Dualism And Success

Success: Is it all that it is cracked up to be?
What is success? If I were to ask this question to an average person I would most likely get a Dictionary.com like response of, “the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors: the accomplishments of one’s goals” (“Dualism”). If I were to then ask this same question to a Western Dualistic Philosopher I would get a response more like, “success is the positive, more powerful side of the dualism between success and failure.” Although this statement would seem extremely dense to someone who has never heard of dualism before, it can be easily explained. Dualism is the state of having two different or opposite principles. In order to better understand this concept one must also understand the concept of nonduality; the sense that all things are interconnected. In this …show more content…
The eight passages given to my class from The Tao Te Ching written by Laozi portray incredible examples to help explain the concepts of dualism and nonduality. My personal favorite of the passages is passage thirteen which states, “Success is as dangerous as failure…What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure? Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. When you stand with your two feet on the ground, you will always keep your balance...” (Laozi). As you can clearly see, the dualistic aspects of this passage are success and failure. Being human beings, success is something that we crave immensely while failure is something that we most often fear, creating the perfect opposing dualism. Within the first sentence of this passage, Laozi not only states what the dualism is but states the nonduality between the two as well. Before reading this passage, in no way did