from Verse FourteenThe Way and virtue are like reeds and rushes: if you consider them far apart, yet there are near; but if you consider them close, they are disparate. If you investigate them you cannot grasp them, but if you look into them they are not empty.~ Wen-tzu: Understanding the Mysteries ~
Therefore sages are like mirrors: they do not take and do not seek, but respond without concealing anything or causing any harm. To attain this is to lose it, to lose it is to attain it.
Lao Tzu isn't the only philosophic figure to understand the great paradox. In the Christian Bible, the Jewish carpenter is purported to have made reference to it several times as well and other thinkers throughout history have noted it too.
More often than not, we can only attain what we seek WHEN we aren't seeking it! We can only achieve benefit when we have no concern for being benefited. We can only find the simple truths when we aren't looking for them. And we can only gain pure knowledge when we aren't thinking at all.
All of these things seem like utter contradictions until we realize that the stumbling block in each case is our overblown egos. Remove the ego from the equation and the seeming contradictions melt away.
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.
More often than not, we can only attain what we seek WHEN we aren't seeking it! We can only achieve benefit when we have no concern for being benefited. We can only find the simple truths when we aren't looking for them. And we can only gain pure knowledge when we aren't thinking at all.
All of these things seem like utter contradictions until we realize that the stumbling block in each case is our overblown egos. Remove the ego from the equation and the seeming contradictions melt away.
This post is part of a series. For an introduction, go here.
Hey!
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what I've been trying to turn myself into, that thing he said. A sage. There's a word for that that regular people can pronounce. :D
Things like this, you can't get closer to by aiming at them. Kind of like a punch has no force if you "aim" at the surface of the thing you're punching. You have to aim at what's on the other side. The other side of the wooden board. The state where you see people as they are, despise nobody, appreciate beauty in everything. Aim at that, and you get someplace different and nicer than you were before. Or, er, a broken board.