| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: desire, and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them
from presuming to act (on it). When there is this abstinence from
action, good order is universal.
4. 1. The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our
employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness. How
deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of
all things!
2. We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of
things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into
agreement with the obscurity of others. How pure and still the Tao
is, as if it would ever so continue!
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: plate for the hundredth time.
Zerkow had come to believe in this story infallibly. He was
immovably persuaded that at one time Maria or Maria's people
had possessed these hundred golden dishes. In his perverted
mind the hallucination had developed still further. Not
only had that service of gold plate once existed, but it
existed now, entire, intact; not a single burnished golden
piece of it was missing. It was somewhere, somebody had it,
locked away in that leather trunk with its quilted lining
and round brass locks. It was to be searched for and
secured, to be fought for, to be gained at all hazards.
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: success in business, too. She was born with a humanity
sense, and a value sense, and a something else that can't be
acquired. Ida Tarbell could have managed your whole Haynes-
Cooper plant, if she'd had to. So could a dozen other
women I could name. You don't see any sign of what you call
success on Jane Addams's face, do you? You wouldn't say, on
seeing her, that here was a woman who looked as if she might
afford hundred-dollar tailor suits and a town car. No. All
you see in her face is the reflection of the souls of all
the men and women she has worked to save. She has covered
her job--the job that the Lord intended her to cover. And
Fanny Herself |
