By practicing in the present moment and training myself to stay in a state of simplicity, I’ve made my 90-minute yoga class a snap. I’ve achieved what I consider to be greatness in the little progressions and improvements that have evolved naturally. It’s work without doing, and nonaction in action because I’ve confronted what might have been thought of as tough. The result is that I don’t experience difficulty.
Lao-tzu urges you to change the way you look at your 21st-century world by doing the following:
Look for the simplicity in what you call complicated by seeing that in this moment, it’s not hard.
Change your preoccupation with tomorrow, along with all of the tomorrows that comprise your future. My friend Byron Katie (whose husband, Stephen Mitchell, created a wonderful translation 63rd Verse of the Tao Te Ching that I’ve incorporated in this book) gave me my favorite definition of insanity: “To believe that you need what you don’t have is insane.” I’d add, “Believing that you can’t be content and happy now because your future appears to you to be difficult is another form of insanity.”
Look at what you have and realize that you’re obviously fine in this moment! A Course in Miracles states this idea so well: “You have no problems, though you think you have.”
Think small.
Change your notion of “thinking big” to “thinking small and getting big things done.” Examine whatever it is that seems so enormous that it terrifies you to start. Then shift your thinking to see what can be done today in your precious present moments, completely ignoring the overall picture. Your accomplishments will magnify into greatness when you undertake the small; by doing so, you’ll paradoxically see huge results.
Do the Tao Now
Set aside some time today to focus on the biggest challenge in your life. Break down whatever it is to one thing that can be done today, right in this moment. Erase the big picture—simply do what you can now and let everything else fade. Write the opening paragraph of your novel. Lay out your blueprint for the home you want to build. Sign up for one course at a local educational institution. Go for a two-minute run. Be in the now. See how doing the Tao at this moment brings big results by paradoxically staying small and simple.
64th Verse
What is at rest is easily managed.
What is not yet manifest is easy to prevent.
The brittle is easily shattered;
the small is easily scattered.
Act before things exist;
manage them before there is disorder.
Remember:
A tree that fills a man’s embrace grows from a seedling.
A tower nine stories high starts with one brick.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Act and destroy it;
grasp it and lose it.
The sage does not act, and so is not defeated.
He does not grasp and therefore does not lose.
People usually fail when they are on the verge of success.
So give as much care at the end as at the beginning, then there will be no failure.
The sage does not treasure what is difficult to attain.
He does not collect precious things;
he learns not to hold on to ideas.
He helps the 10,000 things find their own nature
but does not venture to lead them by the nose.
Living by
Being Here Now
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is the most famous line of the entire Tao Te Ching. It’s quoted so often because it encourages us to avoid procrastination and just begin from where we are, right here, right now. A tiny seed planted and nurtured grows into a forest; a marathon begins by taking that first stride. In my opinion, the German poet and playwright Johann von Goethe nicely summed up this ancient teaching with these rhyming words:
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated,
begin it, and then the work will be completed.
The essence of the widely known 64th verse of the Tao Te Ching is this: Every goal is possible from here! With the emphasis on from here! This is particularly applicable to problems that seem overwhelming. When you change the way you think about them, your new and unique perspective will cause the enormity of the things before you to diminish.
“The sage does not treasure what is difficult” because he breaks it down into easily managed steps. Rather than taking over and directing others or attempting to do everything himself, the follower of the Tao finds a way to manage problems before they exist, and prior to disorder breaking out. Lao-tzu is encouraging us all to do the same.
Reexamine how you view the challenges you face, as well as those of your family, community, and country. Sense in your heart how easily preventable many of them are when you deal with things before they exist, and when you refuse to be attached to the ideas that are largely responsible for these problems.
There are three steps to enlightenment that most people traverse:
1. The first is through suffering. This is when the big problems of your life become so overwhelming that a long period of misery ensues because you “treasure what is difficult to attain.” Ultimately, you come to a place where you can look back at those huge obstacles —such as illness, accidents, addiction, financial loss, children’s struggles, and divorce—and see in retrospect that they were actually gifts disguised as problems. Yet this is not the way of the Tao; this is not how a sage conducts his life.
2. The second is by being
