selflessness

  • Bu Suan Zi – Ode to the Plum Blossom [Mao’s Poems]

    Mao Zedong – December 1961 (Reading Lu You’s Ode to the Plum Blossom, I reverse its mood) Wind and rain have sent spring on its way;Flying snow ushers spring back to stay.Hundreds of feet of ice cling to the cliff’s steep face –Yet still a blossom blooms, with graceful grace.

  • The Analects – Chapter 14.18

    Gongshu Wenzi recommended his own retainer, Dafu Zhuan, to the ruler, and both were promoted together to serve as high ministers at court. When Confucius heard of this, he said, “He truly deserves the posthumous title ‘Wen’!”

  • Caigentan 89. The integrity of selfless motives

    In making a sacrifice, it is important not to have an indecisive mind. Such a mind can inflict a great deal of shame on your spirit of self-sacrifice.

  • Caigentan 78. The corrosive chain of greed

    Once greed and selfishness dominate a man’s mind, his previously steel-like nature will become soft and weak; his intelligence will become blocked and dulled; his benevolent nature will become vicious; his pure spirit will become muddied; and the virtue he has accumulated over a lifetime will become dissipated.

  • Transcendental Bonds: Ethics and Equality in “Wang, the Sixth”

    Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio: Wang Liulang (Wang, the Sixth) centers on the trans-life friendship between the fisherman Xu and the water ghost Wang Liulang.

  • Dao De Jing – Chapter 81

    Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere. Those who are skilled (in the Dao) do not dispute (about it); the disputatious are not skilled in it. Those who know (the Dao) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.The sage does not accumulate (for himself). The more that…

  • Dao De Jing – Chapter 66

    The reason rivers and seas can become kings of the hundred valleysis that they excel at being lower than them—thus they can become kings of the hundred valleys. Therefore, whenever the sage wishes to lead the people,he places himself lower than them in speech;whenever he wishes to stand ahead of the people,he puts himself…

  • Dao De Jing – Chapter 7

    Chapter 7 of the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching) articulates a fundamental principle of Laozi: “The movement of the Dao lies in reversal‌.” Every phenomenon inherently contains the seeds of its own negation‌.