Hi and welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know. A podcast about classical education, the classical world, old books. Sometimes we've maybe even talked about movies. And what's the door?
Once the door. Twice the door. And we're just three guys who like philosophy and literature and art and history. And yeah, we're just casting the pods about it.
And today, AJ is telling us about something old. What do you got? What an intro. So compelling.
Something old. So today, I have been thinking about sort of trying to branch out from the Western canon. So I was thinking of reading through the Vedas texts, some of the texts of the world's great religions, and some of the philosophical texts. I'm hoping to do Confucianism as well.
I'm just poking around, getting into old stuff, wherever I can. And we've been in the Western canon for a really long time. So I thought I would try to reach out and get into the Eastern canon. I found that that's a little bit hard, because I'm a Western person.
And even in reading, I couldn't shake my Western bias. And then as I read the, so for this week, I read the Dabda Ching. And even during my reading, I couldn't shake it. And then as I was reading intros and stuff to the Dabda Ching to understand it better.
Commentaries. The commentaries. It made clear how difficult it was for me to shake my Western bias while I read the Dabda Ching. So just keep that in mind.
It'll also keep in mind that this is not within my expertise. And I'm doing my best over here, audience. So the Dao is written by a fellow named Lao Tzu, which I guess is sort of like a shadowy old master, old philosopher. But chances are there wasn't really one Lao Tzu.
What really happened was it was an oral tradition passed down. And then having been touched by many hands was eventually codified into sort of this long philosophical piece. Same art of war guy. Do you have art of war?
Did you write art of war? That's not asking you. You're the expert. Is it art of war by Lao Tzu?
No, not Sanszu. Yeah, the other guy. Oh. I think you're assuming two stars.
I think you're assuming two stars. Yeah, that doesn't deserve two stars. Yeah, something, that intro. Which we had to re-record.
Yeah. Bloopers come in, audience. So it was pulled together during the QIN, QIN dynasty. How do we pronounce that?
The QIN dynasty. Around the 4th century BC, it was kind of a reaction against the Confucianism that had been ruling the philosophy of the time. And Confucianism is really rigid, right? There's prescriptions for way that you should live your life.
There are prescriptions for high-shidact and family. And this is less of that. It's a little bit more formless, which I'll get into as we go. This was also during a time when martial strategy, like warfare was getting better and better and better.
And we're moving towards the phalanx. And people would put up sea walls and then have them torn right back down. And so it was a time of warring states for sure. And there was a ton of bloodshed.
And it was a very militant kind of atmosphere in China at the time. And in fact, a lot of the books from that time are military strategy books, like the art of war. I don't know if it's from that time, but kind of that same kind of thing. For Christmas, I got a book of the seven texts of classical military text of ancient China.
Apparently, there are these seven seminal works that anybody interested in the martial arts of in China have to read. So I got a Christmas read it. So yeah, this is a reaction against those. So you know, balance it out.
I mean, eventually, Graham might come at you with some military stuff. And hopefully, this will prime you as a purse of peace. Come on, bro. So you have to get yourself in sort of an Eastern mindset, which means that there are things about the West that didn't necessarily happen in the East.
So Greek thought is largely concerned with static things that we can define and separate and say, OK, this is the way that nature works, right? There are four things that compose nature. They are static. It was what hot moist, cold, dry.
There's earth, air, wind, and fire. But those are the results of hot moist, cold, dry. Remember. That was never.
Earth, wind, and fire. Thanks. Yeah, why not water? It's a great point.
It's a great point. Earth, wind, and fire? Is it earth, wind, and fire? The thick three out of four.
Yeah. Oh, man. I don't know. If you know.
Anyway, those elements are the result of the base elements of the world, hot, moist, cold, dry. And so the Greeks are very concerned with staticness. And this is even evident in the way that Christianity grew up. We talk about God in terms of being someone who doesn't change, who is pure of substance, right?
And there's a reason it's inseparable partially because the New Testament grew up in the time of the Greeks and the Roman occupation. And so Greek and Roman ideas and the ideas of the West are tied into Christianity, right? Many of our great philosophers are Westerners, right? They were Romans or they were all around the Mediterranean at that time.
Yeah, they were Helene's kind of. So it's hard to shake that. When you start getting into this Eastern tradition, it's a little bit different. Things are less defined, at least in Taoism, right?
There are change is sort of built into the world. And things are harder to separate, right? When you talk about a flower, well, the sun shines on a flower, and the wind brings seeds to let that flower grow. And then there's the earth that's involved, and you've got to have rain.
And so even in the basic enjoyment of a flower, which might put the smile on a kid's face, well, everything in the world is connected to that. And that kind of reaches back to your episode about causation, right? It's really hard to say this one thing caused something because everything causes everything. Everything causes everything, right?
Everything's kind of involved. And so the notion of the oneness of the universe is more present in the Eastern tradition than it is in the Western. And so even on my first read through, it was hard for me to sort of be OK with that change. All right, so let's go through a little bit of it.
I don't know that there's any chapters in this thing, or even any real movements. There's a couple that you could say, OK, these couple of chapters are about this, these few chapters are about this. But for the most part, it is a reiteration of kind of the same notion over and over and over again. And so I'll read you an occasional chapter here and there.
It's actually pretty short read. It's maybe 40 pages long. There are 81 chapters. But by chapter, I mean, it's the length of the poem, right?
It's really short. So there's any one of those. I'll read you a couple in their entirety. I'll read other small quotes.
And to kind of give you an idea of the feel of the text and what Taoism is like. And then we can talk about the precepts of Taoism after we finish and kind of what the philosophy is in a nutshell, if we can kind of piece it together. And then I have a few questions after that. So we'll see how it goes.
So chapter one, Tao, which means the way, that can be spoken is not the constant Tao. The name that can be named is not a constant name. Nameless is the origin of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of all things.
Thus, the constant void enables one to observe the true essence. The constant being enables one to see the outward manifestations. These two compared from the same origin. But when the essence is manifested, it has a different name.
The same origin is called the profound mystery. As profound the mystery as it can be, it is the gate to the essence of all life. Got it. Yeah, exactly.
You got that? OK, perfect. I'm glad we're all on board. I can see that your difficulty in summarizing that.
If the rest of it is that same tone, you kind of need to read this book on your own to really understand any of it. It's a profound mystery. Or just it's something that should be meditated on much more so than it is. Again, most of our episodes are summarizing a book.
I have no idea how you would summarize that, other than to say everything is a mystery. But that doesn't really capture it. Exactly. And there's stuff I just fully don't understand.
When the essence is manifested, it has a different name. It doesn't say what the name is. I'm kind of unclear. The same origin is called the profound mystery, which origin.
I think all of this is partially tied up in the philosophy of the time. And from my limited understanding of Eastern philosophy, the world has kind of sprung out of chaos. And so when it's talking about the void, I think it's kind of talking about that, what the world is sprung out of. And then to kind of give you a little bit of footing here, I think there's three different ways or dows that are under discussion.
There is the way of nature, in which the laws are kind of constant. There's the way of the universe, which includes the laws of nature and the laws of man. Or laws is maybe the wrong word. What nature does, that's the way of nature.
And so the way of nature and the way of the universe are maybe not separate, but the way of the universe also includes man, I think. And the way of man is often very different from that of nature. Sometimes we do the opposite thing. And so what the dows is aimed at doing is helping you to become in tune with your own nature, the nature of the world around you in the universe, and thereby live a better life.
It's very practical. It's not like that sounded really mystical, but almost all the rest of the book is practical stuff. Here's how you should kind of act. Here's maybe the mindset you want to put yourself in.
Here's what's good. Here's what's bad. This is how you will live a positive, beneficial life for everyone around you and sort of be in tune with everything. So it's not so different from ancient Hellenistic thought in that it's occupying itself with questions of normative.
Yeah, it is occupying itself with questions of normative questions. And the funny thing is how many of those directly overlap with even Christian scripture and other philosophies of the West. But we'll get there. We're getting ahead of ourselves.
So chapter two, I was going to read the entirety of this one. That's one point, right? Yes, that is Lewis's point. Ooh, good point.
Come back to that. We'll circle back. We'll circle back. OK, chapter two.
As soon as beauty is known by the world as beautiful, it becomes ugly. So bad news for your gram. I mean, I'm sorry. Soon as, yeah.
I've known for ages. And the moment I knew. You were ugly to me. OK, as soon as virtue is being known as something good, it becomes evil.
Therefore, being and non-being give birth to each other. Difficult and easy accomplish each other. Long and short form each other. High and low distinguish each other.
Sound and tone harmonize each other. Before and after follow each other as a sequence. Realizing this, the saint performs effortlessly according to the natural way without personal desire and practices the wordless teaching through one's deeds. The saint inspires the vitality of all lives without holding back.
He nurtures all beings with no wish to take possession of. He devotes all his energy but has no intention to hold onto the merit. When success is achieved, he seeks no recognition. Because he does not claim for the credit.
He hence shall not lose it. OK. So that's what you guys in there? Well, once beautiful is recognized as beautiful it becomes ugly.
Is that like an attack on analysis? Like if you can perfectly chart out why this flower is beautiful, you've kind of robbed. You've taken something away from it by making it too sort of mapped out. The idea of one of your favorite poems about analyzing poems, tying it to a chair and beating it with a rope until it tells you what it means.
Like is that what he's getting at? If you recognize something as beautiful because you've run it through the equation of what beautiful is, that makes it ugly. And is he saying the same thing about virtue? If you can say this is good because of all of these causal reasons or whatever.
Now you've sort of robbed it of its goodness and it's going to be an evil because you've mastered, you've lorded yourself over it. You've understood it. Maybe. We can tell you our interpretations.
But it is not going to come back with. Yes, that's the right thing. Yes, this is definitely what's happening in this Eastern text. Absolutely.
Got it nailed it. Yeah. It's the word, maybe. I'll give point to AJ for diving through the reading the whole book.
It's actually pretty interesting. Like I said, it's a pretty short read. But is that the kind of ethos of it? Is it like you just experienced things?
Don't try to know things? No. What just experienced? Well, it's like the difference between English doesn't have a different word for knowing.
Whereas French you have connetre and savoir. You know something by analyzing it. You know something by having to live it. Oh, experiential.
And so is that the decision he's getting at? Like if you just sort of, if you know beauty by analyzing it, you destroy it. If you know virtue by analyzing it, you make it evil. That would be consistent with the rest of the text.
No. Awesome. I think. There's a part where he talks about knowledge and how it puffs up, and which is very reminiscent of some Christian notions there.
And then there's everything. Don't tell everything back to Christianity. Fair enough. I'm simply comparing it to a philosophy.
OK. So as I did that, I actually have a couple that I recognize that were almost direct overlaps. For example, although the saint puts himself last, he finds himself in the lead. Very interesting.
Right. Last, first. It is because he has not focused on self-interests, and hence can fulfill his true nature. So because you're not focused on what you want, you can be humble.
And that's actually I go to here in that second chapter that I read to you. He gets to help everybody flourish, because he's not worried about himself. Because he's not worried about himself. He can help everybody do good, everyone around him, all of nature.
And then because he's not trying to get the credit for doing that, he can never lose it. And so he's in a really good place. Like a high school teacher. Yes.
A non-self-grandizing one time. Or a grand. So this is also where we see a little bit of that yin yang thing. This is one of the texts where yin and yang shows itself.
And it actually uses the words here as we move through. It only shows up a couple of times. But that second chapter really has this duality. Things exist with their opposites.
And there's an ebb and flow between them. And actually in our between episode, we were talking about how a new story will spring up. And someone will put forth an interpretation of that story. And then someone else will put forward a counter-interpretation.
And then those things live symbiotically off of each other. And so I think the yin and yang principle, as I understand it, is recognizing that symbiotic nature between darkness and light and good and bad and ugliness and beauty and cause and effect, and all of those things working together in this flow of the way. And if I'm remembering it from the many, many, many years ago from when I read it, there's also the masculine and feminine tied into that as well. Where, yeah.
Cool. OK, I was also going to read chapter eight. So a person of great virtue is like the flowing water. Water benefits all things and contends not with them.
It puts itself in a place that no one wishes to be, and thus is closest to Tao. A virtuous person is like water which adapts itself to the perfect place. His mind is like the deep water that is calm and peaceful. His heart is kind like water that benefits all.
His words are sincere, like the constant flow of water. His governing is natural without desire, which is like the softness of water that penetrates through hard rocks. His work is of talent, like the free flow of water. His movement is of right timing, like the water that flows smoothly.
A virtuous person never forces his way and hence will not make faults. What do you guys think? Yeah, the virtuous person helps those around them and is like a blessing to be around. That sounds great.
I feel like I'm like a basement floods too much water. Oh, that's chapter nine. It talks about how if you are out to get yours, if you want your own goods and you are after wealth, you are like, and I quote, the overflowing water which shall cause damages. It is better to restrain yourself early.
Those who are not content with fame is like polishing the edge of a knife, the sharper it gets, the easier it is to break. So he's basically saying, you know, if you're after your own stuff, you're going to cause harm to everybody. But if you are chill and you just flow, you're just super chill and you help out everybody and you're kind and you're just like getting in all the spaces and being low as the volume like the water that helps everybody out. I bet some surfers like that.
That's why you like it, because it's just about being chill. So the chill is. So pated. Okay, all right, here's one more time.
You guys want me to talk to you? I wanted to give you guys a second. Wait a second. So what was it where water flows to the place that no one else wants to go?
What was that? It was, let's see. It puts itself in a place that no one wishes to be and thus is closest to Dow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What's your real known? It's closest to the way it puts itself where no one wants to be. How does that relate to virtue? I think maybe it's sort of, you are uniting yourself with nature, maybe?
Maybe. Or if water flows to the lowest point. Right. Oh, yeah, there's a lot of imagery about how the wise person is like a valley where all the water flows into and how the wise person is like a void, right?
You are, there's a lot about emptying yourself. The sort of receptiveness of the way. Yeah, you are receptive. You are just sort of open to your own nature, open to the nature of the universe and by being one with all of those things, then you can find yourself in a place of ease and contentment and being wise.
It makes sense to me that in later romanticism, they got real geeked up about what was that, what ended up being known as Orientalism, which is sort of an unfortunate name, but really got into Eastern texts because it does tie into that sort of romantic notion of like the words worth and cheats and not gates, words worth and cheats and color range of the sort of like receptiveness, openness, letting the winds of nature blow in the harp, the alien harp and that kind of thing. It's interesting. Sure. All right.
I like this format working out. We're actually going to read a chapter and you guys are smiling. That's doing okay. Chapter 10.
Can one unite the body and the spirit as one and embrace the oneness without departing from the great towel? Maybe. Can one achieve harmony with such gentleness by holding onto the true spirit within as if the innocence of an infant? Can one free oneself from worldly knowledge and cleanse one's mind so that no faults shall be made?
Can a ruler love his people by governing with the natural way without personal intention? Can the mystic gate to all life essence be opened or closed without the virtue of a mysterious nature? That one I'd maybe can't. I don't know.
I'm going to say it hard. Yes. I'm not going to. Can one gain the insight of nature and become a wise person without the effort of action?
The mysterious nature creates and nurtures all things without the desire to possess them. It performs with all efforts without claiming for credit. It flourishes all beings without the intention to take control of such as such is the mystic te or mystic virtue. Mystic te is virtue.
Okay. Yep. Okay. Catch me there.
I mean, there's a close association with that the wise man or the virtuous man has some kind of really close relationship to nature. Yes. Receptive to nature. The idea I get is like the hermit living by himself in the woods who is able to form his understanding of the way from the observations of nature.
Yeah. The things that sort of jumped out to me on that one were trying to be like an infant and sort of emptying yourself with personal intention. How do you rule a nation without personal intent in the way that is most conducive to that nation's growth and health without being personally involved? And that leads right into the next thing I want to read.
It's not even a full chapter. It's the idea that if we actually spoke to you right around one hub to make a wheel, it is the presence of the empty space that gives the function of a vehicle. Clay is molded into a vessel. It is the empty space that gives the function of a vessel.
Doors and windows are chiseled out to make a room. It is the empty space in the room that gives its function. Therefore, something substantial can be beneficial. That's a very famous passage.
At least that's the one I've heard before. The idea of the empty space to create the empty space makes the room. You're writing this. It's hard to comment on.
It does. I feel like there's an idea there that's sort of hard to grasp and and that is that there's a benefit in. Well, even if we were just thinking about your last episode, Thomas, where Happy is the man who understands the cause of things, here it's you are also happy if you can either rule out the causes of things or if you can understand the interplay between what is like a table and what isn't the table in the space that is empty. The table needs to have the area of not table for it to have its function and to be useful.
Isn't there also a natural quality to the one who's happy? It's, again, it's a consistency with who they are supposed to be. All the descriptions of the virtuous person, water doesn't think about where it's going. It just goes to, like you said before, the lowest point.
There's also something like almost without thought or without intention. It's only effortlessness. Effortlessness. It's acting within nature.
And this probably is reflected in what we, at least maybe even it's just stereotypically know of those kinds of practices of meditation and being present in the moment to really think about like, okay, I'm just existing as opposed to projecting in the future, remembering the past, I'm just trying to be present. And there was a section that I'm not going to read, but it was about how when you, man, the best translation I can give it is when you are trying to be good, you are clearly not good. The good person is good. They are good.
And it is a just person just sort of acts out of justice without thinking, right? And the person who is honest just tells the truth without having to think about it, right? The fact that you are trying implies that you are not that thing yet, right? If I'm trying to be virtuous, I'm not.
Yeah, this is sort of Kierkegaard's night of, not infinite resignation, another one, night of virtue, but it is, the good man is just kind of like, the good guy is doing his good life as opposed to the guy who's overthinking. Faith, not of faith. Yeah, that's sort of the idea of the night of faith is that like, it's this, you don't require this overthinking, the overthinkingness of it. The joke or the mean with the bell curve, we have the chocolate on one side and the sage on the other.
And the chocolate is like, I'm a good guy. I'm just doing good things. And the sage is like, just do good things. And the guy in the middle is like, no, you can't just do good things.
You have to know the reason of the causes of the wire doing these good things. You have to measure up. Yeah, so I think this book is aimed at making you like that sage. Do good things.
Empty yourself. Figure out how to flow into the empty spaces. Do what you need to do. And you can see how this kind of doctrine flies directly in the face of the militant attitude of the day, right?
It would be totally opposite of what they would be telling warriors. Or some kind of form of meritocracy, which is often in military, right? Like the best will rise to the top and whoever can do the best and be the best is going to be the one that we put laurels on and that kind of thing. Yeah.
Okay, I'm going to chapter 16 partially because I think it helps clear a lot of this up. It's a very straightforward blood chapter. It should be easy to grasp. Human must achieve the ultimate void and maintain calmness with sincerity in order to observe the growth and flourish of all beings, right?
It is in this way that one can understand the law of nature. All things and beings will eventually return to the original source. It's called peace. Peace means returning to one's original nature.
This original nature is the eternal law. To know the nature's law is to be enlightened. He who is ignorant of the nature's law shall act recklessly and thus will invite misfortune. To know the constant law of nature is to be generous.
Being generous, one is impartial. Being impartial, one is the sovereign. Sovereign is the nature itself. And nature is tau.
Tau is everlasting. When one's physical body dies away, tau is still long and doers. All right, did that make sense of some of this? Right.
So empty yourself and you can better look at nature and observe the growth and flourishing of all things. And in this way, you can understand the laws of nature and you can return to your source, find some peace, and then you get to be enlightened and you won't act recklessly. You can know you can be generous, impartial, sovereign, and this will return you to the tau, which is the way of nature. You make yourself like it.
So it has a ruling over yourself, ruling over your passions, but not in a like, not through force, but through levity. Right? Like it's almost, it's, yeah. You're not forcing yourself to act a certain way.
Yeah. You're almost removing burden, removing your example from before about meritocracy. You're like leading that game. Right.
It's not about getting to a certain rank. So, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. I don't think I'm going to read the whole thing I was going to read next, but here's a small piece.
People like to pursue after excitement as if they were sending the terrace in spring and celebrate a sacrificial feast. But I alone remain quiet and calm, like an infant, who's pure and innocent. And I alone appear to be lost like one who has nowhere to go. All people have a surplus, but I alone was a simple and left out like a fool.
So it is like that. Empty yourself, sort of a ban on the meritocracy and pursuing after things. I mean, that's all well and good, but don't we need sacrificial noble actions? Like this person sounds like he's a, you know, a opt out kind of guy.
And I'm going to go sort of pursue my calmness and my piece. And the way to do that seems to be like an abdication of responsibility or a removal of society, like the idea of the hermit. That doesn't seem good. Well, it's not total removal.
And this is where I think this is where it gets complicated. He talks about the ruler who follows the towel. Okay. And so he's got a public life where he just sort of regudgingly does it or he does it in accordance with nature.
There's a couple chapters near the end that have to do directly with governance and how you can rule from the towel. Before that are a couple of chapters about how warfare works with the towel. So you guys, you guys got a couple. So this is a little bit chapter 30.
So it's, yeah, just to be fair. So he's not advocating for total inaction and withdrawal. Okay. No, he's, he's saying you need to act practically in accordance with the laws of nature.
And to do that, you have to understand the laws of nature first, which means emptying yourself. That's, that's kind of what I've put together so far. You can't be a withdrawn monk. You got to be the kind of person that wants to be a withdrawn monk, but is still like, is peaceful, but is still going to work.
Yeah. But you work like water, Graham. Awesome. Okay.
So this is a very popular with the principles of the towel will not use the force of arms to conquer the world. So he, for such a fair result, in cause and effect, apparently cause and effect, not good. Oh, sorry. No more causation.
No more causation. How you conquer the world. Whenever armies touch the land, it is turned into a wasteland of thorns and brambles, right? So this is just war, war is not a good thing, but he doesn't say you can never fight it.
This is chapter 31. Weapons of war are instruments of disaster. They are rejected by all beings. Thus, a person of towel will not dwell upon them.
According to the ancient custom of yin and yang, a man of virtue values the left, which is represented by yang, and a man of war values the right, which is represented by ying. Weapons are instruments of evil, and are not valued by a man of virtue. They are only used as the last resort to attain peace when all else has failed. If their use is necessary, it is best to employ with calmness and tranquility.
Even if it means victory, it's not something pleasant. Those who rejoice over the victory enjoy killing. He who delights in killing will not be favored by the people and shall not bring harmony to the world. It is the ancient custom to favor happy events that left as represented by yang.
While on sat-occasions it is favored to the right as represented by ying. When this right is applied to the army, lieutenant general takes the place on the left, and the commander in chief takes the place of the right. This indicates that war is treated as if it is a funeral service. For many lives had been killed and hence should be mourned with sorrow.
Therefore, although a victory was won, it is treated like a funeral rite. So you can have it if you need to do peace, but you're in mourning that whole time. It's not going to be a good thing. I like that.
It's like an unwillingness to go directly to war. My desire for peace primarily. I mean, all that sounds great. And one of the best parts about this is I was reading a Kindle version that is not...
It feels like one of those versions where someone found a translation and did like a PDF copy of it, and then immediately published it with little pictures as an illustrated version to make a couple bucks. And some of the words aren't quite right. Like they are only used as the last resort to attain peach when all else have failed. It's like Augustine's pair.
Got to have that peach. So, yeah, again, he's not advocating for inaction, but I think maybe right perspective as you act, making sure that you know what you are bringing into the world when you bring warfare. It seems important for a leader to have that they're not... Let there's neither not only going after conquest, but realistic enough to acknowledge that war still happens.
You can't put it off always. Yeah. Okay. I got a couple more, and then we'll move on.
So, let's do the ones on governing a place. Okay. Then we can sort of have a... Just as an aside, I find it fascinating that a lot of these texts talking about philosophy and the way of living were written to rulers.
Like to be written with the idea that this is what you need if you're going to be a person in charge of other people, as opposed to the happy farmer's guide to being a happy farmer. Like whoever sat down and wrote this, who am I writing this to? It needs to be written to a king. Who am I writing this to?
It needs to be written to a ruler. Or writing it to the ruler is... If it's good enough for the ruler, then it's going to be great for the person. Yeah, I think that's the principle.
If it applies for someone who has everyone else under their control and can make a good man out of them, then it should apply to everybody. Then it should apply to everybody. Everybody will have some little bit of control in their lives. Whereas if you wrote for the happy farmer who's not in charge of anything except his farm, then the ruler could be like, well, that's all well and good for him, but we got stuff to do.
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Here's the stuff on governance. Govern a nation with the right principle.
Fight a battle with the tactics of surprise and rule over the world with peace and natural effort. How do I know this is so? By the following. The more prohibitions that are imposed on people, the poorer the people become.
The more sharp weapons the people possess, the greater is the chaos in the country. The more clever and crafty the people become, the more unusual affairs occur. The more laws and regulations that exist, the more thieves and brigands appear. Hence the saint declares, I act effortlessly with the way of Tao.
Thus people transform themselves naturally. I love tranquility and peach. Thus people naturally follow the right way. I do not exhaust people with labor.
Thus people naturally are wealthy. I have no personal desires. Thus people naturally are innocent and simple. That was 57.
58. When the government is dull, people are simple and sincere. When the government is complex and stringent, people are cunning and shall cause trouble. That is where it stops about governance.
Don't you think that is strange? No, I think it makes total sense. If the laws are going to be so complicated, then you are going to be completely engender a bunch of people trying to get out of stuff. It is a little bit.
So, anarchism is not... This is the day the podcast took a turn. Did you guys know that I... I know.
I was... There was a time when I was going to go and be traveling missionary to traveling anarcho, the populace of the US. Anarchism is not necessarily no laws came out all the time. It is return to old ways.
Small government, small government, small government. Basically with no government, we can govern ourselves and put ourselves together. That is what this is advocating is making it all over. He is saying small government.
Small government. We will naturally be simple. Don't give a lot of laws. Not a lot of pointy sticks.
We can't take it. We turn to the old ways. That is what he is saying. I know.
People don't like... More prohibitions mean... Sadder people. Where he started with.
He said, increase the prohibitions. You increase the misery of the populace or something like that. They become poor. And so that makes sense.
But then he says, the more weapons you have and society, the greater ills that you have. The greater the chaos in the country. The greater the chaos in the country. And then the more complex the government, the more cunning and crafty the people.
No, the more clever and crafty the people. The more unusual affairs occur. Yeah, yeah. But they are clever and crafty because.
Oh, yeah. It is something about that. Anyway. Oh, yeah.
When the government is dull, people are simple and sincere. When the government is complex and stringent, people are cunning and cause trouble. Yeah. That sounds right.
That's right. I mean, that's... I got some lawyers make money from complexity, right? Yeah.
Okay. Let's read the very last chapter as kind of a final word. Wait, so before we move on. So your point was that from your reading of this, he's advocating for as much of a stripped down system of governance as possible.
Yeah, as simple as it possibly can be. And in accordance with man's nature. Yeah. Which I guess is kind of the goal.
So maybe it's anarcho-primitivism. Yeah. It's been a long time since I've been one of those, though. Really?
Yeah. What are you now? Like a front-front-front-portrait republican or something? I don't know.
I feel like a front-portrait republican. I don't know. It's like small local community. Okay.
I feel no desire to talk about political belief on a podcast. That seems weird. I don't know. Oh, fair enough to be a young government.
I'm sorry. I kind of made you want to feel uncomfortable. Here's the end. Chapter 81.
Words of truth are not pleasing. Pleasing words are not truthful. The wise one does not argue. And he argues.
It's not wise. It's not wise. A wise man of tau knows the subtle truth and may not be learned. A learned person is knowledgeable but may not know the subtle truth of tau.
A saint does not possess and accumulates surplus for personal desire. The more he helps others, the richer his life becomes. The more he gives to others, the more he gets in return. The dau of nature benefits and does not harm the way of a saint is to act naturally without contention.
Okay. So basic summary. Empty yourself. Return to your true nature.
Be generous. Don't seek your own ends. I can't tell you how many times that came up in the reading. Like if you are selfish, if you are after you're greed, if you're after your own pleasures or your lusts, you're going to come to harm somehow.
So if you don't want anything, you can't really run into trouble, right? You're not going to have any hardship. So empty yourself with those desires. That way you can kind of help everybody.
And if you're the guy leading a country and you are empty of your desires, then you're a concern will be for your people, for their success, keep your government simple, try to make a lot of accordance with their nature. And that is the way of returning, kind of aligning yourself with the way of the world. Like that movie, it's wonderful. Don't be Mr.
Potter. Be Jimmy Stewart. Yeah, sure. Name of the movie.
Bailey? No. Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy Stewart.
I don't have your money. It's in the front. James Potter. All right.
So do you guys have any thoughts you mentioned something about C.S. Lewis a little bit earlier? Well, yeah. We'll see this Lewis.
We'll see this Lewis. Yeah, it moves on. A lot of this has almost word for word kinds of sentiments with Christian principles. The last shall be first.
Lewis's point that he makes in the abolition of man is that this is not because somehow the texts from the east made it to the west or the texts from the west made it to the east, but that this is that there is a universal human objective morality that we all tap into that he calls, that Lewis calls the Tao to steal the word from this book. Does he say why he calls it? Like in light of there being an actual. No, he doesn't.
Maybe that's interesting to speculate on. My guess is that he by reading this recognizes that maybe he sees this as the as the as a good example of that that like, hey, look, go read if you read this book, you'll see that a lot of the thought that is being put forward by a cultured man from a completely different culture separated from the west is putting forward very similar notions to stoicism and to romanticism and to some of these other things that have come up. I was just going to say, this sounds almost exactly like so. Exactly.
And so by doing that, it's not that they all got together and like had a conference and then took these things home. It's that they are all that there is a thing as human beings that we are all part of the world of the moral, the world of the good life, the world of the ethical man that we naturally have resonance and access to. You want proof? Go read this in go read the text of the moral texts of South America, go read the moral texts of medieval Europe, go read the moral texts of ancient China, and you'll see that there are these sort of rhyming concepts.
One may make headway on these concepts more than others, so Lewis uses the example that I for an I tooth for a tooth is a moral precept. And no, don't do to people what you don't want done to you is a moral precept. And then do unto others as you would have them do unto you is a step forward. It's an advancement in ethics.
We say there can be advancements in ethics, but there can't be a wholesale genius change or species change in terms of ethics. There can be mutations, that's the wrong way to say. There can be advancements, there can be improvements, there can be changes, but you're not going to have a wholesale change in kind, you can have maybe a change in token. Because this stuff was being written down right around the same time, the Golden Age of Philosophers and Greece.
Yeah, so then they're not, you know, they're not Ted talking back and forth. No. Like it's just spring to life in Greece and apparently in China. I mean, which is really fascinating.
Is there anything in the book that would either be shocking or like is there anything in there that you look at and think that's wrong? Yeah. Yeah. Other than because it seems like the main difference is stylistic that yeah, it felt like the main difference was simply style and was maybe the mystical side of things, right?
The West is very much cut and dried. Here's the way things work, right? There's little mysticism. It depends on your practice, of course, like there's mysticism even within Christianity, but this is like leaning hard on the mystical side of things.
And if I remember correctly, the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas are kind of the same, right? It's more of a mystical text more than just like, here's a good way to live, right? The Stoics are very straightforward, right? Snowism is not complicated.
They just say here's the best way to do it. And they line up almost exactly, right? The expression of it is just a little bit different. Maybe the only thing is talking about how emptying yourself of the knowledge is the way to go.
And I'm wondering if that's simply a reflection of noticing that good people aren't necessarily trying to be good. They just are good and act from that basis. And so maybe if you can return to that as a natural human state, then you will be good as well, right? That might be shocking more than any other things, but everything else seems to line up pretty well, even with things like Buddhism, right?
Buddhism is here's how to avoid suffering and a lot of the concepts and precepts are the same, right? Action, that sort of stuff. The mysticism of the East and the sort of contemplation of the ideal type of the West, you see both of those things reflected in a unique way, kind of in that buffer territory of Eastern Orthodoxy, right? Like the band that kind of separates the hardcore Latin West from the Far East, you have that mysticism of Greek Orthodoxy, Roman Orthodoxy, Armenia, all those places, and then you also still have the Hellenistic tradition as well.
So that's sort of like this interesting sort of ombre change of the mushing together of the two. Yeah, so one of the questions that I came away with this was where should, like what value is reading something like this to someone in their education? And not necessarily just to high school and college students, but to someone maybe like our listeners who have come to this after college and are looking for a better education, then should they start maybe branching out and reading things like the Tao and the teachings of Confucius and any other texts that might be interesting from the East, like when does that come in? Should I have a good foundation of my Western thought first or does that actually hamper me when I'm trying to approach an Eastern text like this?
Which it did for me, right? I was coming with a very kind of rigid belief set and preconceived notion of the world, right? Things are static, they work a certain way, definitions, like it's less about change and interconnectedness, which is something the East is very much about. Or should I kind of grow up with both of them the same?
Like as I start with Plato, so I start with Confucianism in the Tao. Graham just shut your shoulders. Graham just shut your shoulders. And there you have it folks, it doesn't matter.
No, I mean, I think it's helpful to have both. If you, the stereotype of the person who like discovers the Eastern texts and then like where's a shark shell necklace in Moose, California, right? And practices like the popular Californian version of Zen Buddhism, like that's kind of cringy. And so you want to have, you want to be a well-read knowledgeable person about the world.
And so are you thinking that there's a danger of having an unequal waiting? Well, I was just going to ask you guys what you implied. Like this person who wears the shell necklace in Moose, California, is it because they're impressionable or because they don't know what they believe for? The worry is that someone comes to this and his magnificence isn't worry, but someone comes to this and says, oh, it's all just about your vibe.
And then, right, and you got the surfer philosophy. Maybe there's something wrong with the surfer philosophy. Maybe that guy is happy. Maybe that guy is a good guy.
He's got it all figured out. But I don't want to, but like, Taoism is like a significant religion. It's not just a, the misinterpretation of the surfer. So I also don't want to do it the disservice of saying it's, you know, we've talked before about not judging Christianity by the young, younger, younger, younger.
The experience. Yeah. So that's the other side where this would be a book that's more worthwhile. It's hard to say when you should read it.
Because I think very quickly that conversation turns into you should have read everything by the age of seven because there are so many books that are worthwhile. Do you have some thought about like you wish you would read this sooner? I mean, I think it just plays into a lot of conversations we've had about what to include in the curriculum, right? There's constant clamoring for other voices, right?
And there's definitely a value to other perspectives, right? The value of the perspective from the East is- But this isn't just recognizing your connectedness, that sort of thing. But you don't read it just to get another perspective because as we've even pointed out, by listening to this, they are also talking about the same kinds of things that have been talked about in romanticism and stoicism. And so when you read it, yeah, so it's not just like we're going to give token adherence to something totally foreign from what we're used to.