“To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering.”

When we give up our images of self-importance and our ideas of what should be, we can help things become what they need to be.

Modern man’s difficulties, dangerous beliefs and feelings of loneliness, spiritual emptiness,and personal weakness are caused by his illusions about, and separation from, the natural world.

It is very hard to be brave,” said Piglet, sniffing slightly, “when you’re only a Very Small Animal.” Rabbit, who had begun to write very busily, looked up and said: “It is because you are a very small animal that you will be Useful in the adventure before us.

When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.

Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, ‘This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,’ and trying harder to make it happen some other way.

In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between superior and inferior to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity.

Cleverness, after all, has its limitations. Its mechanical judgments and clever remarks tend to prove inaccurate with passing time, because it doesn’t look very deeply into things to begin with.

Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they’re part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They’re not only the ending, but the beginning as well.

Lots of people talk to animals… Not very many listen, though… That’s the problem.

Well, it takes all kinds to make a mess.

The masters of life know the way, for they listen to the voice within them, the voice of wisdom and simplicity, the voice that reasons beyond cleverness and knows beyond knowledge.

Phonographic. It goes around and around. Sometimes it gets stuck. That’s why I remember things so well.

Like silence after noise, or cool, clear water on a hot, stuffy day, Emptiness cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy. Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness.

We simply need to believe in the power that’s within us, and use it.

There is more to knowing than just being correct

Through working in harmony with life’s circumstances, Taoist understanding changes what others may percieve as negative into something positive.