Reflection

A while back in England I was given the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. Two of the passages of this ancient text have remained with me since a long time. I thought I share them with you. Here they are:

1)
Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich.
If you stay in the center
and embrace death with your whole heart,
you will endure forever.

This one has crept up again recently as I was thinking about and discussing death with Rick. Strangely enough is death something that does not frighten me. I don’t believe in an afterlife or any better place after I leave this earth. I remember one day as I child: I was standing on a grass hill and thought about the endlessness of non-existence. It was around the time my grandfather died. I did not feel any grief and think I felt guilty about this. In my mind I only could see that he has reached endlessness in nothingness and I thought about this more and more. Endlessness and nothingness felt suddenly like the total freedom to me.
Death is in my view just a normal part of the living process that can be observed throughout nature on a daily basis. Everything that is alive will naturally die. I often find that we as humans give through our thinking our own life too much importance. For example, I currently hold a place in this world and in the relations I have with people. Once I make space through my death this place is easily filled with a new human being. I guess this is what I want to come back to: I don’t see my existence as worthier or more important than others' existence. I often experience this when I move to another place. Not that I am not unique as who I am. I think of all of us as unique, but there is no one who is more unique. This is a mere mind construct. I create this uniqueness of one special person and think that he or she is more deserving than others, just because this person happens to be close to me. This creates demanding and haughty expectancies that are unrealistic. On the other hand this is what our "fenced in backyard", "this is mine" society is based on. There is always someone who knows better or is somehow worthy of something that no one else is. What is it with our thinking? It also reminds me of the fundamental attribution error (FAE). Here is an example: I sit in a car and think I am the best driver in this world and anybody else is in my way and makes all the mistakes. It is them and not me. They all must know that I am important and happen to be in a hurry. I therefore am in the right in my mind. This is the same thinking process the person in the car in front of me has. Well this thinking does not bring us anywhere and might even lead us in an extreme case into our own grave.


2)
If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.

The soft overcomes the hard.
The slow overcomes the fast.
Let your workings remain a mystery.
Just show people the results.