Block the passages,
Shut the doors,
Let all sharpness be blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered,
All dust smoothed.
This is called mysterious levelling.
Tao Te Ching 56
Attain utmost vacuity;
Hold fast to quietude.
While the myriad things are stirring together,
I see only their return.
For luxuriantly as they grow,
Each of them will return to its root.
To return to the root is called quietude,
Which is also said to be reversion to one's destiny.
This reversion belongs with the eternal:
To know the eternal is enlightenment.
Tao Te Ching 16
Can you keep the unquiet physical soul from straying,
hold fast to the Unity, and never quit it?
Can you, when concentrating your breath, make it soft
like that of a little child?
Can you wipe and cleanse your vision of the Mystery till
all is without blur?
Tao Te Ching 10
Pure spirit reaches in the four directions, flows now
this way, now that--
there is no place it does not extend to. Above,
it brushes heaven; below,
it coils on the earth. It transforms and nurses
the ten thousand things,
but no one can make out its form. Its name is called
One-with-Heaven.
The way to purity and whiteness is to guard the spirit,
this alone; guard
it and never lose it, and you will become one with spirit,
one with its
pure essence, which communicates and mingles with the
Heavenly Order.
Chuang Tzu 15
