Paper #1, The Advice of the Sage

The ancient ones, when they died, took their words with them. Which is why I can state that what Your Lordship is reading is nothing more than rubbish left over from these ancient ones! (“Heaven’s Tao,” 115)

Are the worlds of the old ones truly dead? Can the ancient world no longer transmit its wisdom to us? Or more importantly, do we really have eyes to see and ears to listen? Though The Book of Chuang Tzu isn’t being completely serious in the quote above, it is suggesting that if we worship old books and old ideas too much, we lose both the books and the ideas. A book is only a ‘finger’ that points to a larger moon, so we can’t focus too much on the book or the person who wrote it. They’re dead; but what they put into words can live on in other people, whose ideas can be just as important as the sages who once lived.

For your first paper assignment, I want you to imagine that you’re in one of the following situations:

• Training a new employee at your job (or at your ideal job)
• Teaching a student just starting high school or college how to ‘make it’
• Giving parental advice to a child
• Advising a friend about to make their relationship/marriage work
• Helping someone get out of personal crisis (grief, depression, etc.)

In your letter of advice (it might help to address this to an actual person!), I want you to draw from the ancient knowledge of our two books—The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Stories and The Book of Chuang Tzu. How can you use the ideas, advice, and metaphors of these works to help teach, train, and guide your audience into wisdom and acceptance? Be sure to quote from the book, but then translate these terms and ideas into real-world situations.

For example, if I was explaining about the danger of taking rules too literally in The Book of Chuang Tzu, I would quote a relevant passage, and then explain that the job’s rules are meant as guidelines, and that sometimes, following the rules exactly might contradict doing a ‘good job.’ You have to know when to bend the rules and when they are meant to be followed exactly, which is difficult to teach and requires experience (and intuition).

REQUIREMENTS: At least 4 pages, double spaced; must quote from both books and use the books in a clear and relevant way to your situation; cite all quotations according to MLA format (we’ll discuss this) with a Works Cited page.

Due in two weeks, Monday, October 1^st by 5pm [no class that day]