Dao De Jing Themes

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The first passage I will be examining comes from the second chapter of the Dao De Jing which is as follows
“Recognize beauty and ugliness is born.
Recognize good and evil is born.”
One of the central themes in the Dao De Jing is the Ying-Yang Polarity which is shown in this passage. The Ying-Yang Polarity is the perfect picture of the world with the universe being understood as the interactions and balance of the two parts, the ying and the yang. It is used to “remind us of how to best get along in the world” by showing the motion of predominance and slight of both sides and that even in the height of each there is always a bit of the other. This tells the reader that values such as beauty and ugliness and, good and evil only have meaning

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