Returning to a Newborn State

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Laozi saw the world as a madding crowd of vanity. He chose to live a simple, quiet life, and to keep his mind undisturbed in the face of temptation. He said he would rather remain a”newborn baby.”

This does not mean Laozi wanted to remain childishly ignorant. He believed that sages-people with the highest virtue-all resembled newborns. The highest level of one’s cultivation was to return to the state of a newborn baby.

The state of the newborn is free of any knowledge, desire, impurity or falsehood.Laozi’s state of the newborn refers to”complete innocence.”The first cry of a baby when it leaves the mother’s womb is pure and clear, which, according to Laozi, is the call of genuine life.

When human beings come into the world, they gradually acquire external knowledge and accept social norms, along with the growth of their bodies.

Step by step, their originally pure minds become tainted with chaotic colors.As humans mature, they become more and more hypocritical. The process of acculturation is the process of losing one’s true self.

To Laozi, civilization is to a certain degree a departure from the”true self.”The development of human culture is a process of “decoration”: clothing as decoration of the body, houses as decoration of the way of living, language as decoration of communication, and state politics as decoration of human organization.

Such”decorations”often turn into bloated desires. Desire-driven, human beings fight and deceive one another, leading to war. Laozi made a comparison between the laws of nature and the laws of the human world. Nature takes from the surplus to make up the deficit, such as the wind leveling sand dunes and the water washing away earth and stones. The human world is just the opposite,i.e., robbing the poor and oppressing the weak.

Bloated desire has damaged the external world as well as poisoned the human mind. Laozi said,”Beautiful colors blind the eyes, complex music harms the ears, rich flavors numb taste, while riding and hunting madden the mind.”

Desire disturbs peace of mind. If immersed in a sea of desire, in the end humans would be submerged.