An excerpt from an online lesson for The Learning Odyssey, now part of CompassLearning. Students have already learned the basics about the time period, Lao-tzu, and the Dao De Jing.

Confucius

Confucius was another peace-loving philosopher. He taught a few years after Lao-tzu wrote the Dao De Jing. But the two men believed very different things.

Confucius thought that if people followed lots of rules about respect, they'd stop fighting. But Lao-tzu didn't like rules. "The more laws you make, the more thieves there will be," he wrote. Instead, he said people should do nothing at all. This idea is very important to Daoism.

Do nothing?

Lao-tzu didn't mean we should all sit around gathering dust. He meant that we shouldn't push, because every time we push, something pushes back. He meant that we shouldn't grab something, because its owner will hang on even tighter.

According to Lao-tzu, if we don't act, we stop and listen and think. We make sure we really want our goal. And eventually, we see a peaceful, easy way to reach it. That way, we don't encourage anyone or anything to fight back, and everything stays in harmony.