Tao Te Ching
Journey Without Goal
As John Lennon sang quoting Allen Saunders, “Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.” Unfortunately though, most of us most of the time don’t notice that life because we’re so focused and fixated on those plans that distract us from our real, meaningful life moments. Like Lao Tzu’s description of Wu Wei, the idea of journey without goal includes action without gaining ideas, aimless wandering, aimless gardening, business without profit motive, fame without fixation, wealth without attachment, power without control. This realization and understanding injects a radical sense of sanity into our confused, delusional, and materialistic world of consumerism, selfishness, and aggression. It opens up the possibility of a spiritual path not based on materialism, of political service without conflicts of interest, of wisdom without arrogance.
Quotes (94)
“the important thing is not to worry about the port of destination but to enjoy the voyage on which we are likely to be a long time and where we are now”
“Never engage in action for the sake of reward… alike in success and defeat.”
“You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working.”
“When I attained unexcelled, perfect enlightenment, there was nothing that I attained.”
“However well a man sows a field or plants a farm, he cannot know who will gather in the fruits; another may build a beautiful house, but he knows not who will inhabit it.”
“not-doing is the opposite of inaction. Because acting without effort, each job does itself in its own time.”
“To act without needing a reason… to ride the current of what is – this is the primal virtue.”
“God’s Realm won’t come just because you’re watching for it, and neither can people say, ‘Here it is!’ or ‘There it is’, because God’s Realm is actually within you!”
“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
“A monk asked Joshu, ‘Please guide me with your teachings, master.’ Joshu asked, Have you eaten your porridge?’ and the monk replied, ‘Yes, I have eaten.’ Josh then said, ‘Then go wash your bowl.’”
“Illumination means the realization that Illumination is not something to be attained.”
“For thirty years I sought God. But when I looked carefully I found that in reality God was the seeker and I the sought.”
“The last line summarizes the entire 5,000 words of the previous eighty verses. It doesn’t focus on action or inaction but simply on action that doesn’t involve struggle.”
“You have always been one with the Buddha, so do not pretend you can attain to this oneness by various practices.”
“The non duality of all phenomena cannot be found by seeking.”
“Cease all activity; abandon all desire; let thoughts rise and fall as they will like the ocean waves.”
“There is nothing to abandon or practice, no meditation or post-meditation. Just this.”
“My parting message to all of you: don’t go seeking after something. (from his death poem)”
“If you start seeking, you are unable to see… As soon as you seek, it is like grasping at shadows.”
“Patch-robed monks roam the world constantly emptying and expanding their minds without the slightest remnant held inside… Do no leave any traces and inside and outside will merge into one totality as leisurely as the sky clearing of rainclouds”
“External objects cause distractions and obscure mental clarity.
Therefore, pay attention to the primary perception and discover peace.”
“A fine day under the blue sky! Don't foolishly look here and there.
If you still ask, 'What is Buddha?' It is like pleading your innocence while clutching stolen goods.”
“A sage’s nonaction is nonaction that is not nonaction… the edge that is not an edge does not cut… the light that is not a light does not blind. All of these are examples of nonaction”
“There is no need to look for God here or there. He is no farther away than the door of your own heart.”
“other approaches are like attempts to create the already-present sun by dispelling clouds and darkness through a process of effort and achievement.”
“Purposeful action leads to exhaustion. The Tao is empty and acts without purpose. Therefore it can’t be exhausted.”
“Study and learn the teachings but become more and more non-sectarian. Follow and learn from teachers but leave them and combine all into one. Meditate and do spiritual practices but don’ think they improve anything.”
“Nurturing firmness with flexibility, solidity with openness, from striving enter into nonstriving, from effort into spontaneity and practice introspection in action letting true yin and true yang naturally unite.”
“The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.”
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”
“The best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew, and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy.”
“the mind must—if it is really to philosophize—also be truly disengaged: it must prosecute no particular goal or aim, and thus be free from the enticement of will”
“Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.”
“I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.”
“The quest for enlightenment only makes sense because buddha-nature is already present.”
“the only thing about liberty that I love is the fight for it; I care nothing about the possession of it.”
“Those who cannot renounce attachment to the results of their work are far from the path.”
“Nothing to illuminate,
Nothing to eliminate,
Looking perfectly at perfection itself,
Seeing perfection, one is perfectly free.”
“My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.”
“The fundamental idea is that Tao, though itself motionless, is the means of all movement and gives it law... The original meaning is that of a 'track which, though fixed itself, leads from the beginning directly to the goal.'”
“The only journey is the ‘Let life happen to you.’ Believe me: life is in the right, always. Journey within.”
“The art of letting things happen, action in non-action, letting go of oneself… became a key to me: we must be able to let thing happen in the psyche… this becomes a real art of which few people know anything. Consciousness is forever interfering.”
“"When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal."”
“What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.”
“It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.”
“A sound man... by never being an end in himself... endlessly becomes himself.”
“It expected me to hear the Cry of the future, to exert every effort to divine what that Cry wanted, why it was calling, and where it invited us to go... Greetings, man, you little two-legged cock! It's really true (don't listen to what others say): if you don't crow in the morning, the sun does not come up!”
“When you have reached the mountain top, only then will you begin to climb.”
“An old grandfather of ninety was busy planting an almond tree. ‘What, grandfather!’ I exclaimed. ‘Planting an almond tree?’ And he, bent as he was, turned around and said: ‘My son, I carry on as if I should never die.’ I replied: ‘And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.’ Which of us was right, boss?”
“Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves.”
“How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.”
“Exceptional human qualities only arise when a person over the course of many years lives and works with only a generosity without any expectation of reward and without a shred of egoism.”
“Despite the success cult, men are most deeply moved not by the reaching of the goal but by the grandness of the effort involved in getting there - or failing to get there.”
“the false serpent persuaded Adam that he must still do something to become like God… to make himself what God had already made him. That was the Fall of man.”
“When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the effort to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized.”
“Tao is not pursuing any purpose, and therefore is not meeting any difficulty.”
“There's no where to go... There's simply being at peace with wherever you are.”
“we don't know where we're going—we're just lost at sea... we feel disturbed because we're unanchored, so we focus on thinking about how we're on our way to somewhere wonderful.”
“My reward is the perfect blue sky at dawn in the desert in a bird-resounding riverbottom grove”
“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.”
“The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.”
“The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.”
“In dreams the truth is learned that all good works are done in the absence of a caress.”
“The tantric tradition builds us up so we do not have to relate at the level of a donkey reaching for a carrot anymore. The donkey has the carrot already”
“Am I spending all my time and energy in some useless pursuit? Hauling a bucket of water to a place that's on the verge of flooding? Shouldn't I give up any useless effort and just go with the flow?”
“any leader who wishes to lead in the Infinite Game must have a crystal clear Just Cause... the goal is not to win, but to keep playing... A Just Cause is bout the future. It defines where we are going. It describes the world we hope to live in”
“'How can I get rid of hope and fear?' The simple answer is, 'By not trying.'”
“The sage […] realizes that things arise of their own accord, and not as the result of her own coercion or anxious striving […] so she does not feel any sense of ownership over the result of her actions.”
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