Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Lao-Tzu and Confucius

Lao-Tzu and Confucius are asked to come speak to a group of Mercy College students about religion in China. Write an interesting, spirited dialogue in which these two wise specialists dialogue with one another on the meaning of life.
Taoism and Confucianism have to be seen side-by-side as two distinct responses to the social, political and philosophical conditions of life long ago in China. Where for instance Confucianism is greatly concerned with social relations, conduct and human society, Taoism has a much more individual and mystical character, influenced a whole lot by nature. In Lao Tzu's view things were said to create "unnatural" action (wei) by shaping desires (yu). The process of learning the names (ming) used in the doctrines helped one to make distinctions between good and evil, beautiful and ugly, high and low, and "being" (yu) and "non- being" (wu), thereby shaping desires. To abandon knowledge was to abandon names, distinctions, tastes and desires. Thus spontaneous behavior (wu-wei) resulted. The Taoist philosophy can perhaps best be summed up in a quote from Chuang Tzu: "To regard the fundamental as the essence, to regard things as coarse, to regard accumulation as deficiency, and to dwell quietly alone with the spiritual and the intelligent -- herein lie the techniques of Tao of the ancients." Confucius would be mostly talking like a politician. He would talk about philosophy. He would explain one of his rules," If you governed your province well and treat your people kindly, you kingdom shall not lose any war. If you govern selfishly to your people, you kingdom will not only lose a war, but your people will break away from your kingdom." Which makes sense. No one wants to be governed wrong and still abide by the rules of the governement. He would also say a wise phrase called the golden rule that is still being used as a rule today. "A man should practice what he preaches, but a man should also preach what he practices."

Dont know if my dialogue is right? Would you guys agree or disagree with what i wrote?

1 comment:

JENNY said...

hey i got it finally ...soo how do you feel about the confucius?