and that of stillness guarded with unwearying vigour.If you've ever come face-to-face with a dire or life-threatening situation, I am certain you understand the great value of calmness. When anxieties are high and circumstances are chaotic, a jumbled and frantic mind can cause us to neglect crucial variables and to make less than well thought out decisions.
~ James Legge translation, from The Sacred Books of the East, 1891 ~
Let the mind become still.
~ Gia-fu Feng and Jane English translation, published by Vintage Books, 1989 ~
Hold on to the truest tranquility
~ Derek Lin translation, from Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths, 2006 ~
Stay calm.
~ Ron Hogan rendition, from Beatrice.com, 2004 ~
Generally speaking, those individuals who can slow everything down and not fall prey to racing emotions are the ones who come out of such situations relatively unscathed. By emptying themselves of runaway desires, they are able to see the path out more clearly.
To view the Index page for this series to see what you may have missed or would like to read again, go here.
[unrelated to this specific post, but the blog in general...]
ReplyDeletequite some time back, you had a post wondering why so many christians were focused on the next world rather than this one. while many/most fundamentalists perhaps do, there is a strain of religion that's not fundamentalist, but seems to be much quieter in the public arena, so many ignore or are unaware of it's existence. however, the excerpt below is from one such camp, so i thought you might find it of interest.
also, if you look at the other parts of the series on bonhoeffer. perhaps if he'd only started out being a taoist, he never would have had to create the notion of "religionless christianity"? i'll leave it to you to compare/contrast his views versus taoism, since you know far more than i.
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2010/12/letters-from-cell-92-part-4.html
Letters from Cell 92: Part 4, Religionless Christianity
Now what is the root problem with metaphysics and this concern over personal salvation? The problem is the same one we encountered in our analysis of the world come of age. The problem for Christianity is that when it becomes concerned with religious issues (like metaphysics and personal salvation) it becomes other-worldly; Christianity-as-religion pulls the Christian out of the world, getting us to focus on the Somewhere Beyond the Blue. Bonhoeffer's concerns over other-worldliness become explicit as he continues on in the May 5 letter:
"It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world..."
--sgl