Did you ever think all you ever wanted to do was play your own music? Or plant your own flowers? That you wanted to contribute something to the community or world.
That the key was learning to take what was playing in you to the outside and see if your tune would play. That’s what writing is for me. Like landing on the moon as your life’s ambition and saying, “Tranquility base here the eagle has landed”.
Or Michaelangelo knowing that David was inside the block of marble just waiting to get out and he was the one to do it.
There was a time sitting in Hanqu Pass when Lao Tzu knew that what he thought his life’s ambition was to use what was to become Taoism to change the world… but no one would listen.
Taking people from war to peace then knowing or thinking it wouldn’t happen. It’s a good thing he told his story and that there was someone to write it down. He not only had a lot to say… he had a lot more to tell after he died. He just needed a scribe… the storyteller, to keep it all alive.
How many great stories or music have never been heard or told? Did you ever think the vibrations and beat of your heart were placed or influenced by your soul mate or mates just waiting for spirit, for you to stop and listen and asked to stay. That the music you are meant to play may not be just your own.
What Lao Tzu was later to discover in spirit was that time and space are both relative and eternal and there would always be a good story to tell just waiting for someone ready to listen.
What he didn’t know yet was that immortality is always in the present until it and we move on. What we each need to know and consider…
Unfortunately, we live in a world where some think our spirit dies with us. That spirits can’t ride the wind with old friends long past. That people and passions end when their present life does.
While we make up stories that fit what we think we know, unaware that some truths are vibrations that are… in fact eternal. That fearing death is often an excuse not to live fully now.
Taoism and Lao Tzu
In the previous post Lao Tzu finishes by saying we answer the call wisely without a word coming into the realm of Heaven without a summons. As if ingeniously without a thought. That the Net of Heaven is all-embracing, its mesh is wide, but nothing escapes.
He continues in the Tao Te Ching with chapter/verse seventy-four with the idea expressed in the title of the following chapter/verse saying we should act as though we are “Acceding to Heaven’s wishes”.
I try to remember that Lao Tzu was writing in the fifth century BC in a family that had a living history of being shaman for over five hundred years. He begins Chapter/verse seventy-four with talking about death.
He would have experienced seeing the beginning and ending of life in a different way than what most people would do while giving advice to Kings who would regularly order thousands of men to their death in warfare.
So, death would be a constant happening every day where he would be giving advice that would be seen as responsible, so the question of context becomes important.
He also would have seen the beginning of kings wanting not to die. Thoughts towards immortality were becoming more prevalent. Kings wanted to extend their lives however possible, and alchemy and elixirs were becoming the duty of the shaman to find and administer.
So, all this discussion by Lao Tzu about death and dying would rightly find a place here in the Tao Te Ching.
In the Ma-wang-tui texts, considered by many the most accurate rendering of Lao Tzu’s writing, he says, “If the people were constant in their behavior and yet did not fear death, how could you use execution to intimidate them?”
Also, in Red Pine’s version we ask,
Wu Ch’eng, a great writer from the Yuan dynasty adds,
“Perverse means ‘unlawful.’ If those who act perverse and break the law do not meet with misfortune at the hands of Man, they will certainly be punished by Heaven.”
Verse 74 – Acceding to the will of Heaven
Everything under the sun must take its turn. Impatience and ego the only deterrent from our recognizing our good when heaven comes forth to greet us .
It is in daring to act without virtue that we fail when keeping still defines who will benefit and who will be harmed.
Who can know the will of heaven? Can only those who accept the path to enlightenment who live under the auspices of the Tao come closer than any other? It is as if two people are confronted with the same choice.
One will follow the instincts of heaven and the other the instincts of self-interest. Why does one see the way beginning within himself ultimately leads to virtue and the will of heaven through detachment from the world.
While the other cannot see beyond himself and the material world he covets. The sage knows that all things under heaven eventually come to pass to find each one of us. It is what we grab onto that determines our way.
That is why cause and effect and yin and yang of everything imaginable must occur. Light must become dark, just as the four season’s change. All things have their time that leads to their ultimate unfolding.
This underlying truth is the path to reason. The way of heaven wins easily without a fight because it already knows the outcome and will see things through to their end.
It answers with a word as the natural progression of cause and effect, comes quickly without a summons protecting those who, with grace, follow the way and plans ingeniously without a thought as the natural extension of the Tao.
Its net is all embracing and nothing escapes it.
Each beginning must follow with its rightful end just as every end is simply the beginning of something else. Death following life and life following death as we continually leave our spirit to find its own ultimate endeavor and destiny.
第74节 接受上苍的意愿
天下万物必须轮流替换。当上苍前来向我们致意时，缺乏耐心和自尊会妨碍我们认识自己的优点。当我们保持宁静，确定谁将受益和受害时，没有大德而贸然行动必将失败。
谁能知道上苍的意愿？那些接受道的指导和生活在道的意愿之下的人，能够比其他人更接近道
吗？这似乎是两个人面临同样的选择。
一人将跟随上苍的意愿；另一人却跟随自己的意愿。为何有人能够从自己看到道的起点，并最终修成大德？同时能够通过有别于世俗的眼光看见上苍的意愿。然而，别人却不能看透自己和他所羡慕的物质世界。
圣人知道天下万物最终会前来发现我们每一个人。这正是我们所掌握的用以确定我们的道的东西。
这正是为什么万物的因果和阴阳发生的原因。光明变成黑暗，如同四季变化。万物均有最终表达的时候。这个真理是基本常识。天道不战而胜，因为它已经知道结局并将看到事情的结束。
答案只有一句话，因为因果的自然发展很快，来不及号召保护寻道的大众。而且，因果的自然发展计划巧妙，甚至没有考虑它是道的延续。它是一张包罗万象的网，任何东西都不能逃脱。
每一个开始必须跟随着合理的结束，就像每一个结束都是某一件事物的开始。我们的灵魂不断地寻找自己最终的目标和命运，生生死死，死死生生，周而复始。
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