Charity Has No Label (Jos Stabbert) - Daily Tao
All these thoughts
words arranged on paper,
come from the Tao
and return to the Tao.
Yet they do not touch it.
3
Charity
has no label,
compassion has no religion
wisdom no dogma,
empathy no rules.
Integrity
needs no laws.
enlightenment no temples,
Living in total harmony
with Tao
is beyond culture,
oneness
with Tao
beyond philosophy.
Emptiness and silence
cannot be defined.
The Way
has no name,
for it is
Tao.
Taoism.net / TrueTao.org
Charity Has No Label (Jos Stabbert) - Daily Tao
The third step suggests that i turn over "my will and my life ... to the care of God as i understand (God).
I say that i cannot understand the god of my understanding - i gusess that is good enough, for now,
Someone online has suggested that the Higher Power of the twelve step programs is the Tao.
Of course, that is no body's business but his own; but i am intriqued.
No one in a twelve step program can tell another person what that other person's idea of God should be.
That is as it should be, and it gives me pause.
If the word "God" or the word "Him" are for some reason disturbing to me, i am free to use another name to reference the unnamable higher power. And if the word :"power" -- or "higher"* also offends -- well i keep trying for words that work for me or (better) i retreatr into silence. The only descriptive that i have ever heard in Al Anon to reference god (besides "him" and "power") is "loving."
I can certainly live with that.
My approach to God is the via negativ and i entered into that through the rear door of Taoism.
* The author of The Cloud of Unknowing suggests that concepts like "higher" and "lower" disappear in the "cloud of forgetting" that permits us to approach the "cloud of unknowing" or God -- a thouroughly Taoist notion, in my opinion.
words arranged on paper,
come from the Tao
and return to the Tao.
Yet they do not touch it.
3
Charity
has no label,
compassion has no religion
wisdom no dogma,
empathy no rules.
Integrity
needs no laws.
enlightenment no temples,
Living in total harmony
with Tao
is beyond culture,
oneness
with Tao
beyond philosophy.
Emptiness and silence
cannot be defined.
The Way
has no name,
for it is
Tao.
Taoism.net / TrueTao.org
Charity Has No Label (Jos Stabbert) - Daily Tao
The third step suggests that i turn over "my will and my life ... to the care of God as i understand (God).
I say that i cannot understand the god of my understanding - i gusess that is good enough, for now,
Someone online has suggested that the Higher Power of the twelve step programs is the Tao.
Of course, that is no body's business but his own; but i am intriqued.
No one in a twelve step program can tell another person what that other person's idea of God should be.
That is as it should be, and it gives me pause.
If the word "God" or the word "Him" are for some reason disturbing to me, i am free to use another name to reference the unnamable higher power. And if the word :"power" -- or "higher"* also offends -- well i keep trying for words that work for me or (better) i retreatr into silence. The only descriptive that i have ever heard in Al Anon to reference god (besides "him" and "power") is "loving."
I can certainly live with that.
My approach to God is the via negativ and i entered into that through the rear door of Taoism.
* The author of The Cloud of Unknowing suggests that concepts like "higher" and "lower" disappear in the "cloud of forgetting" that permits us to approach the "cloud of unknowing" or God -- a thouroughly Taoist notion, in my opinion.