/lit/ - Literature

>>9304809
>I just read a paper about how it was probably created in the Han dynasty from dozens of different sources, and has as much relation to the 6th century BC Confucius as a modern day anthology of the sayings of Robin Hood would have to an outlaw from the Middle Ages. Depressing.

That is depressing. I like the Analects but a lot of it derives from my faith that there are wise people out there who are capable of giving instruction that just seems immediately true. The attraction to the sage-ideal - perhaps more specifically, to following an Old Wise Man Who Knows What He Is Doing is very strong. Of course, I'm not alone in this; Confucius also follows Laozi, who follows the Tao itself, and so on.

I've had that sense that the TTC was a collaborative effort built up over time as a collection of ancestral folk wisdom also, but I haven't looked into this all that much.

>All men are just vessels that resonate at different frequencies as the winds of the universe blow across our gaping orifices.

This could lead one equally well to serenity or schizophrenia. Probably some harmonious balance of both is required.

I'm reading a fair bit of analysis stuff these days and kind of pondering the legacy of Freud and Lacan in China (that is to say, there isn't much of one). With the Tao it's almost like an inversion of Freud: instead of "Where id was, there I will be, it's the reverse: where I was, there the Tao will be."

That's my pseud-interpretation of it, but anyways.