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Tao Te Ching
THE TAOISM OF LAO TZU
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Tao Te Ching
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The Book
The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained. The great Taoist philosophy classic by Lao Tzu translated, and each of the 81 chapters extensively commented. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link). |
Tao Te ChingPeople versus Rulers
There are people and there are rulers. Their relation is a complicated one, to say the least. People often have great difficulties suffering the demands of the rulers, and the rulers can have great problems making people obey their commands. Lao Tzu gives some hints to why this is so.
He blames the rulers, because they have the responsibility and the power to make changes. Common people usually don't.
High taxes were a problem then, as they are now. Governments are insatiable. Taxes are their means, without which they would not be able to do anything.
Power is money and money is power. Those who have the one get the other, and the more they have, the more they can get.
Suddenly, they get too much, and people starve. In the case of ancient China, some taxes could very well be in rice, so over-consumption at one end led directly to starvation at the other end. But the effect is the same when the tax is paid in the form of money.
Sadly, governments are tempted to take all but exactly what people need to survive, and sometimes they do it so narrowly that this crucial limit is exceeded. The excuses vary through time, but the greed is the same.
Of course, people who are pushed to starvation will be difficult to govern, but this can happen for many other reasons. The common denominator is exaggerated interference, which can be said about excess taxation, too.
When governments interfere too much with the lives of the people, there are bound to be reactions, protests, and a general unwillingness to comply. People can cause problems for their leaders in so many ways, only some of them obvious enough to counteract. When pressured, they will swiftly find all these possibilities.
Insufficient Fear
In the former chapter, Lao Tzu talked about threatening people with the death penalty, to make them obedient, and how complicated that can be. He returns to the subject here, explaining why people are not so afraid of dying.They expect too much of life, which means that they hurry to experience this or that sensation, not bothering to consider risks that may be involved. Their appetite for life is so big that they become forgetful of hazards, and have no time for reflection.
It's like children playing wildly, forgetting to consider their own safety. When we are drunk on life, we feel invulnerable, and like the young we believe death to be as far off as if we were immortal.
If we don't get as much out of life as we wished, then it loses its charm. That way, too, we cease to fear death, even if we don't exactly want it at the very next moment. Expecting too much of life must lead to disappointment. Death loses its horror to the extent that life loses its charm.
To the same extent, the rulers lose their power over us, since they no longer have the ultimate threat at their disposal. Any other threat would also lose its bite, when we don't shudder at the thought of being killed. It brings a kind of freedom to the people, but in a risky fashion.
Lao Tzu recommends that we take life seriously and hold on to it. That's in accordance with our nature. We should do our best to survive as long as possible. But he doesn't regard it as the most ideal relation to life.
One attitude surpasses it. That's to act without being concerned about one's own survival, which is utter unselfishness. For the greatest good, we should be able to sacrifice ourselves without hesitation. Also, we should willingly risk our lives to help avoid the greatest evil.
So, we should strive to stay alive as long as that can be done without deviating from Tao, the Way. But we should follow the Way without worrying about how we personally might suffer along it. Lao Tzu assures us that no harm comes to us if we follow Tao, but to do so we must dare risking even our lives.
In other words, to live life properly, we can't be obsessed by the fear of death.
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Tao Te Ching Explained
Preface
Introduction
Literature
translated and explained by Stefan Stenudd.
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