Heaven and earth are enduring.
The reason why heaven and earth can be enduring is that they do not give themselves life.
Hence they are able to be long-lived.
Therefore the sage puts his person last and it comes first,
Treats it as extraneous to himself and it is preserved.
Is it not because he is without thought of self that he is able to accomplish his private ends?
— #Tao Te Ching: Ch 07 (D.C. Lau translation)
#IKITAO #TaoistWisdom
The top part is very similar to a Li Bo poem
Drinking Alone Under the Moon?
The more I learn about nondualism, the more sense this makes to me. As a young atheist I just wrote it off as typical religious self-denial. When I drifted into monism, as a result of hanging out with lots of new age travellers, it seemed that to decentre the self was to reject the universal ocean of which I assumed it was a part.
Now I start to realise that the idea of a "self" as a consistent object operating on other objects is an illusion. So, I start to understand the tao as a representation of dynamic equilibrium, of constant change. Not as a monist container of the Ten Thousands Things.
But you know, the tao that can be spoken is not the eternal, ever-changing tao, so who knows? 😋
