Tao Te Ching
Chögyam Trungpa
Joining Heaven/Earth/Man
"Heaven" represents vision, our inspirations often beyond possibility but still motivating. "Earth" symbolizes practicality, the accomplishable details of our lives. The "Man" principle describes our process of bringing our vision, our missions in life down to earth, fulfilling and accomplishing projects and goals. Too much Heaven leads to impracticality, disillusionment, and failure. Too much Earth brings about an insipid boredom, animal-like repetitive patterns, narrow, fixated goals, and ultimately just another kind of failure. So the main result of applying this "Man" principle is balance, a joining of Heaven's vast vision with Earth's detailed practicality.
Quotes (36)
“I have shown you the methods that lead to liberation but you should know that liberation depends only upon yourself.”
“Nowadays I see with my whole being not with my eyes. I sense the natural lines, and my knife slides through by itself… I stand there and let the joy of the work fill me.”
“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth.”
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
“What is essential is to understand nature and align your intentions and actions with the way things are... Look to the example of people whose actions are consistent with their professed principles.”
“Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out.”
“the concepts of the creative and the receptive that originate in the I Ching are symbolized by Heaven and Earth. Through the union of heaven and Earth, there develop the 'ten thousand things', that is, the outer world.”
“Like a tightrope walker with perfect balance, journey on the high rope joining skillful means and wisdom.”
“Knowledge without action is wastefulness and action without knowledge is foolishness.”
“Realize that not a single thing exists and respond unencumbered to each spec of dust without becoming its partner.”
“If we are to achieve things never before accomplished we must employ methods never before attempted.”
“The ultimate goal of business is not to make a profit. Profit is just the means. The goal is general welfare.”
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.”
“An orator whose purpose is to persuade men must speak the things they wish to hear; an orator, whose purpose is to move men, must also avoid disturbing the emotional effect by any obtrusion of intellectual antagonism; but an author whose purpose is to instruct men, who appeals to the intellect, must be careless of their opinions, and think only of truth.”
“That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would we are part of the Divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.”
“It's a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.”
“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.”
“In the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created.”
“Suddenly a luminous white sail flashed in the narrow crack left between sea and sky. It was a minuscule self-reliant skiff between the two darknesses, pressing forward swiftly, precipitously, in the suffocating calm, its' sail belied to to the bursting point.”
“Nothing is certain. For that very reason every people, every individual, has a great responsibility in our amorphous, uncertain age, a greater responsibility than ever before. It is in such uncertain, possibility-filled times that the contribution of a people and of an individual can have incalculable value.”
“Civilization is a fragile bungalow precariously poised on a live volcano of barbarism.”
“what is this heaven and earth except a vast play of forces, of rays shooting, waves vibrating, colors changing, vapors rising, mists descending, clouds sailing, waters falling, the sun setting, the moon rising, grass growing, and all things aspiring to live in the light of the sun?”
“the distribution of flexibility among the many variables of a system is a matter of very great importance. The healthy system... may be compared to an acrobat on a high wire... he must be free to move from one position of instability to another... If his arms are fixed or paralyzed (isolated from communication), he must fall.”
“Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.”
“One may conquer millions in battle, but he who conquers himself—only one—is the greatest of conquerors.”
“To meet someone who really hurts you is to meet a rare and precious treasure. Hold that person in high esteem, and make full use of the opportunity to eradicate your defects.”
“The luminosity of their world impressed the Hindus from the beginning. Not the fitting-together-ness not the hierarchy of beings or the order of nature, but the blinding splendor, the Light of the World.”
“My reward is the perfect blue sky at dawn in the desert in a bird-resounding riverbottom grove”
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
“Hope lies in the generation who belong to the twenty-first century. If they can learn from the past and shape a different future, later this century the world could be a happier, more peaceful, and more environmentally stable place. I am very happy to see... the Karmapa Rinpoche taking the lead and advising practical ways to reach this goal.”
“He subdues what needs to be subdued, he destroys what needs to be destroyed and he cares for whatever needs his care.”
“Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience Responsibility is doing what is right.”
“If we wake up to this reality, we can actively direct what comes next, and not just passively accept false conclusions of what feels inevitable.”
“We are on the threshold of both heaven and hell, moving nervously between the gateway of the one and the anteroom of the other... a string of coincidences might yet send us rolling in either direction.”
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