Lao Tzu authored the Tao Te Ching
Being deeply loved by someone give you strength, while deeply loving someone gives you courage.
I have three treasures. Guard and keep them:
The first is deep love,
The second is frugality,
And the third is not to dare to be ahead of the world.
Because of deep love, one is courageous.
Because of frugality, one is generous.
Because of not daring to be ahead of the world, one becomes the leader of the world.
The more laws and order are made prominent,
The more thieves and robbers there will be.
“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.”
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.”
Dao refers to The Way – the way of an individual’s cooperation with the course of the natural world.(11) It cannot be captured in definitions, as such an attempt would be antithetical to its nature, but its properties or characteristics can be described. Accordingly, the dao may be said to be:
Tao Te Ching (Dao De Jing)
According to Lao Tzu, words can never fully express The Complete Truth:
The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.(12)
One person comes from the source (from Tao itself). That person attracts a second. The two become three. The three take on the world:
The way begets one; one begets two;
two begets three;
three begets the myriad creatures.(13)
The Tao is open-minded and non-possessive:
The way is broad, reaching left as well as right.
The myriad creatures depend on it for life yet it claims
no authority.
It accomplishes its task yet lays claim to no merit.
It clothes and feeds the myriad creatures yet lays no
claim to being their master.(14)
The Taoist goal is a life of beauty and compassion:
Those who comprehend the Tao are not focused only on themselves;
they are also connected to the world.(15)
The Taoist goal is to become one with all things and to coexist with
Heaven and Earth.(16)