Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 20Unconventional Mind
Chapter 20
Stop always cramming more and more information into your head
And realization may dawn dissolving all difficulties.
Yes and no,
Agreement and rejection,
Beautiful and ugly,
Good and bad…
Won’t seem so different and far apart.
How foolish to fear something just because others do.
When people get what they want,
They are wreathed in smiles, joyous and beaming,
Drowning in what they love.
The wise stay unmoved
Knowing that nothing is ever lost or gained.
Alone, aimlessly wandering like a child,
Like a baby too young to smile,
Not belonging, not fitting it,
They remain with nowhere to turn, no one to turn to.
Fools accumulate more and more but never have enough.
The wise with nothing remain completely content.
Fools thinking they know become more and more convinced
While falling further and further from truth.
The wise remain uncertain, unconvinced, open without answers,
Drifting without anchor like waves on the sea;
Without direction like the restless wind.
The foolish stay busy, settle into habits and endlessly chase goals.
The wise are not seduced, don’t interfere, and remain content with what is.
Commentary
“I—pig-headed, awkward, different from the rest—am only a glorious infant nursing at the breast.”
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“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.”
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“The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.”
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“Don’t chase after people’s approval. Don’t depend on your plans. Don’t make decisions; let decisions make themselves.”
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“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”
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“When the approval and disapproval of others become important, the honest and sincere expression of thoughts and feelings is lost.”
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“Whoever observes complicated rules of propriety is rotten in his innermost heart.”
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“The Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to retention of concepts and so the Way is entirely misunderstood… The first step is to refrain from knowledge-based concepts.”
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“The Ultimate in which all become the same is free of habit-forming thought and limitations.”
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“People all drown in what they love… People chase things and forget about the Tao, while the sage clings to the Tao and ignores everything else.”
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“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere... The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds.”
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“What passes for learning in the world never ends. For every truth found, two are lost.”
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“Do not be the slave of first impressions… Wait for the second or even the third edition of the news.”
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“There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.”
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“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves… how worn and dusty, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”
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“It is easer to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
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“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
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“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it... Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
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“We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion, and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first.
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.”
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“centralization – the elimination of independent groups – leads to one-sidedness, barrenness… because such centralization suppresses rivalry of opinions.”
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“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.”
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“It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone... but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.”
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“life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything.”
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“Heaven in our author’s thought is synonymous with Tao. Tao is the absolute, the enduring, the ever-so.”
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“"I tell so many lies I have to write them down and keep them in the lie box so I can keep them straight."”
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“his parents kept him out of school… Going to a white school and walking a medicine man’s road, you can’t do both.”
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“Buddha is always helping you. But usually we refuse Buddha’s offer. For instance,sometimes you ask for something special. This means that you are refusing to accept the treasures you already have.”
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“We shouldn’t see some as sharp and others as dull. By treating all children without discrimination, we enable them to see all beings as equal.”
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“Be like a child who draws things whether they are good or bad.”
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“My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness”
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“Many a time we ease ourselves into convenient clichés and… once more we are trapped by habits that are the dunghills upon which the creeds feed.”
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“the mind wanders without certainties, desolate, silent, awkward. But in that milky, dim strangeness lies the way… the way embodies the eternal beginning, the ever-springing source.”
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“First impressions - almost always based on the new person’s acting skills, are almost always far from truth.”
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“Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion… we create elaborate scenarios and then react to them but there is nothing really happening outside our mind.”
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“Nothing is intrinsically or ultimately bad. Any situation that arises is only relatively good or bad based on many factors, including—most significantly—how you perceive the situation and how you respond to it.”
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