Learning From Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching
Having studied in the UK, I often cite authors and ideas from the West. In this post I feel the need to go to the Far East, all the way to China as far back as 4th century BC. The Tao Te Ching is Taoism’s fundamental book. Lao Tzu is a mystical character who is said to have written it. Let’s look at what it says about the way of effortless ease.
The Tao Te Ching means ‘The Book of the Way of Virtue.’
Nature is The Model in Taoism
Tao Te Ching is an Ancient text translated as ‘The Book of the Way of Virtue.’ It says:
‘by letting it go it all gets done
the world is won by those who let it go
but when you try and try, the world is beyond winning.’
Taoism has a way of using nature as a model from which we can learn. Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. Following the flow, filling the container like the water, being rooted whilst bending with the wind like trees, are some of the Taoism’s ways of achieving great things.
‘strong winds do not last all morning,
hard rains do not last all day.’
‘nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water.
yet, to attack the hard and strong, nothing surpasses it.’
It is a very different way to achievement compared to the one we are taught. Isn’t it?
‘what the Way is to the world,
the stream is to the river and the sea.’
The more we force the more we create chaos as we try to make things happen faster than they can naturally. In nature, things happen in their own way and at their own pace. Can you make a river flow faster? Can you get fruit on the tree before it is time?
Release Your Intentions
Intentions are powerful forces. It is as if you tell what you want when you go to a restaurant. You will be served in a timely way. The dish the waiter brings will more or less, be as described. If you expect to receive exactly the dish you held in your imagination you will find no end of frustration. The eggs will be too hard, the sausages too large and the cauliflower too small, unless you give up such comparisons.
The Tao, similarly, can create conditions and events that are right for you and to those around you if you’re able to accept, learn and grow in strength and wisdom from them.
Welcoming Change with Effortless Ease
Too much planning beyond releasing your intentions is interference with the natural order of things. Wishing for control opens you up to resist ‘what is’, and in turn leads to anguish and other negative emotions.
‘because he (the Sage) does not resist,
none in the world resists him.’
Everything constantly changes. When you accept this with equanimity you move harmoniously with the natural course of what life brings.
‘the river and the sea can be kings of a hundred valleys,
because they lie below them.’
The future is unknown which makes attachment to the past seem an easier option. But attempting to ever create the past in the present never fully works. It’s really far more life enhancing to embrace the present and welcome the future.
We move with effortless ease when we welcome change as our ally and embrace it.
Even though The Tao Te Ching is perceived by some as a mystical or religious teaching it’s really the basis of oriental psychology. I hope I gave you a flavour that it offers a practical philosophy for guiding us on how to live and achieve things naturally and with minimum effort.
