(Confucius 551-479 BCE; Siddhartha/the Buddha 563-493 BCE; Pythagoras 570-495 BCE; Cyrus the Great 600-530 BCE)
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Departing on an ox with the Tao Te Ching in hand
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Those who know, do not speak; those who speak, do not know.
Be still like a mountain and flow like a river.
The best way to live is to be like water.
The softest things of the world overcome the hardest things of the world.
Less and less do you need to force things, until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
When two opponents meet, the one without an enemy will surely triumph.
Even a 1,000 mile journey starts with a single step.
Tao (Dao)
Yin Yang
Wu Wei
Ch'i
Te (De) and the Three Jewels
all embedded within the Tao Te Ching - "way-path/reality" "virtue/power" "text/means" - "the book of the way to virtue" - of some 5,000 characters in 81 chapters
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"Nine Dragons" hand scroll section, by Chen
Rong, 1244 AD, Song
Dynasty, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. |
Chuang Tzu
370 - 287 BCE
The Unfathomable Source of Existence
If there was a beginning, then there was a time before that beginning. And a time before the time which was before the time of that beginning.
If there is existence, there must have been non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, then there must have been a time before that – when even nothing did not exist.
Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or of non-existence?
Even the very words I have just now uttered, – I cannot say whether they have really been uttered or not.
The Butterfly