Quotes About Lao-Tzu

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. —LAO-TZU

and there are more things in this world than just your qi and ego. Lao-tzu understood this when he claimed that his three treasures were frugality, compassion, and humility. Avoid fanaticism by following Lao-tzu's example.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

Confucius is like the Torah, rules to follow. And Lao-Tzu is even more conservative, saying that if you do nothing you won't break any rules. You have to let tradition fall sometime, you have to take action, you have to eat bacon.

Do the Tao Now Spend an hour, a day, a week, or a month practicing not giving unsolicited advice. Stop yourself for an instant and call upon your silent knowing. Ask a question, rather than giving advice or citing an example from your life, and then just listen to yourself and the other person. As Lao-tzu would like you to know, that's "the highest state of man.

The original qualities Lao-tzu speaks of are the love, kindness, and beauty that defined your essence before you were formed into a particle and then a human being.

Living by Being I encourage you to change your belief that effort and striving are necessary tools for success. In verse 47, Lao-tzu suggests that these are ways of being that keep you from experiencing the harmony and attaining the completion that's offered by the Tao. Living by being instead of trying is a different viewpoint; as Lao-tzu states, you can see and accomplish more by not looking out the window.

As Lao-tzu taught me many years later, "If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place." I corrected my mind and began to see myself as capable of accomplishing anything I place my attention on, and I learned that sometimes our most profound teachers show up for us wearing unexpected disguises.

Softness triumphs over hardness, gentleness over strength. The flexible is superior over the immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation. LAO-TZU

7. THE KEY TO SUCCESS IS COMPASSION In his new adaptation of the Chinese sacred text Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell offers a provocative take on Lao-tzu's approach to leadership: I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies

In the West we tend to think of compassion as a form of charity, but I share Lao-tzu's view that compassion for all beings—not least of all oneself—is the key to breaking down barriers among people.

In his new adaptation of the Chinese sacred text Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell offers a provocative take on Lao-tzu's approach to leadership: I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are the greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

Heider, whose book is based on Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching, suggests that leaders practice becoming more open. "The wise leader is of service: receptive, yielding, following. The group member's vibration dominates and leads, while the leader follows. But soon it is the member's consciousness which is transformed, the member's vibration which is resolved.

There's an ocean of hermit literature; I began my reading on one shore, with Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching (I recommend the Red Pine translation), and started swimming from there. Excellent explorations of the history and motivations of hermits include Solitude by Anthony Storr, A Pelican in the Wilderness by Isabel Colegate, Hermits by Peter France, and Solitude by Philip Koch.