Fragrances of human flowering: living intimately with the whole

For Part 14 of his series, Shanti’s invited to speak: Walt Whitman, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu

Walt Whitman

poet, essayist and journalist

“I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
not one is dissatisfied,
not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.”

“A child said: ‘What is the grass?’, fetching it to me with full hands.
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.”

“The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak,
and went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
and brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d feet,
and gave him a room that enter’d from my own,
and gave him some coarse clean clothes,
and remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
and remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
he staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.”

Lao Tzu

philosopher

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

“The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
Neither need you do anything but be yourself.”

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”

“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.”

“The words of truth are always paradoxical.”

Chuang Tzu

philosopher

“You can’t discuss the ocean with a well frog,
he’s limited by the space he lives in.
You can’t discuss ice with a summer insect,
he’s bound to a single season.”

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”

“Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?”

Lieh Tzu

philosopher

“Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure.
However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment.

“Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they’ve spent their lives following other people’s demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?”

To be continued…