With all things being equal, what does this leave us to strive for?
The paradox is that we don’t live in a perfect world where everything has an equal chance to achieve its fullest potential, and that includes us.Striving for perfection is challenging, with always more to accomplish. As Ringo says, “all I have to do is act naturally”, but we’re stuck in an imperfect world where some prioritize their own ego or personal “wants and needs” over what could benefit everyone.
No matter the circumstances of the present, our individual actions alone do not determine the outcome of events. Indigenous populations thousands of years ago recognized a fundamental law of nature: everything that happens, past or future, is the result of cause and effect. Despite our efforts, we can’t fully control events on our own. Just like everything in nature, we are influenced by our surroundings, and when we create something new, we need to stay open to change as it unfolds.
In the give-and-take of nature, understanding that equilibrium must occur means our survival relies on shaping change for the benefit of all, not just ourselves. Equilibrium is one of those words we often overlook or misinterpret. We tend to define it as a state of rest or balance caused by equal opposing forces, or the equal balance between any powers or influences—equality of effect. This concept was the impetus behind the I Ching, inspiring the idea of complementary opposites coming together to “find the best of both worlds”.
By preparing ourselves to embrace self-imposed boundaries and understanding our limits, we open the door to discovering a path toward becoming limitless. When I was teaching in Qufu, I had several students from Binzhou in northern Shandong Province, the hometown of Sun Tzu, renowned for his book “The Art of War”. The work, attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, consists of 13 chapters, each focusing on a specific skill or art related to warfare and its application to military strategy and tactics. Today, its strategies are often applied as a practical guide for preparing for any possible outcome. My students they would say living under the shadow of both Confucius and Sun Tzu, contributed to their own desire to become a teacher like them.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter 3 – King Mu of Zhou
37. Going along for the Ride
Is it not better to become as one with all things found in nature? Our lives mirroring that as we would experience in a walk in the woods. Making no disturbance, as one with all.
The canopy of trees, the smell of sassafras in the air. Squirrels run to and fro through the scattered leaves on the ground. With three blue jays overhead squawking and monitoring our progress. Ants finding their home in the rotten log you turn over. Multi‑colored wildflowers brightening the path you have chosen to follow; life lived truly as a dream. Staying enmeshed within it to the end.
If as the Tao teaches that all things are equal, what does this leave for one to strive for? If no joy is real and no achievement lasting, then how can one find his or herself in the world? If life is but a dream then suddenly misery and suffering, pain and sorrow, happiness and joy, success and failure all become one and simply take turns coming forward for us to experience and know. If not true bliss and enlightenment having no attachment to lose? Having no desires, how can you be distressed when it does not come? That striving defeats one’s ultimate purpose.
That we find our ultimate comfort in our dreams and what we create within and from them. Reminded only that good and bad must be present in all things.
Come forward through an opening in the trees with both the strength and weakness that nature gave you, remaining as one with all things. Never contending.
Only by going along with the ebb and flow of the river do you come upon that you have come to know and traverse so well. Remain forever charged with your dreams and drift spontaneously as a log down the river’s current. Simply a part of the swirling events around you. Happy just to be going along for the ride. Buoyed with the knowledge that fear and regrets are as unreal as hopes and desires.
Without our dreams life becomes tedious. A lost cause battling upstream against the current of our lives. Is not our challenge to find our inner strength and who we are to become and know no greater purpose than going along for the ride. 2/5/95
Number thirty-seven of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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