Notes:

Confucianism and Daoism share: Tian (Heaven, Cosmos) and Dao (Way)

spontaneity

Way of Cosmos/Nature, Way of Human Beings, Way to Express the Way

Society

Nature

Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching (Laozi - Daodejing) The Way and Its Power

I (57): The Unspoken Way - Dao beyond Words

II-III (58-9): beautiful and ugly, yin and yang; keep bellies empty

IV (60): The Way is empty, yet use will not drain it.

XVIII (74): Way versus (Confucian) distinctions

XIX (75): uncarved block

XXVI (83): heavy and light, yin and yang

XXVIII (85): male and female, peak and ravine

XXXVII (96): non-doing, wu wei

Confucius vs Laozi: 

Virtue: Linear ascendence vs Non-linear complementarity

Laozi (Lao Tzu): Key Points

1. The Wholeness of the Dao (Yin-Yang) Wordless Dao spoken through: poetry, verse, paradox - non-linear forms of expression

2. The Way of Undoing (uncarved block): Vision of Agrarian Utopia (keep their bellies full, empty their minds, do not wish to even visit the neighboring village)

3. Yin-Yang balance: 51% Yin, 49% Yang 

Yin: darkness, mystery, receptivity, the valley, the mother, the female

Yang: light, conceptual clarity, proactivity, the peak, the father, the male

(Note: Notice the gender stereotypes)

Practical Ramification: Finding balance may be akin to finding the center of the Yin-Yang Dao.

For example, how do we balance a) going out in the world and making achievements and accomplishments, on the one hand (yang), versus b) going within, finding rest and nurturing?

Zhuangzi (Zhuang Tzu): Key Points: holistic thinking (awareness) vs linear thinking

1. The problem of mental static: too much thinking, wrong-headed thinking (p. 32)

2. Perspectivalism (pp. 40-41) —> Dissolution of Boundaries (p. 44) —> Oneness in the Dao (p. 38)

Practical Ramification: How do we reconcile opposites: high and low, female and male, human and non-human? Zhuangzi and the butterfly, human beings and cats?