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The Tao can’t be perceived,
Smaller than an electron,
it contains uncountable galaxies.

If powerful men and women
could remain centered in the Tao,
all things would be in harmony.
The world would become a paradise.
All people would be at peace,
and the law would be written in their hearts.

When you have names and forms,
know that they are provisional.
When you have institutions,
know where their functions should end.
Knowing when to stop,
you can avoid any danger.

All things end in the Tao
as rivers flow into the sea.

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

Thoughts, random from my life, some ignited by these lines from the Lao Tsu.

• Watched with fascination yesterday’s White House confab of European heads of state, Ukraine’s Zelenski and the American President. Our chief executive gibbered on at intervals, about security guarantees, insisting upon peace between Ukraine and Russia, refusing to endorse a ceasefire first-step. Everyone in the room knew
  that is what Putin wants. The scene in the White House was iconic of what we
  have become as America. Europe and Ukraine, you are “on your own.”

• I remember the experience of driving a ZO6 Corvette on a racetrack. Brakes and braking
  are of paramount importance. Knowing when to brake, to set up for your line of approach through the next curve. I imagine, fantasize about my dream-car. First I’d want high performance Italian brembo brakes. Brembo brakes are oversized. Knowing when to stop, will be the difference between a faster lap or an expensive mishap. When you delay to brake, – then you must stand on the brakes, hot into the curve, you make the car unstable…
  America in a nutshell: has no idea when to stop…

• Our institutions are overdue for radical change. When anything remains static
  for long enough, the advantages it affords are captured by a few, becoming less justly distributed with the passage of time. Is that what the majority wants? Even though it is strangling us!

• The Tao is like the ocean, as are the rivers, streams, the rivulets that eventually
  reach the ocean. I think that I am a rivulet that feeds into a creek. The creek finds a
  terminus in the marsh. Every part of the process matters, is life-giving, is life itself along
  the journey-of-being. Rivulet and cosmos…