These teachings are easy to understand,
Easy to practice;
Yet very few understand
Or put them into practice.
These words have an ancient source,
These actions an ancient beginning.
But when this source is unknown,
There can be no real understanding.
Therefore the wise appear simple and ordinary on the outside
While holding a precious treasure concealed within.
“Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”
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“When men are enlightened enough to follow their natural instincts, they will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money”
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“When men are enlightened enough to follow their natural instincts, they will have no need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money.”
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“The ordinary, isolated intellect, no matter how brilliant or inspired, has not the energy to command our thoughts, words, impulses, memories and experiences in a way that conforms to truth and the Good.”
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“To wear coarse cloth is to become one with what is ordinary. To keep one’s jade concealed is to treasure the truth. Sages are difficult to know because they do not differ from ordinary people and because they do not reveal their treasure of jade.”
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“The reason the Tao is esteemed by the world is because it cannot be known or perceived. If it could be known or perceived, why should it be esteemed?... Thus sages wear an embarrassed, foolish expression and seldom show anyone their great and noble virtue.”
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“The teaching's voice is total silence amid the ringing wind chimes. The moon hangs in the old pine tree, cold in the falling night.”
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“The Tao is also hard to understand and hard to put into practice… because all words are wrong, because it cannot be learned, and because the mind only leads us astray. Effortless stillness is not necessarily right, and actionless activity is not necessarily wrong.”
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“The deeds you do may be the only sermon some people will ever hear.”
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“Where there is great doubt, there will be great awakening; small doubt, small awakening, no doubt, no awakening.”
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“One must not always think so much about what one should do, but rather what one should be. Our works do not ennoble us; but we must ennoble our works.”
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“Never suppose that either the evil or the good that you do will remain secret, however strict may be your enclosure.”
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“Rest not - life is sweeping by
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime,
leave behind to conquer time.”
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“we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor… No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert.”
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“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”
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“How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog. To tell your name the livelong day, To an admiring bog!”
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“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”
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“Never explain―your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.”
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“We are so greatly tempted to turn everything into purpose and method that I deliberately express myself in very abstract terms in order to avoid causing a prejudice in one direction or another.”
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“Therefore it is the law of the mystics to see all things, to experience all things, either of heaven or earth, and yet to say little.”
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“I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.”
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“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
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“I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.”
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“If all was told, supposing there lived a person who could tell all, there would be no mysteries left, and that would be very bad. Man cannot live without mystery.”
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“you don’t spell out the truth, you imply the truth with wakeful delight… When you spell out the truth it loses its essence and becomes either ‘my’ truth or ‘your’ truth… By implying the truth, the truth doesn’t become anyone’s property.”
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“Words and deeds can be falsified, but not understanding and practice… As with geodes, jade is found inside ordinary looking rocks. Officals once wore it on their hats as an emblem of their status, and alchemists often included it in their elixirs.”
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“You can't find the right roads when the streets are paved.”
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