Returning To The Root
Be completely empty.
Be perfectly serene.
The ten thousand things arise together;
In their arising is their return.
Now they flower,
and flowering
Sink homeward,
returning to the root.
The return to the root
is peace.
Peace: to accept what must be,
to know what endures.
In that knowledge is wisdom.
…
The body comes to its ending,
but there is nothing to fear.
—Translator: Ursula LeGuin
Returning to the Root
On my shelf of favorite books is the Tao Te Ching, and one
of my favorite chapters (or poems as I like to call them) is the
one variously entitled, Returning to the Root.
This poem was brought to my mind as I was looking at this picture
that I took of my daughter, Flora and her
great-grandmother, Anna. Here you can just see that
cycle of life that has no beginning and no end. While
each of us will die, life continues to flower, and so, there is
really nothing but peace.
Maybe this is the reason why Taoism is considered the
religion of old age… as the religion of acceptance. But not
just of resignation, but of illumination that the world is not
something to subdue and have dominion over, but to dance with and
dance within.
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