Lao Tzu + *headdesk*
Sep. 18th, 2007 06:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
athenaltenaHuh. While listening to the news just now, I heard "The DOW" as "The Tao", probably because today in my English class we were discussing the Tao Te Ching and I still had it on the brain. Discussing that text was interesting, though people had some very interesting (read: wrong) ideas about it.
For instance, Lao Tzu says nothing about letting yourself die and/or not fighting. After all, the text was written during China's Warring States Period, so he just wouldn't say something like that if he wanted the people reading it to live. Lao Tzu is many things, but an advocate for passivity he's not. He's more about social order in a stable society, and he stays out of military matters for the most part, with the notable exception of this verse, which stresses that people should not take pleasure from war and treat it like the loss of life that it is, he stays away from that.
I realize that it's by nature a hard text to understand, and I have actually read several versions of it since the translations vary widely and different meanings can be taken from it. It did make for some interesting discussion in class about ethics and Lao Tzu's suggestions for ruling, but I just about *headdesked* when someone suggested that Lao Tzu would be in favor of not resisting a military occupation and essentially letting yourself be killed. That's more Buddhist than Taoist, thank you, and even Buddhism varies widely in regards to that. Shades of grey, people, that's sort of Lao Tzu's point.
For instance, Lao Tzu says nothing about letting yourself die and/or not fighting. After all, the text was written during China's Warring States Period, so he just wouldn't say something like that if he wanted the people reading it to live. Lao Tzu is many things, but an advocate for passivity he's not. He's more about social order in a stable society, and he stays out of military matters for the most part, with the notable exception of this verse, which stresses that people should not take pleasure from war and treat it like the loss of life that it is, he stays away from that.
I realize that it's by nature a hard text to understand, and I have actually read several versions of it since the translations vary widely and different meanings can be taken from it. It did make for some interesting discussion in class about ethics and Lao Tzu's suggestions for ruling, but I just about *headdesked* when someone suggested that Lao Tzu would be in favor of not resisting a military occupation and essentially letting yourself be killed. That's more Buddhist than Taoist, thank you, and even Buddhism varies widely in regards to that. Shades of grey, people, that's sort of Lao Tzu's point.
