Tao Te Ching 29

Do you want to improve the world? I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred. It can’t be improved. If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it. If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them. She lets them go their own way, and resides in the center of the circle.
_______________________________________________________

There’s only one thing we can improve – our self. If we want the world to be a better place, then we need to be a better part of the world in terms of our moral and ethical conduct. In so doing, we impact the lives of other people in loving and compassionate ways and that positive energy is then conveyed through those people to other people.

Our well being in life is sustained by living things and making any improvement in “our world” is a matter of improving the well being of the living things that contribute to our life. The world itself is what it is. It has its natural rhythms and processes and the best thing we can do for the world is to avoid tampering with its rhythms and processes.

It’s hard to avoid the indictment that we have treated the world like an inanimate object rather than like a living thing. As a result, we run the risk of losing the world just like we eventually lose every other object in our life.

The Tao Te Ching invites us back to the center of the circle, where we live in harmony with the rhythms of the world, where we have the clarity to see the world as it is. Only in that truly centered position can we see that there is no need, and no benefit, to trying to control the world.