“Commenting on Chuang Tzu’s story about the Marquis of Lu trying to help a seabird, Stephen Mitchell writes, 'The marquis…by acting out the Golden Rule, became the golden fool… Love your neighbor as yourself: leave him alone.'”

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

Comments: Click to comment

“One of the qualities I most treasure in Chuang Tzu is his sense of the spontaneous, the uncapturable. This makes it easy to follow in his footsteps. Since there are no footsteps, all you an follow is what he himself followed: the Tao.”

Chapters: 56. One with the Dust

Comments: Click to comment

“The ancient Masters… woke up, they ate, they worked, they made love, they raised their families, all the while unseduced by any thoughts.”

Chapters: 64. Ordinary Mind

Comments: Click to comment

“A tragedy is a comedy misunderstood. Once you realize what you are, there's nothing but gratitude and laughter.”

Chapters: 5. Christmas Trees

Comments: Click to comment

“All things flow; the sun is new every day; it is in change that we find rest.”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“All things may be one with me, but am I one with them?”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“Chuang Tzu has been called a mystical anarchist and... offers a whole world of irreverence and subversion... because he has freed himself from his own beliefs. What he subverts is conventional thinking, with its hierarchies of judgment, its fors and againsts, its delusion that life is random unfair, and somehow not good enough,”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“every painful feeling is caused by a prior thought... the only thing that an interrupt happiness is an untrue thought.”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“Evolution doesn't mean progress. Which is more conscious, the butterfly or the flower?”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“Intellectuals began debating... scholars wrote tomes... moralists determined what is on the Way and what if off... thus Taoism was born”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“The Tao begins in the relation between man and woman, and ends in the infinite vastness of the universe.”

Chapters: 25. The Mother of All Things

Comments: Click to comment

“The Tao that cannot be named is the intelligence of the universe: whatever is happening right now... the don't-know mind”

Chapters: 3. Weak Wishes, Strong Bones

Comments: Click to comment

“There are paradoxes born of wit and paradoxes born of insight. No thought is true, bur some thoughts are so much truer that the ones we're used to that they seem absurd”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“We didn't know it was possible to be happy all the time. We didn't know you could have a heart without any heckpoints.”

Chapters: 58. Goals Without Means

Comments: Click to comment

“What if all suffering is the result of confused thoughts?”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“What if cultivating your own garden were the best way to help the world? What if your little backyard could, with the proper care, grow enough vegetable and fruits to feed a million people? What if your gardening inspired a thousand of your neighbors to do the same?”

Chapters: 59. The Gardening of Spirit

Comments: Click to comment

“when we try to grasp anything, it vanishes... there's nothing there, and the nothing is beautiful”

Chapters:

Comments: Click to comment

“Whenever we cling to a particular side of reality, it’s we who are the monkeys, losing ourselves in outrage or partial delight… when the mind is clear, each is an occasion for rejoicing.”

Chapters: 78. Water

Comments: Click to comment

“Worrying about the world is a dead end. When nuclear proliferation is solved, global warming pops up. When global warming is solved, overpopulation starts looming. then there’s always the burning out of the sun and the infinite expansion or contraction of the universe…”

Chapters: 63. Easy as Hard

Comments: Click to comment

“You can’t try to change people without inflicting violence on them… Hitler and Stalin, in their own opinions, were acting for the benefit of humanity.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

Comments: Click to comment