dao: “rest”

rest The year’s end is coming; I feel great contentment. completion means rest. Rest means renewal. Renewal means new beginnings. Perseverance is a great virtue, but perseverance cannot be cultivated without endings. Perseverance does not mean an endless engagement in Sisyphean tasks. It means beginnings, middles, and ends, and then starting over again. We are nearing the end of our year, but we could not contemplate this ending without having gone through the completions of all the days and months that have come before. It’s good to look toward the end of things. Not only does it provide perspective, but it also provides the stepping-stone to our next endeavor. When things end, it should ideally mean the attainment of our goals. We should start everything with definite goal in mind, otherwise our lives will lack purpose. Once we attain our goals, we should be glad and rest. We need the time for our psyches to absorb the significance of our acts. With rest comes renewal, and with renewal we can build the force of our characters and thereby stand stronger for our futures. In the countryside farmers frequently nap in their carts of hay as their mules automatically take them back home. They know how to make achievements and rest at the same time! rest 365 Tao daily meditations Deng Ming-Dao (author) ISBN 0-06-250223-9 duckdaotsu.org tao hub support sustain recommended reading** FU BAO SHI Visiting the Rock 1941 see FU BAO SHI for a complete biography of this artist and his work http://www.chinafinearts.com/ **Suggested reading of daoist texts ancient poetry and contemporary Chinese literature is available at the site. receive a full HTML copy of the daily meditation sent directly to your inbox, please send a note with the words "subscribe tao" in the subject line to mailto:duckdaotsu@earthlink.net Make sure to write subscribe or I might consider it spam and toss it!