Can a man cling to the positive without any negative in contrast to which it is seen to be positive? If he claims to do so he is a rouge or a madman.
Now, when ordinary people attempt to find happiness, I am not sure whether the happiness is really happiness or not. I study what ordinary people do to find happiness, what they struggle for, rushing about apparently unable to stop.
The space under the sky is occupied by all things in their unity.
Being is thoughtless-beyond and beneath all categories of thought. Expression is the realization of creative thought. Being is still; expression, moving. But then if I do not strive, who will?
A battering ram can knock down a city wall, but it cannot stop a hole. Different things have different uses.
Birth is not the beginning, Death is not the end.
Heaven is like an egg, and the earth is like the yolk of the egg.
Men do not mirror themselves in running water – they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.
Heaven cannot but be high. Earth cannot but be broad. The sun and moon cannot but revolve. All creation cannot but flourish. To do so is their TAO. But it is not from extensive study that this may be known, nor by dialectical skill that his may be made clear. The true sage will have none of these.
The creature born is the creature dying.
Only fools imagine they are already awake. How clearly they understand everything! How easily they distinguish this deception from that reality!
When you’re dreaming, you don’t know it’s a dream. You might even interpret a dream in your dream – and then wake up and realize it was all a dream. Perhaps a great awakening will reveal this to be a dream as well.
My most interesting memory is of my first real dream. I was a caterpillar, wriggling around in the earth, just the way a caterpillar would. Following my caterpillar whims, completely unaware of anyone.
Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.
Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.
You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog – he’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect – he’s bound to a single season.
The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror – going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.
The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.
You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless.
All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless!