You
don’t have to
straighten anything out
in your mind. You only have
to set it down if it
isn’t good.
Your
enlightenment is
fully present at every moment
of your life. If you perceive something
between you and that, nothing more
need be done other than
to let go of it upon
observing
it.
You
can now buy
Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
Heaven
is in everything:
follow the light, hide in the
cloudiness and begin
in what is.
People yearn
for fame and fortune,
but this is like aching to taste the
point of a weapon. These are shallow,
confusing, empty of virtue — yet
people become fixed on them
and lose their way
forever.
Look closely
at things that shine
without substance. Fame
enflames one’s idea of self and
separates one from humanity. Touched
by it, people grasp desperately to
get and keep it. What is the
wisdom, though,
in resisting
change?
Fortune
is a lover similarly
impossible to satisfy.
Constantly demanding energy
and attention, fencing off people’s
hearts, it returns less and less to
the soul. Yet common people
contort themselves
into cripples
chasing
it.
See
the injury
built into these,
and let them
go by.
You
can now buy
Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
five-app bundle of Taoist classics
for iPhone or iPad for less than
the cost of one hardcover
book.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
