in GEB, and life and teachings of Buddha that all questions cannot be purely answered with mere words.

Tractatus, Godel's Incompleteness, Halting problem, and these all somehow talk about the same unknowability- or at least intellectually.