Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Tao Te Ching
Chapter 81
Journey Without Goal

True words aren’t fancy,
Charming words aren’t true.
Good people don’t argue,
Proselytizers aren’t good.
The wise aren’t academic,
Scholars aren’t wise.
The foolish understand the words,
The wise understand the sense.

The wise don’t accumulate, hoard or grasp;
The more they do for others,
The more they fulfill themselves.
The more they give to others,
The more they have.

This way of life leaves no trace,
Sharpens without cutting,
Benefits without causing harm.
The wise act without effort,
Accomplish great things
Without striving or struggle.

Commentary

“Life is largely a matter of expectation.”

Homer 1
Primogenitor of Western culture

Themes: Projection

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“The journey is the thing.”

Homer 1
Primogenitor of Western culture

Themes: Travel

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“It is better to travel, than to arrive.”

Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth

Themes: Travel

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“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.”

Buddha गौतम बुद्ध 563 – 483 BCE
(Siddhartha Shakyamuni Gautama)
Awakened Truth

Themes: Happiness

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“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

Socrates 469 – 399 BCE
One of the most powerful influences on Western Civilization

Themes: Carpe diem

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“Many much-learned men have no intelligence.”

Democritus Dēmókritos 460 – 370 BCE
Father of modern science and greatest of ancient philosophers

Themes: Paradox Wisdom

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“When Lao Tan and Yin Hsi heard of people who considered accumulation as deficiency, they were delighted.”

Chuang Tzu 莊周 369 – 286 BCE
(Zhuangzi)

Themes: Consumerism

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“Sages do not need authority to be noble, do not need wealth to be rich, and do not need power to be strong. Peaceful and empty, they are not subject to outside influences; they fly freely with evolution.”

Liú Ān 劉安 1 via Thomas Cleary
(Huainanzi)
from Huainanzi

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“I did not so much gain the knowledge of things by the words, as words by the experience I had of things.”

Plutarch 46 – 120 CE
(Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus)

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“We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.”

Epictetus Ἐπίκτητος 55 – 135 CE
from Discourses of Epictetus, Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί

Themes: Suffering

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“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Marcus Aurelius 121 – 219 CE

Themes: Projection

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“The more you seek the Buddha and the Dharma, the further away they become.”

Rinzai Gigen 臨済義玄 1 via Shan Dao
(Línjì Yìxuán)
from Zen Teachings of Rinzai (Record of Rinzai), Irmgard Schloegl translation 1976

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“The last line summarizes the entire 5,000 words of the previous eighty verses. It doesn’t focus on action or inaction but simply on action that doesn’t involve struggle.”

Wang Zhen 809 – 859 CE via Ralph D. Sawyer
from Daodejing Lunbing Yaoyishu, The Tao of War

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“You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can attain to this oneness by various practices.”

Huangbo Xiyun 黄檗希运 1
(Huangbo Xiyun, Huángbò Xīyùn, Obaku)

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“Give up any possibilities of fruition.”

Atisha ཨ་ཏི་ཤ་མར་མེ་མཛད་དཔལ་ཡེ་ཤེས་ 980 – 1054 CE
(Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna)

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“The problem is not enjoyment; the problem is attachment.”

Tilopa 988 – 1069 CE

Themes: Problems

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“The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.”

Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 1200 – 1253 CE

Themes: Moon

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“What you seek is seeking you.”

Rumi مولانا جلال‌الدین محمد بلخی 1207 – 1283 CE
(Rumi Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī)
from Masnavi مثنوي معنوي‎‎) "Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning”

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“Whenever there is help, there must be harm. But when Heaven helps, it doesn’t harm, because it helps without helping. Action is the start of struggle. Wherever there is action, there must be struggle. But when sages act, they don’t struggle, because they act without acting.”

Wu Cheng 吴澄 1249 – 1333 CE via Red Pine
"Mr. Grass Hut"
from Tao-te-chen-ching-chu

Themes: Confucianism

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“A free mind is one which is untroubled and unfettered by anything, which has not bound its best part to any particular manner of being or devotion and which does not seek its own interest in anything.”

Meister Eckhart 1260 – 1328 CE
(Eckhart von Hochheim)

Themes: Moral Freedom

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“Art lies in conceiving and designing, not in the actual execution.”

Leonardo da Vinci 1452 – 1519 CE

Themes: Art

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“All the way to heaven is heaven.”

Teresa of Avila 1515 – 1582 CE
from Way of Perfection

Themes: Wu Wei

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“At the beginning of this book, Lao-tzu says that Tao can’t be put into words. But are its 5,000-odd characters not words? Lao-tzu waits until the last verse to explain this. He tells us that though the Tao itself includes no words, by means of words it can be revealed – but only by words that come from the heart.”

Deqing 1546 – 1623 CE
(Te-Ch’ing)

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“Study and learn the teachings but become more and more non-sectarian. Follow and learn from teachers but leave them and combine all into one. Meditate and do spiritual practices but don’ think they improve anything.”

Karma Chagme Rinpoche I ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་རཱ་ག་ཨ་སྱས། 1613 – 1678 CE via Shan Dao

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“If you are concerned with the welfare of the future, it is most important to become more and more non-sectarian.”

Karma Chagme Rinpoche I ཀརྨ་ཆགས་མེད་རཱ་ག་ཨ་སྱས། 1613 – 1678 CE via Shan Dao

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“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

Matsuo Bashō 松尾 芭蕉 1644 – 1694 CE

Themes: Enlightenment

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“I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way.”

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet 1694 – 1778 CE

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“It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself.”

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 1749 – 1832 CE

Themes: Compassion

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“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is—infinite.”

William Blake 1757 – 1827 CE

Themes: Transmutation

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“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

Arthur Schopenhauer 1788 – 1860 CE

Themes: Happiness

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“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 – 1882 CE
Champion of individualism

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“the necessary ingredients of happiness: simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.”

George Sand 1804 – 1876 CE
(Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin)

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“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910 CE

Themes: Happiness

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“Your thoughts are not your experiences, they are an echo and after-effect of your experiences: as when your room trembles when a carriage goes past.”

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 – 1900 CE

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“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894 CE

Themes: Skillful Means

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“We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.”

Elbert Hubbard 1856 – 1915 CE

Themes: Projection

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“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”

W.B. (William Butler) Yeats 1865 – 1939 CE

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“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

G. K. Chesterton 1874 – 1936 CE

Themes: Complaint

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“The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.”

G. K. Chesterton 1874 – 1936 CE

Themes: Openness

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“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”

Hermann Hesse 1877 – 1962 CE

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“Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.”

Martin Buber מרטין בובר‎‎ 1878 – 1965 CE
from Ich und Du, I and Thou

Themes: Obstacles

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“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

Albert Einstein 1879 – 1955 CE

Themes: Pluralism

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“By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.”

Teilhard de Chardin 1881 – 1955 CE via Bernard Wall
from Divine Milieu

Themes: Delusion

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“I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.”

Kahlil Gibran 1883 – 1931 CE

Themes: Art

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“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”

Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 – 1962 CE

Themes: Wisdom Livelihood

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“You can often change your circumstances by changing your attitude.”

Eleanor Roosevelt 1884 – 1962 CE

Themes: Change

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“The journey, not the destination matters...”

T. S. Eliot 1888 – 1965 CE

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“Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.”

Aldous Huxley 1894 – 1963 CE

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“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Buckminster Fuller 1895 – 1983 CE

Themes: Change Creativity

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“What matters most are the simple pleasures so abundant that we can all enjoy them...Happiness doesn't lie in the objects we gather around us. To find it, all we need to do is open our eyes.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944 CE

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“Words are the source of misunderstandings.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 1900 – 1944 CE

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“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

Anais Nin 1903 – 1977 CE

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“When we ask what Buddha nature is, it vanishes; but when we just practice zazen, we have full understanding of it… When you give up trying to understand it, true understanding is always there.”

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 1904 – 1971 CE

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“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”

Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE
from The Lathe of Heaven

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“This last poem is self-reflexive, wrapping it all up tight in the first verse, then opening out again to praise the undestructive, uncompetitive generosity of the spirit that walks on the Way.”

Ursula Le Guin 1929 – 2018 CE

Themes: Competition

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“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”

Wendell Berry 1934 CE –

Themes: Travel

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“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”

Dalai Lama XIV Tenzin Gyatso 1935 CE –

Themes: Meaningfulness

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“It isn't the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it's how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”

Pema Chödrön 1936 CE –
(Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)
First American Vajrayana nun

Themes: Karma

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“We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement… all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake.”

Pema Chödrön 1936 CE –
(Deirdre Blomfield-Brown)
First American Vajrayana nun

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“I think it’s a question of being in contact with reality, then we don’t have to crank up something else.”

Chögyam Trungpa 1939 – 1987 CE
from Realizing Enlightened Society

Themes: Reality

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“At the beginning and at the end of the Taoteching, Lao-tzu reminds us not to become attached to the words. Let the words go. Have a cup of tea.”

Red Pine 1943 CE – via Red Pine
( Bill Porter)
Exceptional translator, cultural diplomat
from Lao-Tzu's Taoteching

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