Thoughts I've thunk while sippin' at a cup of tea and reading something provoking, often get dropped here for the benefit of humanity and my own hubris.
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According to verse 20 of the Tao Te Ching:
Yes and no
aren’t so far apart
lovely and ugly
aren’t so unalike
From a Taoist point of view, “yes” and “no,” “beauty” and “ugly” are just words… just labels. And like all labels, are completely relative from the point of view of both the talker and the listener.
In fact, before the value judgement is made and labeled as ugly, an ugly plant wasn’t ugly. It wasn’t beautiful either. It was just a plant. Of course, Taoist idea is to treat each thing without labels.
While thinking of this verse this morning on the bus, I looked outside an saw this tree wearing its Spring leaves. I could still make out the graceful progression from trunk to branches to twigs to leaves, and thought how much more beautiful a tree is if it hasn’t been pruned to funky suburbian shapes. How Nature (or the Tao or whatever you want to call it) makes a far better pruner.
But of course, that is just me casting value judgements again.
© 2002-2005, Howard Abrams • Except where otherwise noted, all original content is licensed under a Creative Commons License (see details).
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