From Stephen Mitchell - tao te ching - A New English Version

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut yourself.

From Byron Katie - A Thousand Names For Joy - Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

Babies aren't born into the world of illusion until they attach words to things. When you're clear, it's great fun to observe that. I love being with my grandbabies, I love hearing what I teach them: “That's a tree.” “That's a sky.” “I love you.” “You're Grandma's precious angel.” “You're the most beautiful baby in the world.” All these lies, and I'm having a wonderful time telling them. If I'm creating problems for my grandchildren, they can question their stressful thoughts when they grow up. I am joy. I'm not going to censor any of it.

Every story we tell is about body-identification. Without a story, there's no body. When you believe that you are this body, you stay limited, you get to be small, you get to see yourself as apparently encapsulated in one separate form. So every thought has to be about your survival or your health or your comfort or your pleasure, because if you let up for a moment, there would be no body-identification. Every thought has to be about ” I ” - that's how you survive. And then, as soon as you get your little piece of turf, your little house, your little car, your thoughts turn to the story of how you need to be healthy and comfortable. You get stuff in the shopping cart, you get stuff in the house, and as soon as you're comfortable, your thoughts turn to pleasure. This is full-scale body-identification: there's no thought that isn't about the body. So you go to pleasure when you have all your little ducks in order. And all pleasure is pain, until you understand.

Your body is not your business. If you're sick, go to your doctor. That way you get to be free. Your body is your doctor's business; your business is your thinking, and in the peace of that, you're very clear about what to do. And then the body becomes a lot of fun, because you're not invested in whether it lives or dies. It's nothing more than a metaphor for your thinking, mirrored back to you.

When I was in Amsterdam several years ago, I did The Work with people from early morning till late at night, even though I was running high fevers. And I noticed that a few times, during a break, I would be huddled up in a corner, exhausted, shaking, in heaven. The shaking was fine with me, and the exhaustion. I was just there to do my job, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer. And, in the clarity of that, I always seem to be well. No story, no sickness. There was snow, there was cold, there was sky, there were people, there was breath, there was fever, there was exhaustion, there was joy - everything ! Without a story, I'm free.

I once went for twenty-seven days without food. There was no reason for it - I just knew not to eat. And during all those days I couldn't find a trace of hunger. Hunger was just another myth. My family and friends were fearful for my life, but I wasn't concerned; I felt healthy and strong; the whole time, I was doing a lot of vigorous walking in the desert. And at no moment did I experience anything but myths about hunger and bellyaches and weight loss. I couldn't find one legitimate need that didn't come face-to-face with the fear of death. And then, after twenty-seven days, for no reason, I ate.

If you don't identify as a body, the mind may occasionally find itself as a galaxy or a rock or a tree or a moon, a leaf, a bird. It may identify anywhere in the vastness of itself. I am this ? I am this ? To be a human is no more and no less important than to be a rock or a speck of dust. It's all equally important, all the same thing. It's limitless. It's still. It's what we all are without a story or a particular body-identification to believe in.

When you dream, you are the whole dream and everything in it. You have to be: you're the dreamer. You're bodiless, you're free - you're a man, you're a woman, a dog, a tree, you're all of it simultaneously; you're in the kitchen one moment and on a mountaintop the next; you're in New York and suddenly you're in Hawaii; nothing is ever stable because you can't body-identify; there's no identification you can attach to. That's how unlimited the mind is when there's no particular body to be.

Without a story of being limited, you're infinite. There's nothing more joyous than that - to know that you're all things and new each moment, and that all of it is projected. People think that limitlessness is terrifying, because they don't have inquiry. But it's no more terrifying than sitting in your living room. It's exactly the same after the initial experience. The ego does everything not to let an experience like that happen. If the experience does happen, the ego body-identifies at a higher level, to hold on to what it thinks it knows. It tries to control body-identification so that it can make sure such experiences never happen again. For people who don't have inquiry, the ego may say, “There's no way back”, and then the thought may be “I'm going insane.” But if inquiry is alive in you, you can't attach to any frightening thought. It doesn't matter if you're a Katie or a bird or a galaxy or a rock or a tree or a grain of sand.

Eventually there is no fear. You come to feel total acceptance: “I am this, for now”. And it's all okay. I'm only here with you in this moment. I'm an old woman the next. I'm a seagull the next. For hundreds of years I'm a redwood tree. Now I'm a mosquito, now a speck of dust, now a star that has just been born and will burn out billions of years from now. Time is irrelevant. I give myself to whatever the reality of it may be.

These apparent transformations aren't transformations at all. It is always what it is, beyond identification, aware of itself, delighted with itself, as all things. In this infinite loving state, it shoots out to know, to revel in its identities, to see what it hasn't yet revealed to itself. And in each experience, you realize that you're nothing; you're prior to thought, not a woman or a bird or anything but awareness: a completely silent mind looking out - in - gratefully, at itself.

Dr Dyer's Essay for Verse 74 -

What happens when we die ? Is death the vehicle that returns us to our Source of being, or does it signify the end of consciousness and all of life ? One thing is absolutely certain: This subject is an absolute mystery to us. Some Tao scholars have referred to death as a place of oneness wherein time, space, and all of the 10,000 things cease to have meaning. Thus, what dies is our human identity. There's still someone underneath the external layers, though, so when you know and understand who that formless someone is, your fear of dying will evaporate. You can live on the active side of infinity by knowing your infinite Tao nature, which probably means that you'll alter the way you think about birth, life, and death.

Move from wanting to see permanence in your life to realizing that all things change due to the nature of this being an ever-modifying world. There's nothing external to hold on to; after all, the moment you think you have it, IT becomes something else. This is as true for your earthly packaging as it is for your worldly treasures. Whether you realize it or not, the body you were in when you began reading this essay is different now, and it will become different again the moment you attempt to make it remain the same. This is the nature of our reality. If you can get comfortable with it, you'll reduce - and ultimately eliminate - your anxiety regarding mortality. 

As Lao-tzu promises: “If you are not afraid of dying, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”

Your Tao essence has to be infinite because it came from a world of infinite possibilities. You're not a thing that's solid and permanent; in fact, there's nothing like that in the world you incarnated into ! You are real, and what's real never changes. Yet your real self isn't in this world, but is the part of you that is the Tao. When you live in harmony with the infinite Tao, death is irrelevant - so know your highest self and understand that there's nothing you can't achieve.

The second part of this verse deals with killing, or taking another being's life. Lao-tzu is quite specific here, saying, “There is always a lord of death”. At the moment of your coming into the world, everything you needed for this journey was handled by the lord of life and death. Just as your birth was Tao energy, your body type, skin color, eyes, ears, and every other physical aspect of you are expressions of the Tao. This includes your death, which has been choreographed, determined, and allowed to unfold in Divine timing. In other words, killing isn't your job, not ever - not of another person or any other being. Since death is as much a part of the Tao as life, it must be allowed to be in accord with nature, not performed as an ego decision.

I learned this lesson years ago while changing court sides in the middle of a tennis match in which I'd been playing at an exceptionally high level. While taking a drink of water, I noticed a bee lying upside down, apparently in the final throes of its short life. I assumed that it was suffering, so I stepped on it to avoid prolonging its agony. As I began to play again, I couldn't get that bee out of my mind: Did I do the right thing ? Who am I to decide this little creature's fate ? Who am I to become an executioner, even to such a seemingly insignificant creature as a tiny insect ? And everything on the tennis court began to take on a different energy from that moment on.

Previously my shots had been landing on the lines, and presently they were out by inches. The wind seemed to shift and work against me. I was now moving more slowly and making uncharacteristic errors. Ultimately, what looked like a sure victory turned into a complete letdown and an embarrassing defeat because my role as the well-intentioned murderer of a small bee had been occupying my mind. I've since changed the way I see death, and I no longer deliberately kill anything. I've decided that it's not my job to decide another's death ever since my day of awakening with that bee ! Even if that bee only had a few minutes of life remaining, it is the job of the “lord of death”, or the great Tao, to make that determination.

I just spoke with my dear friend Lauren, who's in the throes of watching her cat, who's been with her for 19 years, get ready to pass on. She asked for my advice about having Sweet Pea euthanized to avoid prolonging her suffering. After I read her this verse and told her my own experience with that tiny bee, Lauren elected to hold Sweet Pea in her lap until death claimed her. A reverence for life as a form of the Tao helps us all realize that we're not in charge of death decisions.

Lao-tzu's legacy is summed up magnificently in the words of T S Eliot, from his poem “Little Gidding”:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

This is death - nothing to fear, nothing to do.