Without any punctuation mark and in exactly 5,000 words, the
language of the original text of Tao
Te Ching is deliberately
intriguing and even perplexing—one of the reasons why the book has become one
of the most translated works in world literature. The version and translation of TAO TE CHING is in plain
English, very easy to understand.
First and foremost, you must empty your mind of conditioned
thinking, which is a common characteristic of the contemporary human mind. There
was the well-known story of a professor visiting a Zen master to get more
information about Zen, an ancient Asian philosophy evolved from Tao wisdom. The
Zen master kept pouring tea into the overflowing teacup held by the professor,
who had kept on talking. The moral of the story is that you must have an empty
mind first before you can receive new
and transformative ideas. Having an empty mind is surrendering your mind to
transformation in order that you may think differently—a
prerequisite for true human wisdom—or what Lao Tzu called “reverse thinking.”
With an empty mindset, you begin to ask different
questions to find out who you really are, instead of who you wish you were, as
well as what you need and not what you want from life. Understanding of self
and others is the pathway to understanding humanity as a whole. Better
understanding of humanity lets you acknowledge the destructive forces of anger
and envy, bitterness and resentment, as well as many other negative emotions, and
thereby instrumental in reducing their strength. Tao wisdom, which shows you
the importance and necessity of embracing all and everything—the easy and the
difficult, as well as the pleasant and the unpleasant. In life, difficult and
unpleasant experiences not only train but also enhance you wisdom to let go of control—controlling
your life, the people and the happenings around you. Tao wisdom teaches you not
to pick and choose but to embrace anything and everything in life because any situation in life can make you
become either a teacher or a student. Life is about anything and everything
that you can learn from, and this is where true human wisdom comes from.
Understanding that anything is everything may also make
you see things very differently. People and things do not exist independently.
When there is long, there has to be short; they do not exist simply because of
their own nature. Everything in life is not only relative but also related.
Viewing any life situation—whether it is good or bad—with this profound human
wisdom may help you see that anything is everything, In other words, any life
situation is not under its own power but depends on many present causes and
conditions, as well as many past causes and conditions; otherwise it could not
have come into being. With this perspective, you can see much more of the whole
picture, and thus you can see the reality of the situation.
To live your life as if everything is a miracle, you need
wisdom in living. With wisdom, you may become a better and happier individual.
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
No comments:
Post a Comment