Tao Te Wednesday

10/26/2011

Today's Tao:

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

Verse 9. Tao Te Ching Stephen Mitchell translation. I also like the Daily-Tao website found HERE

mistah charley, ph.d. link

10/26/2011 07:15:37 am

Laura - you and/or some of your readers, if you are not familiar with the delightful TAO OF POOH by Benjamin Hoff,
might enjoy it.

http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Pooh-Benjamin-Hoff/dp/0140067477/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Tom link

10/26/2011 12:39:13 pm

This stanza from Emily Dickinson is one that I've always enjoyed (and used to explain myself). I remember showing it to my Dad back when I was in college (class of '73). He said "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye.
Much sense, stark madness
'Tis the majority.

And this line from Octavio Paz's 'The Balcony' is one I've held close. I think Andre Dubus III used it to open his novel, 'House of Sand and Fog'.

Beyond myself
Somewhere
I wait for my arrival.

A buddy once told me that I'd better not wait too long.

V ictoria link

10/26/2011 09:44:46 pm

Lovely - and just what I need! Thank you.

Laura Novak

10/27/2011 02:40:08 am

Thanks, Victoria. I liked it too.

And Tom, I really like the Paz quote. That sure was some arrival at the end of House of S & F. Talk about a train wreck. What an amazing book. I recall devouring it. And proof positive that in fiction, things need to get worse and worse for the protagonist.

As for the first quote, I'll have to mull that over. But very interesting. I wonder how you answered your dad?

Tom link

10/27/2011 12:37:13 pm

I'm sure you recall that Emily was thought by contemporaries to be a little mad. She sat by her bedroom window looking out for hours at a time, She may have been agoraphobic. Those words were hers so that context maybe she was defending herself against the perceptions of others. I don't know.

The time for me was probably around 1970. I'd left college as I wasn't adjusting well at all and my grades reflected that. It's a long story that doesn't need told here but I started school early, at age five, was late to puberty and only became comfortable with high school in my senior year. I'm telling way too much.

My Dad and and were generations apart. He was born in 1903. I was born in 1950. You can untuit from there.

I was a long haired, bearded, wild idea-ed young man. My Dad was raised in coal mining camps in western PA. He thought I was nuts. I told him nuts was good. My proof was Emily. He didn't buy it. We never recovered and he died three weeks shy of 91, Dec. 28, 1993, a very long time of not seeing eye to eye (at all) with Dad.

Verbose at the outset, but only one parenthesis, a personal record--sorry.

Tom link

10/27/2011 12:44:24 pm

Regarding the above, I lived in Amherst, MA, Emily's hometown, for a couple of years in the mid 80s and must have walked by her house (it's only a few blocks from the town green) and looked up at her window dozens of times. I never went in and I don't know why.

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Tao Te Wednesday

Laura Novak

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