Virtue

“To put it simply, the hero of virtue and duty ultimately lands himself in the same ambiguities as the hedonist and the utilitarian. Why? Because he aims at achieving ‘the good’ as object. He engages in a self-conscious and deliberate campaign to “do his duty” in the belief that this is right and therefore productive of happiness. He sees ‘happiness’ and ‘the good’ as ‘something to be attained,’ and thus he places them outside himself in the world of objects…In fact, it is especially true of ‘good and evil,’ or ‘right and wrong.’ From the moment they are treated as ‘objects to be attained,’ these values lead to delusion and alienation. Therefore Chuang Tzu agrees with the paradox of Lao Tzu, ‘When all the world recognizes good as good, it becomes evil,’ because it becomes something that one does not have and which one must constantly be pursuing until, in effect, it becomes unattainable.”

~Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu

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