There was something created before heaven and earth which we call the way (Tao). The way is infinitely high, unfathomably deep. Enclosing heaven and earth, receiving from the formless, it produces a stream running deep and wide without overflowing. It absorbs the negative and emits the positive. In antiquity, the three majestic ones attained the order of the way and stood in the center, their spirits roamed with creation.
Happiness has nothing to do with wealth and status, but is a matter of harmony. Real people embody this through open emptiness, even easiness, clear cleanness, flexible yielding, unadulterated purity, and plain simplicity, not getting mixed up in things. Cherishing the way of heaven, embracing the heart of heaven, they breath darkness and light, exhaling the old and inhaling the new.
When Confucius asked him about the way Lao-Tzu said: Strengthen your body, unify your vision, and the harmony of heaven will arrive. Concentrate your knowledge, rectify your assessment, and the spirit will come to abide. Virtue will be receptive to you, the way will be there for you. Keep yourself open, unminding that you may attain clarity and all around mastery. Those who serve life adapt to changes as they act. Changes arise from the times, those who know the times do not behave in fixed ways.
When people lose their essential nature by following desires, their actions are never correct. Anxiety and lament burn the heart, so sickness builds up. If people can get rid of all these, then they merge with spiritual light. Spiritual light is attainment of the inward. When people attain the inward, their internal organs are calm, their thoughts are even, their eyes and ears are clear, and their bones are strong. They are masterful but not contentious, firm and strong yet never exhausted. They are not excessive in anything, not or they inadequate in anything.
Changes in the times do not allow rest in the intervals. Time does not dally with people. That is why the sages do not value a huge gem as much as they value a little time. Time is hard to find and easy to loose. Those who embody the way are free and never come to a dead end. Those who let their eyes and ears look at and listen to whatever they may tire their minds thereby and so lack clarity. As heaven reaches its heights and earth reaches its depths, as sun and moon shine, as the stars twinkle, as yin and yang harmonize, there is no variations in any of this. Make the way right, and things will spontaneously be natural. 18. When people are caught up in social customs, they are bound physically and drained mentally, therefore they cannot avoid being burdened.
Feelings reach farther than words. Quiet abstraction and lightness of heart are ways of nurturing life. Harmonious happiness is a way of securing virtue. When externals do not disturb you within, then your nature finds what suits it. If you always nurture life and embrace virtue, this can be called the ability understand the way. When that is the case, there is no stagnating blockage of the blood vessels, no accumulating energies in the organs. Self-depreciation leads to failure in achievement and reputation.
The way to heaven is to lower the elevated and raise the depressed. The way of heaven is to revert after reaching a climax, and to diminish upon reaching fullness. Therefore the sages diminish themselves daily and empty their moods, not daring to be self-satisfied. When the spirit is in the lead, the body follows with beneficial results; when the body is in the lead, the spirit follows with harmful results. When your rank is high in the world, then your vitality and spirit are depleted daily, eventually to become dissipated and not return to the body. When the vitality, spirit, will, and energy are calm, they fill you day by day and make you strong. Therefore the sages keep nurturing their spirit, make their energy gentle, and flow with the way. The way is so high there is nothing above it, so deep there is nothing below it. –Lao Tzu (From the Wen-Tzu)
"The way effects the movement of the heavens and the stability of the earth, turning endlessly like a wheel, flowing ceaselessly like water." –Lao Tzu
Lao-Tzu, in his Wen-Tzu, speaks of the effects of the spiritual E/c2 and teaches similar to Plato's Republic in which...
E/c2 - Heaven - The journeying out of the cave into the great outdoors
z/d - Earth - The cave and things pertaining to the lower world.