Number Forty Four Just Enough
44
The maple let’s go
of its red Autum leaves
Do just enough
Lesson # 44
Let’s play a game:
Which matters more to you,
what others think of you, or
your health?
What is worth more,
tons of money, or
control over the way you
spend your time?
Which causes the most suffering
never getting what you always wanted, or
getting it and finding out
it wasn’t all that great?
Are fame, wealth, and luxuries worth
paying for them with your health,
freedom, or your peace of mind?
Want just enough, do just enough.
From: 81 Lessons from the Tao Te Ching
Number 44 Just enough
Let’s play a game
Which matters more to you,
what others think of you
or your health
What is worth more,
tons of money
or control over the way you spend your time
Which causes the most suffering
never getting what you always wanted, or getting it
Are fame, wealth, luxuries worth paying for them
with your health freedom equanimity
That which you possess and grab on to with all your might will eventually be torn from your grasp
That which you covet collect and hoard will be sold on eBay after you die
How do we get out of this trap
You must learn to detach from the three hungry ghosts inside
greed, vainglorious ambition and the lust for power
Want just enough
Do just enough
Hold to your center
And you will be safe from yourself
NUMBER FORTY FOUR
Which is more dear to you, your character or your body?
Which do you treasure more, your body or your wealth?
Which makes you more unhappy, to gain or to lose?
But we must sacrifice much to gain true love.
We must suffer great loss to obtain much treasure,
To know contentment is to fear no shame.
To know how to stop is to avoid destruction.
Thus doing, we shall long endure.
Isabella Mears, The Tao Teh King, A Tentative Translation from the Chinese, William McLellan, Glascow, 1916.
Number 44 (commentary) But isn’t more better?
No. Just enough is better.
Contentment with what one has is better.
Controlling inner greed to achieve inner peace is better.
Getting out of the rat race of “I need just a little more” is much better.
It is painful to witness a typical day in many of our lives:
You get up and look for a stimulant to jumpstart your day. You take a stressful journey to work. You do stressful work that you have to convince yourself that you like. No time for lunch, so grab a sugar-coated carbohydrate that will ultimately lead to your diabetes or heart attack. Take a stressful journey home. Take a toke or a glass of more drugs to ‘de-stress.’ Watch provocative or violent media designed to activate more stress in your brain. Collapse into bed. Can’t sleep? Take another drug.
Is this really the way you want to lead this one precious life you have been given?
Tangent and Tool #44, Die first A question and a reflection: “How can I live my life to the fullest?” There is a country song by Tim McGraw and Craig Weisman titled, “Live like you are dying.” The advice in that song is to go out and grab thrilling experiences while you still can. But it is also a call to live a kind and loving life while you still can.
But doing that just takes you to the threshold. Then you need to die. Something inside that is still desperately clinging to the search for pleasure, the hope of immortality, the need for control. You have to just give up the bullshit quest and know that you already lost the game, just by being born. Taylor Swift, Valdimir Putin and you, all gone and forgotten fifty years from now.
The end of the Heart Sutra in Buddhist texts translates as “Gone, gone, everyone gone, far away, awakening.” We wake up to our true nature once we realize that there is more to us than this fearful, frantic, deluded self we have identified as ourselves. But that can’t be just an intellectual understanding. We have to deeply grieve the loss of everything we have loved, including our precious ego. Die, and see what is left. Die now, die later. Your choice.