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Lessons from the Book of Chuang Tzu - Part 8

The sage brings little to the world but inflicts much harm

Create weights and measures to judge by and people will steal by weight and measure. Create contracts and legal agreements to inspire trust and people will steal by contracts and legal agreements.

One person steals a buckle and he is executed. Another steals a country and becomes a ruler.

If sages and wisdom were abandoned great robbers would cease.

Burn the accounts and rip up the contracts and the people will return to simplicity. Break up the weights and the measures and people will no longer argue.

Throw away the six tones and destroy the pipes then every person in the world would for the first time be able to hear properly.

If adornments were abolished everyone in the world would be able to see clearly for the first time.

Get rid of the tech and for the first time everyone in the world will have and use real skills.

The greatest art in the world is like foolishness.

When people have true, clear vision, no one in the world will be duped.

They made the world aflame with admiration and so confused the world.

In the best of times people followed their ways, knotting string and using the nets. They enjoyed their food; they took pleasure in their clothes; they were content with their lifestyles; they were at ease in their homes. People lives until a good age and never travelled beyond their own borders. Perfect harmony was the norm.

Now the people are agitated, trying to see what is going on, saying "In such and such a place there is a wise man!" So they pack their bags and rush off.

Those who produce rhetoric, plot and scheme, spread rumours and debate pointlessly, to dust off arguments and seek apparent agreement just make people confused. So everything under Heaven is in a state of distress all because of the pursuit of knowledge.

People do not know how to find what they already know. Everyone knows how to condemn what they do not like, but don't know how to condemn what they themselves have which is wrong.

Thwe good and honest people are ignored, whilst spineless flatterers are advanced. The quiet and calm of actionless action is cast aside and pleasure is taken in argument. It is this nonsense which has caused such confusion for everything under Heaven.


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