Tao te ching stephen mitchell quotes8/12/2023 ![]() ![]() TS’AO TAO-CH’UNG says, “The reason people know this but don’t put this into practice is that they love strength and hate weakness.” ![]() Nothing in the world can alter this thing we call water.”ĬHU TI’HUANG says, “We can alter the course and shape of water, but we can’t alter its basic nature to descend, by means of which it overcomes the hardest and strongest things.” HSI T’UNG says, “You can hit it, but you can’t hurt it. LI HUNG-FU says, “The soft and the weak do not expect to overcome the hard and the strong. Yet despite such weakness it can bore through rocks. HSUAN-TSUNG says, “The nature of water is to stay low, to not struggle, and to take on the shape of its container. “Nothing in the world is weaker than water Let’s look, once again, at Red Pine’s translation of today’s verse, and its commentaries. And, how Lao Tzu’s teachings line up so well with our modern understanding of how the universe works.īut, Lao Tzu saw a lot more to water, something physics can only point to. I only wanted to point out how very different water truly is. I won’t bore you with further physics lessons today. The significance of this is, if water behaved like just about every other substance, life on Earth simply wouldn’t be possible. But, get this, just about every other substance is less dense in its liquid state than in its solid state. For instance, water, in its liquid state, is more dense than in its solid state. One thing we were recently learning about is how very different water is from just about any other thing. Indeed, one on one tutoring can be very helpful. But, she immediately began to show improvement, and she got solid B’s on her last two physics tests. When she first started working with me, she was getting a very low D in her physics class. I have been relearning a lot of physics, the last several weeks, as I have been tutoring a 15 year old girl in physics. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.” It truly is like nothing else in our world. “Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Water is Lao Tzu’s go to metaphor when nothing else will quite do. (Tao Te Ching, chapter 78, translation by Stephen Mitchell) Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, ![]()
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