Tao Te Ching - Audiobook - [David Tuffley]

The Tao Te Ching, (also Daodejing, Dao De Jing, or Daode jing) is a classic of ancient Chinese literature. It is a guide for creating harmony in yourself and the world around you by describing a fundamental force called the Tao that operates uniformly throughout the universe and is the cause of everything that happens. The Tao can be understood as the laws of Nature, or the laws of Physics if you prefer. ________________________________________ Kindle: http://bit.ly/TaoTeChing-Tuffley David Tuffley: bit.ly/DavidTuffley ________________________________________ The Tao Te Ching shows you how to develop personal power through cultivating alignment with the Tao, otherwise known as ‘going with the flow’ in popular culture. THE CENTRAL IDEA Central to the Tao Te Ching is the importance of avoiding extremes and keeping to the moderate middle path as you go through life. Find the middle ground between the extremes in any situation, thus avoiding counter-reactions and unintended consequences. The result is neutrality and stability. Harmony with the Tao is living so that the events of our life do not turn into personal dramas. The problem with drama is that it sets up a pendulum-like swing from one drama to the next, which get in the way of calm inner reflection and clear perception of reality. But people quite enjoy their dramas. It might even be true to say that they are addicted to them; it’s how they define themselves. The Tao Te Ching encourages us to sense the world around us directly; and to contemplate our impressions deeply from a position of neutrality. It advises against relying on the structures of orthodox belief that have been created by others. Such ideologies remove us from a direct experience of life in the now and cut us off from our intuition. Following the Middle Path requires you to develop an awareness of the unseen physical forces that direct the events taking place around you. Such forces operate at the levels of macrocosm and microcosm. You could think of them as operating in the universe as a whole and in the minds and lives of individuals. Mental alignment with these forces gives you the power to influence events in the world without resorting to force. That is the way of the Tao. SUBTLE INFLUENCE IS BETTER THAN FORCE The Tao Te Ching suggests using subtle influence, not force, to achieve your goals. The objective is to avoid taking action that elicits strong counter-reactions that are a distraction, and which consume time and energy to manage. In Nature, we see that excessive force in one direction triggers the growth of a neutralising force. It has the effect of returning the system to a stable state. This principle is seen in human affairs too. Force cannot be the basis for establishing a sustainable social environment. ACCEPTING THE INEVITABILITY OF CHANGE. When you come to know the Tao, you understand that everything in the universe is in a state of dynamic change. Nothing, absolutely nothing that exists is permanent. Everything passes into non-existence when its time comes. When you know this, you become less attached to the transitory things of this world. You can still enjoy and value these while they last, but when they leave you, your suffering will be lessened. The forces of change are largely beyond your control. It is not easy for people to accept the inevitably passing of that which we care about, but it can be done. Accepting the reality of impermanence aligns our thinking with those forces that bring about gradual change in the social and physical world. We learn to embrace change and not mind when it happens. One spiritual teacher from another discipline was asked what the secret was to being enlightened. The master replied; I do not mind what happens. BECOMING A FORCE OF NATURE Our alignment with the forces underpinning Nature makes us an integral part of the evolving world. It confers upon us the momentum of those larger forces. You become that metaphorical swimmer calmly going with the current in the great river of life while all around you other swimmers flail this way and that. A HANDBOOK FOR PEOPLE OF INFLUENCE. The Dao De Ching is a response to a time of political unrest. China in that period had been comprised of a patchwork of states frequently in conflict. The Dao De Ching is a leadership manual written to educate people of influence how to establish peace and prosperity in the land. The Dao De Ching is the result Lao Zoo’s careful observations of the unfolding patterns of Nature. From these a set of underlying principles were deduced; principles that cause the world to behave in the way it does. These principles are abstract in the way that a mathematical formula is an abstraction. Knowledge of these principles is tremendously helpful for a person seeking harmony and balance, just as the mathematical formula Pi r squared is helpful for calculating the area of a circle, any circle at any scale.