This section will discuss Tao Te Ching, with a few notes about Confucianism too. Enjoy, guys. I think Eastern Philosophy is the most logical of all of them, so THERE!
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu is the "religious" text of the Taoist philosophy, and is used as a guide, not as law. It is also, incidentally, a text one can use in their IB Paper 2. Yes. So let us break the Tao down as much as we can.
First and foremost, everything I try to say about the Tao is wrong, since you can NEVER learn the Tao. There is no right or wrong answer to anything I say here. You must dance around the Way with metaphors (usually relating to water or rocks) and with examples of it. The Tao is not a list of mantras, it is a list of things you ought to do, written down by a dude.
There are a number of frequently occurring things in the Tao, but water is by far the most common metaphor. When you are in a sticky situation, you must look to water, and do as water would do. Is there an obstacle in your life? Do not fight it, passively find a way around it. You must be strong but flexible. You must be pure, but also muddy. You must be life-giving and also deadly. You must be like water.
An HL person in my Philosophy class disagreed with this, claiming stubbornly that you must be more like Rock in order to follow the Tao. You must be able to be shaped, be strong, be useful, be old and wise, be observant and utterly passive. I don't know if this is more accurate than water, but one can never truly know.
I, for one, prefer the analogy of emptiness. A text that I suggest referring to is The Tao of Pooh, where Winnie the Pooh is the greatest Master of the Tao of all time due to his measured passivity.
WILL CONTINUE!!
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