Sublime

TE-CH’ING says, “To know what truly endures is to know that Heaven and Earth share the same root, that the ten thousand things share one body, and that there is no difference between self and others. Those who cultivate this within themselves become sages, while those who practice this in the world become rulers. Rulers become rulers by following

The word “right” does not mean right according to some perfect model or set of rules. Rather, it means without the distortion brought about by the craving to be separate. Right mindfulness and right concentration, for example, establish a steady and clear mind, which is the foundation for an ethical and spiritual life.

he introduced the Middle Way, a balanced approach that avoided the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification.

This is the secret of the Middle Way: you cannot be saved alone because you are not alone. You are not an isolated point on a circle. You are not one extreme point on a spectrum, separate from any of the other points. You are the whole cosmos.

There is beauty, truth, love, and justice that we don’t invent but discover. They were here long before we were born and would still be here if we all went belly-up tomorrow. We further damage the world when we don’t sync our lives to the rhythm of those realities.

To be at one with the Tao, one must practice wu-wei and refrain from forcing anything to happen that does not happen of its own accord. To be at one with the Tao is to accept that we must yield to a power much greater than ourselves. Through this acceptance of the natural flow of life, and by discarding all learned doctrines and knowledge, a person

The middle way describes the middle ground between attachment and aversion, between being and non-being, between form and emptiness, between free will and determinism. The more we delve into the middle way the more deeply we come to rest between the play of opposites.