Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 26The Still Rule the Restless
Chapter 26
The root masters the trivial,
Stillness masters moving
And constantly transforms itself.
Therefore the wise
Never leave the root,
Are never seduced by the superficial.
They don’t ignore their body
Chasing external things,
Forgetting their true nature by
Following their emotions.
If leaders are frivolous,
They lose respect.
If impatient and restless,
They lose support.
If self-serving,
They lose all value.
Commentary
“The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart – that is, a man’s thoughts – should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore”
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“When asked by two high officials from the king to become the prime minister, ‘Give my compliments to His Majesty and tell him that I am happy right here crawling around in the mud.’”
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“The goal of life is living in agreement with Nature.”
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“A dragon is still. Hence, it is able to constantly transform itself. A tiger is restless. Hence it dies young.”
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“Know how to wait…You must pass through the circumference of time before arriving at the center of opportunity… ‘Time and I against any two.’”
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“Men, it has been well said, think in herds but it will be seen that they go mad in herds. They only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
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“It is precisely the weaker nature, as the more delicate and free, that makes progress possible at all.”
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“so long as men are not trained to withhold judgement in the absence of evidence, they will be led astray by cocksure prophets, and it is likely that their leaders will be either ignorant fanatics or dishonest charlatans.”
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“"When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."”
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“I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.”
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“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”
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“You may think that if there is no purpose or no goal in our practice, we will not know what to do… The way to practice without having any goal is to limit your activity to what you can do just now, in this moment… just concentrate on the activity which we do in each moment.”
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“Chuang Tzu drily observed that the pursuit of the ethical Tao became illusory if one sought for others what was good for oneself without really knowing what was good for oneself.”
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“Stop acting, stop speeding. Sit and do nothing. You should take pride in the fact that you have learned a very valuable message: you actually can survive beautifully by doing nothing.”
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