original text

Everyone in the world knows that beauty is beauty, and evil has been done. As we all know, goodness is good, but it is not good.

Whether they are born together or not, they are difficult to complement each other, long and short, and compete with each other.

Sound is in harmony with sound, and it grows with each other. Hengye

It is based on the words that saints teach by doing nothing; Everything is made by words and deeds, by things, by things, and not by life. It is impossible for a husband to live in a house.

Translation:

The whole world knows why beauty is beautiful and it becomes ugly.

The whole world knows why good is good and good becomes evil.

Existence and nothingness are produced in interaction, difficulty and ease are produced in mutual comparison, long-term and short-term are produced in mutual comparison, nobility and lowliness are formed in mutual inclination, and voices echo each other, sing each other and compare before and after. This situation has existed in people's minds for a long time, and people will think it is an eternal law.

Therefore, after understanding this profound truth, a saint will treat and deal with everything with a motionless attitude without adding manpower, teach the world with his own actions, let everything run naturally without interrupting the natural movement of everything, and never add words to judge and interfere.

Saints nurture all things by nature without interference, silently encourage all things without exerting their own strength, and quietly retire after success, without making any contribution to the world.

It is precisely because saints are active and not proud that their achievements are indelible through the ages.

Explanation:

The core of this chapter is to talk about "letting nature take its course", which is manifested in the specific aspects of life, that is, "teaching by doing nothing, and retiring after doing nothing." So this chapter is essentially about people's attitude towards nature, life and the world.

The first chapter of Tao Te Ching says that "Tao" exists objectively and naturally, is independent of human will, and has the power of death. However, with the opening of the "wonderful gate", after the existence and intersection of the avenue gave birth to everything, the advanced intelligent animal "man" appeared between heaven and earth. After man appeared in nature, in order to know, understand and master everything, he began to use his own wisdom to distinguish everything with relative concepts such as good and evil, difficulty, length, competition, sound, and before and after, thus giving everything the color of "man" and the standard of "judgment", thus producing his own world view. Then formed the view of good and evil, honor and disgrace, right and wrong, gain and loss, life and death, bitter optimism, and thus began to form their own world view, outlook on life and values for things, things and people according to their own likes and dislikes and standards.

After the "Wan Qi Gate" was opened, it also opened a window for people to understand, know and recognize nature. People began to customize the world geographical coordinates and life coordinates of their own understanding of everything in nature according to the relative mutual conceptual experience of existence, good and evil, difficulty, length, competition, sound, and before and after. For example, in order to determine their own orientation, people named it southeast, northwest, middle, upper, middle, lower, left and right, inside and outside, etc. Gradually, people have discovered these things that were originally opposite to each other, which is more conducive to people's understanding of the originally unknown world in which they live. In the repeated identification of different things, people's world outlook has gradually formed. This way of knowing the world still affects our lives today. For example, we can choose different reference objects as standard points to determine the position, movement, quality, likes and dislikes of things. Take the division of provinces in China as an example. The relative provinces in China are: Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Beijing, Nanjing, Hunan, Hubei and Inner Mongolia. There are beautiful women and ugly women as reference, and emotional expressions such as likes and dislikes as reference. . . These are all caused by the concept of contradiction or not.

With the concept of opposition, the concept of contradictory relationship naturally arises, and the concept of contradictory relationship naturally has different cognitive aspects such as positive and negative, good and bad. When contradictions arise, people will naturally seek ways to solve them according to the contradictory relationship and the cognitive law of "mysterious change" of everything. At this point, people finally discovered a major law of the cognitive world, that is, the relationship between contradiction and unity.

The above is about the formation of people's world outlook, so how is people's outlook on life formed? In this chapter, in fact, Lao Tzu also reveals the reasons for the formation of people's various outlooks on life.

In Laozi's view, people initially had no contradictory ideas and no standards of good and evil. They are in a state of natural purity without goodness, ugliness, ignorance and chaos, that is to say, people have no outlook on life at first. However, since people have the concept of "being or not", have an opposing understanding of nature, understand the laws and principles of all things accompanying, interdependent, naturally born and mutually dying, understand the opposition of opposites, and learn to take a selective attitude towards everything, they have gradually developed their outlook on life and outlook on life from the world view. It can be seen that the outlook on life comes from the world outlook and is formed through long-term cultivation.

The avenue is silent, and everything comes into being; It goes without saying that the teaching of the Avenue has made intelligent human beings aware, learned to identify, choose and judge, and the concepts of status, beauty and ugliness, good and evil feelings have naturally emerged.

We take human growth as an example to illustrate the formation of outlook on life. After a person is born, the first contact is his/her parents. He (she) understands adults' expressions, behaviors and attitudes towards things by observing parents' eyes and behaviors, and gradually experiences and imitates adults' expressions and behaviors in his own mind. What an adult likes, agrees with, opposes and dislikes will leave an indelible mark on his/her young mind, and he/she will like and dislike it with adults.

As they grow up, they begin to leave their families and step into society. Parents will approve, encourage or oppose and reprimand their children's behavior in dealing with others. If they do well, they will be rewarded; if they do badly, they will be humiliated or punished. If praised, they will be more glorious, if criticized, they will feel ashamed. Children will consciously shape themselves according to the requirements of their parents or social elders and successful people, thus forming a long-term concept of honor and disgrace.

After entering the school, through the education of the school system, the standards for children to judge things are constantly improving. What is right? What's the matter? They may no longer simply imitate adults, but begin to have their own independent judgment on the right or wrong of things. As children grow up, the concept of right and wrong is gradually formed.

When children really grow up and take up social work posts, they should consider their own food, clothing, housing and transportation and pursue a better life. Different situations of social competition, gains and losses will gradually invade his mind. He began to suffer from loss, which made him happy and sad. The experience of gain and loss makes him anxious, affects his body, mind and behavior, and consciously or unconsciously forms a view of gain and loss.

Over time, what should be gained and what should be lost will be lost. After experiencing the ups and downs of life, finance, beauty, high officials and poverty around him, he began to feel that even if he succeeded or not, his life would grow old. Facing the confusion of life and the inevitability of death, his view of life and death was gradually established.

The contradiction between good and evil, honor and disgrace, right and wrong, gain and loss, life and death troubled her, making his mind restless for a moment. He was distressed and happy. Knowing that all this is a must in life, he began to experience the bitter optimism of life and began to think about what life is all about. How to spend life is meaningful? At this time, his thoughts began to transcend himself, sublimate, or dull, or get rid of the barriers of himself and think about the deeper meaning of life. At this point, his outlook on life has gradually matured.

As an eternal saint, Lao Tzu understood the true meaning of the avenue and realized its inviolability. Facing the absolute road, people's relative efforts or intervention may succeed for a while, but they will never succeed in life, so he transcends himself and adopts a natural attitude towards the changes around him, thus reaching the highest state of doing nothing. Of course, "inaction" is not doing nothing, but doing something beyond nature. What should be done and experienced should be experienced and felt in the same way according to the rhythm of nature. Don't do things that go against the way of nature knowing that you can't do it, and achieve "nothing to experience and nothing to do" in the success of nature. This seemingly negative attitude towards life actually contains a positive concept of life, which is a great positive, comfortable and enjoyment beyond selfishness, greed and desire. Isn't it commendable to feel life easily without being tired?

The main meaning of Lao in this chapter is: everything must be done without doing anything, and everything is natural without doing anything. It exerts influence imperceptibly and naturally, just like the sun, it shines on the growth of all things without exaggeration, flows like a river, nourishes the fertile soil on both sides of the strait, and does not express its contribution. Here, I also hope that the ruling class will not disturb the people's "inaction", give no advice, treat the people equally without discrimination, and let Hui Shi live and work in peace and contentment.

This may be the original intention of Laozi in this chapter to advocate letting nature take its course, not teaching words and deeds, not living in success!