Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 51Mysterious Goodness
Chapter 51
All things arise from the Tao
And the Power of Goodness nourishes them
As their own being shapes them,
As their own energy completes them.
In this way, the 10,000 things
All hold the Tao Sacred
And follow the Power of Goodness.
Unforced and natural,
This reverence and devotion
Arises spontaneously
As the Way gives life and supports,
Mothers and trains,
Shelters and protects,
Comforts and completes.
Mysterious, hidden, and profound;
This highest goodness
Holds without possessing,
Succeeds without taking credit,
Leads without controlling.
Commentary
“The town may be changed but the well cannot be changed. It neither decreases nor increases… Thus the well is the symbol of that social structure which is independent of all political forms… Life is also inexhaustible. It grows neither less nor more; it exists for one and for all.”
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“Good actions should be done not from hope of reward but for their own sake.”
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“The man of spirit hates to see people gather around him. He avoids the crowd… There is nothing to be gained from the support of a lot of half-wits who are doomed to end up in a fight with each other.”
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“Real people are those united with the Tao. Wandering in the vastness beyond mundane clutter, they work freely without making an issue of it, know without learning, see without looking, achieve without striving and understand without trying.”
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“Learn the true nature of your own mind. Then let go and dissolve into unstrsuctusred reality. This tensionless state is the yogin’s life.”
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“The Way is what things follow. Virtue is what they attain. ‘Dark Virtue’ means virtue is present but no one knows who controls it.”
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“You ask why I stay in the mountains and I smile without speaking. My heart content, peach blossoms float into the distance. There’s another realm beyond the world of man.”
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“To do a certain kind of thing, you have to be a certain kind of person.”
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“The Bodhisattva’s mind is like the void, for he relinquishes everything… all action is dictated purely by place and circumstance, subjectivity and objectivity are forgotten... no hope of reward is entertained.”
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“I hear the song of the nightingale,
The sun is warm the wind is mild, willows are green along the shore,
Here no bull can hide.”
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“The ten thousand creatures respect the Tao as their father and honor Virtue as their mother… the Way becomes Virtue… Virtue becomes the Way.”
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“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”
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“Self-nature is empty and illuminating, so let things take care of themselves”
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“Taking hold of the not-thought that lies in thoughts, in their every act they hear the voice of Truth… As the Truth reveals itself in its eternal tranquility, this very earth is the Lotus-Land of Purity, and this body is the body of the Buddha.”
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“Whoever is rich in spirit makes much of his life. Every acquaintance, every incident… an endless series—the beginning of an endless novel.”
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“We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.”
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“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”
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“the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate,.. the totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part.”
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“He talks to the plants and they answer him. He listens to the voices of all those who move upon the earth, the animals. He is as one with them. From all living beings, something flows into him all the time, and something flows from him.”
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“The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages...”
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“The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are… If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence.”
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“You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”
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Comments (1)
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Shan Dao
6 years ago
In the first line, Le Guin translates as “bears,” Wu as “gives them life,” Cleary as “gives birth,” Lin as “produces them,” Carus as “reason qluickens all creatures.” We’re closest to the Gia Fu Feng/English, “All things arise from Tao.”
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