As it acts in the world, the Tao ( Read more... )

For Dao begets but does not keep,
Works its way but does not bind:
Authority that does not rule.
Such is the meaning of "hidden power".

-- Laozi, Dao De Jing, trans. Moss Roberts

(Roberts: 'This is what sublime favor or power means: it goes unacknowledged; there is no way to reciprocate.')

'Evolving simultaneously with these various currents of thought was that represented by the text presented here, the school known as Taoism. Like many of the other schools, it looked back to an ideal age in the past, but one that predated the dawn of Chinese history and written culture, a kind of dream of Neolithic simplicity and innocence. ( Read more... )

'This chapter is full of words like huang (wild, barren; famine), tun (ignorant; chaotic), hun (dull, turbid), men (sad, puzzled, mute), and hu (confused, obscured; vague). They configure chaos, confusion, a "bewilderness" in which the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way. It ( Read more... )

The empty hub at center
Allows a wheel to roll
The vacancy within defines
The function of a bowlOne of the reasons I turned to Lao Tzu is that I started thinking about the pleasures of emptiness. Specifically, I started to feel that my mind was full of nonsense and needed to be emptied. By nonsense I mean worries about things I don't understand, ( Read more... )

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?-- Lao Tzu (trans. S. Mitchell ( Read more... )

( Pretty esoteric, I confess ... )

Chuang Tzu, as I have said, rejects all conventional values, and as a result, like so many mystical writers, he rejects the conventional values of words as well, deliberately employing them to mean the opposite of what they ordinarily mean in order to demonstrate their essential meaninglessness. When a writer does this, he of course invites ( Read more... )