/lit/ - Literature

he is right in that it is one of the most easily bastardized texts, but not that it is essentially meaningless

it is by far one of the most profound texts of philosophy but it is not a LEADING text, i.e. it does not 'lead' the reader well to the state of being that is spoken of. it rather acts much more as a description of the mode of being and natural thoughts and perceptions of one who has stopped interfering with the natural way of things (primarily through desire).

when you have abandoned desire (that is, for random pleasures, distractions, ambitions, fame, and so on) and are content with nothing except the bare essentials of food, shelter, clothes, and medicine, then any action pursued will not be for some gratification that is held at the END of that action, hence when you DO act it will be entirely natural to the situation because the only reason you have to act is because you 'have' to, so to speak. so it won't feel like you doing it anymore, just the 'dao' moving you. and all will be put in its correct place because you were already satisfied before you even pursued the action - hence its results cannot effect you either way. whereas if you act out of desire, no matter how much you satisfy it, the whole framework of gratification requires a root dissatisfaction which only grows and grows the more you feed it - hence, the more you express desire the more you become out of tune with the natural order.

the problem is both that the text is not very good at leading, so it ends up being picked up by most as a belief, world-view, or theory without the corresponding existential import, training, and transformation. and it is doubly bad as well because the description itself is aware of the fact that describing it is virtually useless as it depends on existential appropriation, which forces it to speak in riddles which abound in fools giving wayward interpretations.

yet when that state is achieved it is one of the most accurate descriptions which outlines what the ordinary person cannot understand, that the movements of body, speech, and mind do not require 'you'. hence all the contradictions - acting (the movements of body, speech and mind) without acting (without the interference of the SELF always imbued with desire)

>>21685327
(guy you replied to) I agree with you almost completely, though I would warn against moving too quick towards a perspective of seeing contingent activities and creations in the light of universal principles - without some sort of stage of 'withdrawal' so to speak, or of gaining a higher perspective, one would be liable to simply using their connection to higher principles AS a form of contingent gratification. in other words you stay in the cave and just tell yourself that the shadows true source is the sun so as to cope with its poverty, instead of going out and actually seeing it yourself first (here is also the poverty I feel of some modern approaches to the classical tradition like radical orthodoxy which try to melt Plato too much, or too fast, with modernism - "plato affirms the unique and the different too!"). surely you can see such contingent activites in the light of higher principles but you must work on the activation of Intellect first - as you rightly say primarily through the development of virtue, both civic and purificatory, until that sublime theophanic reintegration can occur