If I do not desire anything and I am not afraid of anything, then the mind is quiet. Not asleep or chewing its cud, but alert, watchful and ready. Like a top-of-class majordomo.
Tag Archives: Tao de Ching
No question, no answer
We bridle our anger when we stop answering questions we haven’t been asked.
Doing the work
We are spittle factories. We talk too much. More words count less. We know that; we long for the gleaming economy of right speech. But first we must know that breaking Babel will be very difficult—harder than quitting cigarettes or weed, harder than losing weight, harder than anything we’ve ever done. We ought not to attempt it unless our goal is our God, before whom there are no other gods, the only and absolute focus of our deathless devotion.
Be still, and know
There comes a time when doing nothing is the best and most curative course. The Chinese term for this is wu wei: action-less activity. Our word is consciousness: awareness without thought. At its purest and most distilled, doing nothing is a state of whole-heartedness, of resolute integrity.
Stones have sermons.
Dao
Littleness and less—this is the way.
