Does anyone want to take the world and do what he wants with it?
I do not see how he can succeed.
The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or
grabbed after.
To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it.
In fact, for all things there is a time for going ahead, and a time for
following behind;
A time for slow-breathing and a time for fast-breathing;
A time to grow in strength and a time to decay;
A time to be up and a time to be down.
Therefore, the Sage avoids all extremes, excesses and extravagances.
When the person tries to do what he wants with the world,
the Tao, whether he knows it or not, is doing what it wants with him. The person’s belief in his own self-will is
exactly the deception the Tao needs for him to be a docile and compliant
instrument. When we believe we can do
what we want, we are unconscious to what is really being carried out.
And we don’t have to look to far to see how the Tao uses
those who are unconscious. It is the
world of nature, full of strife and competition – red in tooth and claw. If you have a desire, and are chasing it,
then you are certain to fail, sooner or later.
This is the price of your unconsciousness.
The spiritually realised person has no particular desires. In any given moment he is content with
whatever happens to be; he is not in search of something else. He is fully aware. His metal realm is not totally dominated by imaginings
of some future state.
This is why he notices, very loudly and clearly when the Tao
seeks to use him. He knows the voice,
recognises it, and trusts it. It is not
his desire, but the Tao’s. He is fully
conscious of the difference. And he
feels that the Tao wants the outcome more than he does. And so he acts for the sake of the Tao, not himself. This is why he always succeeds.
The world is a sacred vessel, which must not be tampered with or
grabbed after.
To tamper with it is to spoil it, and to grasp it is to lose it.
The person who seeks future outcomes through the belief that
they will be better than the present is guilty of tampering. Such a one has not the delicacy to safely
handle the affairs of the world. Only
when we rest satisfied as a permanent state will the Tao start to make requests
of us. The Tao will commission us to
arrange the future. On these terms we
can handle the sacred World with impunity.
In fact, for all things there is a time for going ahead, and a time for
following behind;
The problem with people in general is that they imagine that
one of these is better than the other.
They become attached to the notion of ‘going ahead’, and then become
despondent and confused when circumstances force them to ‘follow behind’. They resist the flow, and generally make a
nuisance of themselves to other people and the world.
Once we accept the advice in this sentence, and become open
to its truth, it becomes pretty easy to see whether activity or passivity is
required of us.
A time for slow-breathing and a time for fast-breathing;
By this we mean a time for relaxation and a time for exertion.
I'm sure most would agree with this, and
yet insist that the appropriate time for exertion is between 9-5 and anyone who
feels the need to rest between these hours should have their wages docked.
When we know for ourselves the restoring benefits of
meditation, we find that the urge to completely slow down can occur at any time
of the day. Sometimes only a few moments
is all we needed! Actually in most jobs, taking these micro-breaks fit in
easily – it is the social stigma that stops us from just putting everything down
and going silent for a while.
A time to grow in strength and a time to decay;
The most obvious example is the physical decay that comes in
old age, but similar cycles of various sizes are occurring throughout our
life. To enter a period of decline and
stagnation while in our mid-thirties is not acceptable for most people. The expectation is that we should all be at
the height of our professional, social and even reproductive powers. Therefore, a period of decay is too often
interpreted as a harmful depression; we do not see the period of growth that shall
follow if only we stop interfering and let our decay sweetly run its course.
A time to be up and a time to be down.
When we are successful we imagine we achieved through our
own talents. We then try to apply the
same talents to subsequent situations, where the requirements are completely
different, and then get despondent when we fail.
As soon as we realise that our successes and failures are
the doing of the Tao itself, we ride both waves with an inner calm and do not
attach ourselves to either. On the
outside we shall look like heroes or losers, but on the inside there is a deep,
unshakable peace that can’t be understood or justified in terms of events.
Therefore, the Sage avoids all extremes, excesses and extravagances.
By rising above them spiritually, he is not drawn into those
excessive actions that are so characteristically human and which only occur
when someone is trying with all their might to fight against the flow of events.
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