Do the Tao Now
Find or make a picture of a heart, and spend time today contemplating it as a reminder of the Tao effortlessly at work within your chest cavity. At some point during the day, allow yourself to be guided by the Tao to do something creative that comes from within, such as painting, writing a poem, taking a walk in the park, beginning a personal project, or anything at all. Just let yourself be guided without having to venture forth in any way. Then bring this magic of the Tao more frequently into all aspects of your life.
48th Verse
Learning consists of daily accumulating.
The practice of the Tao consists of daily diminishing; decreasing and decreasing, until doing nothing.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.
True mastery can be gained
by letting things go their own way.
It cannot be gained by interfering.
Living by Decreasing
We live in a society that seems to say, “The more you amass, the more value you possess as a human being.” Here, in the 48th verse of the Tao Te Ching, you’re asked to change the way you look at this notion. Rather than validating yourself by acquiring more, you can reverse this embedded idea of increasing as the criteria for mastering life. The benefit of living by decreasing is seeing your world in a different light—one in which, believe it or not, you’ll experience a greater sense of completeness.
Throughout the years of your formal schooling, you were encouraged to accumulate more of everything being made available to you: more mathematical formulas; rules of grammar; knowledge of ancient and modern history; information about the human body, the inner and outer galaxies, religion, chemical compounds, and so forth—on and on. You amassed a series of transcripts, diplomas, and degrees that summarized your voyage of collecting, gathering, and hoarding evidence of your learning. Lao-tzu suggests reexamining this legacy, for then you can base your level of success on something that appears to be the exact opposite of what you’ve pursued so far.
The Tao asks you to release the external indicators and symbols of your educational status. While learning is about accumulating information and knowledge, the Tao is about wisdom, which involves letting go of information and knowledge and living in harmony with your Source. In order to enliven your experience of the Tao and live by its principles, you’re being asked to practice decreasing your reliance upon things.
As I’ve already mentioned in these pages, everything that you add to your life brings with it an element of imprisonment: Your stuff requires you to insure it and protect it from potential thieves or natural disasters; furthermore, you need to polish, paint, clean, store, and pack it, as well as move it from place to place. There’s infinite wisdom in the ideas that Lao-tzu outlines in this verse of the Tao Te Ching, especially in his view that true mastery can only be gained by freeing yourself of attachments to things and, in fact, downsizing what you already have.
When you seriously think about this idea and change the way you look at accumulation, you’ll realize that you can never truly own anything. Native Americans once had no term for owning land; today, the modern individual’s purchase of a piece of property involves an endless cascade of legal maneuvers including title searches, liens, attorney fees, mortgages, tax stamps, and so on. We’ve created gargantuan hurdles for the purchase and ownership of a piece of land that we only really occupy temporarily. Lao-tzu urges you to think of yourself as a guest here, rather than a proprietor. Cease interfering with the natural world by doing as much as you can to decrease your impact on the environment. That is, live in harmony with the no-thing-ness state from which you emerged and to which you are destined to ultimately return.
Lao-tzu says that you must think about your lifetime, your “parentheses in eternity,” as an opportunity to be in harmony with the always-decreasing Tao by putting into practice these suggestions:
See the value in subtraction, or “daily diminishing.”
Begin to consciously decrease your need to purchase more things. Keep in mind that the advertising world is designed to convince you that your happiness is tied to whatever it’s promoting—so instead of buying more, see how many of your accumulated possessions you can recirculate. I guarantee that you’ll notice a refreshing feeling of freedom as your desire diminishes and you let go of your obsession with the material objects you’ve amassed. As Lao-tzu might say, you came here with no-thing and you leave with no-thing, so take great pleasure in all that has arrived in your life. There’s even greater pleasure to be had in knowing that your ability to live peacefully and happily isn’t dependent on how much stuff you add to your life. Living by decreasing is the way of the Tao.
Practice seeing joy in the natural world, rather than seeking fulfillment in ownership.
See the folly of ownership in a universe that’s eternally composing and decomposing . . . just like you are. In essence, Lao-tzu is saying that what’s real never changes because it has no form. So the more you can let things unfold naturally, the more harmoniously you’re living the Tao. Enjoy the flowers, clouds, sunsets, storms, stars, mountains, and all the people you encounter. Be with the world, in it and adoring it, but not needing to possess it. This is the way of peace. This is the way of the Tao.
For more than 500 years, Kabir has been one of India’s revered poets. One
