Discourse on Taoist Philosophy
In an ancient China full of selfish lords, underhanded merchants who would do anything to turn a profit, and faithless children who went against their parents out of self-interest, the modest thinker Lao-Tze created his philosophy of Taoism. It sought to balance the excess of creative impulse and active imagination [yang] with receptivity, passiveness, and understanding [yin]. His timeless text, Tao Te Ching, overflows with paradoxes and antilogies as it attempts to explain the mysterious power of the cosmos [Te], a concept virtually unheard of in the Western world, translated as “actionless action” [Wu Wei], the being who has mastered wu wei [the Sage], and the way itself [Tao] – things which to the untrained eye, appropriately enough, may ironically never be understood. Te may best be described as “the effortless spontaneity of all things acting in a harmonious way.” Lao-Tze saw te as the forces of the world at their purest – the perfect concord of yin and yang. It is characteristic of all natural things to act in regard to one another, and Lao-Tze obviously wanted to carry this over to human behavior. Te is also seen as the power which is used by a master of tao – not a physical po
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Sage Tao, Te Ching, Taoist Philosophy, wu wei, Wu Wei, wu wei sage, wei sage, yin yang, tao –, te ching, actionless action, Tao Te, tao te ching, action wu, understand life, action wu wei, tao te, philosophy taoism, actionless action wu,
Approximate Word count = 973
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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