I have been reading 365 Tao. A book of daily meditations. It is another book that inspires me, wakes me up from the daily habits and reminds me of that something other. I could extract several pages from this book but here’s one. After reading this page our world seems so complex and cluttered. No?
“Animals live simple lives close to the Tao. They do not need to think or reason. They never doubt themselves. When they are hungry, they eat. When they are tired, they sleep. They respond to the cycles of the day according to their intuition. They mate at the proper season, and they nuture their young according to their own understanding. When they die, they fall under they teeth of predators or the dispassionate turning of the seasons.
By contrast, we as human being s depart from the natural norm, and worry about ethical action. Extremes of behaviour have become more varied, running the gamut from the sadistic to the moralistic. Tao considers all this artificial and unnatural. Why divorce ourselves from Nature?
The follower of the Tao prefers to live completely in concert with Tao, avoiding any interference of theory and excessive thought. Though one must learn skill and ethics thoroughly, one must come to embody them so completely that they become subconscious. Reacting to a situation by asking what is right and wrong is already too slow. One must intuitively do what is correct. There should be no foreshadowing of an act, nor doubt about oneself.”
