April 30th

Openness


Nothing is meant to be.
There is no predestination.

In ancient texts, the idea of predestination is very strong, but the usage of the term is purely metaphorical. People in the past used the word to express feelings of affinity for a place, a time, or for others. But nothing of the future is set.There is no cosmic puppeteer at work. We are solely responsible for our own actions. It is true that we can become mired in circumstances so strong and so far-reaching that they will continue to have ramifications far into the future. For example, if we construct circumstances right, such as starting an organization to help others, then the good will last for a long time. However, if we fall far into debt and do nothing to help ourselves, then the bad will also last a long time. Yet in both cases, our lasting situations are results of our own actions. This is not destiny. It is causality.
Causality is from the past, and nothing is acting from the future. There is no script, no pattern to walk into. Everything has to be created, and we are the artists.
Those who follow Tao endeavor to have as few restrictions placed upon them as possible. By completing each action, they minimize causality. By living fully in the present, they absorb the best of what each day has to offer. By understanding that there is no literal destiny, fate, or predestination, they keep the future as free and open as possible. That is truly the openness of life.

Personal Interpretation


Openness is of the utmost importance to those who follow Tao. Adherents do not believe in the concept of fate. Predestination may have a place in fatalist religions, but it does not have a place in a philosophy that seeks to transcend the notion of there being a divine plan. Our actions may echo in the future, but this does not mean that we were predetermined to act in a given way. It only means that our action was one with great consequences. Sometimes the choices we make can impact our lives for a long time. If we make an effort to get a solid education, we are more likely to find gainful employment, provide for our needs, improve our standard of living, and afford to pursue dreams that may require money to fulfill. If, on the other hand, we put off paying our bills, the debt that results can also cripple us for a long time. We don't reap rewards or suffer because some vengeful or benevolent god wished it so. It is our own efforts that create our lives. To some extent, we create our circumstances. There will always be some aspects of them that are beyond our control, but we also have the ability to change them, and we get to decide the extent to which they affect our lives.

It cannot be denied-there is a kind of comfort in removing our own free will from the equation. We are no longer obligated to make wise decisions if everything has already been determined. We are like children following the routine that has been set for us. While Taoism asks us to be like children in our acceptance of the Universe and ourselves, it also asks us to achieve a certain maturity level, the maturity level that is necessary to make decisions that impact not only our own lives, but which may have ramifications for the world at large. It is a big responsibility, but it is one which we must all come to assume.

April 29th

Resources


Use a mirror in difficult times:
You will see both cause and resolution.

When faced with adversity, you must ask whether you have done anything to bring misfortune upon yourself. If the present difficulties are the unforeseen outcome of events that you yourself set in motion, then it is necessary both to learn from your mistakes and to search for any possible way to correct it. If the difficulties are due to character flaws, then the situation should be resolved, and the basic fault must afterwards be eradicated.The wonderful part of all this is that the resources for resolving our problems are also within us. When we watch athletes in competition and they outperform even their own high standards, we often say that they reached deep down and were able to give something extraordinary. When we are in the midst of our own confrontations, we must be the same way. We need to reach deep within and use the utmost of our abilities to overcome our obstacles. This is one manifestation of our continuing efforts at self-development.
When confronted with problems, we have all the more power to respond. When we triumph, we have even more confidence and facility to handle future problems. Therefore, meet life head-on. Maintain your self-cultivation, move forth to confront difficulties, and accumulate the momentum that success will give you.

Personal Interpretation


The resources that we need to resolve conflict are often to be found within ourselves. It has been said that the keenest sorrow is to recognize that oneself is the source of all adversity, and yet, one is also the source of all resolution. When misfortune strikes, we must seek to ascertain our role in events. Have we done something to bring trouble upon us? Have we made a bad situation worse? Do we seem to get ourselves in similar situations time and time again? Character flaws can be corrected. This is not an easy task, but, as with anything else, bad habits can be excised. Good habits can fill their place. Once we have practiced a positive behavior instead of a negative one enough times it will take the latter's place. We must talk kindly to ourselves but also know when to be forceful. Let us all try to learn from our mistakes and move forward.

And in those situations where there really was nothing we could have done, let us look to our response to misfortune. Let us learn to bear the burden with humility. Perhaps it can also do us good to recognize the people and circumstances that define our lives. Are they conducive to growth or likely to lead to distress? We all face hardship, but there are usually things we can do to ride it out, correct it, or insure that it doesn't have such power over us in the future. Even as we despair, we can learn. And that makes the next lesson easier to bear.

April 28th

Guidance

Worship with your conscience,
Receive grace with humility.
Guide with awareness,
Lead with modesty.

The altar is a tool. If we kneel before it and say we have done wrong, we are really telling that to ourselves. If we give thanks for our good fortune, we are expressing our modest appreciation for good luck. There is no outside force listening to us. There is no divine retribution for our wickedness. The altar is merely symbolic. Those who follow Tao use it to focus their self-awareness.When we step away from the altar, we should not lose self-awareness. We should not take the fact that worship is symbolic to behave in immoral ways. Instead, we still have to act with a conscience and lead others without manipulating them or taking advantage of them.
It takes maturity to grasp that there are no gods and yet still behave as if there were. It takes insight to know that you must be your own disciplinarian. Only the wisest can lay down their own "divine laws" and find guidance as if they were truly heaven's word.

Personal Interpretation


Altars, prayer, and other artifacts and acts of supplication are tools, nothing more. The real trick is to live as if there were gods, to direct our conduct so that it reflects some higher wisdom. The ability to proceed in this fashion comes with spiritual maturity. We must learn to find ourselves when we are lost, comfort ourselves when we feel that the world has forsaken us, and guide ourselves when the path forward is anything but clear. When we are capable of doing these things, we will truly know what it means to live in the presence of Tao.

April 27th

Attraction


Peacock iridescence in veridical shadows,
Violet blooms spread to noonday sun.
The world's beauty is a swirl of color,
But in the flower's center is bright stillness.

This world is movement. Its nature is constant change, infinite variation. Without infinite variation, there would be stasis, for we would reach limits. But all limits are actually arbitrary. Life is one endless equation of darkness, brilliance, color, sound, fragrance, and sensation.The peacock attracts his mate through his plumage; the flower attracts the bee with its color and fragrance. Beauty is moved to madness, is urged toward more beauty, is lost in the dance of seduction. We hover around the petals of the flower, drunk in the thrill of color. Enthralled with the fragrance of some haunting perfume, we are moved to act, to touch, to fill our shallow vessels with the fullness of promised joy.
Yet in the center of the flower, all is stillness. When the dance of beauty is finished, culmination is at hand. In life, attractions are endless. We should do no more than we need to satisfy ourselves. To plunge further is foolhardy. We must remember to withdraw and look within. Lingering on the outside of our souls, there is shimmering beauty and fantastic movement. It is only when we go to the center of our souls that we are in the eye of the storm, the still-point of existence. Then all is brightness, energy condensed, unbearably strong and powerful, yet absorbed in supreme quietude.

Personal Interpretation

This world is filled with a million distractions. Beauty takes many forms-the setting sun, a particularly vivid flower, the buzz of life that so often fills the springtime air. And these marvels are mostly distractions. They thrill our senses. Their bright intensity speaks to the passionate. This kind of blinding beauty can deceive us, and, indeed,  can even lead us into madness. We can become encumbered more easily than we might like to admit. At the center of the flower all is quiet. And there is a beauty in that quietude too. We should seek it out when the world becomes too much for us.

April 26th

Fulfillment


Accomplish your visions.
Persevere in your ambitions.
Only then can you negate
Visions and ambitions.

Some say that one should not have ambitions; they equate these with greed and lust. However, some ambitions are the result of curiosity and inner desire. They are individual interests, like wanting to know about a certain subject or wanting to achieve goals. As long as they do no harm to others, they should be exercised rather than suppressed.Many young people are held back by their peers and their elders. Sometimes there are valid reasons, but usually the motivations of the others are colored by fear, ignorance, jealousy, or inadequacy. No one should hold you back from achieving your life's goals.
Whatever you want to do, do it to the fullest. There are just a few provisions. First, you must realize that nothing is forever. You may achieve your goals only to find out that they are no longer important to you. This is all right. That means you have come to the end of your interest and are now free to go on to something else. Secondly, your ambitions should not determine your life. You are a human being first, and your goals are merely adjuncts to your basic quest as a person. Finally, you should realize that the fulfillment of your goals should include the eradication of all fears. Once you have accomplished these things, you will truly have nothing standing between you and spiritual realization.

Personal Interpretation


Ambition is not to be feared. We must have goals in life and must work toward fulfilling them. Nothing lasts forever however, and we should not be surprised to sometimes find that the realization of our visions fails to bring us the satisfaction we anticipated feeling. There is often more satisfaction in the fulfillment of our goals than in reaching them. If we feel that the things we worked for have ceased to matter to us, we should not feel that our time or resources have been wasted. Rather, we should see our efforts as a necessary bend in the path and feel free to move on to other things. We are human beings first and our goals should be secondary to a realization of our innermost nature.  Every experience in this lifetime, every success and failure, leads us to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our universe, and this is our primary purpose in this lifetime.

April 25th

Dominance


Sun shines in the center of the sky.
All things turn their faces toward the light.

All things in this life depend on direction. In our world, all is oriented toward the sun : The planets revolve around it, the seasons depend upon it, and our very concept of night and day is tied to the sun's rising and setting. The sun is the dominant element in our lives.In all other areas of our actions, we cannot avoid making arrangements that have a center or orientation. Our lives require composition, just as the solar system has a relationship and structure. Yet all structure and orientation is essentially arbitrary. We take the sun as the center of our world because of our vantage point. To someone standing in another galaxy, our sun is nothing more than another point in limitless space. There is no absolute standard by which to truly call something the center. Therefore, all arrangements and all compositions, all determinations of a dominant element are relative, subjective, and provisional.
There is no center except for that in our own consciousness. When we look at the sun and the arrangement of the planets, we must also include ourselves as observers. How else is there the determination of what is being seen? Consciousness is part of the phenomenon. We are the center, and there is no absolute measure.

Personal Interpretation


The sun dominates our lives because of our orientation. If we looked upon it from a remote galaxy, it would be no more than a pinprick of light in the sky and would have no effect on our lives. We can know no absolute truth. Our experience of reality is subjective. This notion may confuse the adherent who has been told to find the center. Can one exist if perspective determines all that is? Indeed, we should try to be centered in ourselves. The only true center for us is in our own consciousness.

April 24th

Faith


In spite of knowing,
Yet still believing.
Though no god above,
Yet god within.

There is no god in the sense of a cosmic father or mother who will provide all things to their children. Nor is there some heavenly bureaucracy to petition. These models are not descriptions of a divine order, but are projections from archetypal templates. If we believe in the divine as cosmic family, we relegate ourselves to perpetual adolescence. If we regard the divine as supreme government; we are forever victims of unfathomable officialdom.Yet it does not work for us to totally abandon faith. It does not follow that we can forego all belief in higher beings. We need faith, not because there are beings who will punish us or reward us, but because gods are wonderful ways of describing things that happen to us. They embody the highest aspects of human aspiration. Gods on the altars are essential metaphors for the human spiritual experience.
Faith shouldn't be shaken because bad things happen to us or because our loved ones are killed. Good and bad fortune are not in the hands of gods, so it is useless to blame them. Neither does faith need to be confirmed by some objective occurrence. Faith is self-affirming. If we maintain faith, then we have its reward. If we become better people, then our faith has results. It is we who create faith, and it is through our efforts that faith is validated.

Personal Interpretation


Our faith in the divine is an attempt to validate our human experiences. It originates with us. This is not to say that we should refrain from having faith. Indeed, it is important to believe in something larger than ourselves, important to strive to be more at every turn. We should concern ourselves less with notions of punishment and reward and more with the growth and affirmation of the self. If our faith can help us to lead better, more fulfilling lives, then it has not been in vain. It has served an invaluable purpose.