I absolutely LOVED this book! Can’t wait until I read another book by Watts. Tao philosophy is beautiful and I feel very fortunate to have read this book.
I will attach some of my favourite excerpts from the book below.
Yin (negative) and yang (positive) lies the principle of polarity. In the metaphors of other cultures, light is at war with darkness, life with death, good with evil, positive with the negative, and thus an idealism to cultivate the former and be rid of the latter flourishes throughout much of the world. To the traditional way of Chinese thinking, this is as incomprehensible as an electrical current without both positive and negative poles, for polarity is the principle that + and -, north and south, are different aspects of one and the same system, and that the disappearance of either one of them would be the disappearance of the system.
Yang and yin are associated with the masculine and the feminine, the strong and the weak, the firm and the yielding, the light and the dark, the rising and the falling, heaven and earth, and even recognised in such everyday matters as cooking as the spicy and the bland. Thus the art of life is not seen as holding to yang and banishing yin, but as keeping the two in balance, because there cannot be one without the other. When regarding them as the masculine and the feminine, the reference is not so much to male and female individuals as to characteristics which are dominant in, but not confined to, each of the two sexes.
The art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them.
The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether in small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end, and the whole system is protected from monotony by the fact that, in just the same way, remembering alternates with forgetting.
Chinese philosophy takes it as a basic premise that if you cannot trust nature and other people, you cannot trust yourself. It is realising that oneself and nature are one and the same process, which is the Tao. True, this is an oversimplification, for one knows very well that some people cannot be trusted and that the unpredictable ways of nature are not always one’s own preconceived way, so that basic faith in the system involves taking risks. But when no risk is taken there is no freedom.
There cannot be any “before” unless there is an “after.”
Take it that you are not going anywhere but here, and that there never was, is, or will be any other time than now. Simply be aware of what actually is without giving it names and without judging it, for you are now feeling reality itself, instead of ideas and opinions about it.
There is no point in trying to suppress the babble of words and ideas that goes on in most adult brains, so if it won’t stop, let it go on as it will, and listen to it as if it were the sound of traffic or the clucking of hens.
Tao is just a name for whatever happens. The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor to not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it’s like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong.
The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.
Tao is the flowing course of nature and it’s universe.
Another reason why the Tao and it’s pattern escape us is that we are ourselves, and we are like a sword that cuts but cannot cut itself; like an eye that sees but cannot see itself.
What goes on simply happens of itself.
The Tao does nothing and yet nothing is left undone. Wu-Wei is going with the grain, not forcing. Swimming with the current. Knowing the principles, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them.
Is a long life such a good thing if it is lived in constant search for satisfaction.
We must make the desperate gamble of trusting ourselves and others.
Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weaknesses.
Taoists do sit in meditation, but not with the egoistic purpose of improving themselves; they meditate for the joy of meditation - the flow of breath, the sound of roosters in the distance, the light on the floor.
So long as we desire the experience called pleasure we imply, and so generate, it’s opposite.
Wu-wei is to roll with experiences and feelings as they come and go.
In the case of the body, it is best to let it go along with things. In the case of emotions, it is best to let them follow where they will. By going along with things, you avoid becoming separated by them. By letting the emotions follow as they will, you avoid fatigue.
It is worth re-emphasising the principle that “you” cannot go along with “things” unless there is the understanding that there is, in truth, no alternative since you and the things are the same process.
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