Effortless living

The apple is not ripened by trying. Neither are we. “Act without doing; work without effort.”

Beneath the chaos

To borrow from a Trappist monk, the wisdom of Lao Tzu—conceived as his mother traced the arc of a falling star, carried in her womb for 62 years, delivered while she leaned against a plum tree—sleeps in China’s paper flesh like dynamite. “When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.” In a related development, it’s been 50 years since the Beatles released their paean of praise, Let It Be.

Wild things

Ministry of Natural Resources: Don’t feed the wildlife.

Zen: Don’t feed your thoughts.

No small achievement

Don’t get involved with your thoughts. Let them come. And let them go.

Graduating students

Graduating students are routinely told they can be anything they want to be. This is misleading. I cannot want to be virtuous, to be honest, to have integrity, to live, love and die with my whole heart. Wanting is suffering. This three-word simplicity is one of the Four Noble Truths.

Whatever you can dream, you can achieve. Also not true. The more present we are, the fewer dreams we entertain. Dreams are left-overs.