210223 What I learned in my studies this morning

Today's Tao:

We are born gentle and weak, but at death are stiff and hard. 

Green plants are tender and filled with sap. 

At their death they are withered and dry. 

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. 

The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life. 

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle. 

A tree that is unbending is easily broken. 

The hard and strong will fall. 

The soft and weak will overcome.

From The Daily Stoic: 

 

“You shouldn’t give circumstances the power to rouse anger, for they don’t care at all.”—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.38

Situations don't care. Circumstances cannot react to my ire and outrage. They are the definition of "that which is not up to us." 

If I cultivate virtue and find my right path, yielding to inevitable things and forming my actions according to reality, I can free myself from frustration. 

Follow the Tao: do not resist the forces of fate but bend with suppleness and overcome. 

From Eric Hoffer, PART 4 Beginning and End:  

Men of Words 

Men of Words are often surprised that their efforts to reform a corrupt system instead lead to a Movement.  They fail to predict that most people just want a Master, regardless of who it is or what they do. they want to be free from responsibility for their lives and seel anyone who will make choices for them.

 

(The True Believer, XV-109)