IMAGINE THE MYSTERIOUS

Tomorrow, March 1st I leave for Chengdu. In the past weeks I searched public library and websites for pertinent topics, while exploring China’s history and soaking-up valuable travel tips, I also discovered THE DAO TE CHING and LAO-TZU. Suddenly everything else seemed trivial:


There is a Being wondrous and complete. Before heaven and earth, it was. How calm it is! How spiritual!

Alone it stands, and charges not: around it moves, and suffers not: therefore it can be the world’s Mother.

I do not know its name but its nature I call Reason.

Constrained to give a name, I call it the great. The great I call the departing, and the departing I call the beyond. The beyond I call home.

Man’s standard is the earth. The earth’s standard is heaven. Heaven’s standard is Reason. Reason’s standard is intrinsic.

From: The Teachings of Lao-Tzu
Translation by Paul Carus