TAO TE CHING #34

                               

tj worthington

 

 

                                      34

 

 

 

               The great Tao flows everywhere.

 

               All things are born from it,

 

               Yet it doesn't create them.

 

               It pours itself into its work,

 

               yet it makes no claim.

 

               It nourishes infinite worlds,

 

               yet it doesn't hold on to them.

 

               Since it is merged with all things

 

               and hidden in their hearts,

 

               it can be called humble.

 

               Since all things vanish into it

 

               and it alone endures,

 

               it can be called great.

 

               It isn't aware of its greatness,

 

               thus it is truly great.

 

 

                       ---tr by Stephen Mitchell

 

 

tj worthington

 

 

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TALKING TO SOPHIA

early autumn trees

 

A kitten in the house has revived my spirit. It is the consciousness that matters. Kitten does not talk, but we communicate well. We have tuned to each other. She pays attention to me and I pay attention to her. We read each other's body language and eyes. Cats, like donkeys, you do not force against their will. A donkey will kick you over the moon, a cat has twenty switchblades and needles for teeth. I allow Sophia her will, read her clues. When she wants down while being held, she will make a gesture like she's ready to move. I get it, let go and she goes without being controlled. I don't want to control her. I only ask that she stay off the keyboard. I don't want to train cat out of her to make her conform to my will. I allow her catness, she allows me humanness. I treat her right and she wants to please me. I've been told in the past I have obedient cats. Cats don't obey. I treat them right, they treat me right. It looks like obedience when it is by way of the cat's will, not mine.

 

sophia meditates

 

Today, for the first time, I talked to Sophia in sentences, told her a story. I've spoken to her in phrases with her name in them, teaching her that Sophia means her, like the cat she sees in the mirror means her. She knows her name now. This evening, she was relaxing on me while I watched 2Fast, 2Furious, the second time, which I liked even better than the first time. I talked to her, using her name often, and had the feeling she's heard enough of that. The repetition was boring her. I decided to tell her the story of when I saw her the first time and she stayed in my mind for a week. She listened closely and I had a feeling she knew what I was saying. I did not want to make it too complex for her, just a couple of images. She liked being told about the first time I saw her and why I chose her, the time she was put into my hands and I held her first time. She was liking it. The time came she'd had as much as she could handle. It was stretching cat mind pretty far following human language. It wore her out. She snapped out of that mind back to napping cat mind.

 

the hay barn

 

I saw that she can, indeed, follow me talking to her. She acted like it was the thrill of the day to be talked to by the giant in human language. This her first time, I believe the more I talk to her by telling her stories her span of attention will expand. Eventually, I will read to her. The Tao Te Ching is short verses full of meaning. She is fascinated by my voice, watches my mouth while I form words. I'm reminded of Jenny watching Jack bray, closely to see how he does it, something she is unable to do. Sophia watches me talk like she is trying to figure out how my mouth makes these sounds and hers cannot. She likes to watch the monitor while I'm at the desk. A couple days ago I came upon a 20 second video of two leopards walking. I played it over and over for her. She watched it a dozen times before she looked away. She watches parts of movies. I found her watching one of the fast driving scenes, watching every move of the drivers, gear shifting, cars sliding sideways around a curve, she was in tune with it. She watched two guys in a choreographed fight. The movement held her eyes.

 

more trees of early autumn

 

A kitten seems to me the essence of the vulnerable. Sophia is so small and defenseless, she brings out the protector within me. I want to keep her safe, keep her happy, give her the freedom to develop her cat nature in relation to my human nature by her own will. It must be a good stretch for cat consciousness to connect with human consciousness. The way I see it, we only have one  evolutionary leap in consciousness between us. We humans evolved the forebrain, which the four-leggeds do not have, and that's it. Our hands can pick things up and do complex things like operate a keyboard. We can reason things out. They think, but don't have access to reason. They do figure things out, however. They lack language, too, which, alas, does not serve we humans very well. We deal in confusion. In the age of propaganda, we use words to mean the opposite of their original meaning. Even language, itself, has become a confusion for us. I remember when rendition meant Charlie Rouse doing his rendition on tenor sax of Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight. Then, one day, rendition meant torture.

sunlight in the trees

 

Returning home, yesterday, from hanging the pictures at the library, being gone four hours, I was glad to see Sophia was not acting like she'd missed me. It told me she has her own life independent of me, inner resources. It took me back to the first time I saw her, no effort to appeal to me with her eyes or vocally. She seems complete in herself. I like this in her. She won't sleep with me anymore. I probably thrashed her off the bed in the night. She sleeps close by in a good comfortable nest. I like waking and seeing her in her nest. Even when I take a nap, she will nap on her nest. Just now, she was napping half on the desktop, half on my arm, eyes closed. I told her that her back legs are marked like a zebra, her front legs like a tiger, her face like a Siberian tiger. She made a little trill with her voice, shook her head and sat up. She looked me in the eyes, then curled up on the desktop against my right arm.  

 

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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TAO TE CHING 52

air bellows drive-thru art museum

52

               In the beginning was the Tao.

               All things issue from it;

               all things return to it.


               To find the origin,

               trace back the manifestations.

               When you recognize the children

               and find the mother,

               you will be free of sorrow.


               If you close your mind in judgments

               and traffic with desires,

               your heart will be troubled.

               If you keep your mind from judging

               and aren't led by the senses,

               your heart will find peace.


               Seeing into darkness is clarity.

               Knowing how to yield is strength.

               Use your own light

               and return to the source of light.
   
               This is called practicing eternity.


                                          ----Tao Te Ching
                                  tr by Stephen Mitchell

air bellows drive-thru art museum

photos by tj worthington

 

 

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TAO TE CHING 72

etel adnan

                               72


     When they lose their sense of awe,

     people turn to religion.

     When they no longer trust themselves,

     they begin to depend on authority.


     Therefore the Master steps back

     so people won't be confused.

     He teaches without teaching,

     so people will have nothing to learn.



                       ---tr by Stephen Mitchell

etel adnan

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TO WALK THE RED ROAD

I feel more every day like I'm understanding the time Herman Melville was in before and while writing Moby Dick. He saw the nation dividing into factions that fell into hating each other unto wanting to kill the other by way of war. Corporate propagandists today have divided us into factions that hate each other. I can't tell if it is getting more intense daily or if I'm just recently aware of it. The division has always been there. It has never been a problem before, under the American belief that each man and woman has a right to their own way of seeing. We have been consciously divided by way of propaganda since 1980, a step at a time. Expressions of racism today have a hard edge of hate out in the open, arrogance. Before, the racism was the same, it was kept to oneself and one's circles. Much as I dislike seeing such vehement hatred out in the open and increasing, I also see that these dark shadows in a culture are the same as dark shadows in individuals--to be dealt with, we need to bring them to the surface to assess how to deal with them. Hatred surfaces, works itself up and needs to be burnt off by way of a fight or a war. War amounts to, essentially, burning off hate. The hate the right-wing media pumps into their audiences appears to me without conscience. Political ideologies don't do conscience. Neither do belief systems, nor corporate coups. I read Moby Dick made aware by Melville himself that hate was swirling in the political air of his time and he saw the American experiment, democracy, in peril. The white whale, white supremacy, broke and sank the ship of state, a democracy of people from all over the world, Captain Ahab dead and tied to the whale's side by harpoon ropes, Ahab a teabagger of the day without compromise.

I tried to read Moby Dick again a few years ago and could not get with it. I found John Huston's 1957 film of Moby Dick with Gregory Peck playing Ahab. It was a remarkable American film. Orson Wells delivered the sermon in the seaman's chapel. It was old-time New England Primitive Baptist style. I felt throughout Melville's story a civil war on its way. I feel the direction American politics has taken in this time is toward civil war. Again, the justification is immigrants of color. I have the division in myself. Last summer I came face to face, not by my choice, with Reaganista Supreme Parrot, the Congress person of my district in NC, who does not represent me in any way, Virginia Foxx. I felt like hell opened up and this presence emerged before my eyes. I backed away automatically. She put out her hand to shake and I could not touch her. I would have had to go straight home and soak my hand in kerosene to exterminate the cooties. I acted like I didn't recognize her, I, a demographic profile of a Fake tv viewer and Limbaugh listener. This angry old white man was angry with her. I could not speak. I froze inside. It was awkward and she handled it well, distracted herself with someone else. The next one paid no attention to the news, cared nothing about politics, had no idea who she was and did not care. She handed me a business card fancy with gold print, which I dropped in the trash soon after. Then took it back out of the trash, thinking it would go good with my collection of things it's really weird for me to have. 

Earlier in the day I was on the phone with my friend Lee, who lives in New Mexico. We talked some about how we both love this period of our lives the best of any other. We both like to stay at home, like being at home, prefer and enjoy the solitary life. In both our cases, we've become comfortable enough with ourselves we don't need to go looking for distraction. I stopped in at the grocery store for some coffee filters I forgot to buy two days before. At the register, from behind, a familiar voice, Hi. We spoke and hugged. She said, "What are you doing?" I would not let self say, Standing in line at the grocery store. Too redundant. I said, "Staying at home." She showed a long face like to say, Bummer. I said, "There is nothing sad about it." She said, "Really?" I said, "There's no place I'd rather be than home." She just accepted it, already knew I was weird. Glad our conversation was cut short by the momentum at the register, I said, Bye, and proceeded on my way. Somebody from the past, from a chapter that ended long ago, a few cycles back. Six years ago I trimmed down the people I see to the people I care about who care about me. In this time of the life, I know who those people are. I've done my time having superficial associations. I don't do it anymore, and don't care who it pisses off. I'm flowing with this cycle, happy with it, staying at home. I don't even like to cross the county line, except knowing I'll be back to sleep in my own bed. I have my purpose for coming to the mountains, which I am still living, and will go on living. This is the place I walk my spiritual path. It is the only reason I'm here. I don't mix socially, never have. Got the name arrogant on account of it, not my concern. 

I did a lot of spiritual reading for a lot of years and came to what all the masters had said, reading is not it. It is in experience. Paying attention to experience, living in the world as it is, allowing others to be themselves, allowing same with self. My spiritual reading in this time of the life has trimmed down to the Tao te Ching. It's all there in beautiful verse form. It's about honoring the god in others. It's about allowing God, not expecting of God. It's about allowing the flow, going with the flow, using the flow to find a tranquil life. And finding a tranquil life, allowing it. I never enter a lottery for fear of winning. I do not want money messing up my life. I'm able to meet expenses and have a little bit of fun too, quiet, at home fun like movies, reading, music, art projects, donkeys, and Caterpillar. The car runs good and all is well. I trouble my mind with news less and less, though continue to be traumatized when I give it any attention, disturbed every day at the rate American cops are killing black people, man, woman or child. It's shameful and shameless. I'm one of few people I know who think anything of it. And what can I do about it? Send a twitter? Leave a comment? I remind myself it's not my world out there on the news. It's not mine until the swat team breaks down my door and blows me away, saying, Whoops, wrong address. Shit happens. As long as my door is still on its hinges, I'll go on staying at home being a detached viewer.         

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TAO TE CHING 53

  

                     53

The great Way is easy,

yet people prefer the side paths.

Be aware when things are out of balance.

Stay centered within the Tao.

When rich speculators prosper

while farmers lose their land;

when government officials spend money

on weapons instead of cures;

when the upper class is extravagant and 

irresponsible,

while the poor have nowhere to turn ---

all this is robbery and chaos.

It is not in keeping with the Tao. 

                       tr by Stephen Mitchell

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TAO TE CHING #48

eva hesse

48

          In the pursuit of knowledge,

          every day something is added.

          In the practice of the Tao,

          every day something is dropped.

          Less and less do you need to force things,

          until finally you arrive at non-action.

          When nothing is done,

          nothing is left undone.

          True mastery can be gained

          by letting things go their own way.

          It can't be gained by interfering. 

                            ---tr Stephen Mitchell

eva hesse

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TAO TE CHING 8

8

The supreme good is like water,

which nourishes all things without trying to.

It is content with the low places that people disdain.

Thus it is like the Tao. 


In dwelling, live close to the ground.

In thinking, keep to the simple. 

In conflict, be fair and generous.

In governing, don't try to control.

In work, do what you enjoy.

In family life, be completely present. 


When you are content to be simply yourself

and don't compare or compete,

everybody will respect you.


                      --tr by Stephen Mitchell

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A SEARCH FOR ORIGINAL SELF

19

Several years ago a friend in Ashe County told me about a psychic in Charlotte, one he believed was the real deal. He suggested we go see her. He'd seen her before, wanted to introduce me to her. I was curious. Upon meeting her, I distrusted her right away, maybe not a fraud, but in it for the ego was what I felt. Still curious, I paid my sixty dollars, feeling like a traveling salesman at Mother Fletcher's Whorehouse. She asked my birth sign. I said, Taurus. I told her at first I was looking for insight into self, looking for who I am. She told me to hold my hands open facing her. She wanted to see the palms. She said aggressively, the way an old aunt would talk, saying when she looks at my hands all she sees is space. She went off, telling me if I'm there about space, she's not into space, I need to go to somebody else. I told her I wasn't there about space, just wanted insight into self, for her to tell me what she sees. After another minor harangue about space, she said, "Who are you?" I said, "That's what I'm here to find out." I've looked at my hands, ever since, and fail to see space. We sat for maybe forty-five minutes. I don't recall what all she said, it's been awhile. I recognized who she was talking about. When she was done, I felt like I was on track with who I am. I asked, "Where am I going?" She said, "You're going home." I thought, what kind of lame answer is that? It's no answer. Said nothing, taking it for a cheap shot. Sounds good, but what does it mean? My mind went to religion, my heavenly home, my home beyond the sky, where I go when I die. I didn't believe that was her meaning. It has stayed with me more than twenty years. I came out of the session not liking her, felt her judgmental as a preacher, which she was. She had a church of her own. I didn't trust that part of her, either. Nonetheless, I remember finding her reading on target. I was no stranger to everything she said, except the space part. It told me she was seeing something. A recollection just now surfaced. She told me my friends pick me up at night while I'm sleeping and take me on rides in the space ship. I about laughed out loud, but didn't want to be disrespectful. Maybe they do.

4

I've wondered about "going home," carried it in the lazily swirling trash bin in the back of my mind where subjects stay alive, and come forward from time to time to be mulled over, chewed. A couple days ago, visiting my neighbor, Allan, we were watching a video of a tv show. I forget the title. A young guy talking to a psychotherapist on a trip of self-discovery talked about going home. I didn't keep up with the show, so I was not sure what he meant. It caught my attention. I took it for him saying that his original self was opening up, he was going home. For the first time, I saw going home as the journey to find one's original self. It turned out he was in LA talking about going home to Alabama for his grandmother's funeral, him seeing the journey a self-discovery odyssey. I was thinking I got it. I got it because I am there or almost there (here). I realized this is what I'm seeing when I've told my friend Carole a few times recently, I feel like I have come into my original self, who I was as a child, who I am and wanted to be. I am now who and what I wanted to be in the earliest years. I wanted to be left alone, left to follow my own interests. Looking back, I went for the education I needed, and headed for the hills. The time in these mountains has been occupied by finding my way home, unveiling original self, one step at a time, becoming who I am. Going home, in this way, has been my purpose all my adult life. I was so twisted up in knots by the time I left parents, the early years on my own were the worst years of my life. This explains absence of interest in a career and why I've given my life to learning, learning the principles of heaven and earth. It also explains why the Tao te Ching is my personal scripture. The Tao is the Way, the path to self-knowledge. 

20

It would be foolish to say I feel like I found enlightenment. It is a minor enlightenment, a step along the path. Perhaps crossing a mountain range, getting a good look around that feels like I've come into something important. I do feel like I have found my home within. Art projects over the last year are coming more from who I am than ever before. All the way along with painting, I felt like I was learning to paint. There came a time I felt like I knew how to paint. Then it had no more interest. I felt like my figurative painting was cartoons, painting inside the lines. Tired of inside the lines, I set out to leave the lines altogether. Use only one color. Simple. Once an idea for something new takes a turn to the complex, I pull back and remind self it's about simple, the most simple, simple as a line of string. I've picked up things for possible future art projects, so many by now, the house is cluttered with found items. It is time now to use found materials from the collection all over the house. The paint I have is the paint I'll use, buying only white and black, because I use so much white especially. Using what I have, my own resources, putting found things together into completions I am happy with as art objects, I've found home in my art expression. In this sense, too, I feel like I have come home to true self. These objects I've been putting together over the last year come from my innermost self. In this time of the life, I am where I want to be geographically and within. How I got here, I can't name, unless it would be God's grace. It was not from my own decision making. I cannot say it was of my own doing, except aiming self in such direction, unconcerned that it will not make me money, actually makes me even more unfit to make money. Maybe it had to do with getting out of the way and letting the spirit flow as it will, allowing others to be who they are.

14

Yesterday I put together the pieces of the latest art project, a cedar board in the house at least ten years, 25 inches long and 9 inches wide. Looks like 5/8 inch thick. A crack ran through the center of it. Years ago I glued braces to the back to hold it together. It has been leaning against a bookshelf, in sight all the time, at least a year. I've studied it, considered what to do with it, leaning toward maintaining the integrity of the wood itself, too beautiful to cover with paint. A time came I saw it desert sand, the crack the horizon line. Thought about making a stain of blue oil paint and staining one half of it sky blue. Thought about making a line of tiny donkeys a half inch long walking along the horizon line. Way too corny. A Fifties movie poster. Bad, bad, bad. Rethink. I'd been recently searching for compositions using triangles. Rectangles and circles are easy. It turns out a triangle is a challenge. During this time of considering triangles, I saw a photograph of punk rocker Richard Hell onstage wearing a tshirt with fifteen or twenty outlines of triangles, all the same size, scattered as if dropped randomly onto the surface. I thought it a successful image made of only triangles. The image widened my scope of thinking about triangles. One day, looking at the cedar board with the crack the horizon line, I saw the Giza pyramids triangles sticking up from behind the horizon line of North African dunes. A triangle project. This was the moment I picked up the sandpaper and went to sanding. Did not want to use the electric sander. They make tiny circles. The board finished would have little circles all over it. I sanded it by hand going with the grain. Three sheets of coarse and one of fine, then steel wool. All the time sanding, I dreaded applying any kind of color on the beautiful wood and threw out the blue from my mind's eye. All sand. Made a mosaic of six triangles to fit together to make three pyramids. Raw cardboard on raw wood. The cardboard received two coats of clear spray paint to elongate preservation. Glued them into place. Have now put the second coat of tung oil on the board, a coat a day, three or four times. Calling it Red Desert after the Antonioni film. The only connection with the film is the title. A composition in triangles.  

 red desert

21

all images by tj worthington

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TAO TE CHING 45

vada

45

               True perfection seems imperfect,

               yet, it is perfectly itself. 
          
               True fullness seems empty,

               yet it is fully present. 

               True straightness seems crooked.

               True wisdom seems foolish.

               True art seems artless.

               The Master allows things to happen.

               She shapes events as they come.

               She steps out of the way

               and lets the Tao speak for itself. 

                               ---tr by Stephen Mitchell

vada

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KNOW THYSELF IN EVERYDAY LIFE

sigmar polke

The verse from the Tao te ching I put here a few days ago, #33, has been floating in my mind. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering yourself is true power. My journey of self-knowledge included about six years of psychotherapy. A time came I felt self-examination with a therapist was the next step, guided, putting aside self-pity. So it was. My main concern at the time, the enigma I could not unravel, was why was I drawn to controlling women? The answer is obvious, but I needed to find why it was obvious. This was just the starting point. Much came up and everything that rose to the surface was dealt with and allowed its place. It wasn't about learning how to be normal, but for peace of mind. Much was brought up for examination, brought into the light of awareness where it can be seen both objectively and subjectively. The purpose was to find my own truth, not a truth outside self. I took it for the path of "Know thyself," first noted by Socrates, then by Jesus the Christ affirming Socrates. I took it to heart as a part of my path. I chose for self the path of love instead of the path of knowledge. I started from no understanding at all to, by now, a heart that can cry with a donkey when she loses her baby. It has taken forty years. By now, I feel I understand love to some degree and live it to some degree. By living love, I don't mean missionarizing about something I don't understand, or getting married or raising kids, or having a relationship. I meant to find love in everyday life, practical love that can flow freely, wherever and whatever the circumstances. I feel like I know the people I know with a loving heart. I train my pets by love and love only. They love me in turn, want to please me because they love me, and perform better when it comes to "minding" than scolding or hitting inspires. I'm told I spoil my pets. So what. 

sigmar polke

People I know who raised kids without hitting them, without talking down to them, raised kids who went through PhD on scholarship all the way. People I know who hit and berated their kids brought up kids full of anger, resentment, low self-esteem, and spikes of guilt in their heads making education difficult to focus on. This online journal is a project in knowing self. It functions in self-knowledge by bringing up particulars of my individual point of view, articulates them, gives me perspective of self in the world out there and the world within. It brings up issues I carry in mind that pop to the surface from time to time and sink back down out of sight to rise again and sink again. They seldom get articulated or examined to see what they're about, what they're telling me. I follow an issue here like talking with a therapist, the one who is now my friend, one of my favorite people in my life, a valuable soul. I'm not even sure talking to a therapist is more important than talking to a friend. I suspect people who talk to friends don't need therapists. By talk to, I mean cry with, empathize with. Writing in this daily journal becomes a meditation, a focus, searching for words, phrases, sentences, bringing up ideas, thoughts, feelings, exploring them, seeing what they have to tell me. It takes about an hour to write one of these paragraphs. Sometimes a little less and sometimes a little more. It is four to five hours of sitting here searching for sentences, one at a time. I think of it at the same time a yoga,  a meditation. I will not start with an agenda and follow it through. Avoiding agendas is number one guideline for self in this journal, except when I want to write about an agenda. Missionary is not my style. I start with no idea where I aim to go, just write a sentence or two, whatever I have on my mind, then the next sentence and the next. A time comes soon when I see where it is headed, open up and flow with it, see where it goes. One thing leads to another, and another. 

sigmar polke

I feel like I have a far better understanding of self than I did five years ago when this exercise was in its first months. Driving on the round trip to town yesterday, I was questioning the meaning in the lines of the Tao te ching verse, and embrace death with your whole heart, you will endure forever. I cannot find it to say I embrace death with my whole heart. Initially, it seems kind of morbid, kind of Goth, fingernails painted black. It's not about wanting to die or suggesting suicide. Death, in my imaginings, here has to do with living without attachments to this life, this body, emotions and mind. The self that activates this body is the self that lives on after the body falls away. If you stay in your center, the center one's innermost self, may be the higher self, or consciousness, what have you. I like to call it consciousness, though it gets confused with consciousness associated with the fore-brain  that we like to think separates us from the animals. I think of it a word with two distinctly different definitions. like tear and tear. Somebody with a PhD in psychology would more than likely tell me I've got it all wrong. No doubt I do. I'm not giving instruction in absolute truth. I'm telling it as I understand it. At this moment, here is how I understand it. Maybe a year from now I'll see it another way. Maybe if I read some books on the matter, I'd see it an entirely different way. I don't care enough to study it academically. I have enough of a sense of it to have my own names for my own understanding. I'm not spreading it as truth, just admitting my limitations. In this illusion that is not even a vapor or a hologram, but a dream in each one of our minds, each dream is radically different from any of the other dreams in this world of more than seven billion embodied souls. A majority of us dream staggering poverty. 

sigmar polke

This is where I get my joy reading accounts of how others than myself see this world we live in, how other people experience this world, multiple points of view. This is where I find the benefit of reading. I can read Wendy Salinger's LISTEN and feel as another feels in a beautifully written memoir that is a joy to read for the writing in itself. A biography, SITTING BULL, by Robert Utley, is an entirely different experience from my own. Thanks to someone who took on the research and writing what he found looking for Sitting Bull's central core, Sitting Bull the man as he lived, I can see into the mind of someone who has something to say to me. Sitting Bull, the man, opened a new dimension in my life. I found that his values are my values. He seemed like somebody I already knew, somebody I knew well, whose values I shared, or they came from association with him I don't understand. I painted a simple portrait of him that hangs on the wall to the right of where I sit. For me, it seems to have touched his spirit somehow. I doubt any Lakota who saw it would say that. Doesn't matter. It's for me, not anybody else. I painted it because I wanted him on the wall the way some people keep a picture of Martin Luther King on the wall. A reminder, memory, of the values this individual represents. I'd never have known of Sitting Bull's life if I didn't take an interest in points of view other than my own. Knowing someone like Sitting Bull through learning his story adds a very great deal to my well being as a human being. I have refused to give my mind over to corporate brain-drain. I can be aware of the world I live in, but don't have to be of it, don't have to give it my power. I don't give over my power because somebody wants it. My power is for mastering myself, according to this verse in the Tao te ching, knowing yourself is true wisdom, mastering yourself is true power. These are my conundrums the last few days.   

sigmar polke

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TAO TE CHING 33

alberto giacometti

                                  

                                  33

          Knowing others is intelligence;

          knowing yourself is true wisdom. 

          Mastering others is strength;

          mastering yourself is true power.


          If you realize that you have enough,

          you are truly rich.

          If you stay in the center

          and embrace death with your whole heart,

          you will endure forever.


                           ---Lat Tzu
                               tr by Stephen Mitchell

alberto giacometti

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TAO TE CHING 67

                                         

georges braque

                                          67

Some say that my teaching is nonsense.

Others call it lofty but impractical.

But to those who have looked inside themselves,

this nonsense makes perfect sense.

And to those who put it into practice,

this loftiness has roots that go deep. 


I have just three things to teach:

simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thoughts,

you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world. 


                     ---Lao Tzu
                         tr by Stephen Mitchell

georges braque

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TAO TE CHING 13

13

Success is as dangerous as failure.

Hope is as hollow as fear.


What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?

Whether you go up the ladder or down it,

your position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground,

you will always keep your balance. 


What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?

Hope and fear are both phantoms

that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don't see the self as self,

what do we have to fear?


See the world as yourself.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things.


                   ----tr by Stephen Mitchell

photos by tj worthington

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