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CHAPTER 1
Lao Tzu:
The Tao that can be said in words is not the Tao. Words cannot describe it.
Shakespeare:
Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.
Troilus, Troilus and Cressida, act V, scene iii
Polonius: What do you read, my lord? Hamlet: Words, words, words.
Hamlet, act II, scene ii
Words are but wind.
Dromio, The Comedy of Errors, act III, scene i
Comment: The word sun doesn't give any warmth or light. Only the sun can do that. Saying the word is only meant to suggest the thing itself. Of course, in the case of Lao Tzu or Shakespeare, the irony of using words to say something that can't be said in words is significant. Lao Tzu's writing is a foundation of Eastern thought. Shakespeare's plays are among the greatest uses of any Western language.
CHAPTER 2
Lao Tzu:
In each perception of good, there are the seeds of evil.
Shakespeare:
There is some soul of goodness in things evil.
Henry, Henry V, act IV, scene i
Lao Tzu:
What is true and what is not true exist together. Great and small are complementary, before and after make sequence, long and short are relative.
Shakespeare:
The bold and coward, The wise and fool, the artist and unread, The hard and soft, all seem affined [affiliated] and kin.
Troilus and Cressida, act I, scene iii
Comment: The world is defined by opposites. Every ancient spiritual text begins with the separation of light from darkness, water from land, man from woman. Lao Tzu seems to insist that opposites create each other: once anything is described as right, that necessarily implies something else that's wrong. As for Shakespeare, his greatest characters all contain elements of both good and evil: Othello is filled with love and rage; Hamlet suffers cowardice and bravery; Macbeth knows murder and remorse. That's what makes them true.
CHAPTER 3
Lao Tzu:
Be silent while you work and keep control over all.
Shakespeare:
I like your silence, it the more shows off your wonder.
Paulina, The Winter's Tale, act V, scene iii
Comment: If words aren't the way to tell the truth, silence ought to have its say.
CHAPTER 4
Lao Tzu:
Tao is the elemental nothing from which all things are born, a deep pool into which all things go.
Shakespeare:
The elements of whom your swords are temper'd may as well Wound the loud winds, or with bemock'd-at-stabs Kill the still-closing waters.
Ariel, The Tempest, act III, scene iii
Lao Tzu:
It blunts sharpness and levels mountains. An eternal void, it is eternally filled.
Shakespeare:
O God! that one might read the book of fate, Make mountains level, and the continent Melt itself into the sea! And changes fill the cup of alteration.
Henry, Henry IV, Part 2, act III, scene i
Lao Tzu:
When you lose yourself, you will be everywhere.
Shakespeare:
I have lost myself, I am not here.
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet, act I, scene i
Comment: "Elemental nothing" is the origin of all things. In the Hindu pantheon, it's the god who continually divides itself in half. In Taoism it manifests itself in nature. For Shakespeare, it's nature imbued with God. No matter how it's defined, it's where everything comes from and everything goes, and no force can prevail against it.
CHAPTER 5
Lao Tzu:
Is the world unkind? Nature burns up life like a straw dog. Should the wise man meet all things in nature and dismiss them as he would a straw dog?
Shakespeare:
Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man's life's as cheap as beast's.
Lear, King Lear, act II, scene iv
She burnt with love, as straw with fire flameth; She burnt out love, as soon as straw outburneth
"The Passionate Pilgrim," poem 7
Comment: Nature has no emotion. A strong wind doesn't have malice when it tears apart a house. A fire isn't angry when it destroys a forest. A rose doesn't intend to be beautiful. Is there something to be learned from that?
CHAPTER 6
Lao Tzu:
The mystical feminine quality of the universe is eternal and ever present. It is the source of heaven and earth. Empty yet undiminished, it gives birth to the infinite.
Shakespeare:
From women's eye this doctrine I derive: They are the ground, the books, the academes, From whence doth spring true Promethean fire.
Berowne, Love's Labor's Lost, act IV, scene iii
Comment: In Sumerian religious texts, the oldest known records of religious philosophy on the planet, the first thing that existed was the primordial sea, also thought of as the goddess Nammu, the originator of all things.
CHAPTER 7
Lao Tzu:
Because the world doesn't live for itself, it will live on; the unselfish are the only ones who find fulfillment.
Shakespeare:
For my single self, I had as lief not be as live to be in awe of such a thing as myself.
Cassius, Julius Caesar, act I, scene ii
Comment: Everyone agrees: don't be selfish. "For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice" (James 3:16-17). "The common enemy of all religious disciplines is selfishness of mind" (The Dalai Lama). "All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction" (Swami Vivekananda, on Hindu thought).
CHAPTER 8
Lao Tzu:
The highest good goes everywhere, nourishes all things without trying, both high and low, making the world One.
Shakespeare:
The selfsame sun that shines upon his court hides not his visage from our cottage, but looks on alike.
Perdita, The Winter's Tale, act IV, scene iv
All places that the eye of heaven visits are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Gaunt, Richard III, act I, scene iii
Comment: If, as in verse five, nature doesn't have any personal responsibility for destroying a home, it follows that it also has no regard for wealth or power: the same sun warms a castle and a cottage, and everywhere it shines is sunny.
CHAPTER 9
Lao Tzu:
To take all you want is never as good as to stop when you should. Wealth, power, lust, pride: all beget their own downfall.
Shakespeare:
Fie on lust and luxury, Lust is but a bloody fire Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart whose flames aspire As thoughts do blow them higher and higher Pinch him and burn him and turn him about Till candles and starlight and moonshine be out.
Fairies' Song to Falstaff, The Merry Wives of Windsor, act V, scene v
Lao Tzu:
Scheme and plot, and you won't keep riches long at all.
As long as your house is full of gold and your pockets filled with money, it's all impossible to guard.
Shakespeare:
See, sons, what things you are!
How quickly nature falls into revolt When gold becomes her object.
Henry, Henry IV, Part 2, act IV, scene v
Comment: Everyone agrees. "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). "In no manner whatsoever do I declare that gold and silver be accepted or sought for" (The Buddha's Fire Sermon). "There is no hope of immortality through wealth" (The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad).
CHAPTER 10
Lao Tzu:
Can you control the animal in your soul and still remain the same person always? Can you keep your mind from wandering and concentrate on one thing? This is the mystic virtue.
Shakespeare:
Keep yourself within yourself.
Charmian, Antony and Cleopatra, act II, scene iv
I am constant as the northern star.
Caesar, Julius Caesar, act III, scene i
Comment: Great concentration — on a single thought, single activity, or single moment — is an essential quality for all human beings, and all too missing from contemporary life.
CHAPTER 11
Lao Tzu:
You can make a pot out of clay, but the useful part of the pot is not the clay, it's the part that's empty, where there is nothing. Nothingness is a great secret of the Tao.
Shakespeare:
The ear-deafening voice of the Oracle, kin to Jove's thunder, so surprised my sense, that I was nothing.
Cleomenes, The Winter's Tale, act III, scene i
Lear: Speak. Cordelia: Nothing, my lord. Lear: Nothing? Cordelia: Nothing.
King Lear, act I, scene i
Comment: A cup, no matter how beautiful or expensive it is, exists only to create an empty space into which something can be poured. The empty space is the important part. Maybe there's something to be learned from having empty places in ourselves. There's a great story about a student who explained to his teacher that he was eager to learn but already very advanced because he'd studied a lot at home. The teacher congratulated the student and offered him some tea. The student held out his cup and the teacher poured, but when the cup was filled, she kept on pouring. Finally the student said, "Excuse me, but you're spilling the tea, the cup is already full." The teacher said, "That's right. I can't teach you anything if you think your cup is already full. You have to bring me an empty cup."
CHAPTER 12
Lao Tzu:
The five colors blind your eyes, the five sounds will dull your ears, the five flavors mislead your taste; the wise follow the heart, not the senses.
Shakespeare:
In faith, I do not love thee with mine eye, For they in thee a thousand errors note, But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who in despite of view is pleased to dote; Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted, Nor tender feelings to base touches prone, Nor taste, nor smell desire to be invited To any sensual feast with thee alone.
Sonnet 141, lines 1 — 8
Comment: The senses can be completely illusory. It's easy to mistake a red autumn leaf for a cardinal flying to the ground. The Hebrew proverb says, "The heart sees better than the eyes."
CHAPTER 13
Lao Tzu:
It is said: "Good fortune and ill fortune cause tension. Creative and destructive natures exist equally in the mind." Tension exists because we have a mind, and because that mind has dual purposes. All things happen in the mind.
Shakespeare:
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Hamlet, Hamlet, act II, scene ii
All things are ready, if our minds be so.
Henry, Henry V, act IV, scene iii
Lao Tzu:
Be free from thought.
Shakespeare:
Thought is free.
Maria, Twelfth Night, act I, scene iii
Comment: There's a traditional story about two students looking at a flag flapping in the wind. One student says, "The wind is moving." The other student says, "No, the flag is moving." Their teacher says, "Both wrong, your mind is moving." That's only marginally more difficult to understand, at first, than this: why does one person smile and congratulate the other team when he loses a baseball game, while another person on the same losing team kicks things and curses? It's the same event, so maybe it has something to do with how the mind interprets the event. Taking this idea to its greatest extent, maybe everything depends on how the mind interprets it. And if that's the case, why wouldn't people choose to interpret everything happily?
CHAPTER 14
Lao Tzu:
Tao is elusive. Looking you never see, listening you never hear, grasping you never hold.
Shakespeare:
The eye sees not itself But by reflection, by some other things.
Brutus, Julius Caesar, act I, scene ii
Comment: The problem is that intuitions and perceptions are slippery. When you have a strong feeling about something, it's impossible to quantify, and seems to disappear the more you try to examine it or explain it. Even a fact is difficult to defend the more you scrutinize it. The discipline of physics has spent thousands of years (if you consider the Greeks to be the originators of atomic science) trying to define the building blocks of matter. By the time it was decided that the atom was the smallest thing in the universe, someone had already discovered protons and electrons. Now subatomic particles are thought by some people to be comprised of "tendencies of energy." And a tendency is a very elusive thing.
CHAPTER 15
Lao Tzu:
Not asking, not expecting, nature works as it will, nurturing all things in their season. Be patient.
Shakespeare:
At Christmas I do no more desire a rose than wish a snow in May's newfangled shows, but like of each thing that in season grows.
Berowne, Loves Labor's Lost, act I, scene i How poor are they that have not patience!
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
Iago, Othello, act II, scene iii
I will be the pattern of all patience, I will say nothing.
Lear, King Lear, act III, scene ii
Comment: Everyone agrees. "We urge you, brothers, be patient with everyone" (I Thessalonians 5:14). "The greatest prayer is patience" (The Buddha). "Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience" (Ralph Waldo Emerson). "Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold" (Leonardo da Vinci).
CHAPTER 16
Lao Tzu:
All things that come into existence return to the source, all things in nature return to the One.
Shakespeare:
As many arrows loosed several ways, come to one mark, As many ways meet in one town, As many fresh streams meet in one salt sea ... So may a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose.
Canterbury, Henry V, act I, scene ii
Comment: A theory of the universe begins with the idea that in the beginning there was a void, and in the end everything will return to that void. In the Hindu pantheon that process happens over and over and over again in an endless succession of kalpas. Greek thinkers, especially Pythagoras, called this concept an Eternal Return: that the universe recurs an infinite number of times. Some contemporary scientists have posited a kind of "Big Crunch" at the ending of the "Big Bang," that eventually everything that exploded will come back together. Everything comes from some source, and will return to that source in the end.
CHAPTER 17
Lao Tzu:
If you have no faith in others, others will not trust you. When you have faith in others, others will do for themselves.
Shakespeare:
Trust not him that hath once broken faith.
Elizabeth, Henry VI, Part 3, act IV, scene iv
There's no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune.
Falstaff, Henry IV, Part 1, act III, scene iii
Comment: "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase" (Martin Luther King, Jr.). "Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe" (Saint Augustine). "Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark" (Rabindranath Tagore). But also, of course, the opposite is also true: "Call on God, but row away from the rock." (Hunter S. Thompson).
CHAPTER 18
Lao Tzu:
When barren wisdom and intelligence appeared, great hypocrisy also came, and rules to govern our lives.
Shakespeare:
And since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practice the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly.
Coriolanus, Coriolanus, act II, scene iii Comment: When a certain kind of empty education is imposed on anyone, it's difficult to learn. This is especially true in educational institutions whose purpose is to teach rules, and adherence to those rules, instead of offering doorways to genuine knowledge.
CHAPTER 19
Lao Tzu:
Rid yourself of listening to philosophers! Ignore all professors and those who depend on laws!
Shakespeare:
Hang up philosophy! Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, It helps not, it prevails not; talk no more.
Romeo, Romeo and Juliet, act III, scene iii
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers!
Dick, Henry VI, Part 2, act IV, scene ii
Lao Tzu:
Learn things yourself. You'll profit a hundredfold.
Shakespeare:
Learning is by an adjunct to ourself, And where we are, our learning likewise is.
Berowne, Love's Labor's Lost, act IV, scene ii
CHAPTER 20
Lao Tzu:
Without apparent direction I drift, seeming homeless. All others have plenty, I have none. I am always confused. Ordinary people sparkle, I am the only shadow. Vulgar people seem happy, I alone am melancholy. I am lonely and different because I live at the door to the All, seeking entrance.
Shakespeare:
I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation, nor the musician's which is fantastical, nor the courtier's, which is proud, nor the soldier's, which is ambitious, nor the lawyer's, which is politic, nor the lady's, which is nice, nor the lover's, which is all these, but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Tao and the Bard"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Phillip DePoy.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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