Zhachev

Do I have the ability to act on the world to add, change, or stop certain phenomena? Or am I completely a victim of circumstances and forces larger than myself?

Just now realizing how essential learning the language is to calligraphy, derp!

Does anyone here practice caligraphy, with brush, scroll, and ink? Arabic, Chinese, or Japanese?

How would a non-native speaker get immersed in this learning? Thanks as always.

Here is my preferred translation, an amalgam:

29. Ambition
 

Quote

 

Those who wish to change the world
According with their desire
Cannot succeed.

The world is shaped by the Way;
It cannot be shaped by the self.
Trying to change it, you damage it;
Trying to possess it, you lose it.

So some will lead, while others follow.
Some will be warm, others cold
Some will be strong, others weak.
Some will get where they are going
While others fall by the side of the road.

 

The follower of the Way experiences these as well as ordinary people do, for they are one of the Ten Thousand
Things.

 

 

 

Chapter 29 is foundational for me. I'm a fan of philosophy, and also read many continental philosophers. I've been exploring the concepts of agency and autonomy, and the ddj provides a great framework for understanding these. Trying to escape dualism, I've clung on to pluralism, specifically naturalistic holistic pluralism — which is really just another way of saying "philosophical daoism".

I should place a disclaimer: I'm a daoist who interprets wuwei not as non-action, but as non-coercive action. But I'd be happy to debate this.

One Western field that's really grabbed my attention is s-called actant-network-theory (ANT). Through my studies of daoism and ANT, I've noted the following:

Quote

 

Agency is a way of describing the capacity of actants to act and change a state of relations. An actant can be anything, or any concept, including, but not limited to, nonhumans and humans. Actants have capacities unique to themselves that influence the development of other systems (also called networks or worknets) by enacting relations, and enrolling other actants. Structure is the way a systems own immanent dynamics are arranged and interact. It influences and can determine the conditions of operating for an actant or worknet. Desires, ambition, and the agency of non-anomalous individual actants are not usually enough to shape the life-world by themselves. Agency can not even be accurately comprehended through the near-sightedness of individual desires and ambition. Things happen because of the infinitely fractal actant worknets that make up the life-world worknet. Each actant plays their own unique but critical role. (Zhachev 2018)

 

Thoughts?

Hello all:

I've been interested in daoism since late 2014, especially early Daoism, the Ddj, and Zhuangzi. Looking forward to sticking around for a long while, and scratching many of my itches of questions regarding dao along the way.

Cheers,

Z