
Wisdom brings a wholeness
which understands its own ignorance.
Someone with a little knowledge denies this,
but those who study their lives long and
diligently know that they do not
know anything.

Wisdom brings a wholeness
which understands its own ignorance.
Someone with a little knowledge denies this,
but those who study their lives long and
diligently know that they do not
know anything.

Center
your attention. Stop
listening with your ears and listen with
your mind. Then stop listening with your mind and
listen with your primal spirit. Hearing is limited to the
ear. Mind is limited to tallying things up. But
the primal spirit is empty: it’s simply
that which awaits
things.

support sheldrick wildlife trust
Everyone
under heaven says that
my tao is great, but inconceivable.
It is its very greatness that makes it inconceivable!
If it could be conceived of, how small
it would be!
I have three
treasures to hold and protect:
The first is motherly love. The second
is economy. The third is daring
not to be first in the
world.
With motherly
love one can be courageous.
With economy one can be expansive.
With humility one
can lead.
To be
courageous without motherly love,
To be expansive without practicing economy,
To go to the front without humility —
this is courting death.
Venture with
love and you win the
battle. Defend with love and you are
invulnerable. Heaven’s secret is
motherly love.

constant companion and guiding star

Heaven
is in everything:
follow the light, hide in the
cloudiness and begin
in what is.

A sage is subtle,
intuitive, penetrating, profound.
His depths are mysterious and
unfathomable.
The best one can do is
describe his appearance: the sage
is alert as a person crossing a winter stream; as
circumspect as a person with neighbors on all four sides;
as respectful as a thoughtful guest; as yielding as
melting ice; as simple as uncarved wood;
as open as a valley; as chaotic
as a muddy torrent.
Why “chaotic
as a muddy torrent”?
Because clarity is learned by
being patient in the
heart of chaos.
Tolerating
disarray, remaining at rest,
gradually one learns to allow muddy water to
settle and proper responses to reveal themselves.
Those who aspire to tao don’t long for fulfillment.
They selflessly allow tao to use and deplete
them; they calmly allow tao to renew
and complete them.

These days, Obama spends
a lot of time talking with younger people.
With them, he is an elder refuting the notion that things
have never been worse. “I say, ‘No, you know what? Civil War—really bad.
Jim Crow—tough. You know, our parents, our grandparents, our great-grandparents
went through stuff that was profoundly tougher than what we’re going through,’ ”
the former President said. “And I say that not to pull rank on them but,
rather, to pull them out of any kind of hopelessness
about the situation.”