On Respecting Life and Accepting Fate

Abstract

Which is more important, your own arms or the whole world? Given something that’s meant to be, are you going to resist it with determined efforts or just take it as it is? The theory of respecting life and accepting fate answers the above questions from the perspective of Taoism. It holds that, compared with the infinity and eternity of Tao, man and myriad things are too trivial and transient to decide big and small, long and short, permanent and temporary, this and that, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, success and failure. Similarly, as two forms of the ever-changing Tao, life and death are of the same nature. Just as Tao gives form to man, it rests him in death.