Friday Philosophy: Like the water

[Excerpts are from translations of the Tao te Ching by Lin Yutang, Stephen Mitchell, and Ursula Le Guin.]

The words flow like water.

But sometimes it is a drip.  A splash here and there.  Sometimes a stagnating pool.  Sometime a great river.

A life can flow or not, like the water.

Chapter 8

The best of us is like water;

Water benefits all things

And does not compete with them.

It dwells in the lowly places that all disdain –

Wherein it comes near to the Tao.

Muddy water becomes clear by lying still.  Disturbed water cannot be smoothed by a hand.  Lessons learned at great price.

Water finds its way through the world, gathering in the low places, flowing around obstacles to follow the path set by the circumstances of the world, the lay of the land.

If one falls into a swift-moving river, trying to swim back to where one fell in is a recipe for disaster.  Best to swim with the current and hope for safe haven downstream.

The watercourse metaphor seemed clear, but Truth has many levels.  Water also freezes and evaporates.

In order to go with the flow, one must be able to recognize which way the flow is going.

Sometimes a life cannot stay in the low places.  Sometimes the obstacles stand firm.  But the flow leads where the flow leads.

Chapter 78

Under heaven nothing is more soft and yielding than water.

Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better;

It has no equal.

Sometimes for a life to find its way, it must break through the solidity of the world.  Fear must be ground away.  But it takes so many years.  And pain must be absorbed.  New days do not come so easily.  Change happens painstakingly slowly…like water eroding the hardest stone.

Chapter 32

The way in the world

is as a stream to a valley,

a river to the sea.

The banks of the river are carved over time, and lives are carved in the block of wood.  The path is changed by the passing of the traveler.  So is the world changed by our passage, but only by changing ourselves.

Chapter 4

the way is the dust of the way.

The world is what the world is.  We are what are willing to let ourselves be.

If we are unwilling to change, no Sage can bring change to us.  New days will continue to end before the “new” part arrives.

Flow Lines Primary Element What could even should have been a time to listen to one another became instead a time of antipathy a time of distrust of attack of justification of baser instincts of pushing apart rather than pulling together The strength of water lies in it’s unity. –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 8. 2008