Problem
I have a hard trouble remembering who was Plato and who was Socrates. Which one was Confucius and which one was Lao-Tzu? Maybe if I visited a statue it would be clearer.
Answers
GREEKS AND ROMANS
Plato
Socrates
Cicero
Pliny
Hadrian
ASIA AND CHINA
Confucius
Lao Tzu
Statue in Quangzhou, north of Hong Kong. Picture from Wikipedia/Flickr by Tom@HK.
Stone sculpture at the foot of the mountain.
Marco Polo visited this thriving port, whose old name Zaiton gives us the word satin.
Lao rhymes with Tao and Lao Tzu or Laozi was the founder of Taoism. Maybe he was a real person, maybe not. He reputedly met Confucius, taught Buddha, or was Buddha. One of the many sayings attributed to him: When you realise that everything can be appreciated, the whole world belongs to you.
His philosophy is one of calm. We might say, go with the flow, meditate, all things some to those who wait. This philosophy, yin yang.
Yet it is the philosophy of communing with nature, the countryside, needing nothing, harming nothing, acquring nothing, damaging nothing.
We can all see the point of a place for everything and everything in its place, when it comes to objects which are otherwise lost of muddled.
It is the reverse of action, city life, building, expressed as 'the worst thing to do is to do nothing', and a man of action, 'do it now'.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Post being updated today. See my other posts.
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