ed

the Master concerns himself

with the depths and not the surface,

with the fruit and not the flower.

He has no will of his own.

He dwells in reality,

and lets all illusions go.

He went outside and looked at the sky. It was raining stars. He was sorry, because he would rather have seen a tranquil sky. He heard roosters crowing. He felt the mantle of night covering the earth. The earth, "this vale of tears."

Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously

While falling prices might seem desirable to consumers, economists generally agree deflation is bad. Economywide price erosion typically comes with lackluster corporate investment, wage cuts and a mood of pessimism. No one celebrated when consumer prices fell more than 25% in the U.S. between 1930 and 1933, the outbreak of the Great Depression.

He who has conquered weakness, and has put away all selfish thoughts, belongs neither to oppressor nor oppressed. He is free.

There’s a phrase in Chinese, “wu wei,” that describes how I felt. In English, its translation is “non-doing,” but not in the sense of doing nothing. Non-doing is not about escaping anything or being lazy but instead refers to a deep level of connectedness with the world. The Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote about this more than 2,500 years ago in

without intentionality. It’s a fake flow state: time passes quickly and the world fades away

the cultivation of joy as a form of sustenance and a means of rebellion.