😔

MEANWHILE, Śāntideva is over here FULL of guilt, sin, confession, and Buddhist missionary ZEAL. So different!!

Zhuāngzǐ basically argued that concepts of right and wrong are highly contextual and debatable and that we get into trouble when we care too much about right and wrong.

It also kinda seemed like Zhuāngzǐ was advocating for permission to not care about other people and their needs and suffering.

She's working with fantastic material, of course (cover of Tom Waits' song Chicago), but it's less of a trick when she sings it, and the song takes on a whole new set of devastatingly ironic meanings when you consider what is *actually* happening in Chicago right now.

I would love to hear any stories you'd share about how he is a part of your past!

Whoa! This is crazy news! And very sad.

I'm reading Zhuangzi, Esther's reading the Dao De Ching, we're all studying Mandarin Chinese, so I got a bunch of books on Chinese history from the library and strewed them about the house and the kids have been devouring them in their downtime

HOWEVER, the centuries between Zhuangzi and the guy who wrote Journey to the West is LONGER than the time between Jesus and Luther, so... maybe Daoism had simply wandered very far from its origins?

it occurs to me that the ambiguous oddness of Zhuangist polemic with/against Confucianism may itself be an expression of Daoist principles.