Poetry Comparison Of Daoism And Confucianism

The Classic of Poetry is a collection of old Chinese literature that has been rewritten and renamed into the Book of Songs/Odes. (“Norton Anthology of World Literature” 812) This collection of poems seemed to become popular around the beginning of Confucianism. Confucianism is the concept of centering one’s life or work on authority figures, family, and friends. The expression of Confucianism is best seen in the work of Tu Fu.

Confucian and Daoist views were important for the shaping and development of mankind in the past. They were views that existed among the eastern Asian countries. They had both similarities and differences in the way they shaped out self-knowledge and self-cultivation. Also there was other outside forces that played a major role in their theories. Nature and art were said to have helped shape the human race as we know it.

In the following poem, “Which Plant Is Not Faded” and “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” we will be comparing and contrasting both of these poems throughout this essay. Furthermore, we will talk about the poem meaning and how it relates to the ancient Chinese. Secondly, we will explain the song and how it relates to the ancient Chinese. Ultimately, the differences and similarities of the song along with the poem.

Ancient China has three philosophies: Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism. These three philosophies explain how people should behave and how the government should rule the people. The philosophies were guidelines to the people. Confucianism, Legalism, and Daoism have different values, beliefs, and ideas of what is important and expected, but the main goal is to work towards peace and harmony. These cultures are the same way in being rewarded due to their actions, but different in government regulation because of the people in command.

Although Daoism believes in modesty, and Confucianism emphasizes honesty, ruling a kingdom effectively during a time of turmoil requires sovereignty. Legalism is a system of pure power that demands restraint and discipline with an emphasis on strict laws. Daoism maintains the balance of nature and embrace harmony by utilizing “The Dao.” Confucianism highlights virtues and morality wanting people to become The Superior Man. For an East Asian Kingdom plagued by famine, war, and civil unrest, Legalism would bring order to the Kingdom by a centralized and powerful government, strict laws that govern the people, and once peace ensues, a secure economy.

The interdependency between Wu and Buddhism blooms as early as her overtaking of the imperial rule of China. As resourceful and violent as Wu is in securing her title, demonstrated by the empress’s exploitation of the “secret police force to monitor dissident factions,” she is also cunning in gathering support from the ordinary masses, such as the Buddhists and their followers (Bentley 290). She “generously patronize[s] Buddhists, who return the favor by composing

As the dominant philosophical school for around two thousand years in Chinese imperial history, Confucianism is always regarded as the most representative ideology of China, associated with numerous books, poems, artworks and stories that glorify Confucianism’s permeation into every corner of Chinese society. However, before Han Wudi, Confucianism was only one of those competing philosophical schools founded in Spring and Autumn period. During the Warring States period and Qin dynasty, Legalism took place of all other philosophical schools

While the Way can be considered an intangible idea of how to live your life, others believe it is an omnipotent force that shapes all things and cannot be named. Confucianists believe the former, where they have a superior chance of achieving a better life through ritual. Daoists, however, trust in nonaction, in not interfering with nature, to have a better and longer life. Conversely, the Daoist idea can only hold true in an ideal society, since it would be hard to employ. I will argue that a Confucianist society is better, because it relies on action in a society, the use of virtue with rituals to learn, and the overall betterment of the self to create order in the community as a means of reaching Way.

Daoism means “Followers of the way”, although Dao does not means only “way”. According to the BBC religion, the word Dao or Tao can include several concepts such as “the source of creation”, “the ultimate”, “the unnameable” ,“the way of nature as a whole”, “the natural universe as a whole” and “the inexpressible and indefinable.” In Taoism they believe in way of living in which there were not many rules and believes in the philosophy of inaction. They say that you can find happiness through nature and harmony. Also this is where yin and yang come from. As we can see, there are major differences between Daoism and Confucianism, but one of them is very important, the life after death.

Before parallels can be drawn between ideals and paths in Daoism, Daoist philosophy and Dao must be defined. It is hard to put Daoist Philosophy into a nice, neat sentence because of the complexity and vast amount of information on the subject. For the intent of this paper, Daoist philosophy is defined as a Chinese philosophy that takes a more naturalist approach to religion and way of living. It is the connection between imitating nature and harmony. Dao is defined in Chapter 1 as the constant moving “everything” that surrounds us. It is not tangible, it is just what it is, and you do not know exactly what this something is.

Like a pendulum in its unavoidable movement, the significant events in our lives come and go and then return again. Just as certainly as the sun rises and sets, the robustness of adolescence will turn to the feebleness of age; we also know that all things pass. In time, sadness diminishes, making room for enjoyment, and ignorance, with effort and persistence, can be transformed into knowledge. To Daoists, nature is the backbone of human civilization and the idea of this force of opposition is called yin and yang. These abstract ideas play a fundamental role in the beliefs of Daoists: “Yin, associated with shade, water, west, and the tiger, and yang, associated with light, fire, east, and the dragon, are the two alternating phases of cosmic energy; their dynamic balance brings cosmic harmony” (Augustin). Believing in the power of yin and yang meant believing in the power of nature over humankind, and this is congruent with the influence of Daoism in art culture.

Even though the narrator has never been to China, and she was brought up in the United States, the talk-stories that she engages in allow her to become part of her past. She is able to dream, conspire, and work off of the ideas that she hears. The ideas from Fa Mu Lan are especially important to her life because from this story, she believes that she does not have to do anything for her future husband. The narrator states “’ There is an outward tendency in females,’ which meant that I was getting straight A’s for the good of my future husband’s family, not my own” (47). Fa Mu Lan who fights in war for the emperor’s army, and then returns home to her family,

Confucius found the vinegar sour very alike like he saw the world, full of degenerate people in the world, and Buddha found it bitter very alike like the world he saw full of suffering people but Lao Tzu found it sweet as he looked at the world with its seeming discord and look for the underlying harmony that guides it by the

Confucianism and Daoism are two influential schools of thoughts that have existed in ancient China around the 6th century BCE. The former, led by the politician and philosopher Confucius, proposed that humans live in society according to a set of predefined rules and that they transform society through political action. Whereas the latter, led by the philosopher Lao-Tzu, promoted the idea of inaction; people should go with the flow instead of taking action to control their lives and dominate their surroundings. Although, at first glance Daoism and Confucianism seem to be two opposing philosophies, a more in depth analysis of two of their key ideas –filial piety and education—reveals that they do share some similarities.

To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents