The Amazing Tao

Wow, I had never imagined the Tao Te Ching would be like this. It is really easy to understand because it goes directly to the point and makes small comparisons that help people to relate to it in a very nice way. In it I have found many interesting things, such as “Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Difficult and easy complement each other.” (2)It talks about the perfect balance of things and that’s helps show the importance of everything, because there is not bad, then how can there be good? This, I am pretty sure isn’t encouraging people to be bad so there can be good, it´s just saying that because evil exists we can know and therefore do what’s right.

“The highest good is like water.” (8) That I think is one of the most magical and to the point things I have ever read in a religious book, because it encircles all the other teaching that in other books would take up whole chapters, but here they can be putting only one small phrase. Water is pure, clear, and good. By us being really good, or the “highest good”, we will be able to one day become like water. Obviously this is a metaphor, we won´t become water, but we will become pure and clean at heart and extremely good as if might have ever even been imagined.

The other thing that I like the most was “The five color blind the eye, the five tones deafen the ear, the five flavors dull the taste… He lets go of that and chooses this.”( 12)I believe that he, or whoever is speaking is talking about the Tao. There are always five things that are mentioned, five colors, five tones, five flavors, but the question is, are all these fives just a number he liked or just something that stand for five pillars (like in Islam)? He says “He lets go of that and chooses this.” But this, as in Tao or this as some other five things or what.

Ok, so this part was probably a little more confusing, but it was probably because I made it confusing. Reading this really made me look at everything in a different way, I really like it. I just hope we can continue reading and analyzing it to be able to understand everything much better and be able to in a way relate to is more deeply.