Tao te Ching, Chaoter 13 - Meditation
Accept disgrace willingly.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.
What do you mean by "Accept disgrace willingly"?
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss or gain.
This is called "accepting disgrace willingly."
What do you mean by "Accept misfortune as the human condition"?
Misfortune comes from having a body.
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?
Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
Daily Tao - September 26th, 2009
As i become more familiar with Lecto Divina-- the Roman Catholic practice of collecting oneself, reading a snippet of scripture, ruminating on it (medutatio), praying, and silent meditation (contemplatio)--i feel spontaneously drawn to this approach and find myself applying it to my reading of the Tao Te Ching. My meditatio still looks a lot like critical review and intellectual discusssion-but i feel it softening into a more reflective attitude. The various readings of this chapter are each wondrous in different ways. There is even a precursor to Kipling's great Poem "If"
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same
......you'll be a man, my son.
But Kipling's tone seems more striving, more strident, than the translations of the Tao Te Ching,
and his concept of maturity seems different than that of a Taoist sage (or a Catholic or Sufi mystic)
There is no climbing here. It is best to keep both feet on the ground, even as one's soul soars.
The idea that jumps out at me here is balance.
I don't try to soar to high or allow myself the plunge to low.
Let me be extraordinarily ordinary.
Let me care for my little portion of the world with diligence and love.
Let me care for Dianne's body as though it were my own.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.
What do you mean by "Accept disgrace willingly"?
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss or gain.
This is called "accepting disgrace willingly."
What do you mean by "Accept misfortune as the human condition"?
Misfortune comes from having a body.
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?
Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
Daily Tao - September 26th, 2009
As i become more familiar with Lecto Divina-- the Roman Catholic practice of collecting oneself, reading a snippet of scripture, ruminating on it (medutatio), praying, and silent meditation (contemplatio)--i feel spontaneously drawn to this approach and find myself applying it to my reading of the Tao Te Ching. My meditatio still looks a lot like critical review and intellectual discusssion-but i feel it softening into a more reflective attitude. The various readings of this chapter are each wondrous in different ways. There is even a precursor to Kipling's great Poem "If"
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat these two imposters just the same
......you'll be a man, my son.
But Kipling's tone seems more striving, more strident, than the translations of the Tao Te Ching,
and his concept of maturity seems different than that of a Taoist sage (or a Catholic or Sufi mystic)
There is no climbing here. It is best to keep both feet on the ground, even as one's soul soars.
The idea that jumps out at me here is balance.
I don't try to soar to high or allow myself the plunge to low.
Let me be extraordinarily ordinary.
Let me care for my little portion of the world with diligence and love.
Let me care for Dianne's body as though it were my own.