You ask me why I make my home in the mountain forest, and I smile, and am silent, and even my soul remains quiet: it lives in the other world which no one owns. The peach trees blossom. The water flows. –Li Po (The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry edited by Stephen Mitchell, […]
Overflowing Compassion
The wide pond expands as a mirror, The heavenly light and cloud shadows play upon it. How does such clarity occur? It is because it contains the living stream from the Fountain. –Chu Hsi (Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art and Poetry by Chuan-Yuan Chang, p.209) The Tao can be symbolized as […]
The Taoist Writer: Useless Words
Words appear useless. You can’t eat them. But wait! Yes, you can. Thus, words are paradoxical. Words arranged sacredly can feed your soul. They are soul-food. But wait a minute! Soul is just a hypothesis. A soul can’t be seen or measured. Only the rational materialistic worldview is sacred. Therefore, according to the present worldview […]
The Taoist Writer: Merge with Dust
Simplicity “The Tao brings no more important lesson to writing than the benefit of simplicity. Verse 48 of the Tao Te Ching tells us: ‘To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.’ Inexperienced writers typically try to emulate the worst kinds of writing, what they may imagine to be […]