Saturday, January 17, 2009

The Heavens Are Cruel Wise Men Are Cruel


The full quote for this passage is, "The heavens are not kind and treat all creatures like straw dogs. Wise men are not kind and treat people like straw dogs." I like these passages from the Dao De Jing that challenge the part of me that would like to find peace and harmony in my inspirational texts. The Dao De Jing, as much as anything, tries to describe and honor the true nature of nature. There are predators and prey in the natural world and humans are part of that. The idea that wise men are not kind is amusing but should be taken together with all the other descriptions in Laozi's text about how wise men behave. This illustration is an unnatural, whimsical narrative of the cruel nature of creatures. The cat has my eyes.

2 comments:

  1. The various degrees of suffering in this painting are quite interesting. The mouse is obviously in the worst shape. The cat and the tree are wounded, but nonetheless continue to survive -- the cat's getting his next meal, the tree is growing new shoos from the cutback stump. The and the grass in the background seem quite healthy and normal. It all adds up to make some sort of statement that life, suffering, and death are all part of whatever the hell this all is.

    Jim Nishida-Adams

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  2. Corrections -- "the tree is growing new SHOOTS" and "The SNAKE and the grass in the background . . ."

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