Tao Te Ching
Problems
Instead of bemoaning our fates, complaining about our problems, and feeling bad about the difficulties we face; with a quick double take, we can look a little deeper and appreciate difficulties as creative challenges, see problems as opportunities. One of the most vivid examples of this is the ancient "Taoist Farmer story"—
A poor farmer loses his only horse and his neighbor’s say, “Oh, how terrible” but the farmer only says, “We’ll see.”
The horse brings back 7 wild horses and the neighbor’s say, “Oh, how wonderful” but the farmer only says, “We’ll see.”
The farmer’s son breaks his leg trying to train the horse and the neighbors and the farmer say the same things.
As they do the next day after soldiers come and take all the young men but not the son because of his broken leg. This story repeats itself in different ways many times every day for the farmer, for the neighbors, and for all of us.
Greatness in a person arises from the struggle with great problems. Some do this out of necessity after finding themselves in an extremely difficult internal or external situation. Others—like great spiritual teachers and philosophers—after recognizing that we’re all in extremely difficult situations
Quotes (116)
“Most problems, if you give them enough time and space, will eventually wear themselves out.”
“When Homer said that he wished war might disappear from the lives of gods and men, he forgot that without opposition all things would cease to exist.”
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
“To face calamity with an unclouded mind and quickly respond—in both a government and an individual—represents real strength.”
“No society can prosper if it aims at making things easier. Instead, it should aim at making people stronger.”
“Those who know, value deeds not words. A team of horses can’t overtake the tongue. More talk means more problems.”
“A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”
“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”
“If the problem has a solution, worrying is pointless, in the end the problem will be solved. If the problem has no solution, there is no reason to worry, because it can't be solved.”
“If you can solve your problem, then what is the need of worrying? If you cannot solve it, then what is the use of worrying?”
“Do not permit the events of your daily life to bind you, but never withdraw yourself from them.”
“But O ye lovers, bathed in bliss always, recall the griefs gone by of other days… forgetting not that ye have felt yourselves Love’s power to displease, lest ye might win Love’s prize with too great ease.”
“The higher he ascends, the darker is the wood; it is the shadowy cloud that clarified the night, and so the one who understood remains always unknowing,”
“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; 'Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”
“These are the times that try men's souls... Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”
“Wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.”
“Yet, Freedom! yet the banner, torn but flying,
Streams like the thunderstorm against the wind!”
“We rest—A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise—One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh, or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away
”
“Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. No pressure, no diamonds.”
“Misfortune is a stepping stone for genius, the baptismal font of Christians, treasure for the skillful man, an abyss for the feeble.”
“Every new truth which has ever been propounded has, for a time caused mischief, produced discomfort, and often unhappiness; sometimes disturbing social and religious arrangements... the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed.”
“Do not be afraid of your difficulties. Do not wish you could be in other circumstances than you are. For when you have made the best of an adversity, it becomes the stepping stone to a splendid opportunity”
“Oh, don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and nothing goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!”
“Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.”
“Restlessness is discontent—and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
“The claims our civilization makes that life is too hard for the grater part of humanity furthers aversion to reality and becomes the origin of neurosis.”
“In a day when you don't come across any problems - you can be sure that you are traveling in a wrong path”
“I would rather have this life of combat than moral calm and mournful stupor. God give me struggle, enemies, howling crowds, all the combat of which I am capable.”
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
“Infirmity alone makes us take notice and learn, and enables us to analyze processes which we would otherwise know nothing about.”
“The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so... It is amazing how much both happiness and efficiency can be increased b the cultivation of an orderly mind which thinks about a mater adequately at the right time rather than inadequately at all times.”
“It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem.”
“The serious problems of life are never fully solved. The meaning and design of a problem does not lie in its solution but in our incessant working on it. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifaction.”
“I stand between two worlds, am at home in neither, and in consequence have rather a hard time of it.”
“The one so loved that a single lyre raised more lament than lamenting women ever did; and that from the lament a world arose in which everything was there again”
“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.”
“when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean very little. Outward circumstances are no substitute for inner experience.”
“Ask yourself the question 'Who am I?'… Solve that great problem and you will solve all other problems.”
“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
“It is not the nature of man, as I see it, ever to be quite satisfied with what he has in life.... Contentment tends to breed laxity, but a healthy discontent keeps us alert to the changing needs of our time.”
“Most of man's problems upon this planet, in the long history of the race, have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.”
“it does not matter very much what problem, whether big or small, is tormenting us; the only thing that matters is that we be tormented, that we find a ground for being tormented. In other words, that we exercise our minds in order to keep certainty from turning us into idiots... problems keep the soul from rotting.”
“This secret is concerned not with supramundane problems but with everyday ones in all their fervent detail, with the incessantly renewed problems of man's life here upon this earth.”
“Man achieves civilization, not as a result of superior biological endowment or geographical environment, but as a response to a challenge in a situation of special difficulty which rouses him to make a hitherto unprecedented effort.”
“In this age, which believes that there is a short-cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way, in the long run, is the easiest.”
“'All right then,' said the savage defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy… the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat… the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind. I claim them all.'”
“The problem goes much deeper than religion or politics, it starts in our minds, in our habits, in the constant conditioning that has gone on and on for centuries. Judging, prejudice, likes and dislike are all part of this same problem.”
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete.”
“However unpalatable certain aspects of reality may be, they have to be faced as facts and met at their own level. Problems cannot be solved by disapproval but only by facing them.”
“If I could live again my life, in the next I’ll try to make more mistakes...I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,”
“the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life... human beings don't only want comfort, safety, short working hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice”
“Because you lose yourself, your problem will be a problem for you. If you do not lose yourself, then even though you have difficulty, there is actually no problem whatsoever.”
“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.”
“There is no problem. When you say ‘I am a human being,’ that is just another name for buddha – human being-buddha.”
“The demon that you swallow gives you its power. The greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply… the more challenging or threatening the situation, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it.”
“Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
“Because they drive us to swim against the current, ignorance and self-love are the cause of most of our troubles.”
“A problem cannot be solved by people who are concerned with only one or another of its parts.”
“The point is not that the problem has no solution, but that it is so meaningless that it need not be felt as a problem.”
“LIfe is not a problem so why are you asking for a solution? The real problem is believing that the question makes sense.”
“In a world of tension and breakdown, it is necessary for there to be those who seek to integrate their inner lives not by avoiding anguish and running away from problems, but by facing them in their naked reality and in their ordinariness.”
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
“all our problems are versions of 'My self is disturbed by what other selves are doing.' And there aren't any other selves.”
“all our problems are versions of 'My self is disturbed by what other selves are doing.' And there aren't any other selves.”
“There is nothing better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve the next time.”
“Leaders learn by leading, and they learn best by leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.”
“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
“Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”
“Thomas Jefferson would have liked the first stanza… wise souls neither indulge nor repress the troubled spirits that may haunt them.”
“Problems must be solved in work and in place...by people who suffer the consequences of their mistakes.”
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which in indestructible be found in us.”
“‘No … big … deal’… don’t make too big a deal because that leads to arrogance and pride, or a sense of specialness. On the other hand, making too big a deal about your difficulties takes you in the other direction; it takes you into poverty, self-denigration, and a low opinion of yourself.”
“In America, anyone can become president. That’s the problem.”
“The whole point is to have a vision of the totality. Then there’s no problem. If you don’t have a vision of the totality, obviously you will have problems.”
“If you want to solve the world’s problems, you have to put your own household, your own individual life, in order first… the first step in learning how to rule is learning to rule your household, your immediate world.”
“We cannot find an answer, because answers always run out. That is the problem and the promise.”
“People who take holidays, vacations, instead of finding luxury where they are, face spiritual problems. The physical world is the spiritual world and all the problems of the world are therefore spiritual problems.”
“Worrying about the world is a dead end. When nuclear proliferation is solved, global warming pops up. When global warming is solved, overpopulation starts looming. then there’s always the burning out of the sun and the infinite expansion or contraction of the universe…”
“Too many problem-solving sessions become battlegrounds where decisions are made based on power rather than intelligence.”
“Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems.”
“D.C. is not about solving problems. If we solved problems, there would be nothing else left to do and we would all have to go out and do something honest—like fry hamburgers.”
“If you dream that you are flying and continue to believe that you can fly even after you wake up, that becomes a problem.”
“Every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived”
“It is the struggle it takes to make it work that helps give that thing its value... we have warmer feelings for the projects we worked on where everything seemed to go wrong.”
“Instead of rejecting the problems and emotions, or surrendering to them, we can befriend them, working through them to reach an enduring, authentic experience of our inherent wisdom, confidence, clarity, and joy.”
“Essentially the same problem arises whether it is in our relationships to other human beings, to animals, or to the planet—and the solution is also the same: cultivating a much broader awareness of the chains of causality that link us to other, and cultivating the feelings of closeness that can inspire us to act.”
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