Taoism

"Education is the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty." - Mark Twain

wise [ wīz ] (comparative wis·er, superlative wis·est)


adjective

1. knowing much from experience: able to make sensible decisions and judgments on the basis of knowledge and experience


2. sensible: showing good sense or good judgment


3. learned: knowledgeable about many subjects


4. shrewd: capable of achieving some purpose or goal by cunning


5. disrespectful: behaving in a way that is perceived as disrespectful or impudent ( informal )
Don't get wise with me!


6. skilled in occult practices: skilled in magic or fortune telling ( archaic )


learn·ed [ lúrnəd ]


adjective

1. highly educated: well-educated and very knowledgeable
a learned professor


2. education scholarly: showing or requiring much education and knowledge


3. law honorable: used in addressing or referring to a lawyer in court
my learned colleague


4. psychology acquired, not instinctual: used to describe behavior or knowledge that is acquired through training or experience rather than being instinctual


Frankly I have no idea what he means, his statement is a pretty harsh generalization to make and I believe it to be totally false. If you HAVE to write a paper just go into detail about the differences between being learned, and being wise, such as wise shows a good sense of judgement while learned does not.. since I don't agree with the statement I can't exactly guess as to what he might have meant...

 

I think he's saying that having knowled and having wisdom are two different traits. You can be a mathematical genius but have no wisdom, or uneducated with the secret to happiness. It could be taken a step further if you want to make "learnedness" and wisdom mutually exclusive. This would is somewhat illustrated by the saying, "Ignorance is bliss.


Your paper should be a cinch to write. You can explore wisdom and intelligence or education seperately with definitions. Then, compare and contrast the the definitions and how you can derive various meanings to the original quote to give a clearer picture of what it means. Finally, you can explore the philosophical implications of the quote.

 

maybe something to do with common sense.

i know plenty of "learned" people who aren't wise because they have no common sense and lack their own thoughts. People who are learned don't really figure anything out for themselves...they're just memorizing stuff that someone else did the work for.

 

The quote means we waste our time filling our minds with useless information, the things you learn in school simply clutter your mind, people who think they know everything are not wise. True wisdom comes from life experience, having a clear mind. Read The Tao of Pooh it's a an excellent book!

 

"The wise are not learned" Your wise, u already know, it's not something to be tought, its having experience, and knowing.
"The learned are not wise" They are being taught, "learning" things, not yet wise, not yet enough experience.

 

I agree, awsome book, i realy enjoyed it

 

"The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise."

By this, Lao Tse meant (in my opinion) that those who are wise and posses wisdom were not taught it, they obtained the level of wisdom they have outside of a school and away from a teacher; from experience. 'The learned are not wise' means that just because you posses education in whatever it was that you were educated in does not mean that you are wise because of this. Intelligence and wisdom, unfortunatly, do not go hand-in-hand, and one does not mean the other.

"The well frog cannot imagine the ocean, nor can a summer insect conceive of ice. How then can a scholar conceive of the Tao."

By this, I believe that what Lao meant was that we know what we live, what we experience and what we encounter. The well frog, having lived it's life in the well and not being able to see or live or experience anything but the environment of the well, knows nothing of the world outside of the well. If the frog doesn't know and cannot know anything except what it knows, then it can't imagine the ocean. I am fortunate enough to have, my whole life (19.5 years) lived within walking distance of the atlantic ocean. It's grown on me, and to be honest I don't think that I could live very easily for any long period of time without the ocean in my life. I think of people from, say, Kansas or some other state that's land-locked sometimes. I know that this doesn't apply to everyone, but I know that there are some people who have never seen the ocean. All their lives they've never experienced the view from the shore, looking out onto a body of water that even I, someone who's lived it their whole life, cannot comprehend the size of, and neither can the frog. The frog, because it's been ignorant to the existance of such a thing cannot imagine or comprehend it, just as I can't comprehend not having it there.

And the same goes for the summer insect. If the insect lives only during the warm summer months where (in eastern massachusetts) the temperature doesn't drop below like, 60, then it can't imagine or comprehend snow, because it's never seen it or had the chance to see it before.

And the scholar, because he has lived his life by the books and learned facts and nothing else, cannot comprehend Taoism because he has never subjected himself to it, he's lived the opposite life. He knows nothing of it because he's never experinced it or lived it.

Think of it this way, and this isn't a perfect example, but it's a decent one I think;

You've been brought up and taught that a car was called a 'car'. That was it's name, and that's what you know it as. Now say one day you use the word in conversation with a stranger, who doesn't understand what you mean. You point to a car and say 'thats a car'. The stranger tells you that that, as everyone in the world would agree, is called a 'pickle' and that's what it's been called ever since it was invented. No matter how hard you tried, I dont believe that you could ever completly change the association of the word 'car' with 'pickle'. It'd been engraved in your mind and that's all you knew, and no matter your efforts, you couldn't 100% change that.

Anyways, if that makes sense and you acctually read all that, kudos.

 

Before you read this, I'm terribly sorry. I'm not high or on anything except a blatant lack of sleep. I started typing and didn't stop, so if it doesn't make sense, my bad. Enjoi.

Because if you really think about it, we (or, at least, I,) have nothing better to do. Especially seeing as whether or not we do care or not, once we're dead and gone and didn't make a spec of difference someone else will be born that won't care, and won't even think about it because they'll be too busy by the age of 5 gleaming (is that even a word, and if so, the right one?) over their happymeal and stuffing a hamburger in their mouthes--something that they'll do for the rest of their short, narrow-minded, apathetic and insignificant little lives.

I'd like to think that the people who do give a shit get something better after they pass than those that don't. But then again, there's no evidence of that or anything like that except what's written in some books about a magical man that lives in the sky that has, by the way, been a pretty good cause of an incompehendable number of deaths (all for no real reason other than that of arrogance and ignorance, mind you) over the past x amount of centuries--ever since the idea of 'religion' was created.

So what do you have, then? You have the option of giving a shit and the alternative of not giving a shit. No real long-term benefits to either one aside from what you give to yourself for whichever you choose and do. Some people go through life not giving a shit because they simply dont care one way or another. And some dedicate their lives to giving a shit, and believe in it and that it makes them a better person and you know what? Good for them. I'm glad that those people have a better view of themselves for that, because I believe they should.

Let me put it this way: I'm bored.

I'm very bored of this life in many different ways sometimes. It just bores me, but that's okay. I'm trying not to let it, and to do interesting things, but I'm running out of ideas.

So that's why I give a shit. I give a shit because in the end you don't know whats going to happen, so why not?

What do you have to lose?

 

What are some ways you practice taoism in your daily life?

I don't watch tv anymore, instead I listen to music and make crafty things, or I spend the time talking to my husband and cuddling. It really made me realize how much of our lives we waste staring at a screen like a zombie recieving bad vibes from the negative news media, when you could have had fun and done meaningful rewarding things with that time. Oh yeah and I spend less time online

 

me, i toke up and chill with nature, dude nature is so bewutiful and trippy but then like you hit a highway and its like "shit why did we have to mess it up

 

might i say that it is the goal of the Sage (follower of Tao) to amass only as much knowledge as is needed, and then stop learning. The goal is to end one's learning when it becomes irrelavent in the face of one's wisdom.

as for the frog, insect, and scholar; quite simply, the scholar is one with books and man's society, and cannot grasp the complexities of tao, because he's never experienced it, though he sees it everyday with a blind eye.

 

Good responses everyone. I dunno why I didn't read this thread earlier.

I haven't really looked into taoism, but just from this it seems like a good way-to-live. Sounds a lot like buddism as in releasing yourself of material possesions.

To answer the question "Why do you give a shit?'"

Because I can't in no way go back to being a "plastic" person (not that I would wan't to) but life seems so much more fufilled when you stop to look at everything the way the media brought you up like. To give examples like "McDonalds, MTV, WalMart, the "perfect" life displayed on TV, today's so called "education", and useless material possesions that people define themselves as. Its all garbage. When I was a kid, none of that mattered except having fun and making sure nothing "bad" happened. Then you have all this pressure to succeed in life, get a job, go to college/university (thats a good thing though! I can't wait to go to uni to actually learn something "real") and start a life. What most of us didn't realize (maybe you did??) was that we've always had what we needed. We didn't need those Nike shoes, the "in" clothing style, the acceptance of your "friends", the video games, the perfect family life shown on TV and on. I do like many inventians, gaming systems, electric guitar, bikes and so on.
I remember playing street hockey all summer and chilin with friends and it was the best time ever. Why don't I do that anymore? Because everyones freedom has been taken away with memorizing our skeletal system, formulas, working 9-5 to spend it on "shit you don't need" to quote Fight Club.

To get to my point, I don't want to be plastic with no real ambition, I want to be real and enjoy life like when I was a kid. The only problem with that is in my opinion is society and the 10+ years of useless programing in my brain. But thats not hard to get over right? lol

Thats why I give a shit.

 

duuude you are so right thats I want to travel and learn as much as i can in this life and not kjust there propoganda, bullshit, pointless stuff, daaamn man your saying the exact same stuff ive been saying like wooo thats amazing thats why i wanna expand my mind you know a w/e I can hear each individual raindrop on the window sill its trippy as fuck ill be gone for a bit