Tao Quotes - page 3
A mans excellence is like that of water It benefits all things without striving It takes to the low places shunned by men. Water is akin to Tao.... In all the earth nothing weaker than water, Yet in attacking the hard, nothing superior, Nothing so certain in wearing down strength There is no way to resist it. Note then The weak conquer the strong, The yielding outlast the aggressors.
Laozi
The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to all things.... The complete whole is the complete whole. So also is any part the complete whole.... But forget about understanding and harmonizing and making all things one. The universe is already a harmonious oneness just realize it.
Laozi
There are three layers to the universe. In the lower, Tai Ching, and the middle, Shan Ching, the hindrance of a physical bodily existence is required. Those who fail to live consistently in accord with the Tao reside here. In the upper, Yu Ching, there is only Tao the bondage of form is broken, and the only thing existing is the exquisite energy dance of the immortal divine beings.
Laozi
... These are notions of the mind, which is like a knife, always chipping away at the Tao, trying to render it graspable and manageable. But that which is beyond form is ungraspable, and that which is beyond knowing is unmanageable. There is, however, this consolation She who lets go of the knife will find the Tao at her fingertips.
Laozi
Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light - and in the best of cases the fullness of light - in the heart of that same religious tradition. ... It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church.
Simone Weil
We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.
What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.
Karen Armstrong
