From the “TAO TE CHING”. (pronounced, more or less Dow Deh jing.) Since coming across these writings which will have still been Chinese whispered at some point. Even though people say they are close to the findings over 2500 years ago.
I don’t think I would of got anything from the texts had I not come to my own realisations first. The book mentions master a lot and I don’t see myself as any sort of master. (Just an explorer of life). It’s also not a religion or something to follow. I just love the dichotomy of the texts and how life is felt when hearing the words. I relate to it because words can’t really do life justice in all its magnificence. But he gets as close as I feel at present.
The Tao Te Ching translates itself as THE BOOK OF THE WAY. The Author was “LAO TZU”
Nobody really knows much about LAO so it is written that what has been said is very suspect. Even the meaning of his name is uncertain. He left a book maybe around (551-479 B.C.E) its clear in his texts that he deeply cared about society, if society means the welfare of one’s fellow human beings. The classic manual he left on the art of living, written in gemlike lucidity, radiant with humour, grace, large-heartedness and deep wisdom, a wonder of the world.
Some excerpts I like -
1.
He who stands on tiptoe
doesn’t stand firm
He who rushes ahead
doesn’t go far
He who tries to shine
dims his own light
He who defines himself
cant know who he really is
He who has power over others
cant empower himself
He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures
If you want to accord with the Tao,
Just do your job, then let go.
2.
Whoever is planted in Tao
will not be rooted up
Whoever embraces the Tao
will not slip away
Her name will be held in honour
from generation to generation
Let the Tao be present in your life
and you will become genuine
Let it be present in your family
and your family will flourish
Let it be present in your country
and your country will be an example
To all countries in the world.
Let it be present in the universe
and the universe will sing.
How do I know this to be true?
By looking inside myself.
The misperception may arise from Lao insistence on “wei wu wei” literally “doing not-doing” which has been seen as passivity. Nothing 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. (Becoming one with what is)
Less and less do we 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 vanished into the deed; the fuel has become completely transformed into the 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 the Lao-Tzu’s emphasis on softness. Softness means the opposite to rigidity, and is synonymous with suppleness, adaptability, endurance. Anyone who has seen a Thai Chi or Aikido master doing not- doing will know how powerful this softness is.
Lao Tzu’s central figure is a man or women whose life is in perfect harmony with the way things are. This is not an idea, it is reality. The master has mastered nature; not in the sense of conquering it, but in becoming it. In surrendering to the Tao, in giving up all concepts, judgements, and desires her mind has grown naturally compassionate. She finds deep in her own experience the central truths of the art of living, which are paradoxical only on the surface: that the 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 humility, “I am the Tao, the Truth, and the Life”.
The Teaching of the Tao Te Ching is moral in the deepest sense. Unencumbered by any concept of sin, the master doesn’t see evil as a force to resist, but simply as an opaqueness, a state of self-absorption which is in disharmony with the universal process, so that, as with a dirty window, the light cant shine through. This freedom from moral categories allows him his great compassion for the wicked and the selfish.
Thus the master is available to all people
and doesn’t reject anyone.
He is ready to use all situations
and doesn’t waste anything.
This is called embodying the light.
What is a good man but a bad mans teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If you don’t understand this, you will get lost,
however intelligent you are.
It is the great secret.
Truly Beautiful.
Ill share more soon.
Treat yourself to a book
