Tao meditation – both things are

Last night, I spent time on the telephone catching up about friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in a while and there was something wistful in the air – air so thick because it represented another piece of this large life I have been living – life is short, but it’s wide – yet there are dimensions of your life, which are not on the daily path, where people and places live in darkness until someone shines a light in their direction. And yes, those people age, and yes, those people harbor regret and sorrow, and yes, some things/people/places have changed irrevocably – yet, they are all part of your life, happy and sad, short or wide, old layered on new, and how you see and how you feel is what is in you.

Today, the meditation from the Tao te Ching is about how opposing forces may coexist:

Page 2

When people see some things as beautiful
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
Things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

Leave a Reply