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A Daoist Reflection on Sea-Like Leadership and Enlightened Thinking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 December 2016

Yijun Xing*
Affiliation:
Beijing Jiao Tong University

Extract

As he gazed on the sea, Confucius sighed: ‘The passage of time is like the flow of water, which goes on day and night’. In later generations, the image of ‘water’ was found everywhere in Chinese literature, and most works used the metaphor first expressed by Confucius (Xing & Liu, 2015). However, Lao Zi's understanding differed from Confucius's, as he was more concerned with the virtues of water than its image. He believed that ‘the highest virtue is like that of water. Water benefits everything in the world without contending’.

Type
Dialogue, Debate, and Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © The International Association for Chinese Management Research 2016 

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References

REFERENCES

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