Dispel time
And you will
Dispel fate.
Fate is the force that interferes with our lives, wrecking things at the worst moments. Yet what we call fate is nothing more than the consequence of our own actions. Each time we act, we generate a chain of events that is tied to us completely. The faster we run from these links, the faster they follow us. They cannot be severed; our every act binds us further.
The operative element here is time. The events of the past are the curse. Beginning followers of Tao learn to manipulate past, present, and future. They learn how circumstances operate and seek to take advantage of that. More advanced followers of Tao eschew this process of manipulation. They obliterate all regard to past, present, and future as definitions in order to negate the concept of fate.
In order to attain a state of being where there is no past to weigh upon the present and no future to be determined, followers of Tao must reach a profound merging with Tao. The follower then acts no differently than Tao would. There is no fate to oppose them, for they are existence, they are causality, they are Tao itself.
Of course, since the Tao encompasses everything anyway, we are already Tao itself. What it really takes is a realization of this, and then you stop complaining about fate. We are where we are in our lives by the choices we make. Yes, things happen to us we have no direct control over, and I think this passage is a bit simplistic in not acknowledging that. That is what people really refer to as fate, when they feel they have no control over events around them.
But we do have control over how we react to the events around us. We can realize this and manage our own reactions to what happens around us.
73. Fate
The brave and bold perish;
The brave and subtle profit.
The subtle profit where the bold perish
For fate does not honor daring.
And even the gentle dare not tempt fate.
Fate does not attack, yet all things succumb to it;
It does not ask, yet all things answer it;
It does not call, yet all things meet it;
It does not plan, yet it determines all things.
Fate’s net is vast and its mesh is coarse,
Yet none escape it.
— Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Desire nothing, Chafe not at fate, nor at Nature’s changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.
— Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky (1831-91)
Russian-born theosophist
What we really control in our lives is the present moment. If we live without regretting the past, without fretting about the future, and use the present moment as best we can, aware of the consequences of what we do now to the future, then we are doing all we can to live our lives the way we want them to be. That is the real understanding of the Tao, i think – to live in the now as if it is all that matters, because, really, it is.
(originally posted March 18, 2005)
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