The Hammock Papers: Lao Tzu

Showing posts with label Lao Tzu. Show all posts

12 August 2026

Stillness.

Too many words cause exhaustion
In the mind or from the mouth
Better to abide in stillness

Lao Tzu

07 February 2025

30 December 2024

If.

Kipling challenged, "If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim."

Steve offers practical magic.

24 August 2024

Superior.

What is malleable is always superior to that which is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.

Lao Tzu

Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

They don't call him The Professor for nothing.

11 September 2022

Subtle.

Why scurry about looking for the truth?

It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose.

Can you be still and see it in the mountain? The pine tree? Yourself?

Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating more knowledge; knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can't get full eating this way.

The wise person dines on something more subtle: He eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non- being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source.

He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and becomes completely content.

So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world?

The foolish are always making impulsive moves, but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle.

They see that something perfect exists before any move is made.

This subtle perfection deteriorates when artificial actions are taken, so be content not to disturb the peace.

Remain quiet.

Discover the harmony in your own being.

Embrace it.

If you can do this, you will gain everything, and the world will become healthy again.

If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

Lao Tzu

27 December 2021

Dropped.

24 March 2020

Becomes.

Homer, Campfire, Adirondacks, 1892

Muddy water

Let stand

Becomes clear

Lao Tzu

28 September 2019

Without.

Act without doing;
work without effort.
Think of the small as large
and the few as many.
Confront the difficult
while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task
by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty,
she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

Lao Tzu, from Tao Te Ching

09 September 2019

Without.

16 November 2018

Flourish.

Thus, the wise man deals with things through wu-wei and teaches through no-words. The ten thousand things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them.

The highest attainment is wu-wei and is purposeless.

When wu-wei is done, nothing is left undone.

Lao-Tzu

CONNECT

05 February 2018

Time.

Tischbein, Hare, 1796

Take time to listen to what is said without words, to obey the law too subtle to be written, to worship the unnameable, and to embrace the unformed.

Lao Tzu

20 October 2017

Work.

Jim Harrison's desk as he left it ...

Act without doing; work without effort.

Think of the small as large and the few as many.

Confront the difficult while it is still easy.

Accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.

Lao Tzu

07 July 2017

Without.

81.

Truthful words are not beautiful.

Beautiful words are not truthful.

Good men do not argue.

Those who argue are not good.

Those who know are not learned.

The learned do not know.

The sage never tries to store things up.

The more he does for others, the more he has.

The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.

The Tao of heaven is pointed but does no harm.

The Tao of the sage is work without effort.

Lao Tzu

17 April 2017

Because.

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others.

Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval.

Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.

Lao Tzu

29 March 2017

Journey.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao Tzu

10 November 2016

Simplicity.

Embrace simplicity.

Put others first.

Desire little.

Lao Tzu

06 June 2016

Accomplished.

16 September 2015

Limitless.

Magritte, Sixteenth of September, 1956

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory realm,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo's song beckons me to return home;
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to turn back;

But do not ask me where I am going,
As I travel in this limitless world,
Where every step I take is my home.

Lao Tzu

22 July 2015

Gives.

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL