Tao Te Ching: Making mistakes, growing, not blaming May 9, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Tao Te Ching.Tags: blaming, failure, Lao-tzu, life, opportunity, personal development, personal growth, philosophy, Tao Te Ching, writing
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The ancient wisdom of Lao-tzu, as expressed in the 81 chapters or verses of the Tao Te Ching, is able to express and make understandable highly complex principles within the confines of just a few words.
The same concepts the Tao Te Ching so concisely elucidates may take up hundreds of words of commentary in contemporary personal growth and self-improvement media.
Consider the power of these 40 words in Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Chapter 79:
Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else
there is no end to the blame.
Therefore the Master
fulfills her* own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others (1)
* Because the personal pronoun in the Tao is not gender specific, Mitchell alternates between male and female versions of the Master
(1) Tao Te Ching: A New English Version, as translated/interpreted by Stephen Mitchell, HarperPerennial, A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1991
— Dennis Mellersh
Learning from Confucius: The need for daily self-analysis May 7, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Concept of personal development.Tags: Confucius, inspiration, life, personal development, personal development potential, personal growth, philosophy, writing
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By Dennis Mellersh
Rigorously learning a plan of personal development and self-improvement, no matter how thorough and profound it is, will not benefit us much if we aren’t honest in our self-appraisal.
If we are not truthful with ourselves, with our inner commitment, in terms of what we are doing outwardly, we are not on a path of growth.
This from Confucius:
“Master Tseng said:
‘Each day I ask three things of myself: Have I been trustworthy in all that I’ve done for other people? Have I stood by my word in dealing with friends? Have I practised all that I’ve been taught?’” (1)
(1) Confucius, the Analects, as translated in David Hinton’s book, The Four Chinese Classics, Counterpoint, Berkeley, California, 2013
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