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25 results for “water”.

Verse 8 The Nature of Water The greatest virtue is like water; it is good to all things. It attains the most inaccessible places without strife. Therefore it is like Tao. It has the virtue of adapting itself to its place. It is virtuous like the he… Article The Strength of Water …. The Tao Te Ching reaches for the opposite image: "The greatest virtue is like water; it is good to all things. It attains the most inaccessible places without strife. Therefore it is like Tao" (chapter 8, Walter Gorn O… Verse 78 Nothing Is Softer Than Water Nothing on earth is so weak and yielding as water, but for breaking down the firm and strong it has no equal. This admits of no alternative. All the world knows that the soft can wear away the hard, and the weak can conq… Verse 15 The Ancient Masters … wood. How empty! They resemble the valley. How obscure! They resemble troubled waters. Who by quieting can gradually render muddy waters clear? Who by stirring can gradually quicken the still? He who keeps this Tao is n… Verse 43 The Softest Thing in the World …his. The gentlest thing in the world, the verse says, overrides the strongest — water wears the stone, air carves the mountain — and the thing with no substance at all pervades everything, finding its way in where there … Article Taoism for Anxiety Two images from the Tao Te Ching speak directly to a restless mind: muddy water left to settle, and the pull of other people's regard. A restless mind reaches for control — it wants to act, fix, resolve the discomfort no… Verse 66 King of the Hundred Valleys … will say it once more at its very end: it does not fight the streams for their water, and so it has all of it. Take the low place, and what you were tempted to chase comes to you — gladly, by its own course, like water … Verse 61 The Great Take the Lower Place …to say: deference, performance, the carefully filtered version. The truth, like water, runs downhill. If you hold the higher ground in a relationship and wonder why nothing real ever reaches you, the verse has the answer… Article Stillness in a Loud World …onto the couch — it is the deliberate work of letting the silt settle until the water is clear. Rest is motion's master. — Tao Te Ching, chapter 26 (Paul Carus, 1898) The Clear Mind Acts Better A still pond reflects accu… Topic The Tao Te Ching on Purpose …not found. It is uncovered, by clearing away what is standing in the way of it. Water is the example the book keeps coming back to, and the useful detail is a small one: water has the virtue of adapting itself to its pla… Verse 3 Without Contention …ing on its own once you stop feeding the agitation — the way clarity returns to water the moment you stop stirring it. What wanting in you was installed from the outside — by comparison, by the endless display of the des… Verse 5 Heaven and Earth Are Impartial …ervation of its inner essence. The verse says something that can land like cold water: heaven and earth — Nature itself — are not kind. They do not act out of any wish to be benevolent; they treat all the ten thousand th… Verse 16 Returning to the Root …yone who has tried to force calm onto a night like that knows it only stirs the water more. The verse offers the opposite move: not to push the thoughts away, but to watch them rise and fall and return, the way you would… Verse 35 Hold the Great Image …ce that does not run out. The Tao has no flavour, in the end, because it is the water that everything else is flavoured with. You can spend a whole life chasing taste — or you can stop, and drink. What 'bland,' unspectac… Verse 39 Held by the One …rency of Heaven; the steadfastness of Earth; the incorporeality of spirits; the watery plenitude of valleys; the life of all creations; the government of kings and princes; all these endure by unity. But for the cause of… Verse 40 The Movement of Return …ddle line — force through weakness — and read it not as collapse but as method: water rather than stone, patience rather than pressure, the yielding that outlasts whatever the forcing breaks against. You can watch for it… Verse 49 The Sage Has No Mind of His Own …ze anyone at their worst. An unfixed heart can look like weakness the way still water looks like emptiness. But it is exactly this heart, the verse suggests, that everyone eventually turns toward — giving it their eyes a… Verse 75 Not Forcing Life …onsumes the very vitality it guards. Held in a clenched hand, life behaves like water there — it goes. Held loosely, lived forward, glanced at rather than monitored, it somehow fills out again. Leave living a little out … Verse 77 Heaven's Bow …and giving where there is too little. Nature runs on this everywhere you check: water leaving the high ground for the low until it finds its level, the overfull cloud emptying onto the dry field, the pendulum spending it… Verse 81 The Sage Does Not Compete …st line says, penetrates but does not injure — reaches into everything, the way water does, and harms nothing as it goes; and the Tao of the wise man acts but does not strive. That is the whole teaching, set down without… Article The Leader Nobody Notices …excelling in lowliness" (chapter 66, Paul Carus, 1898). The sea does not summon water. It occupies the low place, and everything arrives. Then it turns that into an instruction: whoever wishes to be above people should s… Article What Is the Tao? …t a being who issues one. The course a thing takes when nothing is forcing it — water finding the low ground, a season turning, a situation resolving once someone stops handling it. Why It Refuses to Be Defined A definit… Article The Usefulness of Emptiness …(chapter 11, Walter Gorn Old, 1904) — you pay for the clay, but what holds your water is the hollow the clay is wrapped around. A house: "A house is useful because of its emptiness." The walls and roof take the work and … Article Wu Wei: The Art of Effortless Action …a, so it is worth being blunt: wu wei is not passivity, and it is not laziness. Water is the image the book returns to most, precisely because it is never idle — it moves constantly, wears down stone, and finds every ope… Topic The Tao Te Ching on Ego and Humility …The argument is about position much more than about morals. Low ground collects water. Whoever puts himself behind ends up in front. A large country gets what it wants by yielding. Standing on tiptoe does not make anyone…