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Lao Tzu 22 Of The Tao Te Ching Analysis

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A Chinese philosopher by the name of Lao-Tzu wrote many poems on his philosophical ideas. The poems were translated and combined into a book titled Tao Te Ching. In poem 22 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu discusses how living to better the world makes you the happiest. While the poem doesn’t use these exact words, analyzing the words used in the poem shows this theory is correct. The poem is split into two parts. The first part discusses worse becoming better, and the second half discusses the removal of self-centeredness and how living to better the world makes you the happiest you can be. The first part of the poem discusses things becoming more. “Crippled becomes whole, crooked becomes straight, hollow becomes full, worn becomes new, little becomes more, much becomes delusion” (Lao-Tzu, Lines 2-7). The significance of this is that Lao-Tzu is saying anything can be changed for the better. Proving that …show more content…

I took “the One” to obviously mean a Chinese deity in which he believed, but what was really interesting to me was “take care of this world.” As I understood it with the rest of the passage, by taking care of the world, you will in turn be taking care of yourself. The next lines read, “Do not display themselves and therefore shine” (Lao-Tzu, Lines 10-11). People who try to show off and boast about their successes often times lose themselves in trying to portray a certain reputation. We see this most often with celebrities. It seems like at least once a week on the news we see one celebrity or another being arrested or put into rehab. When asked what happened, the answers mostly mirror each other: “I don’t know who I am anymore,” “I don’t know how I got here,” “I put too much pressure on myself,” “I was trying too hard to fit in,” etc. When people try too hard to please themselves, they lose the light that is their

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