Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
Chapter 73Heaven’s Net
Chapter 73
Those with outer courage
Dare to act and take life.
Those with inner courage
Dare to not act and give life.
Both of these are sometimes good,
sometimes harmful
When one best, when the other?
Even the most wise don’t know for sure.
The Way of Heaven
Doesn’t compete but easily wins,
Doesn’t speak but answers completely,
Doesn’t request but attracts all it needs,
Doesn’t stress but impeccably acts.
Heaven’s Net catches everything,
The mesh is wide yet nothing slips through.
Commentary
“Do not overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel. Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain.”
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“A superior man in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything.”
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“Demand not that things happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do, and you will go on well.”
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“The mind is always present. You just don't see it... When the mind creates the idea of the mind, people are deluded but if you don't use the mind to create the idea of the mind, you will always live in the country of the Buddhas”
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“No unintentional transgression is too great for his leniency… No intentional crime is too small for his punishment.”
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“Yin and yang take turns. The four seasons come and go. The moon waxes and wanes. All things have their time. They don’t have to be summoned to come.”
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“Everyone knows about daring to act but not about daring not to act. Those who dare to act walk on the edge of a knife Those who dare not to act walk down the middle of a path.”
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“Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere -- in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you.”
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“Always act as if others were watching… know that walls have ears and that ill deeds rebound back… know that sooner or later, all will be known.”
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“What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? What dread grasp dare its deadly terrors clasp!”
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“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
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“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble… They can never be solved, but only outgrown.”
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“Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.”
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“The English regard slackness as a vice. We, on the other hand should vastly prefer it to tension. Is there not too much tension in the world…”
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“The point at which we can either extend ourselves further and go towards an unfamiliar brilliance, or return to a more soothing and familiar dimness is the threshold of magic.”
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Comments (1)
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Shan Dao
6 years ago
According to Red Pine, the last two lines of this poem are now a common proverb in China. An insight embedded in not just Chinese culture but in wisdom traditions all over the world, this acknowledgment of “karma,” that no one can ever get away with anything, may be one of history’s most civilizing statements.
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