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    Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living
    Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living
    Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living
    Ebook88 pages1 hour

    Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living

    By William Martin

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    About this ebook

    William Martin continues to explore the Tao as a practical path for the modern person. His collections of short essay and wisdom poetry maintains the simplicity of Taoist writing while exploring the complexities of modern life. This volume looks at such diverse topics as simplicity, solitude, pleasure, consumerism, social action, aging, self-discipline and many other pithy examples of how a Taoist understanding of life can lead to deeper satisfaction, contentment, and joy for people of all ages and spiritual paths.

    William Martin is the author of the best-selling "The Parent's Tao Te Ching" which has been supporting and inspiring parents for the past fifteen years. He is also the author of "The Couple's Tao Te Ching," "The Sage's Tao Te Ching," "The Tao of Forgiveness," "A Path and a Practice," "The Caregiver's Tao Te Ching" (co-authored with his spouse, Nancy), and the eBook, "30 Days of Tao.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Martin
    Release dateNov 15, 2014
    ISBN9781310028953
    Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living
    Author

    William Martin

    WILLIAM MARTIN is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen novels, an award-winning PBS documentary on the life of George Washington, and a cult-classic horror film, too. In novels like Back Bay, City of Dreams, The Lost Constitution, The Lincoln Letter, and Bound for Gold, he has told stories of the great and the anonymous of American history, and he's taken readers from the deck of the Mayflower to 9/11. His work has earned him many accolades and honors, including the 2005 New England Book Award, the 2015 Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the 2019 Robert B. Parker Award. He and his wife live near Boston, where he serves on the boards of several cultural and historical institutions, and he has three grown children.

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      Book preview

      Lost In The Tao - William Martin

      Introduction

      Here are more words from a man who believes that words are dangerous and misleading things; who tries to live the wisdom expressed by the Chinese sage, Lao-Tzu over 2,500 years ago whose core advice was; Those who speak, do not know. Those who know, do not speak. and, The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Writing, of course, is a form of speaking. Why, then, do I continue to speak that which cannot be spoken and to write that which cannot be written?

      I write because it is my craft and art. I have nothing else to offer in way of return for the privilege of life, and it has indeed been a privilege. I try to express my gratitude by being awake to the direct experience of this life. I owe to life the effort to see it as it is rather than through the conditioned filters of my mind. What I see is what I write.

      I'd never considered myself a revolutionary. I lived through the '60s without really understanding the counter-culture movement of the time. I graduated from university as an electronic engineer and followed my conditioned mind down a conventional path of family and career. As an research scientist with the Navy, I avoided the first-hand horrors of Viet Nam and thus did not have the wake-up call that many of my generation experienced.

      Without filling in the biographical details of my long journey, suffice it to say that I have gradually, somewhat unconsciously, become a dedicated revolutionary - a quiet revolutionary, not really a political revolutionary. Following the advice of Lao-Tzu, whose teachings are perhaps the most revolutionary teachings in history, I try to stay hidden and let the movement of the Tao accomplish its revolution in its own fashion.

      I am, however, as are we all, an integral part of this Tao movement toward balance and I am compelled to play my own small role. I am a writer, perhaps a poet. Writers who write for revolutionary purposes, however, cease being writers and become propagandists. My role is not to convince or persuade, but to use my craft to express the heart of the Tao as clearly and aesthetically as possible. I believe a revolution is necessary but it must come in its own manner. I am a seed planter, a tender of a garden of words. What grows from the seeds must grow from its own inner nature, the nature of the Tao. I can’t stop the wheel of Yin and Yang from turning, but neither can I force it to turn faster according to my wishes.

      This revolution will occur. The Tao is always restoring equilibrium to the cosmos. The mindless consumption, distraction, greed, fear, and ecological disaster we have wrought as a species will be brought into balance one way or another. We will return to simplicity, right livelihood, and caring relationship with the earth - either by mindful choice or by apocalyptic force. It seems to be up to us.

      I’ve tried to write in a manner that will help the reader glimpse the underlying movement of the Tao rather than become lost in a sea of words. If my simple offerings are of help to you, my unseen friend, I am delighted. I offer this question to you and to all of us: What might life look like after such a revolution? Let's imagine it as best we can. Then, using these images let's begin now to live that way.

      Peace to us all,

      Bill Martin

      Chico, California

      Why Write?

      I write because Basho wrote

      beneath a banana tree.

      The frog that splashed kerplunk for him

      set free a song in me.

      Transcending myths of space and time

      his verse makes known to me today

      the ordinary yet so sublime

      that rests in grass and mud and clay.

      He didn’t know that as years passed

      his words would last so long,

      I think he would be surprised

      that I have heard his song.

      I am, to him, the unseen friend

      whom Emerson extolled

      as the only audience one needs

      to have one’s words behold.

      "Who are you to set yourself

      beside such men as these?"

      has accused me all my life.

      I finally have an answer: Me.

      Will someone in a future I can not foresee,

      wonder about a few words of mine?

      I doubt it, but you never know.

      If you are there, my unseen friend,

      I wish for you green boughs above

      and between your toes brown mud.

      Enjoy yourself. And write a word

      to someone else unseen.

      Karma

      I read once that human beings were, story-telling animals. This seems quite true to me . We not only tell stories but we, to a great extent, are the products of stories. In fact, story-telling is the root of the often misunderstood term, karma. Karma is essentially the cumulative effect over millennia of an almost infinite variety of stories - stories about how to understand every aspect of life. We learn the stories of who we are, who we are not, how we should behave, how others should

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