The Tao is not party to your achievements, though you will achieve.  The Tao is not party to your failures, though you will fail.  The Tao has nothing to do with your problems and the worries they feed into, but you will have problems and worry about them.  The Tao is in you and around you, and you are in but also around the Tao, yet its peace and calm move separately from the world in which you are moving and about which you may be fretting. 

The Tao is underlying.  It is a wholly different orientation you may take to your being.  When you meditate you are listening for that other Way in the world.  Should you ever hear it, even for a few moments of meditation, you realize that all else you are doing is a kind of entertaining of the passing hours that life in the body makes you believe in.  The hours are true things because your body is a true thing, encompassed by the Tao.  You must spend them; you must preserve the home.  Yet your good and the value of your life lie elsewhere, in the underlying Tao.

12 July, 2024.