The Tao is in all things, in their divisions and their fullness. What I dislike about divisions is that they multiply, and what i dislike about multiplication is that it makes people want to hold fast to it. So people go out and forget to return, seeing little more than ghosts.
Let your mind wander in simplicity, blend your spirit with the vastness, follow along with things the way they are, and make no room for personal views-then the world will be governed.
When I talk about having good hearing, I don’t mean just listening, but listening to yourself. When I talk about good eyesight, I don’t mean just looking, but looking at yourself.
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature.
Only the intelligent knows how to identify all things as one. When one is at ease with himself, one is near Tao. This is to let Nature take its own course.
All men know the use of the useful, but nobody knows the use of the useless. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so that I can have a word with him?
The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point-the time before anything existed. This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it.
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only ‘certain’ standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
