Tao Te Ching
Pluralism
Pluralism - the super food of culture and civilization.
Throughout history, the societies that embraced religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity became more successful. It was the secret to Genghis Khan’s success, the unprecedented flowering of global prosperity after Yung Lo’s expeditions, and the cause of China’s falling out of its world leadership role after Yung Lo died and China embraced isolationism. Attitudes like white nationalism and fascism though inspired by a lack of economic opportunity and meaningfulness completely backfire and exacerbate the problems people hope it will cure.
Quotes (79)
“There is infinite space in your garden; all men, all women are welcome here; all they need do is enter.”
“Since, O Mazda, from the beginning, Thou didst create soul and body […] you wished that everyone should choose his or her own faith and path freely .”
“Water and fire compensate each other,
Thunder and Wind do not disturb each other,
Mountain and Lake are dependent on each other
Thus change and transformation become possible,
And all things become completed.
”
“Learn the unshaken heart of persuasive truth. Don’t believe status quo opinions in which there is no truth at all.”
“The nature of God is a circle of which the center is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
“In comparing various authors with one another, I have discovered that some of the gravest and latest writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making acknowledgment.”
“Perhaps the teaching is one, but there are various people who hear it. On account of the inconceivable merit it bestows, it shines forth in various ways.”
“O fool, know yourself. It is not a matter of meditation, or concentration… the diversity of existence is but a form of thought.”
“We ought not to be embarrassed of appreciating the truth and of obtaining it wherever it comes from, even if it comes from races distant and nations different from us. Nothing should be dearer to the seeker of truth than the truth itself, and there is no deterioration of the truth, nor belittling either of one who speaks it or conveys it”
“When a man who practices one version of the Way of Buddha vilifies another because it differs from his own sect, he cannot avoid the sin of slandering the Truth.”
“I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew… a man, a woman, an angel, or even pure Soul.”
“Benares is to the East, Meca to the West; but explore your own heart, for there are both Rama and Allah.”
“There never were two opinions alike in all the world, no more than two hours or two grains: the most universal quality is diversity.”
“Words are rooted in the mind and differ [from person to person] as much as faces do... the Tao is public, but the study of it is private.”
“I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.”
“It is only our own basic thoughts that possess truth and life… other people’s thoughts are like crumbs form another’s table, the cast-off clothes of an unfamiliar guest.”
“In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Hence, even in revolutions of opinion, one part of the truth usually sets while another rises.”
“Consort with the followers of all religions in a spirit of friendliness and fellowship.”
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.”
“I adopt each theory, myth, god, and demi-god, I see that all the old accounts, bibles, genealogies, are true, without exception”
“Everywhere these days, we have ceased to understand that we only find true security in social solidarity, not in isolated individual effort.”
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
“Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment and the merging of races”
“The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.”
“Man has no individual 'i'. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small 'i's, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, 'i'. And each time his 'i' is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.”
“It was the Stoics who invented the conception of the brotherhood of man. They taught that all men are children of Zeus and that the sage will ignore the distinctions of Greek and barbarian, bond and free. When Rome brought the whole civilized world under one government, the political environment was favorable to the spread of this doctrine.”
“international government is at least as important to mankind as national government... either man must again become a rare species as in the days of Homo Pekiniensis, or we must learn to submit to an international government. Any such government, whether good, bad or indifferent, will make the continuation of the human species possible”
“No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass.”
“it is the tremendous experiment of becoming conscious, which nature has imposed on mankind, uniting the most diverse cultures in a common task.”
“just as the human body shows a common anatomy over and above all racial differences, so to, does the psyche possess a common substratum... the collective unconscious... latent dispositions toward identical reactions.”
“Rise above sectional interests and private ambitions... Pass from matter to spirit. Matter is diversity; spirit is light, life and unity.”
“First of all, what man must know is that he is not one; he is many. He has not one permanent and unchangeable ‘I’ or Ego. He is always different. One moment he is one, another moment he is another, the third moment he is a third, and so on, almost without end.”
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”
“If it meant conventionality, meant slavery, meant deceit, meant denying her love, fettering her limbs, pursing her lips, and restraining her tongue, then she would turn about with the ship and set sail once more for the gypsies.”
“It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and those who agree with us, but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us.”
“The vision of one person lends not its wings to another… no one can teach you anything that doesn’t already lie half asleep in the dawning of your understanding.”
“What did it matter which religion we professed or which philosophy we believed, any more than which language we spoke or what clothes we wore?”
“Religious sectarianism... turned Western Asia from world leadership to destitution... into the poverty, disease, and stagnation of modern times.”
“The human desire to see only one phase of the truth which we happen to perceive, and to develop and elevate it into a perfect logical system is one reason why our philosophy is bound to grow stranger to life.”
“If you think in terms of people divided up into countries, you won't follow me. The idea of countries is going by the boards. Young people are getting wonderfully uprooted and they're too strong to get sucked into this 'country' crap.”
“It is high time that we stop thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom.”
“The conservative who resists change is as valuable as the radical who proposes it.”
“It is not possible for this nation to be at once politically internationalist and economically isolationist. This is just as insane as asking one Siamese twin to high dive while the other plays the piano.”
“We are—all of us—pilgrims who struggle along different paths toward the same destination.”
“Social evolution proceeds most rapidly when different cultures come into close contact with each other and thus can exchange information and goods, even though each retains its originality.”
“[Whitman's] all-embracing words lock arms with workers and farmers, Negroes and whites, Asiatics and Europeans, serfs, and free men, beaming democracy to all”
“From all living beings something flows into him all the time, and something flows from him.”
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”
“Big mind is something you have, not something to seek for... there is no Hinayana way or Mahayana way. Only because you seek to gain something through rigid formal practice does it become a problem”
“Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.”
“To the questioner, nothing is sacred, he detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead.”
“founded on a pluralistic value system, that circumstances must be appropriately weighed... wasn't it the mission of the philosopher to ask what pluralism is, and to unify the discordant value systems of our world? There can be only one absolute value system, and it should have been up to philosophy to show this.”
“The courage to doubt, on which American pluralism, federalism, and religious liberty are founded, is a special brand of courage, a more selfless brand of courage than the courage of orthodoxy. A brand that has been rarer and more precious in the history of the West than the courage of the crusader.”
“If we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”
“Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different”
“Every gross part of our anatomy has originated in various countries throughout the world, some in ancient times some very recently.”
“Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.”
“We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
“We can't let people drive wedges between us... because there's only one human race.”
“Mandala means 'society' or 'group' and is connected with unique or alone, loneliness. When you stand in the middle of your mandala, no one else, only you can see this vision.”
“All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call.”
“The balance of male and female became a guiding principle in Genghis Khan’s political strategy and tactics, as well as in his spiritual worldview.”
“The Bhagavad Gita, like the Divine Comedy, is one of the greatest works of education ever composed. It leads from the darkness of a life without meaning to the clarity of God’s wisdom... The ultimate message of the Bhagavad Gita is that God has created many roads to the truth; each person must find his or her own road.”
“Oh, I've been smiling lately, reaming about the world as one. And I believe it could be, someday it's going to come”
“A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.”
“Multiculturalism should not mean that we tolerate another culture’s intolerance. If we do in fact support diversity, women’s rights, and gay rights, then we cannot in good conscience give Islam a free pass on the grounds of multicultural sensitivity.”
“Throughout the world, more and more entrepreneurs, engineers, experts, scholars, lawyers, and managers... must ponder whether to answer the imperial call—with a growing disregard for the borders and opinions of states—or to remain loyal to their state and their people. More and more choose the empire.”
“Gatherers usually ate better, more varied food than many modern factory workers, and they suffered less from starvation and disease... they were quite strong and healthy because they ate a lot of different things.”
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