"it is easy to get sidetracked and lost in the wilderness
it happens all the time
but
the worst thing you can do
is worry too much about it"
—Tao Te Ching Chapter Fifty-Three

"visions cascade upon you so rapidly
that it becomes impossible
to divide or discern
what we normally regard as real"
—Tao Te Ching Chapter Fifty-Two

Philosophers throughout the ages have debated what is “The Good.” This is a question about morality and virtue. What is it we ought to do? What ought we pursue in our lives? There have been countless answers to these questions, some of which question the validity of “Goodness” (and thereby its counterpart, evil) itself. Here, the Tao Te Ching makes its own argument as to what constitutes virtue and why.

Our lives can be characterized as between birth and death, and the course of our lives shares in those tendencies—either toward the affirmation of life or its denial.

"a wise man does not think first and then act
when the tao way of life presents itself
thinking first stops the moment from unfolding"
—Tao Te Ching, Chapter Forty-Nine

As the young Nietzsche writing The Birth of Tragedy might say, he has refined his tastes as to be sustained when drinking from the cup of the tragedy of Nature. The experience and treasures are his, for he has made himself a dragon-slayer, undaunted by the dark, capable of traversing the abyss without need of fear of being swallowed up or possessed by it.

What is authentic knowledge?

But to fail to do this, to fail to let go of one’s belief that he is correct is to isolate that man from the real world. His order becomes decrepit, his sensitivities senile. He comes to assume he knows almost everything, and therefore all that he doesn’t know must by definition be wrong. Thus, monsters appear in the dark corners of all his thoughts. Inoffensive things become grave threats capable of destroying his very identity. He becomes less and less capable of assenting to how life actually is, favoring instead his presumption as to how life ought to be.

"sit quietly
focusing
forgetting
summon order from the void"
—Tao Te Ching Chapter Forty-Five

There is a social tension at the time of writing this Meditation, a tension that seems to have always existed with humankind but that has perhaps exacerbated recently. It is the divide between the materialist and the religious world views—a difference specifically of values . . . In Chapter Forty-Four, Lao-tzu weighs into this conflict amicably with questions for each of us to answer.

"water will always wear down a stone"
—Tao Te Ching Chapter Forty-Three

Many times during the course of these meditations we’ve discussed being, “in accordance with the Tao source of life,” though what exactly does that mean?

"practice does not make perfect / practice is perfect to begin with"
Accepting imperfection in Meditations: Tao Te Ching Chapter Forty-One

A brief guide to meditation this Friday from the Tao Te Ching Chapter Forty

Who are you really? It is a question that ought to be immediately answerable by every man, and yet both you and I suspect that very few would be able to respond without asking for clarity—as if someone else can tell a man who he truly is . . .

What is the "voice of conscience?" What is it really for, and what does it mean that we have one? Authenticity and inauthenticity discussed in Meditations: Tao Te Ching Chapter Thirty-Eight

If you haven't kept up, today's Meditations on the Tao Te Ching is a great place to start. Chapter Thirty-Seven summarizes much of what has been discussed thus far in a more easily digestible form.

To see the future—potential yet made manifest—one must look no further than inside the self and at what one already possesses.

What does Lao-tzu mean to “hold and embody?”—to be in possession of while simultaneously being that thing. I believe he means that we ought to bear the wisdom while at the same time acting upon it, that each of us ought not only to know but also to live out the Tao way of life by each of us finding our own balance.

We are meant to meditate on the power of reconstitution—the power of the relationship between the us and the unknown. What is that relationship? It is one of ignorance and admittance. We are finite, and it is infinite that which we do not know about ourselves and everything else. To realize this is to open the Eye of Shiva which possesses the power to disintegrate all within its sight.