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My teachings are easy to understand
and easy to put into practice.
Yet your intellect will never grasp them,
and if you try to practice them, you’ll fail.

My teachings are older than the world.
How can you grasp their meaning?

If you want to know me,
look inside your heart.

Tao Te Ching by Lao-tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchel

A few lines to make the head spin… What point is made by such a obvious contradiction? A teaching – easy to understand and to practice, only to be told you’ll never get it, and as for trying to practice it, failure awaits you! Seems as it this is equivalent to a painful rap on the head by the staff of a zen master…

We are educated, or better, trained to approach a book, any prospect of new knowledge by expecting to discover the principles, a few related points that “make sense” in so far as the topic goes. This is the way it is, the mind is our “go to” tool. Well no it isn’t. Here the old Master shakes his head and indicates that we are bound to fail, as long as this deeply ingrained approach is followed.

Trust your body! Your body is your reliable conduit of experience. Put your principles on hold, for they only have limited value. Work to pay attention to your body. What does the body indicate now, in this moment? I’ve just finished one ample cup of Starbucks dark-roast coffee. I feel a midsection warmth, the cloying after taste of astringent flavor, – so what about another cup? (refills are free) However my body suggests that I wait a bit so to enjoy this state of satisfaction. Another now, would be too much, too soon.

Lao-tsu is a proponent of unprincipled knowing 无知 (wúzhí). Way-making is personal, no graduate degree or credential is required. You must do in order to know. Mindful attention to your own body is the benchmark for action, for your life.

I am reminded of the overlap between Lao-tsu and Aristotle. Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”