An Eye-Opening Pearl From The Tao Te Ching
It’s about how to ‘get it all.’
I just checked how many articles I’ve written about the Tao te Ching. Nine. I’d thought I’d written many more than that.
Why? Because the Tao is my favorite book of wisdom.
Legend has it that the Tao was written in the 6th century BC by Lao Tzu, a scholar who worked for the royal court in the Zhou Dynasty. After growing disillusioned by the decline in morality he’d witnessed, Lao Tzu chose to embark on a life as a hermit.
Lao Tzu writes it down, then disappears
When he reached the edge of the kingdom, a guard, Yinxi, recognized him and requested that Lao Tzu write down the wisdom he had accumulated. The result was the Tao Te Ching. Lao Tzu left the text with Yinxi and was never seen again.
One of my favorite of the many beautiful teachings of the Tao appears in Chapter 22:
“If you want to be given everything, give everything up.”
There are two halves to this profound passage. One is about what we need to do, and the other is about what happens when we do that.
Let’s start with what Lao Tzu suggests we do — ‘give everything up.’ What does he mean by that?
