Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Anagarika​ (Lama) Govinda

(Ernst Hoffmann)

1898 – 1985 CE

Pioneer of Tibetan Buddhism to the West

Poet, painter, and brave explorer of both our internal and external worlds; Lama Govinda—when only 16 years old—discovered Buddhism through the writings of Schoepenhauer. This led to a lifetime of traveling, discovering, practicing, and teaching Buddhism, and in particular, Tibetan Buddhism. An early Western initiate into Tibetan Buddhism, he traveled there in 1932 and became ordained in 1933. His writings and teachings became seminal for Tibetan Buddhism's entry into the west. Robert Thurman described him as, "one of the West's greatest minds of the 20th century. He believed he was a reincarnation of Novalis and died laughing.

Eras

Sources

Inner Structure of the I Ching

Unlisted Sources

Way of the White Clouds (1966)

Quotes by Anagarika​ (Lama) Govinda (48 quotes)

“Just as lower organisms serve as building materials for higher ones, so also the stored-up experiences of the subconscious serve the higher purposes of the mind... provided the aim, or the idea that inspired us, was wide enough to include a future beyond the span of one lifetime.”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

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“But prejudice is the greatest enemy of objective observation and creative thought, while an awareness of yet unexplored possibilities will open our minds to new perspectives which reveal new facts.”

Themes: Non-Thought Enemy

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“The ultimate way of Being lies beyond all contradictory pairs of opposites with which our two dimensional thinking mind operates. As soon as we are successful in silencing the restless activity of the thinking mind and give a chance to intuition, the pure all embracing spirit in us will manifest effortlessly.”

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“The feeling of awe and sense of wonder arises from the recognition of the deep mystery that surrounds us everywhere, and this feeling deepens as our knowledge grows.”

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“Surely it is the right wish that draws us to the right place. Nothing of importance happens accidentally in our life.”

Themes: Karma Desire

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“It is our higher aspirations that make us immortal—not the permanence of an immutable separate soul, whose very sameness would exclude us from life and growth and from the infinite adventure of the spirit and condemn us forever to the prison of our own limitations.”

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“The power of the creative imagination is not only merely content with observing the world as it is, accepting a given reality, but is capable of creating a new reality by transforming the inner as well as the outer world”

Themes: Imagination

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“The greatest artist is one who expresses what is felt by everybody.”

Themes: Art

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“To the enlightened man... whose consciousness embraces the universe, to him the universe becomes his 'body', while the physical body becomes the manifestation of the universal mind.”

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“The faculty of continual transformation... is a profound expression of the dynamic character of the mind.”

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“Only a man who is capable of great passions is capable of great deeds and great accomplishments in the realm of the spirit. Only a man who has gone through the fire of suffering and despair, like Milarepa, could have accomplished the highest aim within a lifetime.”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

Themes: Ambition

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“The Siddhas had rediscovered the direct way of spontaneous awareness and realization of the universal depth-consciousness which had been buried under the masses of scholastic learning, abstract philosophical speculation, hair-splitting arguments and monastic rules”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

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“While the Gelugpas had to qualify themselves through a long course of studies in one of the monastic universities, the highest qualificatiomn of a Kargyupa consisted in his ability to spend long periods in complete seclusion in caves, hermitages, meditation chambers”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

Themes: Meditation

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“performers and spectators are welded into one and have both become active participants in a magic rite, which initiates them into one of the most ancient mysteries which is the origin of all religious life and the beginning of the awakening of man.”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

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“However unpalatable certain aspects of reality may be, they have to be faced as facts and met at their own level. Problems cannot be solved by disapproval but only by facing them.”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

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“The self-conscious element of an art that is divorced from life or meaning is unknown in Tibet... It is only from the standpoint of creative visualization... crystallising into the universal order of a mandala that we can understand”

from Way of the White Clouds (1966)

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“not based on abstract ideas or fixed concepts, but on visual reality as revealed in pictures and diagrams... their [the trigrams and hexagrams] main function... is a means of helping us to see into nature's ways with a view to bending ourselves to suit those ways instead of trying to conquer nature and win power over it... it emphasizes individual destiny and the importance of time in human life... compassion and self-reliance, agelessness and enlightenment, service for the good of all, deeds without selfish profit, non-violence and tranquility, and the recognition of eternal change, or transformation”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Transmutation

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“The I Ching is actually concerned with nothing other than the recognition of causes and conditions which determine our destiny. He who knows the causes, or sees the germinations, controls what is otherwise felt as fate.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“Nothing in the world has only one cause. When we speak of causality, we arbitrarily select one of the many causes namely the one which is the most obvious or nearest in time... the Buddha's conception was more profound and based on a reality far beyond the one-sided perspective assumed by our illusory ego.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“The divine is inherent in the universe, and as humans are not different from it, the divine is inherent in them as well.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Sacred World

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“Chan or Zen—one of the most attractive schools of Buddhism which has drawn the attention of the world to the importance of meditation and spiritual awakening—is an amalgam of Taoism and Buddhism in China.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Meditation

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“While theistic religions are based on authority and dogma, non-theistic religions like Taoism and Buddhism are based on self-responsibility and universality. The highest good is found n the lowest places; therefore it is compared to water.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“Taoism and Buddhism pursue the same aims... The highest goal of Taoism as well as Buddhism is a state of enlightenment which the Buddha defines as the overcoming of greed, hatred, and ignorance—not stupidity but the ignoring of facts which appear uncomfortable or against our desires.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“We want to hold on to life as it is is now; we want to eternalize our present state, our small ego, our limited individuality. Therefor we resist change instead of understanding the the necessity of growth, which is the very function of life.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“The Egyptians lost themselves in trying to preserve the bodily form, the Greeks in trying to capture the beauty of the human body, the pre-Columbian Americans, by establishing cosmic laws over human considerations, Christianity and Islam—the daughters of Jewish monotheism—by overpowering the human mind through dictatorship of a a partially world-creating and at the same time world-negating spirit.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“The Buddhist philosopher, Nagarjuna was probably the first to express a similar idea—reality is in itself a relative term which depend on the standpoint of an observer—and base his whole philosophy on it which led to the foundation of Mahayana, the Great Way, which became the main religion of China and was amalgamated with Taoism in the creation of Ch'an or Zen (the meditative school of Buddhism).”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“science itself contradicts the laws on which it was founded, and shows us that what appeared as infallible logic, or an incontrovertible law of cause and effect, is only one of the possible ways of thinking... and that there is another way which we have not even started to explore: the synchronicity of events”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Science

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“We learn to desist from concentrating on what might be good for us in the short run; because, when we study underlying trends, we often find that what is good for us in the short run may be far from good in the long run.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Paradox Strategy

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“Confucius saw in their wisdom a guide for statesmen, prime ministers and people like that. So his commentaries are very much concerned with how a man who has mastered the I Ching and mastered himself can be of use to his emperor or ruler in helping him to guide the State.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Confucianism

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“the world is neither good or bad, it is our attitude toward it that makes it either good or bad. By applying our moral principles to nature, we blind ourselves to things as they are. Instead, we should apply ethical standards only where they belong, namely to ourselves.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“Fu Xi was only concerned with fundamental principles which govern our life... For him, the main things were light and dark, or the cosmic principles of the creative and receptive, the male and female—in the sense of two mutually dependent powers compensating each other.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“individuality can be transformed in a process of growth, but retains its character. It becomes wider and more all-encompassing and transparent until it reflects the whole universe and becomes one with it.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“by combining intuition and creative imagination with clear thinking and observation of the laws of nature, we transform the visions of our heart into comprehensible symbols or into the language of the outer world in which we live.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“The struggle can be won only by acceptance of both the forces of light and darkness in their full significance: as the creative and the receptive, the male and the female, the strong and the soft.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Victory Conflict

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“the autumn of life or even the winter of old age is the time for discovery of the deepest values... Even though everyone does not become wise with age, his judgments are no longer based on self-interest, but rather on a more impartial attitude that stands above the momentary interests of the day.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Old Age

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“Just as alchemy led to the science of chemistry, astrology to the science of astronomy, or in the way that ritual dances led to the art of dramatic performances, man, by first obeying his inner urges—the powers of depth consciousness—felt his way toward the mysteries of life.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“Some got stuck in magic, some in religion, some in science, some in metaphysics or other logical speculations. Only very few remained open to all facets of reality without getting caught in the nets of speculation and wishful thinking.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“If we speak of evolution, it an only mean the gradual unfolding in time of what is potentially present but has not yet stepped into visible or tangible reality... If we can see the causal connections, we speak of evolution. If the process occurs spontaneously, we speak of mutation.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Creativity

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“While logic can deal only with fixed immutable concepts which have been isolated by our intellect from their background and their relationships, symbols have the living quality of establishing spontaneous connections with objects of diverse character but similar tendency.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Reason

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“The I Ching is not there to predict the future, but to show you the possibilities that lie before you... to achieve a reasonable result, we have to formulate a reasonable question... But you yourself must decide your fate.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“if time did not intervene, the polar forces facing each other on the same axis would balance each other so completely that all movement, and with it all development or change, would cease.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“This is what most religions overlook in their yearning after perfection—the fact that absolute perfection would be mere stagnation, ultimate spiritual death. Therefore, the ideal of the perfect saint would result in an inhuman abomination, a robot, an insensible, cold, petrified, closed, and in every sense finished individual.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“A wise one is a person in whom the light has become the leading principle; who sees the world not only under the aspect of time, but sub speciae eternitatis, against the background of universal laws and forces; one who has overcome selfishness and is no more misled by the illusion of separateness. His illumination is complete transparence and spiritual openness, but not mental stagnation.

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“Jung made the first tentative use of the term 'synchronicity', after he observed the simultaneous happenings of psychic phenomena and apparently unconnected outer events which could not be explained by the law of cause and effect”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“We are mortal as long as we fear death, but we become immortal as soon as we do not identify ourselves with the confines of our present personality and yield to the eternal rhythm of the universe in which we live.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“changelessness is a sign of death, transformation a sign of life; decay is the negative aspect of transformation, while the positive aspect is generally hidden from our eyes.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Impermanence

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“It is only in stopping halfway that individuality solidifies and shrinks to the notion of an egohood which contradicts or opposes universality... Individuality pursued to its end, i.e. realized to the fullness of its possibilities, is universality.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

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“When the Greeks identified the planets with certain gods, they projected into the sky qualities of their own psychic experience, symbolized in the images of their gods. This was a genuine procedure, derived from an inner reality. But if we imitate this symbolism, while knowing that, for instance, Venus is a hell of boiling mud and poisonous gases... it is ridiculous to associate it with qualities of love.”

from Inner Structure of the I Ching

Themes: Projection

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Quotes about Anagarika​ (Lama) Govinda (1 quotes)

The Inner Structure of the I Ching

40 years in the writing, a unique and insightful understanding of this ancient but still more-than-relevant text.

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