The highest good is like water

It benefits the ten thousand things(eastern term for all living things)

But does not struggle

The highest virtue is not virtuous(meaning not conscious of its virtuousness)

Hold to this and you have virtue

The good deed leaves no tracks, the good word no trace

And good measure does not use calculated plans

The Sage who holds to this serves people well

Thus no one is abandoned

This serves things well

Thus nothing is discarded

The sound person who holds this exists within

that thickness not within the thin

Its place is in the fruit, not within the flower(substance over style)

Therefore, leave that and take this

Our politicians would self combust if confronted with this guy.........he's got a lot more.....but in my opinion, this is some of his best.

Selections from the Dotokukyo(Japanese for the Tao te Ching)

Lao Tzu in practice does not work. Confucius in practice does.

Anyone can play with words. It doesn't mean the words are wise or meaningful. Even Lao Tzu said that words have no real meaning, so what you did was ignore his own words to try and exploit them for some weird point.

I wonder why he bothered to write the Tao te Ching then.

And...I don't remember him saying all words have no meaning......just that they should be true.

I don't see how his point here is...exploitation?

Maybe you should stick to something simple.....like bashing Christians.

Hi there San. You never responded to my counter concerning fractals. Did you run out of paint or space?

"I wonder why he bothered to write the Tao te Ching then."

He didn't.

Others did.

Please learn a little history on a topic before just spouting.

More definitive experts than you attribute much of Taoism to Lao Tzu....maybe you should learn some history.

And direct quotes are not spouting.

Now get back to whatever small minded sanctimoniousness you normally specialize in on some other thread.

Egotistical, uninformed, twerps like you are a nuisance.

"More definitive experts than you attribute much of Taoism to Lao Tzu....maybe you should learn some history."

And they attribute a lot of theory to Socrates. Doesn't imply that either actually wrote down anything.

Get a clue.

Or like Homer probably didn't actually write the Iliad or the Odyssey, but still gets authorship credits.

or Shakespeare or Jesus and many other figures.

So according to San.....they can never be quoted.

He's quite the pedantic little censor.

San Censorio?...........San Pedantico?........San Sanctimonio?

San Spastico!!!!....OR

San Fantastico and the Brown Dirt Cowboy....otherwise known as San Pederastico.

Lao Tzu said that once you read a book, you should burn it, and believed that paper records were only the path to torment.

So really, that proves that a) he didn't believe in writing his own stuff down and b) it wouldn't work for any government.

" Or like Homer probably didn't actually write the Iliad or the Odyssey"

Seeing as how both were originally sung, he didn't need to write them. :P

San:

" Or like Homer probably didn't actually write the Iliad or the Odyssey"

Seeing as how both were originally sung, he didn't need to write them. :P

That's funny you bring that up.........a troop of travelling Taoists came by my house last night and sung the Tao te Ching...............and that's when I wrote the post.

I'd of sung it to you .....but I don't know where you live.

San lives in Baltimore -- you really don't wanna go there! LOL

Only thing I can say good about Baltimore is it is the setting for HBO's The Wire!

San,

When you get out of Quigly Prep or whatever high school it is you attend, you will discover it's a bigger world than you knew. Maybe then you'll grow up and stop being a troll.

Lao Tzu is an invented name for the collective author of a store of verbal wisdom that's verging on four thousand years old. About 2300 years ago, a Taoist sage (or two or more) named (in our version of his/their name) Confucius wrote and assembled two transcriptions and a small library of commentaries on the I Ching, which is both a "book" and a divination system. This text-base includes much that is "Taoist" and much else that is "Confucian," because there are really no hard and fast terms of comparison that would allow you to distinguish the one from the other.

When Toists refer to "Lao Tzu" it's somewhat like an American referring to the "founding fathers." When, at the end of a long whispering chain of translations, distinctions are made between "the Sage" and "the Superior Man," it's guaranteed they're meaningless. You can think of The Book as a divination system or a randomized hypertext of political and ethical philosophy, but the distinction is empty, because it's both.

Some hippie who's used the Oracle as an advisory countertext to everyday life and a moral anchor, probably knows a good deal more than you do about Confucius and confucianism, whether or not you wrote some neato paper on it for a seminary class.