8. "Always Enough" The Ultimate Antidote Sunrise/Afternoon June 27, 2015

This is  #8  (Tao #28) in a Series of Posts that share Synchronistically-Timely chapters from
Stephen Mitchell's Auspicious book
The Second Book of The Tao

1) TOTAL ABSTINENCE FROM BEING BOTHERED BY ANYTHING/ANYONE
RESULTS IN
2) POSSESSION IN/OF/AS THE GREAT ORIGINAL CORE CALM.

THE SOURCE WHICH MOVES CREATION THRU ALL FORMS
THE ULTIMATE ANTIDOTE

(or does this happen the other way around?
doesn't matter!  as long as it's Happening)
ew
4:12 AM - 6/27/15

#28
The Second Book of The Tao

Don’t chase after people’s approval.
Don’t depend on your plans.
Don’t make decisions;
let decisions make themselves.

Free yourself of concepts;
don’t believe what you think.
Embody the inexhaustible.
Wander beyond all paths.

Receive what you have been given
and know that
it is always enough.

  The Master’s mind is like a mirror;
it responds but doesn’t store,
contains nothing, excludes nothing,
and reflects things exactly as they are.

Thus she has what she wants
and wants only what she has.

  #28
The Second Book of The Tao
Compiled and adapted from the
Chuang-tze and the Chung Yung
with commentaries
by
Stephen Mitchell

COMMENTARY

This is a chapter of good  advice. 
You could do a lot worse than follow it. 
But all advice is dispensable.
  Here’s what I mean.

It’s morning again. You open your eyes. 
There’s a you, there’s a world.
  There’s even a woman lying in bed beside you,
the radiant one, whom you fell in love with the very first moments.
  The gratitude you feel is one drop in the vast ocean of gratitude that surrounds you. 
It’s unnecessary to feel more than that single drop.

There’s a musician at the foot of the bed.
His hands look like oak leaves.
He is leaning back with his arms raised in a gesture of what might seem
(if you didn’t know any better)
like despair.

  A skull sits on your nightstand,
giving you its long-in-the-tooth, memento-mori grin. 
Flowers drift through the air in Brownian motion. 
Inevitably, there’s a guitar in your hands. 
You don’t know how to play, but you’re a fast learner. 
It must be time for “La tristesse du roi” or “Amor, la vida es sueno.” 
Your fingers touch the strings.
  Already you’re moved to tears.

Now the sun taps at your window,
your bladder needs emptying,
the children have dissolved into peals of laughter,
and as your feet touch the floor,
yet again the spirit of life and death has not a word to say.

  Do you see things exactly as they are? 
How would you know? 
Yet things are so good that they couldn’t get much better.

  All that you ever wanted is here, right in front of you;
all that you ever wanted is instantly, irrecoverably, gone.

#28
The Second Book of The Tao
Compiled and adapted from the
Chuang-tze and the Chung Yung
with commentaries
by
Stephen Mitchell

#28
The Second Book of The Tao

Don’t chase after people’s approval.
Don’t depend on your plans.
Don’t make decisions;
let decisions make themselves.

Free yourself of concepts;
don’t believe what you think.
Embody the inexhaustible.
Wander beyond all paths.

Receive what you have been given
and know that it is always enough.

  The Master’s mind is like a mirror;
it responds but doesn’t store,
contains nothing, excludes nothing,
and reflects things exactly as they are.

Thus she has what she wants
and wants only what she has.

  #28
The Second Book of The Tao
Compiled and adapted from the
Chuang-tze and the Chung Yung
with commentaries
by
Stephen Mitchell

COMMENTARY

 

This is a chapter of good  advice. 
You could do a lot worse than follow it. 
But all advice is dispensable.
  Here’s what I mean.

It’s morning again. You open your eyes. 
There’s a you, there’s a world.
  There’s even a woman lying in bed beside you,
the radiant one, whom you fell in love with the very first moments.
  The gratitude you feel is one drop in the vast ocean of gratitude that surrounds you. 
It’s unnecessary to feel more than that single drop.

There’s a musician at the foot of the bed.
His hands look like oak leaves.
He is leaning back with his arms raised in a gesture of what might seem
(if you didn’t know any better)
like despair.

  A skull sits on your nightstand,
giving you its long-in-the-tooth, memento-mori grin. 
Flowers drift through the air in Brownian motion. 
Inevitably, there’s a guitar in your hands. 
You don’t know how to play, but you’re a fast learner. 
It must be time for “La tristesse du roi” or “Amor, la vida es sueno.” 
Your fingers touch the strings.
  Already you’re moved to tears.

Now the sun taps at your window,
your bladder needs emptying,
the children have dissolved into peals of laughter,
and as your feet touch the floor,
yet again the spirit of life and death has not a word to say.

  Do you see things exactly as they are? 
How would you know? 
Yet things are so good that they couldn’t get much better.
  All that you ever wanted is here, right in front of you;
all that you ever wanted is instantly, irrecoverably, gone.

#28
The Second Book of The Tao
Compiled and adapted from the
Chuang-tze and the Chung Yung
with commentaries
by
Stephen Mitchell