Book 1
Exterminate the sage, discard the wise,
And the people will benefit a hundredfold;
Exterminate benevolence, discard rectitude,
And the people again will be filial;
Exterminate ingenuity, discard profit,
And there will be no more thieves and bandits.
These three being false adornments, are not enough
And the people must have something to which they can
attach themselves
Exhibit the unadorned and embrace the uncharted block,
Have little thought and as few desires as possible
pg 23
This passage has to do with the idea of inter-being, especially between opposites. Without profit there cannot be thieves to steal the wealth. This passages was intriguing to me because alludes to the classic saying 'with great power comes great responsibility.' With the knowledge that the sage and the wise bring, it also brings obsession with knowing and understanding. This idea of obsession with understanding is seen as a bad thing in Taoism as the 'way', or the Tao, is not supposed to be capable of knowing.
Book 2
When the way prevails in the empire, fleet footed horses
are relegated to ploughing the fields: when the way does
not prevail in the empire, war-horses breed on the border.
There is no crime greater than having too many desires;
There is no disaster greater than not being content;
There is no misfortune greater than being covetous.
Hence in being content, one will always have enough.
I chose this passage as one of my favorites because I thought that it related a lot to contemporary western society. Traditionally American society revolves around many desires. This is most clearly seen in consumerism as Americans constantly desire to buy more and more as well as accumulate as much wealth as possible. It makes sense to me that having no desires would correlate with being content and satisfied because if you desire things you are constantly looking for things that you don't already have.
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