TAOISM | 5 Life Lessons From Lao Tzu
Can you celebrate life and not cling to it? Can you give up control and still get things done? Can you achieve your goals without forcing? These are all themes we find in the ancient Taoist key work called the Tao Te Ching, which was written by a mysterious sage named Lao Tzu. There isn’t much known about this character of Chinese antiquity, and some historians even doubt that he truly existed. But whoever wrote the Tao Te Ching has inspired millions of people to see the world in a different light.
Taoism deeply respects the passive, receptive part of existence, which is generally undervalued. By becoming aware of the strength of, what the Taoists call, the ‘feminine’ or the ‘yin’-aspects of life, we’ll see that effort and force aren’t always the best tools in the toolbox for getting things done. In a previous video, The Philosophy of Flow, I expand upon the so-called ‘flow state’, known as the soft power of ‘wu wei’ or ‘effortless-action’, also described as being ‘in the zone’ when participating in certain activities like sports and painting.
This video, however, explores how the wisdom of Lao Tzu can help us go with the flow in a more general sense. How can we let go, and let ourselves be carried along with the river of life? How can we live more effortlessly, with less stress and anxiety? How can we live a rich life and enjoy it to the fullest, with minimal interference of the natural course? The following five lessons based on the writings of Lao Tzu might inspire you to live life in an entirely different way.
- Don’t force anything. The Master does not force virtue on others, thus she is able to accomplish her task. The ordinary person who uses force will find that they accomplish nothing. In several chapters of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes about the principle of not forcing. When we force, we go against the natural flow of things, which most likely gets us in trouble. Oftentimes, a fallacy we make is thinking that we can force the unenforceable, believing that when we push hard enough, we’ll eventually get where we want to go.
For some things, pushing hard consistently indeed leads to results. But no matter what we do, there are always natural laws that we must take into account. Lao Tzu observed that nature has its own way of doing things. Living in this world, we see that nature manifests itself in a certain order. Some things are big and heavy; other things are small and light. Some things take ages to grow; other things are born and die on the same day. We humans are bound to the flow of nature as well; the way we grow from infants to adults, the way we learn, the way our bodies function; all is bound to natural laws that we cannot control.
If we force things, we put ourselves in a position in which the universe starts to work against us. This happens, for example, when we swim against the stream. We can swim against the stream for a while, but we won’t last long as it’s highly exhausting. And when we finally give in, and accept that forcing our way up simply cannot be done, we let go and start to flow along. When we, somehow, find a way to work with nature instead of against it, things will get much easier, and we won’t exhaust ourselves so much. This means ‘working smart’, instead of ‘working hard’, by setting our sails correctly and navigating diligently, so that the wind of the universe keeps pushing us forward.
- Don’t overburden yourself. Those who stand on tiptoes do not stand firmly. Those who rush ahead don’t get very far. Those who try to outshine others dim their own light. A typical phenomenon that we see in current civilization is that people are willing to push themselves too far. Pushing boundaries isn’t wrong in itself, as it’s a way to grow.
If we look at strength training, for example, it’s actually necessary to overstimulate the muscles. By breaking down the muscles during a lifting session using progressive overload, they’ll come back stronger and bigger over time. But there’s one necessary ingredient when it comes to this ...