Tao Te Ching
Meaningfulness
As opposed to anarchistic, simplistic understandings that become self-justifications based on ‘be yourself,’ insights into our true selves reveal a sacred and deeply meaningful nature, an inspiring perception that transcends passion and aggression, hope and fear, nationalism and racial identity, egocentricism and selfishness. Cultural advertisements persuasively convince us that our lives become meaningful only after we achieve some kind of success: fame, fortune, wealth, power, pleasure. They seduce us into goal-oriented life-styles that sacrifice the present for imagined goals that either never materialize or come about shrouded in disappointment, dissatisfaction and regret. In his psychologically revolutionary book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl describes his experience in a Nazi concentration camp and correlates people’s ability to survive and the degree of meaningfulness they’ve found in their lives. The more that meaningfulness arises from inner realizations instead of external gaining ideas, the more authentic and powerful that perception of meaningfulness becomes.
Quotes (133)
“When people appreciate and love life, they naturally love and take care of things.”
“Seeing the meaningful as meaningful, and the meaningless as meaningless, one is capable of genuine understanding.”
“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.”
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”
“If our actions do not satisfy the mnd-and-heart, we become starved.”
“The spirit of the universe informs all life... things emerge and submerge, but it remains for ever without change.”
“The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?”
“Why rely on forms and titles? These are like games, stunts and tricks—entertaining but unimportant and meaningless.”
“In these things there lies a deep meaning; yet when we would express it, words suddenly fail us.”
“When you fail to go beyond the world of thoughts and senses, your actions have no significance or meaning.”
“…since you are fundamentally complete in every respect, you should not try to supplement that perfection by such meaningless practices… Only awake to the One Mind, and thre is nothing whatsoever to be attained.”
“There must be a great purpose for a great mountain to shake.
There must be a great purpose to roll out the carpet of the great plain.”
“Better than disks of jade followed by teams of horses would be one good word or one good deed to keep the people from losing sight of the good.”
“Like the aroma of sandalwood spread on the wind, virtue spreads far and wide through place and time.”
“This aloneness is worth more than a thousand lives.
This freedom is worth more than all the lands on earth.
To be alone with the truth for just a moment,
Is worth more than the world and life itself.”
“Set out on the path to peace by being alert and mindful to the misery of chasing after the fame, fortune, pleasure, and power goals of a belief in a separate self. Quickly conquer this fictitious being and enjoy the feast of life's true meaning.”
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to live in a way that makes life worth living.”
“Enthusiasm is love and dreams of a beautiful life, due to which we are enabled to become better”
“Though neither miserable in pain nor courageous in battle, men die from the weariness of boredom, doing the same things over and over.”
“the greatest evil in heaven and on earth: they pass through the world without doing any useful work and are thus great thieves”
“Careless handling of one item might bring harm to the whole world, a moment's carelessness damage all future generations.”
“Oh you, who have never heard the voice of heaven, who think man destined only to live this little life and die in peace; you who reign in populous cities with your fatal acquisitions, your restless spirits, your corrupt hearts and endless desires... retire to the woods, renounce civilizations advances and vices from which always arise more real calamities than even apparent advantages.”
“Don't wait around for your life to happen to you. Find something that makes you happy, and do it. Because everything else is all just background noise.”
“True yin and true yang naturally form a couple and from striving enter into nonstriving, from effort arrive at spontaneity completely realizing essence and arriving at the true meaning of life.”
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”
“To greatly increase your happiness, just realize the simple truth that the value and the meaningfulness of our lives is within and not based on external factors.”
“Show whence I came, and where I am, and why—
'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply
I rose; and bent at her sweet command,
And suddenly my brain became as sand.
”
“Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”
“What a man is born for is to be a Reformer, a Remaker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies; a restorer of truth and good”
“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”
“I have never yet met a man who was quite awake… with an infinite expectation of the dawn… the day is a perpetual morning… I went to the woods… to see if I could learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
“what I should most rejoice at would be to have something good to do with my money”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
“The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.”
“What if my whole life has all been wrong?... I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me”
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, if I can ease one life the aching, I shall not live in vain.”
“How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.”
“These then are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
“I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.”
“An editor must have a purpose. ... What a legacy for one's conscience to know that one has been instrumental in mowing down the old prejudices that rattle in the wind like weeds.”
“It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.”
“men measure by false standards—the everyone seeks power, success, riches for himself and admires others who attain them—while undervaluing the truly precious things in life”
“The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence. [It is] a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression.”
“The purpose of life is not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining…”
“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”
“One must be very strong, very stupid, or completely exhausted to face life with indifference.”
“it is the feeling of being necessary, of being desired, flowing into a man that produces the satisfaction of contentment.”
“compassion... If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.”
“She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which we recognize by instinct as universal and true... a look or gesture somehow revealed the meaning in common things.”
“as in all metaphysical questions, both are true; Life is—or has—meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.”
“The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
“Supreme meaning is the Path, the Way, and the Bridge to what is to come. That is the God yet to come.”
“If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.”
“What the secular mind does is to assert that we (symbolists) are reading meaning into things that originally had none: our assertion is that they are reading out the meaning. The proof of our contention lies in the perfection, consistency and universality of the pattern in which these meanings are united.”
“It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”
“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.”
“[Taoism is] the straightest, most logical explanation as yet advanced for the continuance of life, the most logical use yet advised for enjoying it.”
“Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
“What is the meaning of life?… The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
“there is a purpose above each purpose, and there is again a purpose under each purpose; and yet beyond and beneath all purposes there is no purpose.”
“It is our duty to set ourselves an end beyond our individual concerns, beyond our convenient, agreeable habits, higher than our own selves, and disdaining laughter, hunger, even death, to toil night and day to attain that end... Not to attain it, but never to halt in the ascent. Only then does life acquire nobility and oneness.”
“Every integral man has inside him—in his heart of hearts—a mystic center around which all else revolves... Alas for the man who does not feel himself governed inside by an absolute monarch. His ungoverned, incoherent life is scattered to the four winds.”
“Life is that which can hold a purpose for 3000 years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood nd seed the wisdom of generations.”
“I would rather contribute a microscopic mite to improving the conduct of men and statesmen than write the one hundred best books.”
“all technological advances will have to be written off as merely new means of achieving old ends... we repeatedly enlarge our instrumentalities without improving our purposes.”
“We had the experience but missed the meaning. And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form.”
“It has always been assumed that the most important things in the Gospels are the ethical maxims and commandments. But for me the most important thing is that Christ speaks in parables taken from life, that He explains the truth in terms of everyday reality. The idea that underlies this is that communion between mortals is immortal, and that the whole of life is symbolic because it is meaningful.”
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”
“The most tragic person in our civilization is the middle-aged woman whose duties in the home are finished, whose children are gone, and who is in her mental and physical prime and yet feels there is no more need for her.”
“The great end of any man's existence is to find his place in life—and that is the secret of contentment.”
“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.”
“What at one time are most effective expressions gradually become so worn with use that they cease to carry a definite meaning. The underlying ideas may be as valid as ever, but the words, even when they refer to problems that are still with us, no longer convey the same conviction.”
“Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.”
“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.”
“We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things… We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life.”
“From emptiness, everything comes out. One whole body of water, or one whole mind, is emptiness. When we reach this understanding we find true meaning to our life.”
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life but I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking… what we’re really seeking is an experience of being alive, the rapture of being alive.”
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
“The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.”
“The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning.”
“everyone growing up faces differential opportunities... differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.”
“Everything is naturally perfect just as it is, completely pure and undefiled. All phenomena naturally appear in their uniquely correct modes and situation, forming ever-changing patterns full of meaning and significance, like participants in a great dance… The everyday practice is just ordinary life itself.”
“Try to give to others as much of the teachings as possible. Then you might be of some benefit and not waste your life. ” 
“That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, monotonous, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of ‘bread and circuses’ can compensate for the damage done – these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence – because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.”
“Nature, it has been said, abhors a vacuum, and when the available 'spiritual space' is not filled by some higher motivation, then it will necessarily be filled by something lower – by the small, mean, calculating attitude to life which is rationalized in the economic calculus.”
“Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.”
“There is a monastic outlook common to all who question the value of a life submitted entirely to arbitrary, secular presupposition dictated by social convention and dedication to the pursuit of temporal, mirage-like satisfactions; and instead, find something they vastly prefer in solitude.”
“Everything that everybody does is so—I don't know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless... And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”
“Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart?”
“If there are no meanings, no values, no source of sustenance or help, then man, as creator, must invent, conjure up meanings and values, sustenance and succor out of nothing.”
“People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands… the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.”
“Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.”
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives... it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.”
“Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station.”
“I think the best thing you can do is help each other. When we do that, we do something meaningful. I choose this meaning for myself since no one knows. I make sure that in my life I can help other people who are in trouble.”
“To 'make America great again' would mean individuals seeing through all the materialistic, consumerism lies and re-finding real meaningfulness and inspiration in their lives; it doesn’t have anything to do with all of our 'Homer Simpsons' regaining the prestige and respect they’ve lost through their laziness, arrogance, and egomania.”
“Without your love it's a honky tonk parade, without your love it's a melody played in a penny arcade.”
“Every drop in the ocean counts… You may think I’m small, but I have a universe in my mind…”
“We’ve been filled with great treasure for one purpose: to be spilled.”
“The idea of ‘retirement’ is a scam deluding people into sacrificing the meaningfulness of their careers for the illusion of pleasure, of unconstrained leisure. The result of a propaganda campaign during the age of industrialization and rapid population growth to deal with unemployment, governments wanted to minimize the discontent of jobless youth by tricking older people into obscurity, pointless dependence, and abandoning one of our most basic sources of happiness—meaningful and productive work.”
“In this state of total consumerism - which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves - all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken.”
“The little Angels of the trees and flowers. They offered to unlock my mind… till every fiber Of my soul was bathed in harmony.”
“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.”
“American culture is going down the drain… an enormous degeneration… a culture that has no spiritual center, a culture that has money and education, but no sense of being at peace with the world, no sense of purpose in life.”
“The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”
“Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.”
“The Bhagavad Gita, like the Divine Comedy, is one of the greatest works of education ever composed. It leads from the darkness of a life without meaning to the clarity of God’s wisdom... The ultimate message of the Bhagavad Gita is that God has created many roads to the truth; each person must find his or her own road.”
“Don’t pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life and it’d lose even its imperfection.”
“every single civilization including this western world, was brought into being from a sacred place to serve a sacred purpose. And when that purpose is forgotten… the fundamental balance and harmony of its existence become disrupted”
“behind the walkman, BMWs, all our wonderful technological inventions, … there is a purpose waiting to be discovered”
“By understanding emptiness, you lose interest in all the trappings and beliefs that society builds up and tears down—political systems, science and technology, global economy... you become like an adult who is not so interested in children's games anymore.”
“When we make a conscious choice to seize the day, we are making a commitment to being active rather than passive beings, to pursuing our own path rather than one determined for us, to living in this moment rather than waiting for the next . And through that act of decision, we gain a sense of purpose by becoming the author of our own life.”
“There is no greater inspiration, no greater courage, than the intention to lead all beings to the perfect freedom and complete well-being of recognizing their true nature.”
“A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is... happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.”
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