16
mist over a gray pond
each breath fades away
no one is here
Lesson # 16
Breathe in . . . release.
With each breath
let go of more and more.
As you become empty,
you see everything
being born, living, passing away.
When you were full of yourself
you grasped, stumbled,
and suffered.
But empty, you are everything,
and even in death
you are unafraid,
because you cannot lose
that which is most fundamental
and most precious.
From: 81 Lessons from the Tao Te Ching
Number Sixteen: Stillness
Gently, with each breath
let go of thoughts
Gently, with each breath
let go of feelings
Gently, with each breath, empty everything out
Find your stillness
When you are not full of yourself
you are free to see everything around you being born living dying
returning to the soil and to the source from which it came
After a life of activity everything returns to stillness
This is the way of nature
when you touch into that still source within you
you can find peace
Without that awareness you throw yourself at life
You stumble and suffer
With inner peace you can afford to be non-judgmental kind tolerant and gentle
and when Death comes to your body you do not have to be afraid
because you cannot lose
that which is most precious
NUMBER SIXTEEN
To arrive at ultimate quietness
Steadfastly maintain repose.
All creatures together have form;
I see them return again to their root.
The Master creatures come to perfect form,
Continuously they return to their root.
Continuous return to the root is called repose,
Repose is called the law of return,
The law of return is called eternity.
To know eternity is called illumination.
To ignore eternity is to draw misfortune on oneself,
To know eternity is to be great of Soul,
To be great of soul is to be a ruler,
To be a ruler is to be greater than all,
To be greater than all is to be conscious of Life,
To be conscious of Life is to endure.
The body shall disappear but not decay.
Isabella Mears, The Tao Teh King, A Tentative Translation from the Chinese, William McLellan, Glascow, 1916.
Number Sixteen (commentary) How can we face our death without overwhelming fear?
It helps if you have a practice in which you seek to quiet your thoughts, that intrusive, internal, ongoing conversation going on inside your mind.
Learn to soothe your emotional conflicts, knowing that right now, in this present moment, there is nothing to be done about them. Turn down the volume in that cacophony going on in your mind. Then you are on the road towards inner peace.
Breathe.
Tangent and Tool # 16, Thoughts on what is eternal: A question and a reflection: “How am I facing my eventual death?” There is so much to learn when we deeply take in the cycle of birth, growth, decay, death, knowing it also applies to our precious body. Dealing with this issue often inspires folks to embark on a spiritual path. Over time you may sense that there is an awareness inside of you that is not just your ego, something that is hard to describe, but that is more fundamental than your identity. And, when you are looking out from those eyes, you see all life revolving in a cycle: fertilization, birth, development, aging, death and finally, the return to the Earth and to the source. That is the cycle of your body. But you are more than the shell that carries you around. You are the thing that lights up a newborn’s eyes, that gives you awareness even at your body’s last breath, the light that existed before Creation. This thing Lao Tsu called the Tao is vast, eternal and awake, and you carry a drop of it in your small cup of an impermanent body. That spark can never die.