Verse 64 - Living by Being Here Now

Re: Verse 64 - Advice from Dr Dyer

Re: Verse 64 - Advice from Dr Dyer

Re: Verse 64 - The Tao of Emerson

From The Tao of Emerson by Richard Grossman

From James Legge - The Texts of Taoism, 1891

That which is at rest is easily kept hold of;
Before a thing has given indications of its presence,
          it is easy to take measures against it;
That which is brittle is easily broken;
That which is very small is easily dispersed.
Action should be taken before a thing
          has made its appearance;
Order should be secured before disorder has begun.


The tree which fills the arms grew
          from the tiniest sprout;
The tower of nine stories rose from a small heap of earth;
The journey of a thousand li
          commenced with a single step.


He who acts with an ulterior purpose does harm;
He who takes hold of a thing in the same way
          loses his hold.
The sage does not act so,
          and therefore does no harm;
He does not lay hold so,
          and therefore does not lose his hold.


The sage desires what other men do not desire,
          and does not prize things difficult to get;
He learns what other men do not learn, and turns back
          to what the multitude of men have passed by.
Thus he helps the natural development of all things,
And does not dare to act with an ulterior purpose of his own.

From Ralph Waldo Emerson - Essays - ”Circles”, ”Compensation”

Every ultimate fact is only the first
          of a new series.
There is no outside, no inclosing wall,
          no circumference to us.
That which builds is better than
          that which is built.
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit
          could be severed;
For the effect already blooms in the cause,
The end preexists in the means,
The fruit is in the seed.


Our strength grows our weakness;
Whilst a man sits on the cushion of advantages,
         he goes to sleep.


The man who renounces himself,
         comes to himself.
Every step so downward, is a step upward.
Words and actions are not the attributes of
         a brute nature;
They cannot cover the dimensions of
        what is in truth.
The wise man, in doing one thing, does all;
Or, in the one thing he does rightly,
He sees the likeness of all which is done rightly.

Re: Verse 64 - Jonathan Star

From Jonathan Star - Tao Te Ching - The Definitive Edition

A still mind can easily hold the truth
The difficulties yet to come can easily be avoided

The feeble are easily broken
The small are easily scattered
Begin your task before it becomes a burden
Put things in order before they get out of hand
Remember,
A tree that fills a man's embrace grows from a seedling
A tower nine stories high starts with one brick
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

Act and it's ruined
Grab and it's gone
People on the verge of success often lose patience
          and fail in their undertakings
Be steady from the beginning to the end
          and you won't bring on failure

The Sage desires that which has no desires
          and teaches that which cannot be taught
He does not value the objects held by a few
          but only that which is held by everyone
He guides men back to their own treasure
          and helps all things come to know
          the truth they have forgotten
All this he does without a stir 

Re: Verse 64 - The Tao of Motherhood

From Vimala McClure - The Tao of Motherhood

64


NOW

Love your children while they
are small.  Spend time with them
now.  Don't put it off for a
single moment.

The rigid tree begins as a pliant
sapling.  A hugh building begins
as a shovelful of dirt.  A thousand-
mile journey begins under
your feet.

Everything depends on early 
influences.  You can't go back later
and bond with your children in
the same way.

Many parents get anxious with
their teenagers and try to make up
for lost time.  When the child
needs wings, they try to root him
and spoil everything.

Conscious mothering requires
careful choices, from beginning
to end.  

(deb's note - I just listened to an excellent Soulgarden meditation video Cancer Chap 1 for Jun 29th about self-mothering using the Cancer energy now entering.  Julie is so much fun to watch.)

Re: Verse 64 - Stephen Mitchell & Byron Katie

From Stephen Mitchell - tao te ching - A New English Version

What is rooted is easy to nourish.
What is recent is easy to correct.
What is brittle is easy to break.
What is small is easy to scatter.

Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm
at the end as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.
What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they have always been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things.

From Byron Katie - A Thousand Names For Joy - Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

                                                    Prevent trouble before it arises.
                                                    Put things in order before they exist.

There's no need to put the world in order.  Things are already in order, even before they exist.  I walk out onto the street, there are people and cars and dogs and birds and plants and litter, and in this marvelous chaos there is a beauty that always delights me.  It's all for me, it presents itself to me at the perfect moment, exactly as needed.  Though walking down the street doesn't seem like a lot to some people, to me it's a whole world, it's my secret world, where I'm always serving everyone and everything, as they serve me.  There's never a task too great or too small, because the only task to accomplish is the one in front of me.  It might appear that there are a thousand things to do, but in fact there is never more than one.

I live in constant meditation, and if a thought should ever show up as anything less than goodness, I know that it would spill over to other people as confusion, and those other people are me.  My job is to enlighten myself to that, and to love the spent rose, the sound of the traffic, the litter on the ground, and the litterer who gives me my world.  I pick up the litter, do the dishes, sweep the floor, wipe the baby's nose, and question anything that would cost me the awareness of my true nature.  There's nothing kinder than nothing.

I come home from my walk, make lunch, and as we're eating, Stephen says, “Look, there are ants in the salad,”  I continue to chew, and I marvel at the balance of life.  I never get more or less protein than I need.  Before a rain, the ants move into our kitchen.  There is a steady trail of them across the stove and the countertop, and my vision was too foggy to see those marvelous little explorers.  Later, sitting on the living room couch, I feel ants on my legs, my arms, in my hair, one by one, little massage therapists, walking over my pressure points, tickling me, sometimes biting me, but only where needed.  And I notice my hand moving toward my arm, squeezing an ant between my fingers and killing it as quickly as I would want to die myself.  It is my own death I am experiencing, and I love death as I love life.  My hand moves to my leg and squeezes two little fellows who are traveling up my calf.  I notice the thought “Oh, I'm killing the ants”, and I smile.  How very strange.  The hand keeps moving on its own, without a plan, doing its job.  “I” stop it, and I notice later, when I'm not conscious of my murdering ways, that the hand is at it again.  When I'm not looking, who is killing the ants?  Should I take credit?  The hand stops.  And who know what it will be up to next?

My daughter happens to be visiting, and as she leaves the house to buy rice milk for Marley, I tell her, “And, by the way, sweetheart, please buy some ant hotels”.  Why did I say such a thing?  Because I did.  That's the way of it.  The idea with ant hotels is that the ants are drawn to the poison inside and go back to their nest after eating it and infect the others, and that, supposedly, is the end of the ants in the house.  I wonder why killing ants doesn't bother me.  And I come to see that my death also is by poison, the things I have done to pollute the water that not only I but everyone drinks, the emissions from my car that poison the very air we breathe.  I am so like the ants.  And the greed for food that for so many years created guilt in me, as if mind were body and suffering were possible in reality.  And the chemicals from the processed food products that I occasionally eat, the many ways that I still poison myself, bring a smile to my face.  It's not that I'm masochistic, I love my life, but this continual poisoning is beyond me; it is simply the way of it.  Am I breathing?  That's how it seems.  I live with the ants the way I live with my own dear self.  Bodies come and go.  And when mind understands itself, when it stops poisoning itself with what it believes to be true, there is no physical experience that it can suffer over.

Two days later, as I sit in my favorite corner of the couch, again I begin to feel little scrambling movements on my hand and my neck.  Ants again.  It turns out that I am their nest, I am the one they hvae come back to infect, and I have only bought poison for myself.  What goes around comes around.  I appreciate that.

Re: Verse 64 - Dr Dyer's Essay

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is the most famous line of the entire Tao Te Ching.  It's quoted so often because it encourages us to avoid procrastination and just begin from where we are, right here, right now.  A tiny seed planted and nurtured grows into a forest; a marathon begins by taking that first stride.  In my opinion, the German poet and playwright Johann von Goethe nicely summed up this ancient teaching with these rhyming words: