dao emptiness

emptiness Dust cannot gather If there is no mirror there. Some people have compared a pure soul to the unsullied brightness of a perfect mirror. Others have retorted that if there is no mirror there in the first place, then there cannot be anything to be sullied. The soul is empty. We should not think of our souls as discrete and separate from the rest of creation. We are indeed one with everything, so there is no need to think of our souls as isolated entities. Thus, it is the concept of the soul as separate being that is empty. Or is impossible to live in this world and not be sullied by it. The red dust will settle on you no matter how often you clean. It is good to strive for purity, not if you conceive of purity as a fight against the filth and the dust of the world, you doom yourself to obsession and futility. The only way to achieve actual purity is to realize your essential oneness with all things. If you are one with everything, then even filth is pure. For this to happen, you must transcend all distinctions in yourself, resolve all contradictions. With this erasure, the mirror-bright soul and the dust are all dissolved in a single purity. emptiness 365 Tao daily meditations Deng Ming-Dao (author) ISBN 0-06-250223-9 <>duckdaotsu.org <> tao hub <> <> Deified Laozi (detail) Tang dynasty, late 7th/early 8th century Limestone h. 56 cm Museum f¸r Ostasiatische Kunst, Cologne; acquisition made possible by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of the Land of Northrhine-Westphalia, the Association of the Friends of the Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne, and an anonymous private donor cat. no. 39 thank you to the Art Institute of Chicago Taoism in Art exhibit and lessons Deified Laozi After a period of rapid growth and consolidation in the second to sixth centuries A.D., religious Taoism reached its first peak when China was reunited by the Tang dynasty. Based on the fact that they had the same family name (Li), the Tang imperial family claimed to be descended from Laozi, whose full name was Li Dan. In the Tang dynasty, Taoism became a national religion and was seen as both a means of spiritual fulfillment and a tool to strengthen the emperor's political power. The imperial family sponsored the establishment of Taoist temples all over the country, and Taoist priests played an important role at court. Laozi is here depicted as both a perfected god at the top of the Taoist pantheon and a royal ancestor who represents the divinity of the ruling family. The balanced proportions of the statue suggest Laozi to be an ideal being free of human weakness or imperfection. This stands in stark contrast to the Portrait of Laozi by Muqi. 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 duckdaotsu