Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 1The Unnamed
Chapter 1
A Path that can be explained
Isn’t a complete path.
Words that become names
Are only concepts, not real things.
The unnamed is the source of everything in heaven & on earth.
Not wanting anything to be different,
We see the inner essence.
Always wanting, we are blinded
And only see what we want.
Nameable and un-nameable;
The same source and nature but two words;
Deeper than any mystery,
Doorway to the essence of all true understanding.
Commentary
“Life and Death are indeed changes of great moment but they cannot affect the sage's mind which he lets wander in the moral harmony of things. He does not notice the loss of particular objects.”
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“all these things are but the names which mortals have given, believing them, to be true”
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“The one who thinks he does not know is profound, the one who thinks he knows is shallow.”
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“In these things there lies a deep meaning; yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us.”
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“When the pupil is ready to learn, a teacher will appear.” Comments: Click to comment
“The whole world is tormented by words… Only as much as one is free from words does one really understand them.”
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“Form not separate from me, nor yet a part of me; the phenomenal appearance of empty space.”
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“In the village of nothingness
Gnarled trees prosper
Useless, nothing will harm them.”
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“The experience right before your eyes is no different from the Buddhas of all times but you do not believe it and continue looking somewhere else outside.”
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“Reading should be an active search for the vital arteries, not a matter of understanding only the words, the literal meaning which only leads to being harmed by what we read.”
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“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” Comments: Click to comment
“The highest goal that man can achieve is amazement.”
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“The crow wished everything was black, the Owl, that everything was white.” Comments: Click to comment
“Why chase after thoughts which are only superficial ripples of present awareness?”
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“It is possible that our millions of suns make up altogether but a spec in a minute insect in a world vast beyond our ability to imagine which is in some other world no more than a speck of dust.”
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“The same thing which in Lao-Tzu…is the Tao… is Spinoza’s cosmotheism is God as the eternal substance.”
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“It is a lie that truth always belongs to the majority! When a truth is hoary with years it is a long way to becoming a lie.”
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“What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”
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“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”
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“Every statement about the transcendental ought to be avoided because it is invariably a laughable presumption on the part of the human mind, unconscious of its limitations.”
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“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel is as good as dead.”
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“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
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“We all derive from the same source… We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
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“Regard life with passion to see its manifest forms, do away with passion to see the Secret of Life.”
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“Only when you give up everything can you see a true teacher. Even the name of Buddhism is already a dirty spot on our practice. It is not teaching. The character and effort of our teachers is our teaching.” Comments: Click to comment
“What is implied here is nothing less than the healing of the split between the two hemispheres of our brain which have become separated, alienated and at war with each other during the past few thousand years... This verse welcomes the disappearance of all boundaries among art, science, and religion as the walls and premises of every discipline dissolve into a higher consciousness”
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“To really be with the raw stuff of this moment doesn't need identification or labeling.”
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“If words are of any use at all, they are the words of the poet. For poetry has the ability to point us toward the truth, then stand aside.”
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“The things we distinguish as real change while their names do not.”
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“When we see the world through the lens of desire, reality becomes fractured into what we want and what we do not want.”
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Comments (2)
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Shan Dao
7 years ago
There are c. 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe, more than 27 for each person alive now (based on 7.3 billion population). And each galaxy has at least 100 billion suns. In our galaxy – the Milky Way, there are c. 400 billion suns or more than 50 suns for each person alive now. In the whole universe, that’s close to 3,000 suns per person. Some of these suns are more than 100x larger than ours. Traveling at the speed of light, it would take 13.2 billion years to get from here to the (as far as we know now) furthest away galaxy and yet as Anatole France says, “It is possible that our millions of suns make up altogether but a spec in a minute insect in a world vast beyond our ability to imagine which is in some other world no more than a speck of dust.”
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Shan Dao
7 years ago
Another insight into our true place in the universe from the human perspective is this conclusion from historian Will Durant: “Civilization is always older than we think; and under whatever sod we tread are the bones of men and women who also worked and loved, wrote songs and made beautiful things, but whose names and very being have been lost in the careless flow of time.”
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