Taoism Quotes - Page 14

• When thoughts arise, as soon as you sense them heading on the road of desire, bring them right back onto the road of reason. Once they arise, notice them, once you notice them, you can change them. This is the key to turning calamity into fortune, rising from death and returning to life.

  Zicheng Hong

  Keys, Desire, Rising

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• If a poor house is well kept, or a poor girl well groomed, there is elegance if not beauty. If good people should come upon hard times, why should they immediately give up on themselves?

  Zicheng Hong

  Girl, Giving Up, Hard Times

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• In whatever you do, if you leave a sense of incompleteness, then Creation cannot resent you, ghosts and spirits cannot harm you. If you insist on fulfillment in your work and perfection in achievement, you will become either inwardly deranged or outwardly unsettled.

  Zicheng Hong

  Resent You, Perfection, Achievement

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• Even if you do no work that is particularly lofty or far-reaching, if you can shed mundane feelings, that is a great achievement. Even if you do not strive much for progress in learning, if you can minimize the influence things have on you, you will soar into the realm of sages.

  Zicheng Hong

  Achievement, Feelings, Progress

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• The most eloquent seems to stutter.

  Laozi

  Eloquent, Seems

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• The eyes and ears, seeing and hearing, are external plunderers; emotions, desires, and opinions are internal plunderers. But if the inner mind is awake and alert, sitting aloof in the middle of it all, then these plunderers change and become members of the household.

  Zicheng Hong

  Eye, Mind, Desire

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• A clear sunny day can suddenly shift to thunder and lightning, a raging storm can suddenly give way to a bright moonlit night. The weather may be inconstant, but the sky remains the same. The substance of the human mind should also be like this.

  Zicheng Hong

  Night, Sky, Weather

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• If the mind is illumined, there is clear blue sky in a dark room. If the thoughts are muddled, there are malevolent ghosts in broad daylight.

  Zicheng Hong

  Dark, Blue, Sky

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• The learned should be vigorous and diligent, but they should also be free-spirited. If they are too rigorous and austere, they have the death-dealing quality of autumn but lack the life-giving quality of spring. How can they develop people then?

  Zicheng Hong

  Spring, Autumn, People

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• The Chinese used the symbol of tai chi, the undifferentiated reality - no separation, no left and right.

  Frederick Lenz

  Reality, Chinese, Separation

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• If there's no background, no foreground, no opposition, no complements, then there's no change becasue there's no subject and object.

  Frederick Lenz

  Backgrounds, Complement, Subjects

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• We can say the stars are moving because we have a relative context.

  Frederick Lenz

  Stars, Moving, Relative

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• Change can only exist in time. Without time there is no change. Change can only exist with a background of that which is changeless, otherwise it has no definition.

  Frederick Lenz

  Definitions, Backgrounds

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• When we have complements or oppositions, change occurs.

  Frederick Lenz

  Complement, Opposition

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• Initially there's absolutely nothing.

  Frederick Lenz

  Absolutely Nothing

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• When there's no difference, there's no time, no world, no separativity - and there's no you ... nor is there an I.

  Frederick Lenz

  Differences, World

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• For a person who lives in time, differences are the most important thing because they represent your existence.

  Frederick Lenz

  Differences, Important, Time Difference

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• Get some distance on yourself and undertand the multilevel structure that's operating. There's a power structure within you. You're a very political creature.

  Frederick Lenz

  Distance, Political, Structure

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• Examine everything that you've been taught, not simply what you've been taught in school, but the images that have been held up to you since the time of your birth.

  Frederick Lenz

  School, Up To You, Taught

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• 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?

  Laozi

  Thinking, Self, Tao Te Ching

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• Weapons are ominous tools. They are abhorred by all creatures. Anyone who follows the Way shuns them.

  Laozi

  Tools, Weapons, Way

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• I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Evil, Spirit

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• He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Dozing, Exhausted

  Laozi (1959). “Tao Tê Ching: A New Translation”

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• But if you do not have the Tao yourself, what business have you spending your time in vain efforts to bring corrupt politicians into the right path?

  Confucius

  Business, Effort, Path

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• Acting without design, occupying oneself without making a business of it, finding the great in what is small and the many in the few, repaying injury with kindness, effecting difficult things while they are easy, and managing great things in their beginnings; this is the method of Tao.

  Laozi

  Kindness, Business, Design

  Laozi, Sepharial (1904). “The Book of the Simple Way of Laotze: A New Translation from the Text of the Tao-teh-king”

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