The time of the autumn floods came and the hundred streams poured into the Yellow River. … Then the Lord of the River was beside himself with Joy, believing that all the beauty in the world belonged to him alone.
The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world.
Forget the years, forget distinctions. Leap into the boundless and make it your home!
So it is said, for him who understands Heavenly joy, life is the working of Heaven; death is the transformation of things. In stillness, he and the yin share a single Virtue; in motion, he and the yang share a single flow.
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
Only he who has no use for the empire is fit to be entrusted with it.
The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror – going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing.
The sage is still not because he takes stillness to be good and therefore is still. The ten thousand things are insufficient to distract his mind – that is the reason he is still.
The Spirit Tower has its guardian, but unless it understands who its guardian is, it cannot be guarded.
Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. Meaning has something it is pursuing, but the thing that it is pursuing cannot be put into words and handed down.
The little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers – because it lives with those who know how to speak.
When men do not forget what can be forgotten but forget what cannot be forgotten – that may be called true forgetting.
When a man does not dwell in self, then things will of themselves reveal their forms to him. His movement is like that of water, his stillness like that of a mirror, his responses like those of an echo.
The man who has forgotten self may be said to have entered Heaven.
In the midst of darkness, he alone sees the dawn; in the midst of the soundless, he alone hears harmony.
Men all pay homage to what understanding understands, but no one understands enough to rely upon what understanding does not understand and thereby come to understand.
Understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the finest.
You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog – he’s limited by the space he lives in. You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect – he’s bound to a single season.
Suppose I try saying something. What way do I have of knowing that if I say I know something I don’t really not know it? Or what way do I have of knowing that if I say I don’t know something I don’t really in fact know it?
The petty thief is imprisoned but the big thief becomes a feudal lord.
People who excuse their faults and claim they didn’t deserved to be punished – there are lots of them. But those who don’t excuse their faults and admit they didn’t deserve to be spared – they are few.
If you’d called me an ox, I’d have said I was an ox; if you’d called me a horse, I’d have said I was a horse. If the reality is there and you refuse to accept the name men give it, you’ll only lay yourself open to double harassment.
He who has mastered the true nature of life does not labor over what life cannot do. He who has mastered the true nature of fate does not labor over what knowledge cannot change.
Cease striving. Then there will be transformation.
We can’t expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone – the understanding has them, too.
Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free: Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?
Things joined by profit, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cast each other aside.
You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless.
We are born from a quiet sleep, and we die to a calm awakening
Don’t you know about the praying mantis that waved its arms angrily in front of an approaching carriage, unaware that they were incapable of stopping it? Such was the high opinion it had of its talents.
Forget about life, forget about worrying about right and wrong. Plunge into the unknown and the endless and find your place there!
The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods, she uses no more than one branch.The mole drinks off the river, it can only fill one belly.
Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views – then the world will be governed.
Do not use life to give life to death. Do not use death to bring death to life.
I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
I know the joy of fishes in the river through my own joy, as I go walking along the same river.
Men honor what lies within the sphere of their knowledge, but do not realize how dependent they are on what lies beyond it.
Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.
Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.
Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.
Life comes from the earth and life returns to the earth.