Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
Search Quotes Search Sages Search Chapters

Tao Te Ching
Chapter 20
Unconventional Mind

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

“Heaven has appointed us dwellers on earth a time for all things.”

Odysseus Ὀδυσσεύς 1 via Homer
(Ulysses)
Trickster lineage hero and symbol
from Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

Comments: Click to comment

“I—pig-headed, awkward, different from the rest—am only a glorious infant nursing at the breast.”

Lao Tzu 老子 1 via Witter Bynner
(Lǎozǐ)
from Way of Life According to Lao Tzu

Themes: Crazy Wisdom

Comments: Click to comment

“I look upon all sentient beings as my children.”

Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth
from Dhammapada धम्मपद

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.”

Diogenes 412 – 323 BCE via Will Durant
(of Sinope)
from Life of Greece

Themes: Desire

Comments: Click to comment

“The way of learning is none other than finding the lost mind.”

Mencius 孟子 372 – 289 BCE
(Mengzi)
from Book of Mencius 孟子

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“Don’t chase after people’s approval. Don’t depend on your plans. Don’t make decisions; let decisions make themselves.”

Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

Themes: Conformity

Comments: Click to comment

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”

Koheleth 1
from Ecclesiastes קֹהֶלֶת‎

Themes: Time

Comments: Click to comment

“When the approval and disapproval of others become important, the honest and sincere expression of thoughts and feelings is lost.”

Lie Yukou 列圄寇/列禦寇/列子 1 via Eva Wong, Shan Dao
(Liè Yǔkòu, Liezi)
from Liezi "True Classic of Simplicity and Perfect Emptiness”

Themes: Integrity

Comments: Click to comment

“Whoever observes complicated rules of propriety is rotten in his innermost heart.”

Hán Fēi 韓非 280 – 233 BCE

Themes: Conformity

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Huangbo Xiyun 黄檗希运 1
(Huangbo Xiyun, Huángbò Xīyùn, Obaku)

Comments: Click to comment

“The Ultimate in which all become the same is free of habit-forming thought and limitations.”

Tilopa 988 – 1069 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Su Che 呂洞 1039 – 1112 CE via Red Pine
(Su Zhe)
Great writer of the Tang and Sung dynasties
from Tao-te-chen-ching-chu

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Hóngzhì Zhēngjué 宏智正覺 1091 – 1157 CE via Dan Leighton
(Shōgaku)
from Cultivating the Emplty Field

Themes: Travel Moon

Comments: Click to comment

“What passes for learning in the world never ends. For every truth found, two are lost.”

Li Xizhai 1 via Red Pine
(Li Hsi-Chai)
from Tao-te-chen-ching yi-chieh

Themes: Progress

Comments: Click to comment

“Thinking good and bad is hell and heaven.

Mumon Ekai 無門慧開 1183 – 1260 CE
(Wumen Huikai)
Pioneering pathfinder to the Gateless Gate

from The Gateless Gate, 無門関, 無門關

Themes: Non-Thought

Comments: Click to comment

“Do not be the slave of first impressions… Wait for the second or even the third edition of the news.”

Balthasar Gracian 1601 – 1658 CE

Themes: Slavery

Comments: Click to comment

“There are two things children should get from their parents: roots and wings.”

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“A robin redbreast in a cage puts all Heaven in a rage.”

William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

Themes: Control

Comments: Click to comment

“Habit rules the unreflecting herd.”

William Wordsworth 1770 – 1850 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“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!”

Henry David Thoreau 1817 – 1862 CE
Father of environmentalism and America's first yogi
from Walden or Life in the Woods

Comments: Click to comment

“It is easer to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

Frederick Douglass 1818 – 1895 CE
International symbol of social justice

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”

Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author

Themes: Lies

Comments: Click to comment

“Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it... Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”

Mark Twain 1835 – 1910 CE
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
America’s most famous author
from Europe and Elsewhere

Themes: Truth

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Winston Churchill 1874 – 1965 CE

Themes: Deception

Comments: Click to comment

“centralization – the elimination of independent groups – leads to one-sidedness, barrenness… because such centralization suppresses rivalry of opinions.”

Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955 CE

Themes: Opinion

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

Themes: Memory Forget

Comments: Click to comment

“This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition.”

Nikos Kazantzakis 1883 – 1957 CE
from Zorba the Greek

Comments: Click to comment

“How can man progress if he is forbidden to question tradition?”

Will (and Ariel) Durant 1885 – 1981 CE

Themes: Doubt Progress

Comments: Click to comment

“life is short and information endless: nobody has time for everything.”

Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE

Themes: Time

Comments: Click to comment

“Heaven in our author’s thought is synonymous with Tao. Tao is the absolute, the enduring, the ever-so.”

Arthur Waley 1899 – 1969 CE
from The Way and its Power

Comments: Click to comment

“his parents kept him out of school… Going to a white school and walking a medicine man’s road, you can’t do both.”

John Fire Lame Deer 1903 – 1976 CE via Richard Erdoes
from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Themes: Education

Comments: Click to comment

“"I tell so many lies I have to write them down and keep them in the lie box so I can keep them straight."”

Anais Nin 1903 – 1977 CE

Themes: Lies Deception

Comments: Click to comment

“Be like a child who draws things whether they are good or bad.”

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE via David Chadwick
from Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

Themes: Mistakes

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“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”

Thomas Merton 1915 – 1968 CE

Themes: Happiness

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Reb Zalman 1924 – 2014 CE
from Paradigm Shift

Comments: Click to comment

“I don'think there is any truth. There are only points of view.”

Allen Ginsberg 1926 – 1997 CE

Themes: Judaism Truth

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

Comments: Click to comment

“First impressions - almost always based on the new person’s acting skills, are almost always far from truth.”

Shan Dao 山道 1933 CE –

Themes: Deception

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche ཛི་གར་ཀོང་སྤྲུལ། 1964 CE –

Themes: Illusion Mind

Comments: Click to comment

“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.”

Karmapa XVII ཨོ་རྒྱན་འཕྲིན་ལས་རྡོ་རྗ 1985 CE –
(Orgyen Thrinlay Dorje)

Comments: Click to comment

 

Comments (0)