dao homecoming

Where was Tao when I was gone? Wasn’t I following it where I went? Do you think that there are two? After traveling awhile, we come home to a familiar place, only we often look at it in a new light. Were things different while we weren’t here? We experienced so many new and different things while we were gone—wasn’t that Tao too? How can there be so many differences? You might argue that a mountain is a mountain, but our attitudes toward it are changeable. If we mistake our subjective viewpoints as something that is solid, permanent, and never relative to circumstances, then we will have no end to our problems. However, if we always remember that everything is comparative, then we can move through life in a much more dynamic way. There are not two ways. There is only one, It is so vast that we can experience widely diverging aspects of it and imagine that we are in different realities. This is a misconception. We cannot outrun Tao, cannot be outside of it. It is only our viewpoints that change to the degree that we think we are in differing dimensions. In the river of Tao, we are like minnows that can never plumb the length and breadth of the water. homecoming 365 Tao Daily Meditations Deng Ming-Dao ISBN 0-06-250223-9 today’s art is by Surya Kala Shah T A O t e C H I N G S E V E N T Y - O N E Knowing ignorance is strength. Ignoring knowledge is sickness. If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick. The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness. Therefore he is not sick. — translation by GIA-FU FENG Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Master is her own physician. She has healed herself of all knowing. Thus she is truly whole. — translation by STEVEN MITCHELL To acknowledge one’s ignorance shows strength of personality, but to ignore wisdom is a sign of weakness. To be sick of sickness is a sign of good health, therefore the wise man grows sick of sickness, and sick of being sick of sickness, ’til he is sick no more. — translated by STAN ROSENTHAL a reading list of books and interpretations of the Daodejing is available at http://www.duckdaotsu.org/dao_books.html for a meditation sent to your email address each day, please write ’subscribe tao’ in the subject line and send to lisbeth at duckdaotsu