The way that can be spoken is not the eternal way
That which can be named is not the eternal name
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, 1
“Talking about a path is not walking that path.
Thinking about life is not living“.
Directly experiencing life is not something we do easily. By the time we are adults, our experience is mediated through a multitude of conceptual filters that provide a constant commentary about our life, but that ignore the thing itself. This process is so deeply conditioned in most of us that we don’t even notice it. We wander through day after day with our minds spinning an endless stream of thoughts, judgments, hopes, fantasies, critiques, and plans, all mixed with a babble of advertising jingles and fragments of television shows. Lao-tzu suggests that this habitual commentary on life, though a natural part of being human, is not the same thing as a fully lived life. At the same time, he does not totally discount the conceptual thinking process. We make a certain kind of sense out of our life through the use of categories, thoughts, and words. But, he suggests … these thoughts and words are gateways to life, not life itself.
Commentary on the Tao Te Ching by William Martin in A Path and A Practice
photo: without you
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