When it comes to Taoism, the first thing that comes to mind is "Taoism is natural". These four words come from Tao Te Ching. Laozi summed up the laws of the whole universe as these four "top-ups". Literally, we understand that the way of "Tao" is to let nature take its course, but at the same time we will think of such a sentence: "My life is up to me, not heaven." With the proliferation of online novels, this sentence is often borrowed because of its grandeur. Some readers even think that this sentence was created by a network god, which always makes people excited. But in fact, this sentence has long existed, and it is a classic sentence of Taoism, which has been mentioned many times in Taoist classics.

The meaning of this sentence is like a slogan of declaring war on death. Your life and destiny should be in your own hands, and you can't be dominated by heaven, let alone bow to fate. This is a strong spirit against fate, but this sentence seems to be contrary to "Tao, law and nature" Why does Taoism say "Taoism is natural" on the one hand and "my fate is not decided by heaven" on the other? The two seem to be contradictory, but they are actually mistakes in our understanding.

First of all, the word "Tao, law and nature" has been mispronounced for thousands of years and should be read as "Tao, law and nature". The meaning of "law" is naturally a concept put forward by Laozi. In his words, if Tao can be said, it is not eternal, so it cannot be said that the concept of "sex" is different from ours.

Personally, I think the most important thing in this sentence is the word "law". Whether our own "Tao" should imitate nature or follow the footsteps of nature depends on whether we will feel contradictory if we regard the word "heaven" in "My life is not determined by heaven" as nature. Contradiction itself is opposition and unity. We might as well think that Taoism is imitating nature, that is, following the laws of nature, but the ultimate goal is to make ourselves as natural as "nature" and thus become another "nature" independent of nature. Isn't this whole process a struggle with "Heaven"? Isn't the ultimate goal to make my life my own?

So these two sentences are not contradictory, just like Tai Chi, seemingly contradictory, but actually a whole and indispensable.