Introduction to The I Ching and Taoism continued….
Sometimes I think our role is conveying voices from the past who have stories yet to tell.
When Chuang Tzu talks about his Perfected Man and Confucius stresses the value of virtue, it is a matter of what we came in with, what we are here to experience and learn about our path, and third what is to become of our ultimate aspiration. Perhaps even to help to perfect the role of both student and teacher.
On Christmas day 1993, while studying Taoism, the following just came to me as I was reading a book about Lao, Chuang, and Lieh Tzu, and the history of Taoism in China. The book changed the trajectory of my life.
Beginnings
In Everything there is Tao
It is through you, Dan we speak. You have far to go but you can find the way. Stay within yourself and it will come.
Tea is a part of the ritual that brings you to us.
Lack of coordination, lack of memory and lack of patience are but weaknesses we gave you to overcome. For you to find the way you must find all three.
To find balance you must seek coordination in your relationship with others.
To find benefits you must learn to remember, and to find boundaries you must learn patience. Your power is in your vision. When you have mastered all three that vision, or oneness, is within you now to find the way of virtue.
In everything there is Tao.
As the crane is to longevity as a strong wind you should be. In following the Tao, the rest will come. You must repeat the above liturgy prior to any proceeding to find the way. We are here now come with us. (Written Christmas Day 1993 finished January 9, 1994)
If there is such a thing as a person having an epiphany, this liturgy has had an effect on everything I have thought since then and done in my life up to and including this moment. Events that have played out since then have taught me that it is not where I am – but who I am that matters. It’s like two years later after moving to Florida in 1995 when I was writing my second book, My travels with Lieh Tzu, and writing an entry Finding Confucius who I had previous only heard about… that I would one day teach at the school in Qufu that was founded hundreds of years earlier for his descendants. Much more on this later. It was like the heavens had descended on me in the voices of the ancients, we will call them dragons, in a turbulent time saying that what I was doing is not who I was meant to be.
I was forty years old at the time, and what I learned was that it was to be both my actions and my writing that would help to take me there. I have been writing ever since… and knowing that my future rests above the clouds.
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