Everyday Tao Quotes

“The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“Those who don't know how to suffer are the worst off. There are times when the only correct thing we can do is to bear out troubles until a better day.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“Who you are is always right.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“If you have a good idea, use it so that you will not only accomplish something, but so that you can make room for new ones to flow into you.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“Grappling with fate is like meeting an expert wrestler: to escape, you have to accept the fall when you are thrown. The only thing that counts is whether you get back up.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“We may be floating on Tao, but there is nothing wrong with steering. If Tao is like a river, it is certainly good to know where the rocks are.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“Expression is never helped by suppression.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“It is too facile to say that the way to follow Tao is to simply go along with the flow of life. Sometimes, like the carp, we must know when to go it alone.”
― Deng Ming-Dao, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“Happiness Fu. Happiness. The left side means a revelation from heaven and is used in all words with abstract meanings. The right side shows the word for “beans” on the top and “fields” on the bottom; when the beans are harvested, people are happy. All abundance is provided by Tao. If we appreciate that, we will see that we are surrounded by happiness. Like everything else in Tao, happiness comes from within. What minimal support we need from the outside—a bit of food, some shelter—can actually be very simple and plain and is readily available. Nevertheless, people are unhappy because they do not know moderation. “All I need to be happy is to be rich,” many say. But the newspapers are filled with stories of wealthy people who live in deep despair. In fact, the simple phrase, “All I need to be happy is to be rich”—complete with your choice of substitutes for the word rich—is an immediate indication of the source of our unhappiness: there is no end to what we want. Know when enough is enough. Some die from hunger, but many die from overeating. So to be happy, we have to control our desires. The ancients taught two ways to do this. Sometimes they used discipline to curb desire. Sometimes they satisfied their desires. This is the genius of Tao: moderation. We do not need to cleave to the extremism of the ascetic. We do not need to lose ourselves in the indulgence of the hedonist. We follow Tao, the middle path.”
― Ming-Dao Deng, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony

“To simply be ourselves is the greatest challenge but the simplest spiritual technique. A”
― Ming-Dao Deng, Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony