Interpreting tao
When beauty is recognised as beauty, ugliness is created.
When good is recognised as good, bad is created.
(Lao Tzu)
Verse 2
This page is going to explore verse 2 of
Tao Te Ching, by breaking the verse down
into component parts and then considering the overall
theme.
Ray Grigg's The New Lao Tzu is the version we are quoting from.
When
beauty...
We will begin with the verse at the
top
of the page.
The key words are recognised and created.
Recognised
Recognition requires familiarity.
You must have encountered it before or heard of it in order to experience
recognition.
To recognise, we must know already. We must have prior information or
preconceptions.
We do not recognise the new. We are innocent of the unknown.
Created
Creation involves manufacture. It is developed, produced.
It is not inherent. It is attributed. Applied. Assigned.
Beauty & ugliness
Rather than being a fact, it is a determination.
Beauty is not
inherent.
It stems from value and perspective.
The values of a culture change over
the years and are singular and unique to each individual.
Mass media may assign standards of beauty but these do not reflect the
appearance of everyday people.
Ugliness and beauty are not actual things.
They are attributed values.
They represent a means of categorising aesthetic values and dividing the
world accordingly.
These standards are manufactured and false.
They have no intrinsic value or
worth.
No real meaning.
Holding one thing up as beautiful automatically relegates other things
to not being beautiful.
The very notion of beauty condemns everything else to ugliness.
Good & bad
As with beauty, good and bad are applied standards. Calling one thing
good is to call another bad.
Moral values are not inherent.
They are relative to a time, a place, a people and the influences governing
their perception.
More...
Page created 16 May 2000