10

Can you coax your mind from its wandering
and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing,
having without possessing,
acting with no expectations,
leading and not trying to control:
this is the supreme virtue.

Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, trans. by Stephen Mitchell

Wednesday dawns with a promise of rain. Does nature whisper? Clouds from horizon to horizon suggest now would be a favorable time for meditation, a ‘following of the breath’. This is a centering ritual reinforcing the “oneness” of mind/body. Body is mind. Mind is body. This is a Taoist thing. You find this in Zen Buddhist practice. Also in Yoga. Seduce, coax your scattered mind back to a centered condition…

There are a few approaches to such an integration of affairs, our mind-body oneness. I mean the focus of life-force, like the reflection from a really clean mirror, – light, nothing but light without hint of a smudge.  What about fulfilling a leadership role by positive influence, only bringing out the best version of others? For the most part, events will unfold as they will, no matter what one does (or does not do).

Can I show up and let be?

Can I receive and step back, allowing others to receive? Attend to my own oneness of body and spirit, my portion of the life-force of being and non-being.

Lao Tsu writes, nothing else but this is the apex of wisdom. Life, good-as-life-gets.

And then what?

Need there be a “then what”?