Imagine you have a few pieces of wood and you want to build a chair. Once you have a plan of how to construct the chair, you must gather certain truths about your pieces of wood. So, for example, you measure their sizes. This gives you quantitative facts that will be useful for cutting the pieces properly. Once you've built the chair, and it doesn't wobble, you have no more use for these facts. You can and likely will forget them. This is how we should handle the truth in general: gather … [Read more...]

When someone behaves negatively towards you, typically displaying some kind of rudeness, there are three ways in which you can take it: Insecurity. You take it personally by default, even when you aren't attacked on a personal level. This is due to your lack of self-esteem, often accompanied by an oversensitivity to nonverbal cues. For all you know, the other person might just be in a bad mood because he is sleep-deprived, love-deprived, angry at or disappointed by someone else, or suffering … [Read more...]

The Way is the flow of the universe, and Daoism teaches us to go with the flow, to be in harmony with nature. But how could we not do that? How could we ever fail to be in accordance with nature—are we not a part of it? And if we can't paddle against the stream of Life, doesn't this make Daoism meaningless? What's the point of a philosophy telling us to move along the Way if there is no way that opposes the Way anyway? Funnily enough, this apparent pointlessness of Daoism is actually its … [Read more...]

Whatever you do, forget your petty reasons. For let's say you come up with ten reasons to guide or explain an action. You can then order these reasons by their causal or explanatory power, with the first being your strongest reason, followed by your secondary reason, and so on. Ordered that way, chances are that your primary reason is socially acceptable and morally respectable, rather than selfish and reprehensible. Now ask yourself: Is this because your individual will is so closely in … [Read more...]

To find out whether the ego is useful or not, we must first ask: useful for what? So let's see... Is the ego useful if you want to prevent others from walking all over you? No, the ego is not your spine, which would draw prudent boundaries. Rather, the ego is what overreacts when you are afraid that you might be perceived as weak. Maybe the ego is useful when you want to become successful? Well, for becoming successful the ego is not just useful, but necessary, because having … [Read more...]