Musings of the Dao De Jing

There is a timelessness of the Dao De Jing. Its philosophies can be applied today as easily as the era in which it was written.

Be child-like in expecting goodness. Innocent, like a beginner. Be like water in the way water benefits all. Stay present. Be in harmony with nature. Seek answers from within. Want little. Be selfless.

This describes a mindfulness practice and way of looking at the world with no baggage to cloud your vision. Seek to enhance the lives around you and your surroundings. Be selfless and do not expect anything in return and lead a life of service. I feel like I’ve heard this in other places.

By keeping a beginner’s mindset you keep yourself open to learning and absorbing new information about the people and world around you. When you do things to benefit those around you you increase their joy and this radiates to others, impacting all. Being present decreases feelings of stress and anxiety, and illness inevitably derived from the experience. It allows you to absorb and enjoy where you are and increases feelings of wellbeing. Being in harmony with nature and surroundings and not trying to control and direct them creates an ease with which to live. After all, dams break, structures crumble, weather changes, and the Earth quakes. If you live with what is, you have less to manage.

Seek answers from within. We innately know right from wrong. Life isn’t all that complicated until we make it so. Getting quiet and meditating on a question often brings us a satisfactory answer. I’ve always known this to be so. Whether asking your higher self, or channeling guides, the information flows.

Want less, give more.

I used to have a bumper sticker that said, “Want what you have and give what you need.” We currently live in a society that depends on you wanting the newer and bigger object. So many years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. It described a missionary family who left America to live in the African Congo. They left their comfortable life to live in a mud house with a dirt floor and no electricity. Each family member brought things that were useless in the environment that they thought they couldn’t live without, like hair dryers and cake mixes. The last chapter of the book involves one daughter bringing her African-raised children to a grocery store in the US and addressing their puzzlement upon seeing all of the hair products. When asked, What is all of this?” She replied, “Many varieties of things nobody needs.”

What are the things you keep? Do they sustain you? Are they useful or do they just take up space.

I once gave away 90% of what I owned and it felt freeing. Sometimes I think about doing it again.

Be selfless… Yes. The world doesn’t revolve around me. How can I help you? In helping and giving I receive joy. Selflessness is also the ability to detach from needing.

I saw a phrase that said something like I’ll water you and you can water me. We are symbiotic and depend on each other to live. Somehow we’ve forgotten that.