I Think It Is Farewell Tao Te Ching

Dear Tao Te Ching. I think you are one of the origins of my culture. Probably that is one of the reasons why I feel so familiar with this writing and belief. However, I have found some lines I have never heard before from my culture that has enticed my heart. One of them is a metaphor for life. It is from chapter 53,


“Keeping to the main road is easy,
But people love to be sidetracked.”


Yes, I do have heard that metaphor of life and road. In the form of, “life is all about going into the sideways, taking the longer path.” But I have never thought of why. Why do we always walk into that narrow and winding path? I thought that it was because that’s the way that enriches you with experience. But do we take that path because we think it’s right to do so? The more I think about it, the more I am beginning to doubt the answer I always thought it was certain. Isn’t it that adventurous scent that makes us go towards it? Isn’t it that uncertainty of where it might lead to, that makes us be so curious? Isn’t it that scenario surrounding the path that makes us feel so enchanted? This line from Tao Te Ching has made me reconsider the answer that I thought it was definite.


I was surprised when I read the next line I want to share. You know why I was so surprised? Because I have asked about it to myself and thought it was too ridiculous to ask such a question. This line is written in chapter 57 and goes like the following,

“The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.”

Well, what I have asked myself was that ‘are the laws and the rules motivating many of us to do what it prohibits us to do?’ Many people can have a warped mind. By being told that you can’t do it, the curiosity towards that whatever thing it is prohibited increases. Also by being told that you can’t do it so many times over and over again, you begin to want go against it. There are even people that just love situations that are in the edge of danger. I thought aren’t those rules tickling the heart of these people? But then soon after I asked myself, I thought; “Oh, don’t be stupid Mamiko. There are reasons to the existence of those laws. And think about the world without chains in our feet. We will be flying and the world might be in total chaos.”


Now, I would like to present with a line that I found interesting. It comes from chapter 64, and goes like this,


“A journey of a thousand miles starts under one’s feet,
So give as much care to the end as to the beginning.”



One of the reasons why I found interesting is that we, or maybe I, have always focused on how important is the ‘first step’. But if you think about it, the next steps that come after the first step is as important as the first one. I mean, one of the difficulties to accomplish something is to keep the spirit until the end. To not give up. In Japan we have this saying that goes “three days bonze”. It is used to describe a person that cannot continue doing whatever thing he/she has started and only lasts for about three days. (I am like this when I start a diary. When I see the dates I have written, the period of time between the first one and the forth one is about a year.) I would like to always keep in mind about this line in order to keep up my spirit until I finish up anything I’m doing.



To conclude up the whole story of Tao Te Ching the line from chapter 78,

“The truth often sounds paradoxical.”


was suiting. I mean, what Tao Te Ching said has mostly sounded so contradicting. Starting from how the opposite of each other defines each other it keeps on uniting many of the ideas that it seems it will never coexist in the same definition. The analogy of good & bad and black & white is one of the best examples. The ‘paradoxical truth’ continues with the description of a sage or a good person. Or “how the strong and stiff with fall” and “the soft and weak will overcome.” (Tao Te Ching Chapter 76)

I think I learned a lot and did several discoveries after reading this book of the Tao.
However, I guess that this post will be a farewell to Tao.





One more last thing I want to say is about this line from chapter 70. It’s rather a question than a opinion. For the first and last time in the entire book, the author uses first-person, “My words have ancient beginnings,” to what it seems to describe about Tao. What does this mean?