Sublimation of the Ego: A Link Between Tolstoy, Confucius and Lao Tzu?
"Therefore the sage never strives for the great, and thereby the great is achieved. He who makes rash promises surely lacks faith. He who takes things too easily will surely encounter much difficulty. For this reason even the sage regards things as difficult. And therefore he encounters no difficulty" (212).
This passage, like many others from The Way of Lao Tzu, seems to suggest that only by recognizing the presence of a greater force in the world and submitting oneself to this force can one truly be at peace and achieve success. Rather than striving for achievement independently, one must be aware of this force and or greater order and channel it by renouncing oneself to it. This sort of "sublimation of the ego" to a larger process is reminiscent of both Confucius and Tolstoy's works. Could the idea of the "sublimation of the ego" and recognizing one's limited place and influence in the world be one of the main threads that relates these three texts to one another? Is this perhaps why those who had been reading Tolstoy were so fascinated by these Eastern philosophers when they finally came upon them in the 19th century?
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