Be an active listener.
Rather than attempting to control others by speaking frequently and loudly, allow yourself to become an active listener. Many of the answers you seek (and the results you expect) from others will surface if you can remember not to speak or even ask. Try living in accord with nature, which listening—rather than pushing, striving, or demanding—will help you do.
Do the Tao Now
I decided to go for a one-hour nonaction walk today after rereading this 73rd verse, to simply observe how everything under the net of heaven is working perfectly. I noticed the silent sun nourishing the land and providing light for us all. I stepped back and watched bees flitting back and forth between flowers, and stood there amazed by the invisible life force growing green bananas in a clump at the top of a tree. In all, I was just an observer of the Divine, invisible, silent, effortless Tao at work—realizing that while it’s in no hurry, it’s still getting everything done on time. Those green bananas will ripen in due course; but today I just loved the energy that creates, nourishes, and prepares them to appear for my breakfast someday!
Today I urge you to take a similar nonaction walk for an hour, and note how nothing slips through the net of heaven.
74th Verse
If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you are not afraid of dying,
there is nothing you cannot achieve.
There is always a lord of death.
He who takes the place of the lord of death
is like one who cuts with the blade
of a master carpenter.
Whoever cuts with the blade of a master carpenter is sure to cut his own hands.
Living with
No Fear of Death
What happens when we die? Is death the vehicle that returns us to our Source of being, or does it signify the end of consciousness and all of life? One thing is absolutely certain: This subject is an absolute mystery to us. Some Tao scholars have referred to death as a place of oneness wherein time, space, and all of the 10,000 things cease to have meaning. Thus, what dies is our human identity. There’s still someone underneath the external layers, though, so when you know and understand who that formless someone is, your fear of dying will evaporate. You can live on the active side of infinity by knowing your infinite Tao nature, which probably means that you’ll alter the way you think about birth, life, and death.
Move from wanting to see permanence in your life to realizing that all things change due to the nature of this being an ever-modifying world. There’s nothing external to hold on to; after all, the moment you think you have it, it becomes something else. This is as true for your earthly packaging as it is for your worldly treasures. Whether you realize it or not, the body you were in when you began reading this essay is different now, and it will become different again the moment you attempt to make it remain the same. This is the nature of our reality. If you can get comfortable with it, you’ll reduce—and ultimately eliminate—your anxiety regarding mortality. As Lao-tzu promises: “If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”
Your Tao essence has to be infinite because it came from a world of infinite possibilities. You’re not a thing that’s solid and permanent; in fact, there’s nothing like that in the world you incarnated into! You are real, and what’s real never changes. Yet your real self isn’t in this world, but is the part of you that is the Tao. When you live in harmony with the infinite Tao, death is irrelevant—so know your highest self and understand that there’s nothing you can’t achieve.
The second part of this verse deals with killing, or taking another being’s life. Lao-tzu is quite specific here, saying, “There is always a lord of death.” At the moment of your coming into the world, everything you needed for this journey was handled by the lord of life and death. Just as your birth was Tao energy, your body type, skin color, eyes, ears, and every other physical aspect of you are expressions of the Tao. This includes your death, which has been choreographed, determined, and allowed to unfold in Divine timing. In other words, killing isn’t your job, not ever—not of another person or any other being. Since death is as much a part of the Tao as life, it must be allowed to be in accord with nature, not performed as an ego decision.
I learned this lesson years ago while changing court sides in the middle of a tennis match in which I’d been playing at an exceptionally high level. While taking a drink of water, I noticed a bee lying upside down, apparently in the final throes of its short life. I assumed that it was suffering, so I stepped on it to avoid prolonging its agony. As I began to play again, I couldn’t get that bee out of my mind: Did I do the right thing? Who am I to decide this little creature’s fate? Who am I to become an executioner, even to such a seemingly insignificant creature as a tiny insect? And everything on the tennis court began to take on a different energy from that moment on.
Previously my shots had been landing on the lines, and presently they were out by inches.
