“We didn't know it was possible to be happy all the time. We didn't know you could have a heart without any heckpoints.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 58. Goals Without Means

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“The Tao begins in the relation between man and woman, and ends in the infinite vastness of the universe.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 25. The Mother of All Things

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“One of the qualities I most treasure in Chuang Tzu is his sense of the spontaneous, the uncapturable. This makes it easy to follow in his footsteps. Since there are no footsteps, all you an follow is what he himself followed: the Tao.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

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“Commenting on Chuang Tzu’s story about the Marquis of Lu trying to help a seabird, Stephen Mitchell writes, 'The marquis…by acting out the Golden Rule, became the golden fool… Love your neighbor as yourself: leave him alone.'”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

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“The ancient Masters… woke up, they ate, they worked, they made love, they raised their families, all the while unseduced by any thoughts.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 64. Ordinary Mind

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“You can’t try to change people without inflicting violence on them… Hitler and Stalin, in their own opinions, were acting for the benefit of humanity.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“Worrying about the world is a dead end. When nuclear proliferation is solved, global warming pops up. When global warming is solved, overpopulation starts looming. then there’s always the burning out of the sun and the infinite expansion or contraction of the universe…”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

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“What if cultivating your own garden were the best way to help the world? What if your little backyard could, with the proper care, grow enough vegetable and fruits to feed a million people? What if your gardening inspired a thousand of your neighbors to do the same?”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 59. The Gardening of Spirit

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“Whenever we cling to a particular side of reality, it’s we who are the monkeys, losing ourselves in outrage or partial delight… when the mind is clear, each is an occasion for rejoicing.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 78. Water

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“What if all suffering is the result of confused thoughts?”

from Second Book of Tao

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“Intellectuals began debating... scholars wrote tomes... moralists determined what is on the Way and what if off... thus Taoism was born”

from Second Book of Tao

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“The Tao that cannot be named is the intelligence of the universe: whatever is happening right now... the don't-know mind”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

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“The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”

from Second Book of Tao

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“A tragedy is a comedy misunderstood. Once you realize what you are, there's nothing but gratitude and laughter.”

from Second Book of Tao

Chapters: 5. Christmas Trees

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“There are paradoxes born of wit and paradoxes born of insight. No thought is true, bur some thoughts are so much truer that the ones we're used to that they seem absurd”

from Second Book of Tao

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“All things may be one with me, but am I one with them?”

from Second Book of Tao

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“every painful feeling is caused by a prior thought... the only thing that an interrupt happiness is an untrue thought.”

from Second Book of Tao

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“Evolution doesn't mean progress. Which is more conscious, the butterfly or the flower?”

from Second Book of Tao

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“when we try to grasp anything, it vanishes... there's nothing there, and the nothing is beautiful”

from Second Book of Tao

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“All things flow; the sun is new every day; it is in change that we find rest.”

from Second Book of Tao

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“The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance.”

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“The more truly solitary we are, the more compassionate we can be.”

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“psyche, the Greek word for 'soul,' can also mean 'butterfly'... what depths of joy lie hidden within that pinpoint of a brain? The whole world contained in a garden, in a single flower! All time contained in a summer's day, and life one all-embracing multi-orgasmic fragrance!”

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“Chuang Tzu has been called a mystical anarchist and... offers a whole world of irreverence and subversion... because he has freed himself from his own beliefs. What he subverts is conventional thinking, with its hierarchies of judgment, its fors and againsts, its delusion that life is random unfair, and somehow not good enough,”

from Second Book of Tao

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“The 64 I Ching hexagrams have the mathematical property of 8 squared or 4 cubed as well as being the number of squares on a chessboard, the number of sexual positions in the Kama Sutra, and the only two-digit number ever to star in a Beatles song.”

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“The Net of Indra is a profound and subtle metaphor for the structure of reality. Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.”

from The Enlightened Mind​

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