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But if we add up the spaces between the rewards, we'll come up with quite a bit. If we add up all the rewards in our lives, we won't have very much. 'The honey doesn't taste so good once it is being eaten the goal doesn't mean so much once it is reached the reward is not so rewarding once it has been given. If anything, the days only grow longer with the sheer amount of work we attempt to squeeze in. In the world of today, we are still working as hard as we ever did before, even with all of the 'time saving' technology that we have. With the next award, with the next retweet, in the executive suite, with the next job, with the right qualifications. This mind tries too hard, wears itself out, and ends up weak and sloppy.'Īlways striving for the next thing. 'Man has developed a mind that separates him from the world of reality, the world of natural laws. Always believing the reward is just around the corner but only ever finding corners to go around. The 'Bisy Backson' is always pushing, pushing, pushing. Simply let things happen while you work with the circumstances given. If you punch a cork in floating water, the harder the punch the faster and more powerfully it jumps to the surface. We become tense and nervous - how does anything truly good come from that? We make things hard for ourselves by thinking too hard and forcing too many things in a way that we want them to go. 'When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round you peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. Instead, wu wei is to act like water, flowing around and over the rocks in a stream. There's no meddling, no monkey business, no tomfoolery. 'Wu Wei' is something of an untranslatable concept that broadly means that we don't try to fight our way through things in a straight line. As Lao-tse pointed out, the bad can be raw material for the good.' Wu Wei / Working In Harmony 'So there is no such thing as an ability that is too useless, too crooked, or too small. So, in that sense at least, a Weakness of some sort can do you a big favor, if you acknowledge that it's there.' 'A saying from the area of Chinese medicine would be appropriate to mention here: "One disease, long life no disease, short life." In other words, those who know what's with them and take care wrong of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses. Use them to our advantage (best outcome, least effort).Struggle to remove them (hard, hurtful).However, with our limitations, we have three options: There is little use in trying to pretend we don't have them, either - if anything we only do ourselves further harm. There is nothing wrong with having limitations, essentially. Don't try to pretend otherwise - a fish can't whistle and why does a chicken? Who knows.ĭon't try to be clever. 'Cleverness' is a thing that seems right and sharp and witty and spot on in the moment. We can be so obsessed with categorising things correctly that we can become more ignorant and misguided than knowledgeable and aware. 'The words of blind men describing the sun.' We might look at the 'pompous, desiccated scholar' as a good example of someone having significant learning, but no real knowledge of how the world works. There is more to life than simply being correct. The wise are not learned, the learned are not wise. Take it for a spin - it's fun! Better to be Wise Than Learned
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Simply accept life in a simple, childlike fashion. Instead, be like an uncarved block of wood. Along with that comes the ability to do things spontaneously and have them work, odd as that may appear to others at times.' Because what good is it to us? 'From the state of the Uncarved Block comes the ability to enjoy the simple and the quiet, the natural and the plain. We should not acquire intelligence just for the sake of it. But we can understand its nature, so long as we don't let our minds interfere too much. We can fully understand or even begin to know the universe in its fullness. Lao Tzu - tastes the vinegar and smiles (this is simply life) An elaboration of the three Chinese schools of wisdom, and how the Tao differs (and is best).Ĭonfucius - tastes the vinegar and finds it sour (and, in life, wants to apply rules to make life more palatable)īuddha - tastes the vinegar and finds it bitter (and, in life, wants to find a way to escape the bitterness of suffering)