Tao Te Ching
Conflict
Probably rooted in some Darwinian natural selection process, humans have deeply rooted propensities for conflict, aggression, and extreme views. This powerful influence on human behavior obviously leads to fighting, murder, extreme suffering, and war. Solid and extreme views justify and encourage this kind of activity. Going to war, killing, and conflict lose their foundation when not disguised in solid beliefs, ideologies, or nationalism. In this context, the idea of “Middle Way” becomes an antidote, an alternative, a path toward sanity. Reality never conforms to our belief systems. External and self-deception exert so much more power over us than we realize. As Balthasar observes, “All fools are fully convinced and everyone fully convinced is a fool.” As the Taoist yin-yang symbol conveys, every dark and negative experience has its inner light; every bright and positive one, its inner dark. A life lived in accord with a “Middle Way” avoids extreme views, beliefs, and opinions; fosters understanding, peace, and compassion.
Quotes (85)
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
“When leaders are convinced by concepts, corruption, confusion, and conflict reign. When instead they remain unconvinced and open, blessings and goodness spread.”
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
“Faced with chaos or conflict, the sage commander looks first to the largest reference point. No matter what ground he has been given, he always thinks bigger… he looks to the space around things.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.”
“Conflicts break out when opposite parties—the rich and the poor—are equally balanced. if one or the other were highly superior, the other side would not risk an attack.”
“Those who govern others with worthiness never win them over. Those who serve others with worthiness never fail to gain their support.”
“A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.”
“On Golden Rule:
Repay wrongs with the Power of Goodness;
Love your brother and sister as your soul;
protect them as you do the pupils of your eyes.”
“How do you think you can help mundane beings with gold? It will only cause greater conflict and strife, greater sin and evil.”
“We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?”
“When the mind is at peace, the world too is at peace... I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict.”
“Conflict arises because duality is not seen as it is at all... if we are completely in touch with these dualistic feelings, that absolute experience of duality is itself the experience of nonduality.”
“contention is the source of military combat, the foundation of disaster and chaos... therefore, Lao Tzu repeatedly takes noncontention as the essence. When no one contends, how will weapons and armor arise? For what purpose will forces be deployed for combat?”
“When fighting and quarreling cease in the family, military deployments cease in the states, and punitive expeditions cease throughout the realm"”
“True teachings pacify violent emotions, conflicting thoughts, and still these wave-like disturbances in meditation.”
“Taoists don’t avoid what others hate… They only avoid what others fight over, namely flattery and ostentation.”
“Struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. I sing the song of the village woodsman, and play the tunes of the children.”
“There are many winds full of anger, and lust and greed. They move the rubbish around, but the solid mountain of true nature stays where it's always been”
“All people love a compassionate person as they do their own parents… Hence, those who attack or defend with compassion meet no opposition.”
“What the wise choose is what everyone else hates. Who is going to compete with them?”
“In the nature of man we find three main causes of conflict: competition, diffidence, and the lust for approval.”
“People have no enemies, none at all right from the start. You create them all yourself fighting over right and wrong.”
“I think that everything goes awry with us, that nobody knows his office nor what he is doing, nor what he ought to do. Almost all of their time is passed in senseless quarrels: Jansenists with Molinists, lawyers with churchmen, men of letters with men of letters, courtiers with courtiers, financiers with the people, wives with husbands, relatives with relatives—it's an eternal war.”
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”
“The constant roaring of the cannon is so distressing that we cannot eat, drink, or sleep. May we be supported and sustained in this dreadful conflict!”
“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.”
“If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.”
“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.”
“As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
“The history of all previously existing societies is the history of class struggles.”
“The great enemy of knowledge is not error… One error conflicts with another, each destroys its opponent, and truth is evolved.”
“Argument is generally a waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one’s opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.”
“What is the use of fighting against the season, or the tides, or the movements of the planetary bodies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows through us?”
“The opposition between the men who have and the men who are is immemorial.”
“This is a busy world, and no one has time to sit right down and hate you. The only enemies we have are those we conjure up ourselves. The idea that we have enemies is only egotism gone to seed.”
“Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution… civilization is built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications… This ‘cultural privation’ dominates the whole field of social relations and is the cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight.”
“The task of philosophy is to clarify our ideas about contemporary social and moral conflicts. It's purpose is to become—as far as humanly possible—an organ for dealing with these conflicts... Philosophy is a catholic and far-sighted theory about our adjustments to the conflicting factors of life.”
“Conflict stirs us to observation and memory, instigates invention, shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.”
“To fight is a radical instinct; if men have nothing else to fight over, they will fight over words, fancies, or women; or they will fight because they dislike each other’s looks, or because they have met walking in opposite directions… To fight for a reason and in a calculating spirit is something your true warrior despises.”
“Of our conflicts with others, we make rhetoric; of our conflicts with ourselves, we make poetry.”
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
“the greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble... They can never be solved, only outgrown... while to remain caught in a conflict is something pathological.”
“You cannot struggle with men, not you, because at the very moment you are fighting, you keep thinking that your enemy might be right, and no matter what he does to you after that, you forgive him.”
“Greatest of all dialogues, of course, is the Republic, being the fullest exposition of Plato's philosophy, and in its earlier parts a dramatic conflict of personalities and idea... Their form entitles them to as high a place in the annals of literature as their content has given them in the history of thought.”
“War in our time has become an anachronism. Whatever the case in the past, war in the future can serve no useful purpose.”
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”
“Control in any form breeds distortion, conflict and an unhealthy mind.”
“The struggle can be won only by acceptance of both the forces of light and darkness in their full significance: as the creative and the receptive, the male and the female, the strong and the soft.”
“The very process of living is a continual interplay between the individual and his environment, often taking the form of a struggle resulting in injury or disease.”
“A relationship with no combat in it is dull, and a relationship with too much combat in it is toxic. What is desirable is a relationship with a certain optimum of conflict.”
“The cause of conflict is some fixed or one-sided idea… there is not particular way in true practice. You should find your own way”
“A constant image is the conflict of the eagle and serpent. The serpent bound to earth, the eagle in spiritual flight… when the two amalgamate, we get a wonderful dragon, a serpent with wings.”
“The more fiercely each man 'fights for his life', the clearer it becomes that he is fighting against all the others who hem him in.”
“the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality… It is the source of all the troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations… to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.”
“[Moral conflicts are] an intrinsic, irremovable element in human life... These collisions of values are of the essence of what they are and what we are.”
“I believe The Art of War shows quite clearly how to take the initiative and combat the enemy—any enemy… Sun Tzu’s truths can equally show the way to victory in all kinds of ordinary business conflicts, boardroom battles, and in the day to day fight for survival we all endure—even in the battle of the sexes! It has been a constant companion to me… I would make it obligatory study… I believe, very much, that Sun Tzu’s knowledge is vital to our survival.”
“Disagreement shakes us out of our slumbers and forces us to see our own point of view through contrast with another person who does not share it”
“The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology but to break down the barrier of dualistic thought and understand technology for what it is—a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both.”
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.”
“Heresies play an essential role by keeping our minds argumentative and alert.”
“Inasmuch as predictions are but explanations in reverse, it is possible that they will be quite as combative as explanations... our attempt to do so masks our desire for power over each other.”
“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”
“You don't have to dress up in fancy costumes, you don't have to have someone—or a whole organization—behind you to prove that what you're doing is right... a tremendous conflict with form goes along with that.”
“Universally—in all traditions and schools of thought, religions, philosophies, political theories—there's always a conflict about how to relate the imaginary world to the physical world.”
“It is the war that is going on inside our own heads to which we have to call the truce.”
“Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends.”
“Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
“The Middle East is the crucible of conflict and the graveyard of empires.”
“...The problem is that feminists have taken over with their attempts to inhibit sex. We have a serious testosterone problem in this country. … It's a mess out there. Men are suspicious of women's intentions. Feminism has crippled them. They don't know when to make a pass. If they do make a pass, they don't know if they're going to end up in court.”
“Fights over ideas are the most vicious of all. If it were merely food, or water, or shelter, we would work something out But in the realm of ideas, one can become idealistic.”
“The mental machinery that drives modern wars—patriotic fervor, mass self-righteousness, contagious rage—have their deepest roots in... conflicts among coalitions of males for status.”
“This isn't about what is . . . it's about what people think is. It's all imaginary anyway. That's why it's important. People only fight over imaginary things.”
“he actually threw concepts at me. I had no idea your kind had advanced to the point of using energized abstract macroconstructs in combat. Who expects microbes to go nuclear?”
“The more we allow ourselves to be guided by compassion—to pause for a moment and try to see where another person is coming from—the less likely we are to engage in conflict.”
“Rejoicing in the success of others means letting go of competitiveness, jealousy, and envy”
“military globalization: War spreads ideas, technologies, and people far more quickly than commerce does... People care far more about their enemies than about their trade partners. For every American film about Taiwan, there are probably fifty about Vietnam.”
“Human beings are great at starting wars. We are also reasonably capable of ending wars, given enough time. What we struggle with, is avoiding wars altogether... When ancient kingdoms came into contact with one another, no matter how many gifts were exchanged in the early days, wars of domination eventually resulted.”
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