Stabilize awareness
And the world will arise
Safe, serene, and at peace.
Music, fancy food, and entertainment
Make wayfarers briefly pause
While the Tao
Seems flat and insipid,
Without substance or flavor.
It looks like nothing much,
It sounds like nothing much,
We look but don’t see it,
We listen but don’t hear it.
“An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.”
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“I do not want a friend who smiles when I smile, who weeps when I weep. My shadow in a pond can do better than that.”
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“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
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“Without friends, no one would want to live, even if he had all other goods.”
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“Where is Tao? There is nowhere it is not to be found… It is in the ant… It is in the weeds… it is in this turd… Tao is great in all things, complete in all, universal in all, whole in all.”
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“We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.”
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“carpe diem (seize the day)… As we speak, cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”
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“Adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.”
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“Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.”
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“I do not care about a thousand years - let me only make this morning last forever.”
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“The world was easier to understand when choices fell away. It was like understanding a tree when all the leaves dropped: There it was, the pattern of the boughs, the tree itself.”
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“Our very nature is buddha, and apart from this nature there is no other buddha.”
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“Whoever realizes that from the very beginning there has been nothing other than mind, has acquired the realization of all the Buddhas of the three times.”
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“The intrinsic nature of all things is infinite space.”
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“…since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices… Only awake to the One Mind, and thre is nothing whatsoever to be attained.”
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“Although it has no taste, shape, or sound with which to please people, those who use it can never exhaust it.”
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“The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes”
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“The wise rule the world through selflessness. All things come to them because they are one with all things.”
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“We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand--and melting like a snowflake...”
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“Although there are many wonderful spiritual techniques, by far the best practice is the unification of luminosity and emptiness.”
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“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows, by itself.”
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“I have never yet met a man who was quite awake… with an infinite expectation of the dawn… the day is a perpetual morning… I went to the woods… to see if I could learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
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“You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can't forget. Those are your 'friends.'”
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“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”
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“Journalism largely consists in saying, "Lord Jones is dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.”
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“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”
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“A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now… but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera… will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.”
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“So to be a human being is to be a Buddha… the most important thing is to express your true nature in the simplest, most adequate way and to appreciate it in the smallest existence.”
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“One can appreciate and celebrate each moment — there’s nothing more sacred. There’s nothing more vast or absolute. In fact, there’s nothing more!”
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“The great setting sun of the West has provided us with beautiful, comfortable conditions for living our life, like central heating, air-conditioning, taxicabs, and numerous other conveniences. But that setting-sun approach has provided us purely with a comfortable way to die.”
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“The great setting sun of the West has provided us with beautiful, comfortable conditions for living our life, like central heating, air-conditioning, taxicabs, and numerous other conveniences. But that setting-sun approach has provided us purely with a comfortable way to die.”
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“When we find… something familiar, we are dying to get on to the next… and we rush. We are constantly looking for. We don’t really want to read the pages of life properly and we panic.”
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“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV, and you think you're so clever and classless and free… A working class hero is something to be.”
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Comments (1)
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Shan Dao
7 years ago
“Stabilize awareness” is a stretch from other translations. Red Pine uses, “Hold up the Great Image,” Le Guin says “Hold fast to the great thought.” Our translation was inspired by a comment on this chapter by Cheng Xuanying (647-663 CE), “Here ‘hold’ means to hold without holding, to hold what cannot be held.”
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