Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie
Dust unto dust
The calm earth mothers all who die
As all men must
Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell
Too strong to strive
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
The cowed and the meek
Who see earth’s great languish and its wrong
And dare not speak.
Those
who wish to use
Tao to influence others
don’t rely on force or weapons
or military strategies. Force rebounds.
Weapons turn on their wielders.
Battles are inevitably
followed by
famines.
Just do
what needs to be done,
and then stop. Attain your purpose,
but don’t press your advantage. Be resolute,
but don’t force. Succeed, but don’t
crow. Accomplish, but don’t
overpower.
Overdoing
things invites decay,
and this is against Tao.
Whatever is against
Tao soon ceases
to be.
from The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,
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Mentally repeat,
‘Let all beings be happy;
let all beings be peaceful; let all
beings be blissful.’ So do to the east,
south, north and west. The more you do
that the better you will feel yourself. You will
find at last that the easiest way to make ourselves
healthy is to see that others are healthy, and the
easiest way to make ourselves happy is to see
that others are happy. After doing that,
those who believe in God should pray—
not for money, not for health, nor
for heaven; pray for knowledge
and light; every other
prayer is selfish.
Life is given.
Nothing is earned, so learn
to serve others, not your own desire
and greed and ego. They steal your energies,
whereas devotion builds your strength
and protects the intelligent
flame that leads to the
truth within.
We are born
under circumstances that
would be favourable if we did not
abandon them. It was nature’s intention
that there should be no need of great equipment
for a good life: every individual can make himself happy.
External goods are of trivial importance and without much influence
in either direction: prosperity does not elevate the sage and
adversity does not depress him. For he has always made
the effort to rely as much as possible on himself
and to derive all delight from
himself.