Tao Te Ching 22 (Teaching 1)

If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
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As mentioned in the introduction on September 1, the Tao Te Ching is filled with paradox, but that apparent contradiction is filled with wisdom. In it we learn that all dualistic concepts, and we employ hundreds if not thousands of them, contain their opposing sides.

If you accept one side, you get the other side. If you seek one side, you will find it in or through the other side. If you reject one side, then you reject the other side. If you want to avoid one side, then you must avoid the other side.

Jesus said, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Wisdom, it seems, tends to be ironic.

Much of our suffering in life comes in the tossing and turning from one conceptual side to the other. That which makes us happy has the equal capacity to make us sad. Whatever has the ability to lift us up also has the ability to bring us down. We’re told at an early age that we must accept the good with the bad in life. That’s true, but only if we insist on thinking in terms of good and bad.

We have one other choice, and that is, paradoxically, to make no choice – to move beyond dualistic thinking and to realize that reality is not conceptual. Reality is what it is, here and now. Once we stop slapping our beloved “either / or” and “this / that” labels on people, places and things, then the reality of those people, places and things reveals itself.

If we want to be full of real life, then the Tao invites us to empty ourselves of our conceptual life.