Explain why Confucianism is for public life and Daoism is for private life.

We are going to make our way out of Varanasi and into East Asia. Over the semester, we saw that the problem the Jerusalem religions are trying to solve is the problem of sin. For the Varanasi religions, the problem is maya or illusion. For East Asia, the problem to solve is that of balance. How does a person or a society attain balance and how do they keep it? In China, two thinkers came up with two different answers to the problem of balance, Confucius and LaoTzu. They lived at the same time as the Buddha. So both religions predate Christianity by 500 years or so and Islam by 1100. In East Asia it is not a question of whether you are Confucian or Daoist. You are both. So the Jerusalem approach to religion where a person HAS to be one religion OR the other does not come into play in East Asia. You are Confucian AND Daoist and in many cased Buddist as well. What you emphasize depends on the situation you find yourself in.