Dao Te Ching By Lao Tzu

Taoism is one of the most popular Chinese philosophical and religious practices. It denotes the ‘way’ of living as a process of pursuing stillness and non-action. This idea is discussed in Dao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Taoism achieves attentions and significance from philosophers and literature scholars as Taoism gets interpreted in many different ways. As a companion of Dao Te Ching, The book of Chuang Tzu is the second most influential and popular literature that concerns with the interpretation and application of Taoism. Different from Tao Te Ching, The Book of Chuang Tzu elaborates on Taoism with philosophical fantasy narratives and poetries that are obscure and erotic. Why does he write about animals such as butterflies, horse and goats? What …show more content…
A paradox is built on whether people act with their minds or intuition from their hearts. The textual contradictions in Working everything out evenly imply that appealing to different perspectives lead to different judgments. Furthermore, Chuang Tzu develop his skepticism by arguing that we cannot ever claim to know anything because we might be wrong about anything we claim to know. His argument is a result of his belief that we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. Thus people need to prevent themselves from making judgments about whether it is good or bad. When people cope with the limited perspective of socialized and linguistic understanding, the perspective is too vague and paradoxical for people to build a judgment. Chuang Tzu’s skepticism about understanding and language can be applied as that since things are beyond people’s ability to know with certainty, they have to relieve their anxieties and accept the things that happen to them with …show more content…
Chuang Tzu’s argument goes beyond the function of ‘useless’ and reflects his idea of Taoism about one’s life. A life is a source of longevity. It is supposed to be protected, kept whole, nurtured and cultivated. Chuang Tzu’s opinion creates a sense that one’s life derives from natural development, so it can escape from artificial social structure that is regulated and re-calibrated. This is because the more we try to curtail the natural meanderings, the more complicated the social structures become. In the case of trees, they are more likely to be exploited by human. Therefore, Chuang Tzu thinks there is little for people to change things in a corrupt or artificial world. However, if one really wants to try, then the one has to be careful with the dangers and be aware of the natures of things, and they transform and