The Tao

In my family, each person has a copy of the Tao Teh Ching. The book is sacred to me for its content, but also for how much I feel connected to my family through it. In 1999, my wise dad gave each of his three children a beautiful copy for Christmas. He inscribed it simply with "Into the next millennium." Like most of my books, it's not something I simply sit down and read; I pull it out and dip in and out at will. I always come back to it, though. Sometimes, if I want a path for my meditation, I'll slide the book off the shelf and read a favorite passage.

Tonight I'm spending some time with passage #76:

When a man is living, he is soft and supple.
When he is dead, he becomes hard and rigid.
When a plant is living, it is soft and tender.
When it is dead, it becomes withered and dry.

Hence, the hard and rigid belongs to the company of the dead:
The soft and supple belongs to the company of the living.

Therefore, a mighty army tends to fall by its own weight,
Just as dry wood is ready for the axe.

The mighty and great will be laid low;
The humble and weak will be exalted.