How can a book club use In Harmony with the Tao?People sometimes join book clubs at the start of a new year. A while ago I was invited to speak to a spiritual book club. They had selected In Harmony with the Tao as a book they were going to read and...
At a Loss for Words? “For lack of a better name, I call it the Tao.” (Lao Tzu) We’re pretty good at naming anything we can wrap our minds around. We like analyzing and distinguishing one thing from another. But what about bigger things? For example,...
What Is “Enough”?“We can never have enough of what we don’t really want.” I came across this quote and it got me thinking. Why would we want to have something we don’t “really want”? Isn’t there a contradiction in there? Interestingly, I think the an...
No Need to Prove Points“Wise men don’t need to prove their point; men who need to prove their point aren’t wise.” (Lao Tzu) Is Lao Tzu just being witty? Perhaps. But his main point is that wisdom has little to do with proving points (Tao Te Ching, Ch...
Why Is Nature An Example For Us?The Tao Te Ching often refers to nature as an example of the expression of the Tao. Why is nature held up as an example? Can’t we express the Tao just as well as nature can? The short answer is that of course we can. W...
Less Knowledge Is a Good Thing? “In the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped.” (Lao Tzu) Knowledge calls for analyzing things, separating them into parts, naming the parts, and...
Flow versus InterferenceWe’ve all heard the phrase “to go with the flow.” It generally refers to going along with whatever is happening around us. “Interfering,” on other hand, is not going along with it, typically because we have a better idea in mi...
Flow versus InterferenceWe’ve all heard the phrase “to go with the flow.” It generally refers to going along with whatever is happening around us. “Interfering,” on other hand, is not going along with it, typically because we have a better idea in mi...
Act Without Expectation?“The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things.” (Lao Tzu) This suggests that whenever we seek and expect, we fail to be present. We are off somewhere else looking...
The Tao Is Like...This newsletter is going to be about words. We use them to distinguish things from each other, and they work very well. Calling different things by different names means we all know what we’re talking about. But what happens when we...
