Tao Te Ching
Moon
The first stone tools go back 3.3 million years and the electric light less than 200. That means we’ve had electric light at night for roughly 1000th of 1% of recognized human life on this planet. So for almost all of the collective human experience, the moon has been by far the main source of light at night. And since the darkness of night encompasses roughly 1/2 of human life, of course the moon became a major symbol and influence in the myths and stories of human culture. And since love-making most often occurs at night and the moon dominates the night-time environment, naturally the imagery of the moon intertwined with strong emotions, romance, and sex. The slight illumination during times of major darkness gave it a mysterious connection to the unknown and to the unconscious. Physically, as a piece of the earth reflecting back brings it into the mythic symbolism of Narcissus. As he saw his reflection in a pool of water, we could say the Earth “sees” it’s reflection in the Moon.
Quotes (81)
“When the moon begins to grow, blood and breath are at their fullest, tendons and muscles are at their strongest. When the moon is completely empty, tendons and muscles are at their weakest.”
“Men call women faithless, changeable, and though they say it in jealousy of their own ever-threatened sexual honor, there is some truth in it... As the moon changes yet is one, so we are virgin, wife, mother, grandmother.”
“As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.”
“The gleaming stars all about the shining moon hide their bright faces, when—full-orbed and splendid in the sky—she floats, flooding the shadowed earth with clear silver light.”
“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
“When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger.”
“King Wen was like the sun or moon, shedding his bright light in the four quarters and over the western land... the universal love of King Wen was so broad that it embraced the whole world like the universal light of the sun and the moon shines upon the whole world without partiality.”
“The ancients heard thunder, saw lightning, conjunctions of the stars, eclipses of the Sun and Moon, became afraid, and began believing in gods to explain what they couldn’t understand.”
“Shine, Moon of the night who love to look on revels, shine through the lattice and let your light fall on golden Callistiŏn… You bless her and me, I know, O Moon”
“Worshipping unknown gods with unknown singing, her customary magic, would cover the white moon’s face and darken the sun with cloud.”
“An owl, noiseless as a feathered cloud, glided away in the moonlight, a songbird in its left foot. Fate goes ever as it must.”
“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger.”
“The one Moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water,
And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon.”
“The moon shines on my bed brightly,
So bright like frost upon the loam.
Looking up and gazing at the mountain moon,
My head sinks back down with thoughts of home.”
“A flower blooming in the sky,
The son of a barren woman rides a horse...
He kills his enemy in the space of dharmata...
The sun and moon dance, blowing trumpets.”
“Yin and yang take turns. The four seasons come and go. The moon waxes and wanes. All things have their time. They don’t have to be summoned to come.”
“if the conch moon did not rise in the sky, who could find their way in the pitch black of night?”
“I lean over the fishing rock, dip the deep clear river current;
Store the reflection of the large Spring moon, return it to the jar”
“Like the moon overwhelming the darkness, from the beginning just beam through all gloom.”
“The reeds blossom under the bright moon; the jade thread fits into the golden needle; the opportunity arises to turn around, enter the world, and respond to conditions.”
“The moon accompanies the current… understanding and the the changing world fulfill each other… go forward and see for yourself.”
“A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere... The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds.”
“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.”
“All is one law, not two. It is as gold and dross, or the moon emerging from a cloud. One path of clear light travels on throughout endless time.”
“When you've cooked the marrow of the sun and moon, the pearl is so bright you don't worry about poverty.”
“In the morning, greet the energy of the sun; at night, inhale the vitality of the moon.”
“Be praised my Lord, for sister moon and the stars, in the sky you have made them brilliant and precious and beautiful.”
“Hundreds of flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,
A cool breeze in summer, and snow in winder;
If there is no vain cloud in your mind,
For you it is a good season.”
“Moonlight floods the whole sky from horizon to horizon;
How much it can fill your room depends on its windows.”
“Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.”
“at last the bottom fell out. No more water in the pail, no more moon in the water!”
“The autumn moon is of loveliness without end. Nobody is more pitiable than a man who cannot see the difference and thinks the moon is the same at all times.”
“Even the moonshine seems to gain in friendly brilliance, striking into the house where a good man lives in peaceful ease.”
“Kissed lips don’t lose their fortune; but, on the contrary, like the moon, quickly renew themselves.”
“And when the Moon says, 'it is time to plant,' why not dance, dance and sing?”
“And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.”
“The moon’s the same old moon, the flowers exactly as they were;
Yet I’ve become the thingness of all the things I see!”
“The limitless sky of meditation, the clear moonlight of wisdom; the truth revealed as eternal stillness.”
“When the dirt is gone the mirror is clear, when the clouds disperse the moon appears; revealing the indestructible body of reality, they transcend yin and yang and Creation, and merge with the eternity of space.”
“One never realizes fully that a language is originally only symbolical, using only pictures, and that it never expresses the objects directly but only reflects.”
“When a thief came to rob Ryokan, there was nothing to steel so Royokan offered him his clothes. When the thief slunk away, Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. ‘Poor fellow,’ he mused, ‘I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.’”
“I had a dream, which was not all a dream...
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
Darkness had no need of air from them --- She was the Universe.”
“Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.”
“Like the young Moon
When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
”
“We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon...
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Naught may endure but Mutability.”
“The poetic mind has no self, no character, no identity; it is every thing and nothing, continually filling some other Body: The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women”
“Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have to 'come on' for awhile, and so goes 'in front' in her ordinary clothes to watch the rest of the company but keeps in the background, not wishing to attract attention to herself.”
“Before Galileo it was held that there was a radical difference between regions below the moon and regions from the moon upwards... below there was change and decay... From the moon upwards... there was no such thing as change or decay”
“In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.”
“The God of words is cold and dead and shines from afar like the moon, mysteriously and inaccessibly”
“Create an ocean from a dewdrop. Do not beg for light from the moon, obtain it from the spark within you.”
“as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island—a fresh green breast of the new world... vanished trees [that] had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams... for a transitory enchanted moment many must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor denied”
“Life lives by killing and eating itself, like the moon, casting off death and being reborn.”
“When you see the earth from the moon, you don’t see any divisions there of nations or states. This is the symbol for the new mythology to come, the country we are going to be celebrating, the people we are one with.”
“Not only the Chinese, but the ancient Greeks and Hindus, the Finns, the Pawnee, and the Arapaho all likened the moon to a bow. Thus the Way of Heaven is like a bow.”
“‘We have nothing on which to dine, Splendid, we shall have more time to sit outside and enjoy the moonlight, with music provided by the wind in the pines.”
“Tao originally meant 'moon.' The Yiching stresses bright moon, while Lao Tzu stresses the dark moon.”
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
“Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides. Just like hopes springing high, still I’ll rise.”
“Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.”
“Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.”
“Emotions are very aggressive, so in order to cut through them, you need some kind of cool moon, fresh water, iceberg.”
“We can plant the moon of bodhichitta in everyone’s heart and the sun of the Great Eastern Sun in their heads.”
“We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...”
“Every month the moon effortlessly shows us that something comes from nothing.”
“loneliness seeps deep down inside your body, like a red-wine stain on a pastel carpet... For Men Without Women, the world is a vast, poignat mix, very much the far side of the moon.”
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