Tao Te Ching
Ksenia Samorukova
Carpe diem
Humans attached to integrity walk a narrow path between unbridled, instinctual passion on one side and over-regimented conformity to rules on the other. The true spirit of "carpe diem" walks this road but modern advertising and culture has distorted and mistranslated this sentiment. One of the oldest and most famous dictims from Western philosophy, almost every language now has this phrase and online search results give over 62 million results. The first recorded quote goes back to the Roman poet, Horace (65-8 BCE) and since then it has become a favorite quote of philosophers, religious leaders, movie stars, movies, and rock bands from Metallica to Bob Marley. However while those with authentic understanding described it in ways similar to Henry David Thoreau — "to live deep and suck out all the marrow from life" — more modern voices have stolen the words and coopted the meaning in phrases like, "Just Do It". Although often used as justification, a carpe diem attitude differs tremendously from pleasure-seeking hedonism, power-grabbing lust, competitive striving, and apathetic complacency.
Roman Krznaric insightfully warns of how this last pitfall pervades the modern mindfulness movement—not the lineaged and authentic spiritual traditions but the diluted and over-simplified new age version. While in Buddhist traditions, mindfulness is one of the most simple practices given to beginners; the new age version often "over-promises, under-delivers." It too easily falls into the traps set by spiritual materialism, ego-promoting delusions, and attraction to animal-realm apathy. It also forgets that—while mindfulness can help people accomplish goals more successfully—it doesn't determine or decide those goals. Mindfulness could help an autocratic politician more skillfully manipulate and control, a racist segregate, an assassin kill, or a hacker steal.
Quotes (98)
“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.”
“If our actions do not satisfy the mnd-and-heart, we become starved.”
“Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home.”
“A special teaching, without scriptures, beyond words and letters, pointing to the mind-essence of man, seeing directly into one’s nature, attaining enlightenment.”
“Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise.”
“It's not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It's because we dare not venture that they are difficult.”
“[The problem] is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste so much of it... there is nothing the busy man is less busy with than living. [The wise] plan out every day as if it were the last.”
“the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth”
“A half-hearted spirit has no power. Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes... Unless we fully give ourselves over to our endeavors, we are hollow, superficial people and we never develop our natural gifts.”
“And whatever you do—remain in the world as artisan, merchant, politician, or religious recluse—put your whole heart into the task.”
“Time is like a river of events - each arising, carried away, and quickly replaced by something also quickly replaced.”
“Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretense.”
“Be confident in yourself. You have already ascended here and now, and no longer need someone to show you the way. Open your eyes and see.”
“If you don't liberate yourself through realization on the spot, it will be difficult to benefit others with compassion.”
“The bird of time has but a little way to fly—and lo! the bird is on the wing...
Ah, fill the Cup:—what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday.
”
“This is the time and place to leap beyond the ten thousand emotional entanglements of innumerable kalpas. One contemplation of ten thousand years finally goes beyond all the transitory, and you emerge with spontaneity.”
“If a reader is brave enough and goes straight forward in his meditation, no delusions can disturb him. But if he hesitates one moment, he is as a person watching from a small window for a horseman to pass by, and in a wink he has missed seeing.”
“When you simply release and forget both your body and your mind and throw yourself into the house of Buddha, then—with no strength needed and no thought expended—freed from birth and death, you become Buddha.”
“overleap the worship of your mental powers, overleap your understanding and spring into the heart of God”
“If you pour water into a large vessel and then make a tiny hole in it, though it drips but a little, yet if it goes on steadily leaking, soon there is none left... Therefore the dealers in coffins can never make enough to keep a stock.”
“The most important thing in life is to learn how to live in a way that makes life worth living.”
“slow resolves are invariably injurious... it is well in all deliberations to come at once to the essential point, and not always to remain in a state of indecision and uncertainty... tardiness helps no one, and generally injures yourself.”
“All success depends on timing. To turn out well, an endeavor must be done on its own day. At that time, seize the opportunity without hesitation.”
“Everyone fears death and knows they will die but still continue to fool themselves into thinking there is plenty of time.”
“If you love life, do not squander time for that's the stuff life is made from.”
“they mistake for happiness the mere absence of pain. Had they ever felt the solid pleasure of one generous spasm of the heart, they would exchange for it all the frigid speculations of their lives”
“To see a World in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.”
“Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”
“The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.”
“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
“The best piety is to enjoy—when you can. You are doing the most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates.”
“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks... If a man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is the wall.”
“Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”
“Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing”
“Forgive me for saying so, boss, but you're just a pen-pusher. Here you had the chance of a lifetime to see a beautiful green stone, and you didn't see it. By God, sometimes when I have nothing better do do, I sit down and ask myself, is there a hell or isn't there? But yesterday when I received your letter, I said, There sure is a hell for certain pen pushers!”
“There is a time for everything. Possibilities for everything exist only for a definite time.”
“Why wait to be peaceful? Why not be peacdeful now? Why not be happy now Why not be rich now?”
“An hour is not just an hour, it is a vase full of perfume, sounds, projects, and moods.”
“Whatever you do—walking, eating, sitting, and so forth—abandon laziness, indolence, apathy, negligence, and distraction.”
“I know so many women who have kept all the things that she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life.”
“Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute!... Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.”
“I knew my true face and my sole duty: to work this face with as much patience, love, and skill as I could manage... to turn it into flame so that Charon would find nothing of me to take. For this was my greatest ambition: to leave nothing for death to take—nothing but a few bones.”
“Why do we love Plato? Because he himself was a lover... because of his high passion for social reconstruction... because he worshiped beauty as well as truth... because he was alive every minute of his life... because he conceived philosophy as an instrument not merely for the interpretation but for the remolding of the world... because of his wild nomadic play of fancy, the joy he found in life... and because he retained throughout his 80 years that zeal for human improvement which is for most of us the passing luxury of youth.”
“Our grasp is greater than our reach; but therefore our reach is made greater than that grasp.”
“Don't sleep, don't sleep, artist,
Don't give in to sleep.
You are eternity's hostage
A captive of time.”
“religious in the only way that is becoming—extracting the utmost of life from every passing minute.”
“The best of the most atrocious, zeal is always intoxicating. A world without zeal would be a world deprived of many simple but savage pleasures: but at least half its present excuses for interfering and bullying would have been taken away from it.”
“It is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person.”
“It is only in stopping halfway that individuality solidifies and shrinks to the notion of an egohood which contradicts or opposes universality... Individuality pursued to its end, i.e. realized to the fullness of its possibilities, is universality.”
“Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.”
“If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.”
“when you do everything without thinking about whether it is good or bad, and when you do something with your whole mind and body, then that is our way.”
“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.”
“Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment and suffering.”
“Man’s chief moral deficiency appears to be not his indiscretions but his reticence.”
“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.”
“the future is an evanescent dew, a shadow, a lightening flash, just as the past, just as now”
“Nothing splendid was ever created in cold blood. Heat is required to forge anything. Every great accomplishment is the story of a flaming heart”
“People sacrifice the present for the future. But life is available only in the present. That is why we should walk in such a way that every step can bring us to the here and the now.”
“The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality… the moment of vision before intellectualization”
“Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.”
“We’ve been filled with great treasure for one purpose: to be spilled.”
“We don't have the right to ask wheter we will succeed. We must just do the right thing.”
“Whenever there is any inspiration, you just jump in. That is why it is said that 'first thought is best thought.' Just jump in!”
“You can achieve complete freedom; you can experience vastness. Genuine wakefulness is possible constantly.”
“The premature evocation of the future veils the present moment. Dwelling on one's good dream of the future and borrowing from others in the present on the basis of it is the attitude of pet dogs and cats.”
“Here, the term spirit is like the spirit of the morning, or the spirit of watching the sun rise, the spirit of a journey. This kind of spirit is based on the idea of delight and joy and heroism... You are about to give birth to it.”
“Determination, energy, and courage appear spontaneously when we care deeply about something. We take risks that are unimaginable in any other context.”
“There’s a point in everyone’s life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes, you have to grab it by the tail, grab it hard and never let go… They obliterate the stye they’ve worked in, and out of the ruins they rise up again.”
“recognizing the ephemeral nature of existence, and being able to look death in the eye or float on its ocean, is perhaps the most crucial ingredient of carpe diem living”
“For more than 2,000 years there has been a long war against pleasure... Carpe diem hedonism was far more than the pursuit of sensory pleasures: it was a subversive political act with the power to reshape the cultural landscape.”
“For the first time in years, it seems, she's done something not just because she's expected to do it, but because she's chosen to do it and done the hell out of it besides.”
“Because leaders fail to envision the future as the world rapidly changes around them, in the '60's, the average life of a company was 60 years; now it's only 20 years.”
“Can we seize the unbidden opportunity to explore this new mental territory of nondefined spaciousness that is actually always there?”
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