5
the Tao, a bellows
breaths in and out
everything comes alive
Lesson # 5
The bare truth is that
the Tao doesn’t discriminate.
Everything is sacred.
It breathes you.
From: 81 Lessons from the Tao Te Ching
Number Five: Unavoidable
The Tao is not sentimental
Eventually it tosses aside
everything in creation
The Sage is not sentimental
They strip aside the masks
that we create to hide behind
and they see us truly
The Tao is moving through all things
Like the shape of air in a bellows it changes form
as it blows through the 10,000 things
bringing them to life
Talking about all this is exhausting
Best to be silent and center
NUMBER FIVE
Heaven and earth are impartial, they regard all creatures as sacred.
The self-controlled man is impartial, he regards all people as sacred.
The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows.
Emptied, it loses not power,
Moved, it sends forth more and more wind.
Many words lead to exhaustion.
Be not thus; keep to thy center.
Isabella Mears, The Tao Teh King, A Tentative Translation from the Chinese, William McLellan, Glascow, 1916.
Number Five (commentary) Why do bad things happen to good people?
The Laws of the universe are not sentimental. Good fortune, bad fortune and death comes to the bad and the good alike.
All love ends in separation or death. Live long enough and old age, sickness and death will become your companion.
A wise person is not sentimental. Seeing the sinner in the saint and the saint in the sinner, they speak the uncomfortable truths that cut through our bullshit.
The nature of the Tao is the most fundamental thing.
The forms of the 10,000 things constantly change. But they are held alike in time, held alike in space, held alike in gravity, and held alike in the ineffable something that holds all of time, space, matter, energy and gravity.
Trying to explain this in words is useless.
All we can do, ultimately, is center, breathe, stay present and hope to experience more.
Tangent and Tool #5, Healing through meditation: (Reflective exercise) Meditation is important for many reasons, four of which are:
1- Meditation helps focus your attention and it can give you some moments of rest from the chatter of your mind and the cacophony of the world,
2- Meditation helps you sharpen focus for anything you do, including your work, your attention to others, your activism and your leadership,
3- The centering that you do in meditation, through focusing on your breath, can also help you center in other, more stressful, situations.
4- Meditation can provide a space in which you can discover more about your true nature.