(OT) Morality (was: Re: aesthetic evaluation (was: RE: (OT)

Andy Canivet scripsit:

> Yeah - I remember hearing a joke in my Taoist philosophy class - if Taoism
> is all about wordless teaching, why did they need to write the book of a
> thousand words (the Tao Te Ching)?
Because it is poetry and not philosophy, religion, or ethics.  (The same
can be said of the Bible, or much of it.)

"[The TTC] is the most lovable of all the great religious texts, funny, keen,
kind, modest, indestructibly outrageous, and inexhaustibly refreshing.
Of all the deep springs, this is the purest water.  To me, it is also
the deepest spring."
        --Grandmother Little Bear Woman

Or as the book says about itself (poem 41):

        Thoughtful people hear about the Way
        and try hard to follow it.
        Ordinary people hear about the Way
        and wander onto it and off it.
        Thoughtless people hear about the Way
        and make jokes about it.
        It wouldn't be the Way
        if there weren't jokes about it.


"The artist says what cannot be said in words, and the poet does
this *with words*."
        -- G. L. B. W.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_