Tao Te Ching
Water
Weak and humble, powerful and strong, water symbolizes the diversity of human expression, the power of softness and yielding, the impermanence of experience, and the strength of going low instead of striving, Always open and adapting to each new experience, it communicates the wonderful lessons we can learn from nature. As Heshang Gong wrote,“the best people are like water.” Slow Water
Quotes (80)
“Water reaches its goal by flowing continuously. It fills up every depression before it flows on… So likewise in teaching others everything depends on consistency, for it is only through repetition that the pupil makes the material his own.”
“Speaking waters touched me from your fountain, the source of life. I swallowed them and was drunk with the water that never dies.”
“The highest form of goodness is like water... In making a move, know how to choose he right moment.”
“A sage’s movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.”
“The sea is the source of water and the source of wind; for neither would blasts of wind arise in the clouds and blow out from within them, except for the great sea, nor would the streams of rivers nor the rain-water in the sky exist but for the sea; but the great sea is the begetter of clouds and winds and rivers.”
“We are all one, and this one suffers—we must deliver it. If but a single trembling drop of water suffers, I suffer.”
“As the water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it, so a wise man adapts himself to circumstances.”
“The military in its victory avoids the solid and strikes the empty. Thus water determines its movement in accordance with the earth.”
“the form of the military is like water. Water in its movement avoids the high and hastens to the low. The military in its victory avoids the solid and strikes the empty. The water determines its movement in accordance with the earth. The military determines victory in accordance with the enemy.”
“If rulers really promoted them, people would turn to universal love and mutual benefit as naturally as fire tuns upward or water turns downward. Nothing in the world could stop them.”
“Water is for fish and air for men. Natures differ, and needs with them. Hence the wise men of old did not lay down one measure for all.”
“The best people are like water… empty, clear, and deep…Water can take any shape, and it is never out of touch”
“Conflicting emotions, deeds and bodies, actors and results are as castles in the sky, a mirage, an optical illusion and the moon's reflection in water.”
“The nature of water is to stay low, to not struggle, and to take on the shape of its container. Thus nothing is weaker. Yet despite such weakness it can bore through rocks. Rocks, however, cannot wear down water.”
“I smile, and am silent, and even my soul remains quiet: it lives in the other world which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom, the water flows.
”
“A mountain doesn’t have to be high if a saint lives there. Water doesn’t have to be deep if it shelters a dragon. My tiny, simple and shabby room becomes a palace when wisdom reveals itself.”
“Since water can bore through rock and float metal, there is nothing it does not conquer.”
“Realization is like writing in water.”
“If the rain has not moistened the crops, then what is the point of placing seeds there?”
“When flames consume the mountains and valleys it is too late. If the canals are not built when the water is low, when the floods breach the banks it is too late.”
“It's easy to extinguish a fire when it's small,
You don't even need water.
It's easy to subjugate an enemy when he is small,
You don't even need weapons.”
“Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing”
“When the stains from old habits are exhausted the original light appears, blazing through your skull, not admitting any other matters. Vast and spacious, like sky and water merging during autumn, like snow and moon having the same color, this field is without boundary, beyond direction, magnificently one entity without edge or seam.”
“The water is clear right down to the bottom, fish lazily swim on. The sky is vast without end, birds fly far into the distance.”
“Rivers of living water are to be poured out over the whole world, to ensure that people, like fishes caught in a net, can be restored to wholeness.”
“As soon as the six senses merge, the gate is entered This unity is like salt in water, like color in dyestuff. The slightest thing is not apart from self.”
“If the believer understood the meaning of the saying 'the color of the water is the color of the receptacle', he would admit the validity of all beliefs and he would recognize God in every form and every object of faith.”
“Be praised my Lord through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.”
“You are water, but in a whirlpool and engulfed; come down among us... we know nothing except singing these songs of unknowingness.”
“at last the bottom fell out. No more water in the pail, no more moon in the water!”
“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.”
“Like water in a mirage, a dream, an echo, a phantom emanation, a reflection, a castle in the air, or a hallucination; all things are clearly apparent yet to not truly exist”
“Buddhas bear the same relation to sentient beings as water does to ice. Ice, like stone or brick, cannot flow. But when it melts it flows freely in conformity with its surroundings. So long as one remains in a state of delusion he is like ice. Upon realization he becomes as exquisitely free as water.”
“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty… go where you will… if you do not find your soul, the world will be unreal… Go not elsewhere.”
“The river and its waves are one surf: where is the difference between the river and its waves? When the wave rises, it is the water; and when it falls, it is the same water again. Tell me, Sir, where is the distinction? Because it has been named as wave, shall it no longer be considered as water?”
“Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind”
“Once things reach their limit, they go the other way… Thus to hide the light means the weak conquer the strong… Deep water is the best place for a fish. But once it is exposed to the air, a fish is completely helpless.”
“When the mind is not altered, it is clear. When water is not disturbed, it is transparent.”
“Muddy fountain water doesn't get clear from our meddling but from us leaving it alone and likewise, often the best remedy for a disturbance is to let it run its course.”
“I watch people in the world throw away tehir lives lusting after things... such people are like monkeys frantically grasping for the moon in the water and then falling into a whirlpool.”
“a little water instantly relieves monotony... no matter what objects are near it;—a grey rock, a little grass, a crab-tree or alder bush, a stake,—they instantly become beautiful by being reflected”
“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, … in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial… I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra… The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges.”
“brief phrases which seemed pregnant to him because he had many thoughts lying under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to peep above the water.”
“For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”
“The essence of this motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance alters at every moment.”
“This expanse of water was an inconceivable pleasure to me, an incomparable splendor... without water, I thought, nobody could live at all.”
“Man at his best, like water… loves living close to the earth, living clear down in his heart.”
“It is the empty pitcher that makes a noise when you knock upon it, but the pitcher which is full of water does not make any sound; it is silent, speechless.”
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
“While theistic religions are based on authority and dogma, non-theistic religions like Taoism and Buddhism are based on self-responsibility and universality. The highest good is found in the lowest places; therefore it is compared to water.”
“I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”
“land, water, air, the earth and what lies beneath its surface cannot be owned as someone’s private property. That belongs to everybody, and if man wants to survive, he had better come around to this Indian point of view, the sooner the better, because there isn’t much time left to think it over.”
“Whenever Dogen-zenji dipped water from the river, he used only half a dipperful, returning the rest to the river again… when we are one with the water, we intuitively do it in Dogen’s way.”
“Making love with you
Is like drinking sea water.
The more I drink
The thirstier I become,
Until nothing can slake my thirst
But to drink the entire sea.”
“water—often piped in from hundreds of miles away—is sprayed over the fields with sprinklers. When it evaporates, it draws salt up from within the soil and this continuous deposition of salt in the topsoil eventually turns the irrigated land into a salt field.”
“If you are drilling for water, it's better to drill one 60-foot well than ten 6-foot wells.”
“Our mind is like a clear glass of water. If we put salt into water, it becomes salt water; sugar, it becomes sugar water, shit, it becomes shit water. But originally the water is clear.”
“Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven’t done a thing. You are just talking.”
“A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and only herself.”
“The simplicity or singleness of the Way is that of water which always rejoins itself.”
“We're all water from different rivers,
That's why it's so easy to meet,
We're all water in this vast, vast ocean,
Someday we'll evaporate together.”
“It was like a water experience in the sense that when you go to meet someone, if you can still the water, the reflection appears.”
“Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup,
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe.”
“Civilization has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water.”
“If we do not create a story around the wave [ emotions, desires, and aversions ], then we have empty water dissolving into empty ocean... Emotions themselves are not the problem. It's how we relate to them.”
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