Tag: harmony

Daodejing #11

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So much suffering as we continue to choose sides and hold our beliefs. Fed by the system and eons of conditioning we continue to perpetuate lack of awareness. It is not this side or that, us or them, a short-sighted experience that is disharmony and imbalance. We must stick our heads above the clouds of doubt and glimpse what is beyond the walls–rest in the hollow, the space wherein these thoughts have no existence.

Thirty spokes converge on a hub
but it is the emptiness that makes a wheel work.
Pots are fashioned from clay
but it is the hollow that makes a pot work.
Windows and doors are carved for a house
but it’s the spaces that make a house work.
Existence makes a thing useful
but nonexistence makes it work.

We may sit and think, contemplate and feel that this is useful but it is when we are free of thought that we realize, everything unfolds without any participation.








#78 Paradoxes

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From Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and through the eyes of *Ursula K. Le Guin

Nothing in the world is as soft, as weak, as water;

Nothing else can wear away the hard, the strong and remain unaltered.

Soft overcomes hard, weak overcomes strong.

Everybody knows it, nobody uses the knowledge.

So the wise say:

By bearing common defilements you become

a sacrificer at the altar of earth;

by bearing common evils you become a lord of the world.

Right words sound wrong.

*Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and essays. She has received many literary awards and is internationally well known.

The Tao Te Ching is possibly 2500 years old. The first copy Ms. Le Guin knew belonged to her father, a first edition 1898 copy by Paul Carus. It became a part of her life as a child as it was a frequent reference book of her father. She lived with this book her whole life.