Empty your mind…

Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
But contemplate their return.

Each separate being in the universe
Returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.

If you don’t realize the source,
You stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
You naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused, kindhearted as a Grandmother, dignified as a king.
Immersed in wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you, and when death comes, you are ready.

Lao Tzu

The Healing Abilities of Trees

Taoist Masters observed that trees are tremendously powerful plants. Not only can they absorb carbon dioxide and transform it into oxygen, but they can also absorb negative forces and transform them into good energy. Trees strongly root with the Earth, and the more rooted the tree, the higher it can extend to Heaven. Trees stand very still, absorbing the Earth’s Energy and the Universal Force from the Heavens.

Trees and all plants have the ability to absorb the light of the energies and transform it into food; in fact, they depend on light for most of their nourishment, while water and earth minerals make up about 30% of their nutritional intake. Trees are able to live very long lives.

Trees are the largest and most spiritually advanced plants on earth. They are constantly in meditation, and subtle energy is their natural language. As your understanding of this language grows, you can begin to develop a relationship with them. They can help you open your energy channels and cultivate calm, presence, and vitality. You can reciprocate by helping them with their own blockages and devitalized areas. It is a mutually beneficial relationship that needs cultivation.

Who knows?

The Master helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

Lao Tzu

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Li Po

Born from nothing

Returning is Tao’s move.

Being weak is Tao’s means.

Everything under the sky is born from you.

You are born from nothing.

Bloom

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

A life-time is not what’s between…

A life-time is not what’s between,
The moments of birth and death.
A life-time is one moment,
Between my two little breaths.

Chade Meng

He’s free

Take someone who doesn’t keep score,
who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
is his own personality: he’s free.

Rumi

Disgrace doesn’t exist

You regard favour as something good.

Let’s decode this.

It means:

You judge favour as something good.

But good and bad don’t exist in the world of Tao.

Judgement is one of the least wanted things in Taoism.

Simply, you don’t need it.

Be like a baby.

A baby doesn’t judge.

If you don’t judge, “disgrace” doesn’t exist.

Go-in

When turmoil rules, go in.

— Laozi