Tao Te Ching, 77-End

"Knowing ignorance is strength./Ignoring knowledge is sickness." (Seventy-One)

Here's another example of Lao's dislike for learning. The poem then goes on to say that since a sage didn't know, he could not ignore his knowledge and therefore could not become "sick of sickness." Though I agree that ignoring knowledge is sick, I don't think that simply being ignorant will help. In both cases, you end up making decisions without any real understanding of what you're deciding on and the decision would ultimately be the same. Lao's hate of learning reminds me of the Catholics and their hate for science. Does Tao also think it's disrespecting the Tao to try and learn about it, or that the Tao is so mystifying there's no use trying to understand it because it can't be understood?

Seventy-Five is also a good poem. I like how it explains that a government that's too complicated would cause trouble, although I don't agree with the idea. Tsu seems really anarchist, and I think that if there wasn't a central government everyone would just do whatever thy wanted, which could work if everyone was good, but since we're obviously not then it just spells trouble. And a lot of it.

'"The hard and strong will fall./The soft and weak will overcome." (Sixty-Six)

At first I didn't understand what this meant, but then I thought of another book I'd read that explained it better (Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell). An old lady is explaining to Scarlett O'Hara that she was a survivor because, like grass, she bended but never broke. It's also something that Confucius talked about; you should never be completely rigid, you should adapt yourself to the environment you're in, not expect it to adapt to you because that wasn't going to happen. The analogy was that hard branches were broken by strong winds, but the grass always rose back up in the end.

"The Tao of the sage is work without effort." (Eighty-One)

I just thought I should put this in because it's the closing line of the Tao Te Ching, and it restates what seems to be it's most important moral, wu-wei. I already gave my interpretation of wu-wei so I won't write it again.

I like this book,though at first I thought it was really confusing and must've been written by some sort of madman. But when I started to think about some of the things he said, I saw that it usually made sense, even though I didn't always agree with him. It also helped me understand some aspects of Confucianism, such as the rigid part I just mentioned; and even the parts I didn't understand we're so beautifully written I liked reading them anyway.