WU and WU WEI

In class we have been constantly discussing the “wu” and “wu wei” ideals but I’m still not sure if I understand them completely. “Practice non-action. Work without doing.” (pg. 65) By saying Practice or work, aren’t you already doing something? Isn’t that already contradicting it? I just really can’t understand how many things are supposed to be occurring when nobody is making them occur. I don’t really agree with many of the teachings Tao Te Ching supports and in general I think I would rather live under Confucius beliefs.

Suffering

In class, while we were reading Job, we currently discussed the reasons for which humans were currently made suffer by God. Even though in the Tao Te Chin God is not the one who makes people suffer, and even though the topic is not directly expressed, I interpreted one of the chapters in a way that could explain why we currently suffer.
“That which shrinks
Must first expand.
That which fails
Must first be strong
That which is cast down
Must first be raised.
Before receiving
There must be giving.”

Suffering could be expressed as “Those who enjoy must first suffer”. I believe that if one wouldn’t suffer, he wouldn’t entirely appreciate the good things in life. When bad things occur they act in a way in which we are be able to compare the good ones to these and appreciate them much more. Many times to be able to understand one extreme, you have to live the opposite one.

Active and Passive Verbs

1. Change this active sentence to the passive:
A client delayed Joanne when she was leaving the office.
Joanne was delayed by a client when she was leaving the office.
2. Change this active sentence to the passive:
The tennis club was holding a meeting at 6.30.
A meeting was being held by the tennis club at 6.30.
3. Change this passive sentence to active:
The doorway was blocked by Sheba, the dog.
Sheba, the dog, blocked the doorway
4. Change this active sentence to passive:
Joanne had to take Sheba to the vet.
Sheba had to be taken to the vet.
5. Change this active sentence to passive:
Her condition worried the vet.
The vet was worried by her condition.
6. Change this passive sentence to active:
The dog was treated by the vet while Joanne went home
The vet treated the dog while Joanne went home.
7. Change this active sentence to passive:
The vet told Joanne to get out of the house.
Joanne was told to get out of the house.
8. Change this active sentence to passive:
The telephone call confused Joanne.
Joanne was confused by the telephone call.
9. Change this active sentence to passive:
The police captured the burglar.
The burglar was captured by the police.
10. Change this active sentence to passive:
The dog had bitten off his fingers.
His fingers had been bitten off by the dog.

Dec. 4 : Our Daily Lives

In these chapters the two “quotes” that mostly caught my attention were both on chapter 29. The first one is:
“The universe is sacred
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will loose it.”
The other one is “therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency”

The first one caught my attention so much because it reminds me of the control humans want and believe they have over the earth. We are always trying to change it in ways that are convenient to us but forget the long terms consequences of our acts. We ignore the fact that by destroying many of nature’s aspects, we are actually destroying ourselves because we depend on nature to survive. When we were nomads and we lived as “one more” creature on earth instead as “the” creature. We respected more what we had and we took a better advantage of it. We are currently taking more than what we need and focusing on our own benefit and this will lead to our self destruction because we will destroy everything we need to survive. In other words we could say that humans interacted better with the earth and everything else on it when it wasn’t trying to control it.

The other quote is one I have heard many times throughout my life and it is one with which I completely agree. I believe that to be able to be in a good state, one must learn to find a balance. That is why if you ever go to excesses you unbalance everything and rightness and happiness are messed up. The hard thing is to find the balance point in which everything is right and enjoyable. Still the only way of finding the balance is by living and applying “ guess and check” to life and that way you can take reasoning from your trials and errors and apply what you learn to life. Extremes are bad because they permit you only one thing and never give you other possibilities, instead the balance permits you to play around with it in small amounts and experience new things. Excess is also bad because everything in nature is made to follow a certain balance and if you are the only thing that does not posses that balance, then you don’t interact peacefully and easily but forcefully.

Nov. 3 Tao Te Ching

The Tao Te Ching in a way reminds me of the analects but at the same time differs a lot from it. For example they both give very wise and important ways of viewing life and they teach you ways in which to reflect to lead a good life. Still they have very different writing styles and while Confucius respects learning a lot, the Tao Te Ching focuses on a different way of learning and considers study as one of the lowest of his priorities. I also think that the Tao Te Ching is a lot more complicated to read that what the Analects was and one has to put a lot more thought into it if you are willing to understand. It happened many times that I had to reread the text over and over again while Confucius I would understand right away and if I got confused or mixed up I would reread it once and understand what it was that I that was trying to be said. Even though the passages are very short, they are very rich in content and one has a lot of material on which to reflect. Reading this kind of texts will open my mind to different ways of thinking and I can actually learn a much about them.

Nov. 28: Play "GO"

“Go” is a game in which you develop different sections of your brain, just like chess and other board games. To be able to play these games you learn to consider all the different options before acting because a wrong movement can kill you. In this kind of games one learns to think in different ways and to use different parts of logic and then one can apply it to every day life and start taking in life from a different perspective. This game is a very healthy way of working your mind and opening it up for new things.

Nov 27

While reading this book I would constantly think about my father and even though it gets me really sad to think that he’s dead and that I will never be able to be with him again, I do find comfort in the fact that he didn’t suffer before he died. My dad died doing something he really enjoyed and in a place that he loved. He also experienced a quick death through the one he probably didn’t even understand what was going on. And when he died, he had all of the people who he ever cared for, and ever cared about him to mourn over him and express the grief that his departure caused. During the holocaust instead, Elie Wiesel, was currently in fear of loosing his life and he did suffer a lot before dying. He experienced starvation and his mind was really mocked. He would also wake up every day wondering if he would be killed right away and even though he was with his father, and they showed how much they cared about each other, they were never able to share truly happy moments or have a bonding relationship. When his father died, he did after suffering for a long time and it could be said that the short life we live should be a happy one instead of one with a lot of suffering. And when he died nobody other than his son was able to grieve for him. Anyway, even though my dads is dead I could say that the short life he had was one really worth while and it was filled of happy moments that were shared with people he loved. The holocaust gets me mad because it took away the opportunity of many other people to enjoy their life’s and they instead had to suffer a lot for a stupid reason. So they got punishments they never deserved, but I guess life’s really just not fair.

Nov 26

This book makes me literally sad because of the way people were treated and how they suffered. It made me realize all the stupidities humans get to do even when its about ethnicity, a topic we should have already gotten through, but no. Even today there are gangs such as Ku Klux clan and others that discriminate people because they have different beliefs, or physical properties. It is said that the reason for which we study history is to learn from it since it repeats itself and that way we would be able to control it to only have the positive aspects repeat but humans have constantly proven their flaws, and we have not yet learned from our mistakes.
It is also hard to believe that there are currently places in which people find themselves under very harsh conditions. As in Africa for example, kids die every day from starvation, or kids are forced to work under conditions that are just unhealthy. There are also many problems like guerrilla in which people have to live under conditions that nobody deserves. Around the world there are a lot of “desplazados” and there is too much poverty and I personally sometimes feel bad for what I have because even though I enjoy it, there are many things that I really don’t depend on or need while others do. I just hope that we will start learning from our mistakes and hope for nothing similar to the holocaust to ever occur again and even though this might sound really cheap, I really wish that all the current problems of the world would disappear and we would be able to live in utopia... our perfect world.

Nov 21 blog books 9,16, 10

While reading these blogs I began to wonder how life would be if we all followed Confucius ideas of life, how different people would act and how our perspective our life would be very different. If you think about his priorities one would understand that the mayor goal of a man is to become a gentleman and be able to follow the way. He would focus on his family and everybody would try to be a trustworthy person which is very respectful and takes great interest in learning. I also believe that women would be treated as inferior to man and they would have to deal as their “gentleman” wanted them to. People would also live a much calmer life in which philosophy is a greater aspect of the daily life.
Today, many people are concerned about their reputation and Confucius would support that, and he would support many more of the values we have now days and the daily life we live. He would of course disagree with many other of our actions and never accept many of our ideals but he would teach us many more and we would be able to mix the different ideals to reach an intermediate point. I also think that people would be less materialistic and poverty would be reduced. Even though Confucius does encourage to look for progression and be ambitious, one would become “wealthier” in other aspects such as in ideas, thoughts, the views of life, how often follows what they say, how often one teaches what he believes and other virtues and ideas.

Final comment of the analects

Each chapter has very important information; actually each sentence is very rich in meaning. When it came to comment I could have been able to comment on each individual book and sometimes found it hard to mix three since each is focused on something different and tells so much about it. Even though it is not a religious book it has ethnical perspectives that support many religious beliefs and morals. This is a text that is very rich in context and any person who reads it can learn a great deal from it. This book has changed many of the ways in which I see things and the perspective I have of my life. It helps me look into the ideas of others and it helps me round up my own conclusions of my life and how I live it. I have seen the great importance the enjoyment of learning has and the way one can apply many principle to your life. It teaches me to be open to new ideas and I discover that every idea I consider will help me in a way. It can help me change my previous principles and modify them or it might actually make me feel stronger of what I believe. This is a book that I would have never read on my own but I am very happy I did read it because I learned a lot from it and got to see many things from different perspectives with which I turned out to agree.

Nov 20 read what is missing: 19, 20

These last two books kind of give a conclusion of all that we have read but what I think is the most important is the last one, 20.3 since it kind of resumes the whole in that phrase. I believe that that is a very important quote because it expresses what it is that a person needs in life, which are ritual, fate and words, because all that has been said in the previous books can be taught to a person but unless he has the three previous skills/values then it will be no good because he wont fully understand all that is being taught and it will be a waste of time. This book has a lot of deep information and one can choose to get as much as you want inside and understand and learn from as much as you want. As it has been previously said in the book, the love of knowledge is very important and a great way to learn is by enjoying it.

Nov 19: books 15, 17, 18

Even though many of the quotes and writings found in these book are very deep and easily understood by me, there are a few that I do not understand right away, I have to reads them over and over again until I finally get what it was that they were trying to state. Still, even after rereading them, there are a few of the teachings that I don’t understand no matter how hard I try. Maybe it is the fact that I’m still a kid and I have a lot to learn ahead of me, or maybe it’s just the fact that I’m slow but it really bothers me not to understand the message or get what it was meant for the reader to understand because throughout this books I have learned a lot and I have got to see other ways of seeing life. One of the states Confucius makes is the following “women and servants are particularly hard to manage: if you are too familiar with them they’ll grow insolent, but if you are too distant, they grow resentful.” (17.25) I personally find this comment both offensive but comical at the same time. I find it comical because it is a true statement and many times woman really react in the way said but it is also an insult because it refers to woman in a way that them as well, are servants and that they are it kind of shows like they have little rights and respect towards men like when its said that they grow insolent and because since the beginning they weren’t given equal importance to that of a man.

November 15

In these three chapters, the master first talks about his life and all the characteristics he finds in himself. He talks about what he does, what he would never do, what he likes, what he thinks and how he feels. It is in a way a reflection of his life and how he has lived it and even at one point it talks about what he would do to change and what he would change if he was given more time in life or another life but he also appreciates many of the things he had done. On the next chapter, though, he doesn’t reflect on himself but he instead suggests for the future. He expresses complex ideas through concise sayings that will help a person throughout the whole life. The master talks about his enjoyment of learning and he shares his knowledge with others and gives advice on how to live a good life and one that is really worthwhile. And in the eleventh book he now listens to his disciples. He gives them the opportunity to show him how much they have really learned and express their thoughts to him. Throughout this activity is when he discovers which disciples were really learning his philosophy and which were not. Then he is able to choose one student on which to focus and get their understandings together and comment about life. He also uses other people as examples to get his points through because he doesn’t only show what he believes, he actually proves himself correct with actual events that have occurred.

November 16: books 12, 13 14

These three books combine in a way that specifies how it is that gentlemen should act around other people and at the end it concludes by showing the way the master feels about his ideology and how it is that nobody else gets to understand the way he thinks. About his way of considering a man a gentleman I believe he is way too strict and he expects too much about a man and many times he expect two things that in a way that contradict themselves. Also about his beliefs I consider completely acceptable to have his own thoughts and ways to see life what I don’t get is why, even though he teaches them, does he decide that he alone thinks that way? Shouldn’t he give other people the opportunity to understand his ideas? Also every person has the right to have his own ideas and believes and Confucius doesn’t support this sometimes but then he also sometimes says he does. I don’t know, he gets to confuse me a lot sometimes about his ideas but I really do appreciate and believe a person can learn a lot from these thoughts about life.

November 13

After reading these three books, I decided I would comment on the quote I was mostly inspired by. From 4.17 I took, “When you see someone who is worthy, concentrate upon becoming their equal; when you see someone who is unworthy, use this as an opportunity to look within yourself.” This quote made me realize how we always criticize people without even knowing them and we are always focusing on the negative aspects of a person. I believe that it is important to look at the positive aspects of a person because it is always easier to learn and try to adapt the positive characteristics of a person. It is usually easier to tell which the negative aspects of a person are because they tend to be stronger or one notices the bad things, instead one is used to seeing good things and therefore doesn’t appreciate them as much as one should.

5.12 “What I do not wish others to do unto me, I also wish not to do unto others” This phrase reminds me of a quote I was taught in third grade, and from then always remembered. It is the following” treat others as you want to be treated”, both of these sayings are trying to express the same thing to the reader. It is trying to show that respect is very important in life and even though not everyone thinks alike or feels the same, the closest you’ll ever get to know about what a person feels is feeling it yourself. This is why I believe that t is true that one should treat the others as you would like to be treated because if you were happy when you were treated in a certain way, the other person will probably also feel happy when treated in that way. The same thing happens with the things that shouldn’t be done because if you didn’t liked it when it was done to you then the other person will probably dislike it when done to them.

6.28 “If I have done anything wrong, may heaven punish me.” 5.19 “I do not know about that- what makes you think he deserves to be called good?” These two quotes connect because they make you realize that one has been living their whole life with a certain image of good in their head but who decided what good was? Shouldn’t that be a subjective question instead of an objective one? Still, somehow, someone made some standardized points on what was good and what was bad, and from then on the whole world has followed those points. What decided that those points themselves were “good”? And the same thing occurs with wrong and right… who chose what was correct and what wasn’t and who chose how to punish the wrong doers? Here the master asks heaven to punish him but how can heaven measure a moderate punishment and how can each person know if they deserve it or if they deserve it more or less than another person? Life will continue to be a mystery to all of us and you can decide if you like the current rules which have been brainwashed onto your head or if you want to establish your own rules. But if you choose to make your own rules and follow these, you must accept the consequences.