The Right Thing: A Tao-Driven Guide to Contented Living, Vol. 6

Contentment

Secondly, on imitation; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience; that is the bitterest. The Analects , as reported in Chambers Dictionary of Quotations , p. By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is the noblest; Second, by imitation, which is the easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

The Ethics of Confucius , Cosimo Inc, , p. To be wealthy in an unjust society is a disgrace. To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge. Attributed to Confucius in Out of the Blue: Misattributed [ edit ] Chinese [ edit ] The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. Xunzi in the Xunzi book Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. Attributed in Lillet Walters , Secrets of Superstar Speakers ; attributed in English sources as a "Japanese proverb" as early as No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

Townsend, editor of Good Reading , various editions from at least Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius - Wikiquote

Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest , Vols. The right half specializes in Gestalt-type, intuitive thought processes, art, music, and spatial processing clearly yin activities. Several psychologists, most notably Robert E. Ornstein, have commented on the remarkable parallels between these cerebral specializations and the yin-yang model. In many areas of biological research, we scientists have learned how fruitless an "either-or" approach can be, in which one explanation must be correct to the exclusion of another.

Instead, persuaded by experimental evidence, we frequently have been forced to adopt the yin-yang sort of view, in which various explanations are viewed not as opposed and exclusive, but rather as complementary. The "nature-nurture" debate is one example, as is the controversy among ecologists whether competition or predation structures biological communities. Long-distance navigational abilities by birds is yet another example. Taoists view death as an integral part of the natural process, not as an unnatural event, or an enemy of life.

Elsewhere, Lao Tze advises a cripple who has just been rebuffed by Confucius, "Why don't you simply make him Confucius see that life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides--and thus free him from his cuffs and fetters. Without death, new life and new life forms could not occur.

Those who study biogeochemical cycles find that death and the subsequent decay of organisms are prerequisite to recycling the elements necessary for new life to arise. We have already seen how nitrogen revolves from life to decay to the soil and back to life again in a perpetual cycle.

Life arises from death, and death from life. This view of the role of death in natural processes, of course, affects one's view of human death.

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The Taoists refused to view death as a calamity, unlike the Confucians, or even to fear death. Death was simply another transformation, and transformation is part of the Tao. Some Taoist texts indicate plainly that they were not sure what happened after death, but they certainly were not going to dread it.

Lady Li was the daughter of a border guard of Ai. When the Duke of Chin first took her captive, she wept until her dress was soaked with tears. But once she was living in the Duke's palace, sharing his bed, and eating delicious food, she wondered why she had ever cried. How can I tell whether the dead are not amazed that they ever clung to life? Note that this calm acceptance of the cessation of one's existence is not predicated on an afterlife, as in the transcendental Christian or Muslim traditions. When he entered death, there was no sorrow.

He accepted what was given with delight, and when it was gone, he gave it no more thought. Why these similarities between modern Western science and the ancient Chinese outlook of Taoism? The Tao Te Ching itself gives us the answer. The answer follows directly: We scientists base our knowledge on careful observation of the natural world. Even in the experimental method, I am observing a situation in which hopefully! And now we see that the Taoists also arrive at their outlook on the universe by observing it, indeed observing it with a clear, unfettered mind.

Restraint begins with giving up one's own ideas," says the Tao Te Ching. The Taoists of traditional China were people of the woods and mountains, and the urban gardens and parks. They spent a great deal of time simply sitting by streams or wandering through forests. Chinese landscape painting has pictured them over many centuries of superb paintings, quietly and attentively observing streams from a hut, or walking with a sharp eye and ear among groves of trees or bamboo: Because Taoists knew the natural world intimately, nature metaphors and examples abound in the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tse.

At his death he is hard and stiff. Green plants are tender and filled with sap.

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At their death they are withered and dry. It crouches close to the ground and waits for its prey. Then it leaps up and down, first one way, then the other, until it catches and kills its prey. Once upon a time, I--Chuang Tse--dreamed I was a butterfly flying happily here and there, enjoying life without knowing who I was.

Suddenly I woke up and I was indeed Chuang Tse. Did Chuang Tse dream he was a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream he was Chuang Tse? Do you know how a tiger trainer works? He knows when the tigers are hungry and when they are full. Thereby he is in touch with their fierce nature. In cases of contrasting views, the deciding judgment comes not from a book, nor from a person, nor from a supernatural being's revelations. The final arbiter is the phenomenon itself. The scientist goes back to the field, or back to the bench, and looks at the phenomenon again, using perhaps a new stain or new experiment.

The Taoist goes back to the natural world and patiently, calmly watches the flow of the stream and the steady progression of seasonal changes. Reality itself, carefully observed, is the source of knowledge and the final arbiter in both these systems.

It is important to admit, however, that even though there are fundamental similarities between Taoism and science, there are also some clear differences. Some of these ways in which the two differ are important. Taoists dislike argument and mistrust people with verbal facility. Those who talk do not know," the Tao Te Ching says. Beautiful words are not truthful. Good men do not argue. Those who argue are not good," it says elsewhere. Most of us scientists, on the other hand, relish spirited exchange of opinions, either verbally or in print.

We use the "peer review" system to judge grant requests and articles for publication. The most interesting section of scientific journals is the "Notes" section, containing critical comments on previously published articles. It is out of this climate of sometimes unbridled criticism of each other's ideas that scientific advances occur. Taoists also dislike machines and harbor deep suspicions of those who use machines. The Tao Te Ching describes the ideal country as follows. Though there are machines that can work ten to a hundred times faster than man, they are not needed.

Though there are boats and carriages, no one uses them. Men return to the knotting of rope in place of writing. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of modern science independent of the array of microscopes, oscilloscopes, spectrophotometers, centrifuges, calorimeters, and myriad other instruments which have opened up worlds of observation and modes of quantification virtually closed without them. To a large degree, the story of modern science is the story of the invention of the machines used in its investigations. Another very important difference is in the area of experimentation.

Although it is true that objective observation is the crux of science, the most powerful use of this act is when the observation of one situation is compared with the observation of another situation identical to the first except in one respect--that one respect being the experimental or independent variable.

By thus manipulating the phenomenon under observation, the effect of the variable may be induced. That's the crux of the way we scientists operate. In Taoism, on the other hand, there is no mention of the experimental method, much less an expressed understanding of its power in the discovery and description of natural processes. Indeed, there is an unmistakable sense of distaste for human manipulation of the natural world.

I do not believe it can be done. The universe is sacred. You cannot improve it. If you try to change it, you will ruin it.

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If you try to hold it, you will lose it" Tao Te Ching. When they express this view, Taoists are not thinking only of the efforts of evil, manipulative humans to change and control the world for their own selfish profit. The honest, sincere, goodly efforts of humans to improve the world are just as distasteful to Taoists. In the Taoist way of viewing reality, the world is just right just as it is. Any attempt to force it into some other configuration inevitably sullies it, regardless of the motive. That's the Taoist way.

It remains to emphasize that the fundamental similarities we have noted between Taoism and modern science are just that--similarities, not identities. I am not arguing that Taoists have always known everything that science has arrived at in the past two centuries. Thousands of years ago, Taoists knew that cycles were common and important in natural systems. They did not know that the element nitrogen occurs in the atmosphere, that it is fixed into nitrate by microorganisms in the soil, and that plants take it up in this form and combine it with hydrogen and carbon atoms to form protein molecules.

Taoism has known from its earliest days that that humans possess two aspects to their personalities, one assertive, rational, and verbal, the other receptive, intuitive, and nonverbal. They did not know that the former set of properties are primarily processed by the left cerebral hemisphere, the latter by the right. Nor did they know that the brain is composed of millions of neurons which communicate with each other by means of chemicals crossing gaps between the cells.

Taoists saw thousands of years ago that life forms on this planet were endlessly transforming and had arisen from a common ancestral origin. They did not know that differential reproductive fitness resulting from natural selection powered these evolutionary changes, nor did they wonder whether the changes occurred mainly by the gradual accumulation of minor changes a la neo-Darwinism or by sudden major changes a la punctuated equilibrium. Even with these caveats in mind, it is nothing short of remarkable to find, across a seemingly vast chasm of separating time, culture, and outlook, the degree of essential similarities between the ancient outlook of Taoism and the modern scientific enterprise.

This set of similarities argues strongly for a fundamental continuity of mental processes within the human mind, as well as for a fundamental continuity in the structure of reality. The early Taoists, lacking an appreciation for mathematical models and the systematic use of experiments except perhaps in the alchemy movement , did nonetheless come a surprisingly long way toward certain aspects of modern science by adhering to the cornerstone of that science--careful, objective observation of the natural world.

These considerations are reflected in the findings of the noted English biochemist, sinologist, and historian of science Joseph Needham, who showed by careful scholarship that Taoism was the fertile ground out of which early science arose in China, and led early science in the West for the first fourteen centuries A. You may be interested in pursuing this fascinating story in his massive, multi-volume Science and Civilization in China , begun in , or much easier reading!

The wonder of it all is how far the early Taoists did come merely by observation, and doubtless by sharp, informed intuition proceeding out of that observation. When generations hence look back on our science of today, they will doubtless wonder at our ignorance and the incompleteness of what we thought we knew. We can only hope that some few among them in that future day will be intelligent and fair enough to realize that, for all our shortcomings, we are doing our best to make sense out of our existence in a strange and beautiful world, in a way that respects the integrity and reality of that world.

Just as were the early Taoists so long ago, and so far away from us today. An early version of the above thoughts was published in in Zygon, vol. Prologue and Chapter One Prologue What do you think: China's culture--its everyday habits of life and the values they embody--is more than 5, years old. America's is less than You can do the math. The Chinese "way of life" wears well. Because it works so well, it retains its characteristic stamp wherever it's transplanted around the world. Molded by the ancient native outlook of Taoism, China's people practice a way of living their everyday life that is robust, cohesive, and above all successful.

It is the flourishing constant underlying the changing superstructures of empire, republic, warlords, and now communism. Can we in America learn anything from this old and fabulously successful way of living life? Do we have any need for a different approach to life? In my home state of California, there're more people in prison than in college.

Relax, You're Already Home: Everyday Taoist Habits for a Richer Life

The state Legislature and our Governor regularly transform problems into crises, with the cost passed straight to citizens like you and me. Big business and big labor alike buy special consideration. Money talks, and how. All this confusion and strife isn't confined to the public sphere, unfortunately. It's amply reflected in our private lives. Whether our jobs and relationships are steady or constantly changing, we all ask the same questions, just below the surface of our busy lives. What's this all about? Am I really happy, or just too busy to confront the fact that my life doesn't have a direction, a purpose?

Religion is supposed to answer these questions, of course. But some of us see traditional religions as hopelessly out of touch with the modern, scientific understanding of life. We wander into "New Age" ways of thinking. Others of us reach back to earlier and simpler versions of religion, fueling the contemporary resurgence in fundamentalist branches of Christianity and Islam.

And those of us sticking with the religion we were raised in feel too often like we're just going through the motions, and we wonder, deep down, if the old explanations really work for us. Why don't we try thinking really outside the box? Something really weird--but successful! Of course, from our American point of view, that's China. Those 5, years of a culture that works so well that it really hasn't changed fundamentally for millenia.

A culture that works so well that when its people move to Karachi or London or San Francisco, they take it with them, lock, stock, and barrel, giving the world all those Chinatowns in every corner of the planet. On my first trips to Asia--Vietnam in the late '60s, courtesy of Uncle Sam, then China several times in the early '80s with my travel buddy Kyle-- I immediately noticed how strange these places were, and how the daily lives of the people there had a different "flavor" than I'd ever seen.

Since I'd studied the Chinese language while at Yale, and because Kyle is adventuresome and cool-witted, we were able to connect with the people way beyond the typical tourist level. The "different way of living" in China and the surrounding countries fascinated me, and I sought out the common people in little-traveled corners of China and Korea and Taiwan and Japan in subsequent trips.

Everywhere I found common people exhibiting a tough acceptance of life, an ability to plunge into both the sweet and the bitter sides of life and savor it. I was struck by a simple, easy-going enjoyment of everyday life evident in many people, a low-key gusto that was at odds with life in much of America. The trite "serenity" that you hear so much about turned out to be true, and not in gurus and hermits, but in many of the common folk I encountered.

Between my travels and my study, it became apparent that the ancient Taoist approach to life accounted for much of what I was seeing. Not the Taoism of the advanced Masters, with their dramatic feats of martial arts and exotic breathing techniques, but the Taoism of the common people, the real China. Long described in China as "the art of living," Taoism is the oldest continuous and consistent approach to living on the planet. This Taoist outlook is thoroughly engrained into everyday life in China, so that daily life is permeated by Taoist habits.

The accumulation of these simple Taoist habits, it turns out, gives rise to that richer, more vibrant, steadily focused quality of life that I saw throughout China. You can tap into that richer life. Right here in America, today. And you don't have to "go Chinese" and start meditating and practicing vicious high-leg kicks to do it. All you need do is incorporate the simple, everyday Taoist habits into your existing life. I'll get you started in the following pages, and give you lots of suggestions about what has worked for me, my family, and many others.

Immersion in the Tao The Taoist tradition has given rise to countless everyday habits of the ordinary people of China, habits which contribute to a rich, coherent experience of life. These everyday Taoist habits work just as well for Americans as for Chinese, though.

In fact, you and I practice many of them, unaware of what's behind them. Take the view of things I have from my kitchen window here in northern California, for example. As I stare out the window filling the teapot with water first thing every morning, I usually see Julie from across the way coming back from her dawn run. She's beaming, cheeks flushed, walking with a lilt. And most evenings, while doing the dinner dishes in the same spot, I see Jay from the other end of our CoHousing community, arriving home from a brisk stroll in the park with my neighbors George and Judy.

They're laughing, and there's a comfortable swagger in their steps. We've all witnessed these scenes. Maybe you're the one doing the jogging or the walking. Why do these particular activities make us feel so good? Why do folks carve time out of their busy days to walk, to jog, to visit a park? The same sort of scenes occur in China, although the details are different. Some older folks were simply walking deliberately along a course, hands describing circular movements in the chill air.

When you survey Chinese art down the ages, you notice how many paintings there are of lone individuals or small groups of friends in the mountains, or in a bamboo grove, or very frequently beside a stream. Usually these folks are playing a friendly board game, or drinking tea, or often just sitting quietly, enjoying the scenery. Are the Chinese participating in the same sort of experience as the neighbors outside my kitchen window? In China, at least, people do these outdoor activities because the Taoist outlook permeating Chinese culture places a huge premium on humans connecting with the forces inherent in the natural world.

This keeps people healthy and happy. Preeminent among these forces that structure and permeate the natural world is the Tao. These folks are connecting with the Tao. Tao the way, or path, pronounced "dow" and often spelled "Dao" confers the inherent nature of each material and force in the universe.

Tao is the backdrop and the impetus for everything that happens, all the myriad processes of transformation that constantly course through the world. In the words of a Japanese scholar, Tao is "the mood of the universe. Tao courses everywhere, but most clearly in the natural world, where its patterns are strikingly evident, most accessible to human perception and participation.

So we humans connect with this most elemental of phenomena by spending time in the natural world, by participating in the flow of life in nature. Paramount among Taoist habits for us modern Americans, then, is doing in our society what those Chinese have been doing in theirs for thousands of years: Immersing ourselves in the Tao is the most basic Taoist habit.

This is so important to our health, both physical and spiritual, that it should be done on a daily basis. How do we daily immerse ourselves in the Tao in the modern West? Renouncing your job and family and moving to a shack in the woods is not required. Do you have a park or green space reasonably close to your home? Go there, every day if you can. Make it a routine part of your day.

Julie across the way from me knows this. Although she has two energetic youngsters, she manages to be up early every day for her jog through the park, before Richard leaves for his work. We all know the air is fresher, the day more charged with positive potential just after dawn. Prime time to be out in the natural world. This is Jay , George, and Judy's walk schedule.

Raymond Barnett

In general, engaging in some movement among the trees and rocks is best--walking, bicycling, jogging. But just sitting in the natural environment is beneficial, especially near a body of water. We are fortunate here to live just a block from the third largest municipal park in America. On foot, bicycles, or skates, we head for Bidwell Park. We have our favorite corners, our favorite swimming holes, our favorite paths and trees and rocks. You're not close to a park?

Or you're not particularly athletic? If you have a bit of dirt around your home, start a garden, either flower or vegetable. Tend it, as much of the year as your climate permits. Mulch it, fertilize it, take deep breaths as you work the soil, drawing into your lungs the delicious dirt smell produced by the millions of Streptomyces bacteria residing there. Start a compost pile if your neighbors will stand it, and recycle your food and lawn wastes. Tending your garden puts you in touch with the flow of the Tao, focuses you on the natural rhythms of the universe.

Immersion in the Tao How many of these can you do today? Walk or jog in a park; notice the trees and rocks. Eat lunch outdoors; note clouds and breezes.