Tao Te Ching, 44-66

I think I finally understand what wu-wei is. I realized I'd been looking at in the wrong way for the past week. I thought wu-wei was the belief that if, for example, you didn't plow the field, some ghost would come along and plow it for you. I was, understandably, a bit confused.

"The world is ruled by letting things take their course./It cannot be ruled by interfering." (Forty-Eight)

I just realized that what he meant by "doing by not doing," is that things will happen by themselves. You don't need to act to make things happen, the Tao makes it so that things happen away. By interfering you're just stopping the things from taking their own course. Sixty-Four enforces my belief; "Deal with it before it happens./Set things in order before there is confusion." I think he means that if you don't act, then you won't cause trouble. It's only if you act that bad things happen, which is why you should let everything be.

"If I have even just a little sense,/I will walk on the main road and my only fear will be of straying from it." (Fifty-Three)

I don't think Tsu would like Robert Frost. Lao wants to do things the simple way, which could also be considered the "easy" way (although I think that if it were so easy more people would follow the Tao), while Frost wanted to take the more difficult and complicated path, feeling that he would get more of a reward from it. I actually agree more with Robert Frost, although that's probably because I'm thoroughly westernized. I tend to think that things that are more difficult and complex are "better." Lao Tsu probably wouldn't approve of me either.

I like Fifty-Seven, even though I don't agree that having less laws would make less bad people. Certainly they wouldn't be punished for doing unjust things, but wouldn't that just motivate the cowards to do things they wouldn't have dared doing if they knew they could get punished? I think it wouldn't solve anything.