Stosh

Why eat if you're going to die anyway?

Imo the point is meant to be rhetorical, ,,and then the answer is 'Nobody in particular' , each thing playing its own part (though it leaves the thing open for those who want a godhead. ) Presuming the authors idea is indeed no-one , makes sense to me in the larger view of the canon, in that the end users , the useless ones, the ones living according to their nature, breathe the life into an inorganic situation , as witness of it all , an awareness in it all , and are just as integral a part of the whole as anything else ... Rather than some kind of object divided from the divine, or some kind of pawn in a practical joke.

"Oh,,, Mr. Holmes, I would love to tell you! ,,, but then, of course, I'd have to kill you."

The interdependency of good and evil is the thing being used to enlighten us to the interdependent nature of the other things. Doesnt this sage have goals like teaching? The point is that he approaches his goals using a sort of reverse psychology or daoist alchemy. its this interdependency which makes this approach feasible. The effective teacher asks questions, which sets the stage for the student to bring the resolutions into being. Or he sets an example which inspires etc and so forth. The effective teacher sets the scene for the student to grow.

Yep, very significant. What word would you suggest as the unbiased subject of that polemic set? .Imo... VERY significant and apparently VERY subtle.

When one understands the Dao has no roles for a man to fulfill, or rules that can be broken, or lessons to pass on, he is freed. ( meow)

You only have a few hundred posts , spend the time , delete them individually. Frankly IMO all of these should go away after a while; but even as it is , things will become buried as bones eventually .

Bottling them up doesn't resolve em., Right? so at least potentially , folks cry themselves out of it , get tired of the hubbub etc , and they come back to stillness. " too much light blinds the eye" and basically once you've had enough , you're done. Being still and at peace could equally be seen as an indulgence if over done , one gets bored and wants to 'get to sea' "whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.” Melville

You use one hand to steady the other.

That sounds sad. Yknow, Lin 's piece also suggests , the 'forest for the trees' approach too , right? (That the door which looks no different from the wall is effectively invisible as well.)

You're invisible ? That ought to be pretty handy. As for my opinion on this chapter, I don't like it , because it reinforces the polemic of good and bad. Since it declares some things as being good , the flip side is the judgement of some things being bad. Remember the jazz where judgement of things being beautiful , implies a judgement , , or the creation of conceptual badness. Recognize , that I am not the one from whom this translation or idea arises TTC Ch 2 Lin Yutang When the people of the Earth all know beauty as beauty, There arises (the recognition of) ugliness. When the people of the Earth all know the good as good, There arises (the recognition of) evil. Therefore: Being and non-being interdepend in growth; Difficult and easy interdepend in completion; Long and short interdepend in contrast; High and low interdepend in position; Tones and voice interdepend in harmony; Front and behind interdepend in company. Therefore the Sage: Manages affairs without action; Preaches the doctrine without words; All things take their rise, but he does not turn away from them; He gives them life, but does not take possession of them; He acts, but does not appropriate; Accomplishes, but claims no credit. It is because he lays claim to no credit That the credit cannot be taken away from him

This too shall spin.. so,, the Duke and the son , have indeed absorbed the dregs .. richest most useless leftovers. So they don't want to bust a hump fitting spokes , the wright, knows his son has gotten things right -being useless, but he never got the hang of it , though he recognizes that the wisdom is there to be read. The duke is not threatening the wright , but explaining that in their words the sages they have lived on , in himself and the wrights son.

The Duke comments that your knowledge- person will die if it-you cannot be communicated, the wright explains himself , and so presumably , he would live on , both in his job, and his ideas. But the duke feels the sages are dead , and therefore ,do not live on, ,( by effectively communicating in the written words). So the words Are dregs when read by the Duke. The son also, doesn't intuitively comprehend, he had to get in the shop or world , and DO the work.

Well yes its unrealistically idealistic to expect flawed humans to meet such a lofty goal as a group. But since I dont think the only thing being discussused here is large scale social dynamics, I think theres a window for individuals to sqeeze through. One person can maintain a super high Polemic standard. . And depending on the subject, I dont Think its all that unusual. Its just not all that likely that several people will all conclude the same behaviors really represent virtue., so the group drags down the best and drags up the worst as people traditionally view virtue. So I think Iam supposed to come away reinforced about Not taking a highly polarized moral stance. Like... not getting bent out of shape at bad drivers who havent collided with anything. I'll probably always reflexively mutter ' idiot ', But dont need to dwell on it. Best I can manage..

Dont accept what? The view of heaven is impartial, the spin we put on it is a moral call. Brass feel justified about the perks they have. The egalitarian or Socialist view sees wrongness in that. You had advanTages due to position, and not all think that inappropriate. What gov is so wonderful it avoids all that? None , I think we might agree there.

Oh, you want it spun the other way? OK. The officials have removed their personal egos from governance, so as merely functioning cogs, the court is empty of willful personalities. The palace is swept, the nobles are prepared to defend, the province is well fed. Everything is hunky-dory so being envious or hoping for things to be otherwise would be irrational . Same message either way IMO.

AWOL , instead of being invested in proper governance, the court is preoccupied with self serving matters rather than the duties of service. No one is at the helm. If the analogy is being made, regarding an individuals conduct, they have lost track of their own best interest or have abandoned their best interests. The person is lost and flailing around spiritially. If the analogy is of the body, the person could be drunk , high, in a rage ,or passion, or even sleeping.

I figure the mindfulness would be doing itself ,rather than being the practitioner.

Yep , that struck me as ..problematic , too. But the funny thing to me was , that it was step one , like convincing everyone of something one just DOES , like sharpening a pencil. It comes to mind because I am eading the rest of the hogfather story , having found an online print of it. I don't recall if it was Death speaking at the time, but , the character said.. the problem isn't so much step one,, its the thousands of steps after.

I read a safety promotion pamphlet that said ... Item 1) Convince everyone that all accidents are 100% preventable.

! now I have to go back and change something! Ah! I can undermine it all! I can't remember chapter 82 because I am perfection personified

Took the spontaneity out? trying to fill a formula ? well , that would be a down side , but I still like it. Do you have an example of what you mean that preceded it ? Frankly , it reads like they don't think much of happiness at all, or personal fulfillment, or meaningful social relations. Its like they want to be,,, non-existing or , inorganic material. I suppose this means that I think that if there is virtue for human beings , it is in being fully human. And it suggests That I should perhaps be more accepting of the downside stuff , because I don't think we can still be what we are without the whole shebang. Package deal. And that if there is an ideal , it would be in finding a balance between blending in with the background , and exerting ourselves in some non-destructive ways on that background. The idea of a perfected person , always rubbed me the wrong way , one cannot be perfect , simply because the most adaptive traits in a situation , depends on the situation itself. My mom was not athletic , but , she floated like a cork , and when the titanic went down , if she was there , she probably would have survived. My dad, was not a kind man , but , that too can be just the thing ,when surrounded by hostiles. The example I usually drag out though, is that of Roman soldiers, they weren't overly big, its said that on the long hot marches , it was the biggest guys who flopped over first. Because virtue is situation dependent , and dependent on what we have as our ideal.. .. I don't see how one could call it virtue , to see ones own children as no more important than strangers. Or that one should eschew things one enjoys, so they can pursue some sort of unending homogeneity, or some kind of brainiac numbness, unless all the best of life you can muster is just that. To me it seems like one of the pervading paradigms , is that the world trends towards a sort of cyclic balance. Push things to their very extreme and you get to a tipping point. the sharpest sword would have the flimsiest edge, too much sun blinds the eye , and so forth. It just works that way or you would have a runaway trend. And so , at the greatest pinnacle of mental development towards seeing unadulterated fact , one is confronted with the irrationality of the universe itself. These disciples seem to be promoting toward that pinnacle , they think one can get there, they think virtue and non virtue are polemic fact , which they arent. ( because the poles connect at the ends : ) ) I guess I am rehashing ,But to me, It makes no sense to say that one can have a perfect virtue of truth. ( because truth conflicts with rational perfection --- truth is that which is , and perfection is just a biased opinion about what things should be ) I think that gets missed and there's a reversion to seeing things as polemic good and bad again. Truth and perfection can be mentally reconciled , but only if one calls everything that exists , to be perfectly .. what ever it is., but that makes all men perfect as they are, and so no one man can have more virtue than another, and there's no reason to read any of the Classics when you're already perfection personified.

Hey, Dude, It Ain't me telling you it isn't virtuous , its this translation in the OP! , that is. ( and ,by extension, You , since you quoted it) Personally , I don't think these chapters depict the same flavor of the earlier ones, which were formulated in such a way that , when read carefully , embodied a different spirit/intention. Once one has set the goal of being in a pleasurable state , you've already circumvented the issue, of whether that state is a rational one. However, Tautologically , anything that exists , does actually exist , and is real. ( by definition) While Happiness is very real ,and very important, its not a rational endpoint of some sort of calculation. The end user, is really the person who is happy . The existence of the universe is also not a rational conclusion. It does not have to be here. We have no provable reason why it needs to exist , nor does a 'need' for it to exist , even make sense. I think the prohibition against social embroilment is to help a person avoid the pitfall of getting- remaining wrapped up in everyone else's insanity. And the thing against the devil music , likewise is intended to keep one grounded in reality. As stated though , I think the thing is phrased too open ended-ly. The viewpoint of the universe, being one of complete neutrality , and simply existing - is not for humans , and the bias to say that being a vulcan ,or computer chip, or walking pachinko game ,would be the greatest thing since sliced bread .. should Not be ones goal . I like motown a lot , it has soul.

I didn't say it was a pretense , I said its not a logical/rational product. ( there is no actual ultimate man - and I said so already , so , I agree on that point )

If logic is to rule you have to give up the pretense that pleasure is rational. And if you support what is said in the OP , then you are the one who needs to give the music a heave ho and alienate your friends.