Lao Tzu: "We Are a River"

Our life has not been an ascent
up one side of a mountain and down the other.
We did not reach a peak,
only to decline and die.
We have been as drops of water,
born in the ocean and sprinkled on the earth
in a gentle rain.
We became a spring,
and then a stream,
and finally a river flowing deeper and stronger,
nourishing all it touches
as it nears its home once again.

                                      *

Don't accept the modern myths of aging.
You are not declining.
You are not fading away into uselessness.
You are a sage,
a river at its deepest
and most nourishing.
Sit by a river bank some time
and watch attentively as the river
tells you of your life.

"We Are a River," from The Sage's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life, William Martin's free-verse interpretation of the classic work by Lao Tzu (The Experiment, 2010).

Art credit: Untitled photograph from Autumn River, a series by Philip Brittan in which he "submerges himself and his camera in the currents of Bristol’s River Frome, capturing the movements of fallen leaves." See more of his remarkable series here. 

Lao Tzu: "The uses of not" (Book One, Chapter 11)

Thirty spokes
meet in the hub.
Where the wheel isn't
is where it's useful.

Hollowed out,
clay makes a pot.
Where the pot's not
is where it's useful.

Cut doors and windows
to make a room.
Where the room isn't,
there's room for you.

So the profit in what is
is in the use of what isn't.



"The uses of not" (Book One, Chapter 11) by Lao Tzu, from Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, translated from the original Chinese by Ursula K. Le Guin (Shambhala Publications, 1998 edition). Visit this link for the Chinese and a wide variety of English translations.

Translator's note: "One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He's explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counter-intuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots." 

Art credit: "Empty vessel," photograph taken on July 24, 2011, in Hyderabad, Telengana, India, by swarat_ghosh.

 

Lao Tzu: "47" ["There is no need to run outside"]

There is no need to run outside
For better seeing,

Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide
At the center of your being;

For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Search your heart and see
If he is wise who takes each turn:
The way to do is to be.

"47" ["There is no need to run outside"] by Lao Tzu, from The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu, An American Version, translated from the Chinese by Witter Bynner. © Perigree, 2006.  

Photography credit: Detail from "White Dahlia," one in a series by Carolyn Parker (originally color).