section_path: Teachings/Ethics
section_name: Ethics
paragraph_text: Ethics
  
  Daoist ethics tends to emphasize various themes from the Taoist classics, such as naturalness (pu), spontaneity (ziran), simplicity, detachment from desires, and most important of all, wu wei. The classic Daoist view is that humans are originally and naturally aligned with Tao, thus their original nature is inherently good. It emphasizes doing things that are natural, following the Tao, which is a cosmic force that flows through all things and binds and releases them. However, one can fall away from this due to personal habits, desires, and social conditions. Returning to one's nature requires active attunement through Daoist practice and ethical cultivation.
  
  Some popular Daoist beliefs, such as the early Shangqing school, do not believe this and believe that some people are irredeemably evil and destined to be so. Many Taoist movements from around the time Buddhist elements started being syncretized with Daoism had an extremely negative view of foreigners, referring to them as yi or "barbarians", and some of these thought of foreigners as people who do not feel "human feelings" and who never live out the correct norms of conduct until they became Taoist. At this time, China was widely viewed by Taoists as a holy land because of influence from the Chinese public that viewed being born in China as a privilege and that outsiders were enemies. Preserving a sense of "Chineseness" in the country and rewarding nativist policies such as the building of the Great Wall of China was important to many Taoist groups.
  
  Foreigners who joined these Taoist sects were made to repent for their sins in another life that caused them to be born "in the frontier wilds" because of Buddhist ideas of reincarnation coming into their doctrines. Some Daoist movements viewed human nature neutrally. However, some of the movements that were dour or skeptical about human nature did not believe that evil is permanent and believed that evil people can become good. Korean Daoists tended to think extremely positively of human nature.
  
  Some of the most important virtues in Taoism are the Three Treasures or Three Jewels (三寶; sānbǎo). These are: ci (慈; cí, usually translated as compassion), jian (儉; jiǎn, usually translated as moderation), and bugan wei tianxia xian (不敢爲天下先; bùgǎn wéi tiānxià xiān; ' not daring to act as first under the heavens ', but usually translated as humility). Arthur Waley, applying them to the socio-political sphere, translated them as: "abstention from aggressive war and capital punishment", "absolute simplicity of living", and "refusal to assert active authority".
  
  Taoism also adopted the Buddhist doctrines of karma and reincarnation into its religious ethical system. Medieval Taoist thought developed the idea that ethics was overseen by a celestial administration that kept records of people's actions and their fate, as well as handed out rewards and punishments through particular celestial administrators.
  
  In its original form, the religion does not involve political affairs or complex rituals; on the contrary, it encourages the avoidance of public responsibility and the search for a vision of a spiritual transcendent world.