Hey everyone,
Hope you’re doing well. I’m nearing the end of my studies of the Daodejing and we’ll soon be transitioning to read the Zhuangzi, which is the primary focus for my thesis next year. While Laozi and Zhuangzi both have different forms of Taoism, they generally tend to advocate for similar things, particularly to do away with absolute moral principles and rigid definitions of language. Hence it’s been useful to do some background work in Laozi before starting my thesis work.
My favorite passage this week was the eighth passage of the Daodeding. Here, Laozi talks about how the highest goodness is like water. That it benefits all things but without struggle, in a very natural way. The Dao is similar to this aspect of water, in that it comes very naturally. Water also goes to and comes from places that human beings tend to “hate”, and doesn’t make any forced unnatural distinctions between good and bad places, like human beings do. Hence, if we’re to study the Dao, Laozi encourages us to study the water, and its movement, rather than us to go study how other people do things and imitate them like we are so wont to do (不要人為）。How can we better embody the features of water in our everyday lives?