Ridiculous how personally and seriously we take life? A life will be over soon, relatively speaking.
Published at : October 24, 2021
Isn't it just ridiculous how personally and seriously we take life?
Imagine for a moment that Life, your life will be over soon, relatively speaking.
Then how important will whatever is going on today be?
Yet we are easily offended and often super concerned about what people say about us or what we think they think of us, HaHa.
That's kind of a joke, isn't it?
We don't even really know ourselves and we are imagining that someone else's opinion about us matters.
In this moment, who are you, answer that and you are free, free forever.
The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67
Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
Book Forward. The Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching (pronounced, more or less, Dow Deh Jing) can
be translated as The Book of the Immanence of the Way or The
Book of the Way and of How It Manifests Itself in the World or,
simply, The Book of the Way. Since it is already well known
by its Chinese title, I have let that stand.
About Lao-tzu, its author, there is practically nothing to
be said. He may have been an older contemporary of Confu¬
cius (551-479 B.C.E.) and may have held the position of
archive-keeper in one of the petty kingdoms of the time. But
all the information that has come down to us is highly sus¬
pect. Even the meaning of his name is uncertain (the most
likely interpretations: “The Old Master" or, more pictur¬
esquely, “the Old Boy”). Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left
no traces. All he left us is his book: the classic manual on
the art of living, written in style of gemlike lucidity, radiant
with humor and grace and largeheartedness and deep wis¬
dom: one of the wonders of the world.
People usually think of Lao-tzu as a hermit, a dropout
from society, dwelling serenely in some mountain hut, unvis¬
ited except perhaps by the occasional traveler arriving from
a '60s joke to ask, “What is the meaning of life?” But it's
clear from his teachings that he deeply cared about society,
if society means the welfare of one’s fellow human beings;
his book is, among other things, a treatise on the art of
government, whether of a country or of a child. The misper¬
ception may arise from his insistence on wet wu Wei, literally
“doing not-doing,” which has been seen as passivity. Noth¬
ing could be further from the truth
A good athlete can enter a state of body awareness in
which the right stroke or the right movement happens by
itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious
will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most
effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem
writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.
Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly van¬
ished into the deed; the fuel has been completely trans¬
formed into flame. This "nothing" is, in fact, everything. It
happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in
the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior
intelligence of the body. Hence Lao-tzu’s emphasis on soft¬
ness. Softness means the opposite of rigidity, and is synony¬
mous with suppleness, adaptability, endurance. Anyone who
has seen a t’ai chi or aikido master doing not-doing will
know how powerful this softness is.
Lao-tzu’s central figure is a man or woman whose life is
in perfect harmony with the way things are. This is not an
idea; it is a reality; I have seen it. The Master has mastered
Nature; not in the sense of conquering it, but of becoming
it. In surrendering to the Tao, in giving up all concepts,
judgments, and desires, her mind has grown naturally com¬
passionate. She finds deep in her own experience the central
truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on
the surface: that the more truly solitary we are, the more
compassionate we can be; the more we let go of what we
love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our
insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can
embody the good. Until finally she is able to say, in all hu¬
mility, "I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life.”
The teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest
sense.
Imagine for a moment that Life, your life will be over soon, relatively speaking.
Then how important will whatever is going on today be?
Yet we are easily offended and often super concerned about what people say about us or what we think they think of us, HaHa.
That's kind of a joke, isn't it?
We don't even really know ourselves and we are imagining that someone else's opinion about us matters.
In this moment, who are you, answer that and you are free, free forever.
The Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67
Some say that my teaching is nonsense.
Others call it lofty but impractical.
But to those who have looked inside themselves,
this nonsense makes perfect sense.
And to those who put it into practice,
this loftiness has roots that go deep.
I have just three things to teach:
simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
Book Forward. The Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching (pronounced, more or less, Dow Deh Jing) can
be translated as The Book of the Immanence of the Way or The
Book of the Way and of How It Manifests Itself in the World or,
simply, The Book of the Way. Since it is already well known
by its Chinese title, I have let that stand.
About Lao-tzu, its author, there is practically nothing to
be said. He may have been an older contemporary of Confu¬
cius (551-479 B.C.E.) and may have held the position of
archive-keeper in one of the petty kingdoms of the time. But
all the information that has come down to us is highly sus¬
pect. Even the meaning of his name is uncertain (the most
likely interpretations: “The Old Master" or, more pictur¬
esquely, “the Old Boy”). Like an Iroquois woodsman, he left
no traces. All he left us is his book: the classic manual on
the art of living, written in style of gemlike lucidity, radiant
with humor and grace and largeheartedness and deep wis¬
dom: one of the wonders of the world.
People usually think of Lao-tzu as a hermit, a dropout
from society, dwelling serenely in some mountain hut, unvis¬
ited except perhaps by the occasional traveler arriving from
a '60s joke to ask, “What is the meaning of life?” But it's
clear from his teachings that he deeply cared about society,
if society means the welfare of one’s fellow human beings;
his book is, among other things, a treatise on the art of
government, whether of a country or of a child. The misper¬
ception may arise from his insistence on wet wu Wei, literally
“doing not-doing,” which has been seen as passivity. Noth¬
ing could be further from the truth
A good athlete can enter a state of body awareness in
which the right stroke or the right movement happens by
itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious
will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most
effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem
writes the poem; we can’t tell the dancer from the dance.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone.
Nothing is done because the doer has wholeheartedly van¬
ished into the deed; the fuel has been completely trans¬
formed into flame. This "nothing" is, in fact, everything. It
happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in
the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior
intelligence of the body. Hence Lao-tzu’s emphasis on soft¬
ness. Softness means the opposite of rigidity, and is synony¬
mous with suppleness, adaptability, endurance. Anyone who
has seen a t’ai chi or aikido master doing not-doing will
know how powerful this softness is.
Lao-tzu’s central figure is a man or woman whose life is
in perfect harmony with the way things are. This is not an
idea; it is a reality; I have seen it. The Master has mastered
Nature; not in the sense of conquering it, but of becoming
it. In surrendering to the Tao, in giving up all concepts,
judgments, and desires, her mind has grown naturally com¬
passionate. She finds deep in her own experience the central
truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on
the surface: that the more truly solitary we are, the more
compassionate we can be; the more we let go of what we
love, the more present our love becomes; the clearer our
insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can
embody the good. Until finally she is able to say, in all hu¬
mility, "I am the Tao, the Truth, the Life.”
The teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest
sense.
lao-tzulao tzu teachingstao te ching stephen mitchell