Where realities clash

I promote the spiritual view of life, what it could be, should be, and is to some people. There is also the "real world" - which is entirely false and can kill you. The vast majority of humans live in an entirely false world that they are convinced is real, and in blindness, will fight for.



Israel, one example of the (fake) real world going mad.

We live in a dream world, an elite know this and are shaping that dream to their own. On a human level it is abhorrent but justified by many self delusions as "just the way things are".

Please, whilst correcting yourself spiritually, do not let our planet body and dreaming brothers and sisters allow life to become an invaluable fuel for a fire that consumes and burns them as they watch in passive ignorance.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

An immortal truth - Can we start living by it, not just quoting it?

“It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.”

BILL HICKS

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Yoga - what? why?

Yoga: To Yoke: To bring body and mind to one. Yoga is not moving the body into odd positions, that is Assana, a part of Yoga. Yoga comprises a number of activities from breath to diet to assanas.

The most important part of the assana regime is to get the body flexible enough to sit for extended periods. It is not to show how flexible you are as that is not required for spiritual gain only ego. If it is fun to do, do it, if you benefit from the stretching, do it, if you want to show off how long you can stand on your head with full lotus, then don't.

The poses are held to maintain the stretch but more importantly to hold the mind. A good yogi will be able to hold any pose so comfortably that the mind is absolutely still. Holding a pose and gritting your teeth has no benefit.

The most important gain is to be able to sit for an extended period to allow deeper mediation. The most important pose is Dead Mans Pose. Dead Mans Pose is how you begin an assana session, how you rest between each pose and how you rest at the end. It is the hardest to perfect and I recommend dropping all others and focusing on Dead Mans Pose because it is 1) great for the body and 2) a meditation pose. Perfecting Dead Mans Pose helps you learn your breaths (full yogic or diagrammatic breathing are easy to observe) and get deep meditation without concern for the body being uncomfortable.

From the Dead Mans Pose you should then put the base of the feet together so that your knees are off the ground being pulled down by gravity, and just rest there, continue breathing. With time and no effort the knees drop a little stretching the inner thigh. This is an effortless way to stretch the inner thigh and makes sitting easier. Then rest again in Dead Mans Pose to rest out the stretch.

When you have used Dead Mans Pose long enough then you know your breaths, have meditated deeply, and with the stretch exercise adapted your legs. You are now fit for sitting meditation, the rest of the assana work is not required.

Now sit upright and see how you can get your legs comfortable, back straight and join me in the next write up for sitting meditation. You will probably not find full lotus useful to you yet, also if you look at pictures of deities, they most normally sit in half lotus or an adaptation. Half has the major benefit that if in pain you can swap sides and adaptations of half include some solid sitting poses and no discomfort to the western body at all.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Orgasmic child birth

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Cycles & Circuits - An interconnected world

Watch someone playing a hand held game and you can see the circuit in place. The screen gives a display which is carried invisibly to the eyes, processed in the brain, signals sent down the arms, the fingers hit a button, the electronics process and on the screen either Mario lived or died, the signal is carried invisibly to the eyes a response is produced in the brain, signal down arms, etc etc..

Look at a tree. As you breathe the tree does too. What you pull in, it expelled. The bronchi in lungs resemble an inside-out tree. The process of breathing is not yours, you are in cycle with the lung of earth. I like to think the universe is 'a breathing'.

Chuang Tzu was challenged many times on the uselessness of his teaching and many times told stories of how uselessness is a great virtue. The huge gnarled tree that outlives the others was not fit for any purpose and so lived a grand long life. Chuang asked one of his opponents to tell him "of all the land, that beneath your feet or the rest of the earth, what is most useful?" The reply was "that beneath my feet" and Chuang said "if i remove all the rest of the land, leaving you on two foot shaped pillars and a gaping chasm around you, it won't be long until you understand the usefulness of the useless".

This debate is fun but my point is that there is no uselessness, Chuang too was saying that in saying useless is in fact useful. We have to see that all is interconnected, all exists because of the rest and so we find the unity in all things. We appreciate oneness.

By appreciating how you are not "that body" but the environment that you are in and your reaction to it - it will encourage people to make a better environment. Man's attempt to tame and control nature is completely over. Many still carry on in vain as they won't admit it or don't know how else to think but it can't last.

When we appreciate the circuits, the cycles, the interconnectedness and further when we see that this complete process is me! ..then we see that a chemical to make an apple grow bigger will affect the whole "I" and not just the apple.

We are, individually, each a very sensitive feeling element of the whole, something to stay mindful of in life is how you are constantly sensing; fluctuations in air flow, light, sound, a tiny waft of a smell can alter your complete train of thought, we are that, we are that special sense of the universe. We are inseparable, we are it, and our position is sense and feeling.

Most people seem void of both!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Thought provoking

It must happen, but the worse thing someone can say of a spiritual work is "Thought provoking". Complete understanding has no thoughts. Thoughts arise from an incomplete understanding and once caught can grow and grow. So when trying to pacify the mind, provoking thought is not good.

There is the Koan of course. "Where will the next raindrop fall?" designed to have no answer and stun the mind to silence so provoking no thought and is a genius of Zen.

We should be able to accept that "I (when I was the universe including the human under a tree when he became the Buddha) have experienced complete and full enlightenment. Therefore I as me now this idiot with a cup of tea and a bad hair cut am, without any thought, too able. All the thought and reason required for complete enlightenment has been done and my going over it again with my foolish mind will not help only hinder." This is where I laugh at Zen students following strict regimes and not one of them achieving enlightenment due to the very strictness. The Buddha never read a book on Buddhism!

But that is not to promote blind faith and that stupid misinterpretation of the New Age "I am enlightened". This is a misinterpretation of a tool used in the distant past. A student who had done the full work to become awake had one step left and the master would hit them with "you are awake" and the student would awaken. This however requires a knowledgeable master and not an ego saying "I am awake", what a joke that is.

So blind faith is a no and thinking to attain is a no.

Think and reason until you see there is no use in it, then whenever thought occurs decide if it is useful, it is very rare it is, so open the space (mentioned in the How to meditate" post and accept; "I am dumb to think my mini mind can do this, all the thought has been done and the proof is there" Boom.

"Fear is in your Head
Only in your Head
So Forget your Head
And you'll be free
The writing's on the wall
Free-yeah, And you can know it all
If you choose. Just remember
Lovers never lose
'Cause they are free of thoughts"
David Bowie

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Hijacking Humanity

Hijacking Humanity (movie)

Many movies like this exist. I only post this one here for two reasons;

1) A quote: "Grow yourself spiritually so as to remove yourself from their grip" This is the method I promote to beating the system. You must also watch such films and read such books to get the full picture of what it is you are escaping and how deeply entrenched the conspiracy is.

and

2) I forgot 2 I'll have to edit this post when I remember it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao Te Ching Audio Book

Stephen Mitchell's Spoken Tao Te Ching so very good.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

> How to meditate a brief note <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

I will mention this in many posts but to make the information more available to the passing surfer here is it.

You can not be enlightened. When you are one, then by definition,there can be no other, especially no you. So enlightenment is a very special state that has no doer.

So in proper meditation, you can not "do it" you can not do it to get to somewhere. Meditating the mind on something is duality, meditating by some method is dual if you use the mind, eyes, any such system.

So - Find the place between the solar plexus and heart, about the base of the ribs. Don't meditate on it or dwell on it as that is dual, just locate it, know where it is - It has a strong being so is easy to locate.

Now look out from there.

Look from that space. Using this space as your centre, as your root, is beneficial as it has no sense of time and thinks no thoughts. It links to a being that is undivided by sense or mind.

Also read this Here Now article

Look out from there and you will notice the rest falls into place. The breath falls into place, gets deeper and becomes unnoticed; you find a way for your body to rest, (obviously different if you are on a bus, by a lake, walking, cooking, or on your bed), and the non-dual meditation takes place of itself.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meditation and wisdom

A master does not have to meditate, there is nothing to do. By contrast someone with much baggage has to learn to meditate first before finding any benefit. They must progress and with time get better at it, work through tough issues, battle on. It is tough for someone with a whole world seemingly against them; commitments, habits, plus a past that they took no part in forming, even ingrained habits in the way thoughts are processed. It seems this mind must be opened then worked with. Further still there are barriers in the way people have learned to learn. There is so much to do.

Yet the master does nothing, and the best advice is to do nothing.

What happens is that when someone has that first realisation that something is wrong and needs to be made right that they find a master. This does not mean to find a guru. A master or teacher comes in many forms and you will have many on your path. (The trap of taking one guru, one path, is a hindrance.) Masters can be lakes, books, children, pets, forests, exercises, breathing techniques. Wisdom is everywhere. Something said one day that seems meaningless, something overheard in a passing conversation, a line in a book, can pop back to mind with great relevance in the future. Past actions can come back to haunt - this is all good. Nothing bad is happening, has or will. It all makes sense.

Don't hold onto bad memories, don't hold on to ideas. The more you learn the less you need.

Life can be plotted like a graph. Your life may seem like a distorted sound wave when seen as a graph, with no pattern only random ups and downs. The aim is a slow, smooth, sine wave. Waking through sleeping follows a sine wave, you will know how smooth or haphazard. Eating and work habits follow waves too, but all these waves interfere, the waves collide and the resulting interference pattern is your life, your wave.

Meditation smooths the wave, it brings waves into sync.

From entering the path from seeing something in life is not right you go about soothing your wave. Ultimately you can smooth your life wave on the grand scale of rebirth; you can be born very infrequently, very smoothly, very controlled. For now you may aim at smoothing your Samsara Nirvana wave - how often you are in illusion, how often truth. Until then you have many more waves to pull into line.

So the master would just sit still and the wave would settle. The unlearned will try to locate things that ripple the wave, that cause distortion and unbearable ups and downs.

To get from a false living to a true being there is a journey. A wonderful one. You will learn many truths that become false. Say you learn about Chakras and they give you great benefit in finding imbalance in your life. Then in the future you learn that Chakras are not even real and only apparent when they reveal themselves due to imbalance - This is not a bad thing, it is part of the journey. In finding stillness you will have to learn many nearly truths to help you over the false. Then it becomes easier as your knowledge of truth becomes more penetrating. Many nearly truths reveal themselves at just the right times, they help soften the fall from a false, but they must all be dropped in the end, there can be no crutch when all is one. No guru, god, method, style, ..

The hardest part of the journey is the begining as it is a journey - the end is a shock as you realize it was not.

If things don't make sense then you are not ready for them yet, or they are just false. Only in furthering your training do you develop your truth penetrating vision to see what is what. You will see through fallacies you will know when you are ready to adopt tools, say a year of yoga, and drop crutches, say yoga when it is no longer a tool. If you are not developing, then it is a crutch. All tools can become crutches so tools are both necessary and dangerous.

More confusingly still, once enlightened, tools are still required. Using a tool but dropping a crutch is an ongoing thing. In this world it is hard to remain enlightened, the wave can be slow and smooth but will still have drops. It is easier for a once enlightened to notice a drop and pull it back, but it is still required that they remain diligent and do. An awakened person can make many falls. Three of the worst being hiding, contentment and awe.

1) Hiding from the world when enlightened narrows and weakens the human, as a result the mind is weakened and the person can not relate to normal life. A great warrior is enlightened in daily life, rubbing off on normal people, spreading the wisdom and not sitting in a cave depleting life force.

2) Contentment in an enlightened person is a danger as diligence and mindfulness weaken, weakening the mind then the body. This going unnoticed, the person will have a sudden drop and will not be so ready to pull themselves back.

3) Awe. Being in awe of the one is dangerous as openness is lost to partial focus, the mind is narrowed, the body weakened but feels strong. The awe takes like a drug supporting the body and preventing the body from meeting its needs. The drop can be hard to return from as mind and body took solace in the greatness but gave nothing back, they took and failed to maintain, so that when the fall came they were weak and unready.

Be awake, be aware. Meditate in life not just in sitting. Open, watch. Watch the mind, watch the great mind, be at ease, be on the ready. In work rest or play; be a ninja in the way you act.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Elite manipulation of consciousness - Solidity is the great minds memory

Open your mind. Empty it. Now if something flicked in front of your eyes, you may not say it is real. If it flicked into view and stayed, you were able to approach it, touch it, you may start to consider it as real.

As a tree grows it places something very soft outwards to the world, with time it goes over and over that new growth until in years to come there is a solid branch. So where there was nothing in mind (considering the whole universe and more as the one mind) there is now what I call a memory of a tree in the mind.

Soil and dirt which can be blown by wind, moved by rain or foot, if it stays long enough in one place can become a certain kind of rock. A very solid memory in mind. One that will last and can even be taken, built upon.

Zen is the rock in humans minds that led to the base for such giants as the martial arts and medicines. Tao is the rock on which Zen stands.

But where is the difference between rock and Zen? Zen is only alive in the mind and not solid and graspable, so here we can see how if you want to make something exist in mind you have two paths. (People interested in conspiracy, political manipulation of power, sorcery can find great interest here.) To make something exist in the great mind, you repeat and repeat, feed it to the youth and they grow it and solidify it. This is how we can store something in your little minds, so why not the big mind? It is the same.

Elite Manipulation

The Tao Te Ching can be used for bad. You can take any passage, flip it, and rather than "to have the people at peace" you have "to have the people divided under your control". The so called elite will do this.

"Rid of formalized wisdom and learning
People would be a hundredfold happier,
- So formalize dumb learning to sadden peoples hearts

Rid of conventionalized duty and honour
People would find their families dear,
- place false levels of control in peoples lives, weaken the family

Rid of legalized profiteering
People would have no thieves to fear.
- build the world on profit and love of money

These methods of life have failed, all three,
Here is the way, it seems to me:
Set people free,
As deep in their hearts they would like to be,
- remove freedoms one by one, never stop

From private greeds
And wanton needs."
- promote a market of low chakra stimulating entertainment and make it doubly desirable and doubly profitable by making it illegal.

Easily in the wrong hands such wisdom can be twisted to do precisely what the wise man was warning bad leaders against.

So to be a bad leader and have the world as your own you make memories in the great mind. Deeply entrenched memories: huge solid buildings, palaces, parliaments, statues; so called cultural significance, love of institutions, pride, citizenship, love of learning and high art, the church with so many buildings. Instil ideas in the youth that will take aeons to undo. Would you be able to knock down a statue of the Queen or rip apart parliament? Say the world was flat? No. So these form grand memoires in the great mind that are hard to budge. Even if we destroyed royalty someone would be sure to want to maintain the buildings and a hundred future generations will hold the memory in mind.

This is how the mind has been manipulated, so do we make it better by fighting the institutions and buildings? No. When the mind is manipulated with such a science as this then they accounted for people who would naturally rebel, intellectuals and so on are provided side shows of conspiritaninment and smokescreening to test their wit against. The conspiracy exists but the level it is built to accounts for inquiry. The way is to form new memories in mind to take the mind back, it is vast, much vaster than the part that has been contaminated, we correct ourselves and with one more of us each day we take the mind back.

Build love, the thing that makes this easy is that the driving force of the universe is love. These "solid" institutions are transient The great universe is deathless, so this will be won, it is already won on the grand scale. Don't strengthen the synapses by going over the bad memories, move on. take back your own mind.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meat and spirituality

I can not tell you not to eat meat. It may be perfectly right for you to eat it.

If it is dead, and you are hungry then great. Go eat.

Yet. If you are not needy for food supplies, you have to breed the animal as food, kill it prematurely just for food, it's birth was only brought about so it could be food, and the result is you are bigger in body than health and nature would intend, then maybe think about it.

Not eating meat does not lead to spiritual insight. I can not say "do not eat meat for 3 days and you will receive insight" so that is all false.

Yet.. One developing yourself, you will one day receive insight and that will tell you not to eat meat. Until that day, do as you will, but I know that on development of the self it will occur.

So not eating meat is not a tool for the spiritual path, it is a result of the spiritual path. Like many suggested means, they are in fact ends.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

An Unreasonable solution

Where do you get by reasoning Up and Down, Right or Wrong? only to another place based entirely on them! Rather than reason the false notions away you look out of the window fooling yourself of a unique view whist using them as a prop or stool to get that very window view. How silly it is to reason away false notions of language by using the very same.

There is no path as paths lead away. No method as a method requires I to do it.

So how then do you act if you can not be involved, are you just a passive onlooker? No, you can't be as that is I fooling itself that it is just looking on and not acting when I is still looking on, present and hoping no one spots him! We have to beat the ego away, but how if it not there? Only by reason, unfortunately, we must do what we know can not be reasonably done, use a notion to prove the notion is false. How ridiculous, and this is it. Reason and reason until you see that it is hopeless to do so. Then the ego can disappear in a puff of its own logic.

Look out from the heart, the breathing naturally alters (correct breathing is a consequence, not a means), the body looks for a place to sit (meditation is a consequence not a means), the mind is wide open, so open as to leave nothing out, has all the wisdom and compassion available to it (these are consequences not means) and the universe sits in perfection.

(And then you think about it, and spoil it all. The Buddha saying "I am awake" was not. For that moment he stepped to the un-awakened level to communicate the message, as masters do and have to do. This communication, one to another is not awake, Awake can not be communicated in words so all words are traps. This is why they say that "anyone calling themselves awake is surly mad" as no "I" can be awake. To talk from the non-I you don't make much sense.)

SO-- all these ideas of using compassion and meditation to achieve Oneness are self defeating and only a monk of many years can spot this. That is what the masters do is set tasks with the intention that the student can realize for themselves. As the truth can not be told in words this is perfect for a monk but has lead to a million false teachers passing on the lesson and not the solution! As they have never found it they convince themselves and their unwitting student that the lesson is the goal, reinforcing the very I they seek to to lose and blinding themselves to from obvious.

----
stop.
----

We can only know the flow by having known the still. Only know being by our knowing non-being. Don't reason this as you trap yourself, just know it without reason. It is the ego that is reborn over and over into this trap. With practice (of non-practice by no-one) you can spread out the ego rebirths. Stop coming back so often to Samsara (I looking forward and back) and stay with Nirvana (no I bliss). There is no I only a continuum of consciousness. Unlearn the tendency to return by the fact that this can not be denied. But never never affirm it or deny it, as to do so is to maintain the idea as something reasonable, and this will have the ego convinced that I can be awake and you have to read it all again.
So next time, do as you are told and Stop!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

> Here Now <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

We are never not Here Now. We are absolutely always from birth, through every action, to death, Here Now.

We are never in the past or the future, they are unreal, just ideas, but our minds insist in wandering off into the unreal.

We choose to avoid reality, this here now and go off to a side step, a distraction, thinking a thought that takes a past or future idea, plays with it; a false thought based on a false notion - and choose to deliberately avoid the very thing we seek.

And the seeking itself is like stepping forward to achieve standing still, an impossible method.

Crazy as it seems we are the barrier to finding ourself. There is no one who can be awakened, no one to be enlightened. When "One" is found then by definition there is no other, especially no you. No seeker.

A method to finding now is to look out from your solar plexus or heart. Don't use eyes or ears as they are filtered by the mini mind that is trained and has the nature to form time and analyse. It does this as it is too weak to comprehend the "Now", the "One" so it splits, measures, analyses and gets lost in its own fallacies.

"The eyes do not look, they absorb. The mind is responsible for looking; its failure here is the splitting of one of the sensory inputs into values, good and bad. These only exist due to the mind itself – here is the illusion." (source: me)

instead ...

"Your empty mind,
is your full life;
The impenetrable solid reality,
is the ungraspable mind." (source: me)

Our mind is useless, our language contaminated with rules that split the mind. Drop it all and then you are left with "Aaaaaaaa!" Here Now! it was there all along, Bliss!

Also see How to Meditate

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The secret future

(I posted this as a comment elsewhere but have decided to add it here as a post too)

It does seem more and more likely that we have little say in our life at all and connecting with the false I on this ride is absolutely guaranteed to bring ups and downs.

4 people are driving up a road expecting to turn left. The fist turns left and feels nothing. The 2nd turns left and is convinced he can see the future. The 3rd meets a diversion 'turn right' and feels anger. 1 lucky, 2 deluded, 3 dumb. Only the 4th person who drove to the junction with an intention to turn left but acceptance of change could take left or right, even a flat tyre with a smile.

The only thing a sorcerer needs to do in opening a door using his mind is not sit for years to train the mind to do the act but sit for hours and train the mind to believe he did it when it eventually comes about by itself.

I am currently amused by those who say they can shape the future. Instead I feel that by perfecting how we see "now" then there is no future to need to or wish to alter. It is so egotistical to say that (the false local) I knows better than the true I, that which is the universe experiencing in a trillion forums, infinitely creative. The best events are not only unplanned, but beyond the (little) I to ever make happen.

There is a natural act which can be unlearned but in our society is trained harder into us to feel I exist and have a role in choosing my path.

The only path to serenity is to find fascination in the whole, then it is all a beautiful adventure.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wise Words - Wei Wu Wei

"There is no mystery whatever - only inability to perceive the obvious."

Wei Wu Wei an Irish(?) man writing some time ago after and during his path to awakening. He studied Tao and Zen along with various philosophies spiritual and not and left behind a number of books. Occasionally he gets lost in the very language and set of ideas he is working with but more than occasionally he gives single lines and simple passages that open the mind to truth.

On the whole, I love his work and find it opens doors. you can find it here. It is probably not for someone early on the path of seeking truth as some concepts he refers to as fact may be too early and so confusing to some. For those close to awakening, those who experience Satori but fall back down again and need a lift up, and those who are awake and aiming to maintain the state (yes awake requires work to keep as well as to get in the first place) I can not recommend this enough.

Wei Wu Wei bits

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Story of the monk

A Zen story that captures Zen and Tao very very well, I love it!

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The master took his favourite pupil to one side and sat down with him by the lake.

"I will be passing away soon and I want you to take my position. Here I am passing on a book of great old wisdom that has come down the ages from master to master. Generation after generation of great masters have there words here, I have even added some notes of my own and they will surely help you along the way."

The student grabbed the book with both hands, threw it to the ground and set fire to it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Story of the Fisherman

This seems to be based on a story by Chuang Tzu

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A fisherman is done for the day and he is lying down, relaxing beside his boat, smoking a pipe.

"Why aren’t you fishing?" a rich passer by asks.
"Because I have caught enough fish for the day," the fisherman responds.
"Why don’t you catch some more?"
"What would I do with it?"

"You could earn more money, was the reply. You could put a motor on your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets, which would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you’d have enough money to own two boats... maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you’d be a rich man like me."

"What would I do then?" the fisherman inquires.

"Then you could really enjoy life," says the smiling rich man.

"What do you think I’m doing right now?" answers the fisherman as he gets even more comfortable in his seat and smiles back.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao