“Think One, Not What’s Lost”
(Chuang Tzu)
Little Austin who showed his schoolmates that he could do what they thought he could not was a real inspiration. It’s more than courage, it is being enlightened by loss and discrimination.Instead of mourning over what cannot be done, think what can be done at the moment.
“Use of No Use is Great Use.”
(Chuang Tzu)
“The tailor bird builds her nest in deep woods,
she uses no more than one branch.”
Chuang Tzu
“The mole drinks off the river,
it can only fill one belly.”
Chuang Tzu
Live with less,
then you can live with loss.
Wang Shu
Carefree
Take a light walk leisurely in autumn,
looking for what?
Wild winds blow in its own nature
with many wonder words.
Keep your heart carefree
to discover true meaning.
Love beyond material things,
then you’ll know the minimalist’s life.
Wang Shu
Lone Boat
Everyone engages
in social life with passion.
Why not aspire
to seize gallantly
a lone boat,
reflect in leisure,
the deep green waters.
Wang Shu
Red vs Green
If the red hot dusty world
can be less than the greenery,
that is happiness and harmony
for the universe.
But people all love
the red hot habit reaction,
they have become more and more
fanatic in rallying,
shouting “Communist Red”
and “Nationalist Red”.
Why not have fresh breeze
gently blows
and everywhere is luxuriant growth
dyed in vivid green.
Wang Shu
Worldly Status
Luck, whether chill or fervor,
rests in Heaven’s hands.
Wealth is transient and
not worth suffering for.
It does not matter who is poor
and despised in worldly status,
all end in a cup of dust.
Wang Shu
(national artist of Austria, also taught Chinese philosophy in Germany)
Wang Shu is a dear friend who inspired me to embark on the long journey to study Taoist philosophy of Lao Tzu and then Chuang Tzu. Hope his art and poetry will facilitate your appreciation for Chuang Tzu’s teachings.His poems are all in Chinese, some in German.
(To facilitate understanding of the western readers, I have taken liberty to excerpt from the poem“Slimming” and changed the title to “Lone Boat” as well as using “Communist Red”instead of “Orient Red” (a song of Mao’s Red China) and “National Red” instead of “Red all around the ground” (The highly controversial national flag of Republic of China as the National Party is crumbling to pieces with pro-Taiwan- independence in power.”)
Get a free calligraphy of Chuang Tzu’s original words for free easy mind. Write a review for Free Easy Mind at Amazon. (Calligraphy will be mailed after review verification and postal address provided at Contact.) View video on calligraphy meditation of Thich Nhat Hahn and more about the calligrapher.
Transform the Material.
(Chuang Tzu)
Mind as Mirror. Chuang Tzu.
“Use of No Use “
(Chuang Tzu)
In the beginning the ancestral folks used fingers and toes to count, they felt inconvenient after counting to ten. When they counted to nine they felt difficulty was approaching, therefore the shape of the pictogram was crooked and difficult to stretch out. The number of fingers and toes were running out. This was how the pictogram came about. See the fork representing the fingers and hand.
The Chinese character of “Nine” is similar to the somewhat crooked pictogram that evolved from the fork and highly bent hook.
The famous saying of “Nine Deaths One Alive” means nine chances of death and only one chance to live. It has the connotation of numerous or near death experience. The saying of “under nine springs” also means being dead and buried. Hell is “Nine-Level-Hell” and “Beyond Nine Heavens of Clouds” means rising above and forgetting it all.
“If one can preserve his original nature and be grounded in no fear, a single brave warrior can charge into nine troops like a hero.”
Chuang Tzu.
(Artwork “Roman Soldier vs Germanic Warrior” Peter Dennis
saved by Ornella on Pinterest.)
“Whether alike or different,
we still belong to a certain group,
and then we are really no different from each other.”
(Chuang Tzu)
Jane Goodall
Thich Nhat Hahn’s “Please Call Me by My True Name” comes to mind with terrorists’ attacks in Belgium and Pakistan, the refugee children in Europe and the four-year-old girl decapitated by a random killer near a Taipei MRT.
“I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his ‘debt of blood’ to, my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.”
“I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda”.
Our hearts cry for those who lost loved ones in Belgium’s terrorist attacks.May we all find consolation in Chuang Tzu’s teachings on death and loss.
“What we exhaust is the firewood,
it’s the fire that passes on.
It knows no end.”
(Chuang Tzu).
“Life and death is a matter of destiny,
just like day and night
is the law of the universe”.
(Chuang Tzu)
“Let things change naturally
to cope with the unforeseeable change.
Go along with the change predestined. ”
(Chuang Tzu)
“Life and Death are One.”
(Chuang Tzu)
How would I know I wouldn’t regret longing to live after I die?
Chuang Tzu
“Everything has a reason for being so.”
(Chuang Tzu)
Violinist’s touching article on Four Weddings & a Funeral.http://bit.ly/1jqQNhB
“Nature gives us form,
belabors us with living,
eases us with old age
and lets us rest with death.
Therefore if life is good,
death is good as well.”
(Chuang Tzu)
http://bit.ly/1jqQNhB
“Heaven, Earth and I came into existence together. All Things and I are One.” Chuang Tzu.
The pictogram of “Man” is a drawing of a small head and body with long limbs. “Big” is a man with stretched limbs and “Heaven” is the horizontal stroke of “One” above a big man while “Origin” is depicted by another horizontal stroke over the horizontal stroke above man with bent limbs.
Man with a big ego,don’t forget Heaven above us. The universe of Heaven, Earth and Man all came from one Origin.
Free Easy Mind 