Try as we may, thinking expansively doesn't get us to induction. If you want to understand meditative life, it is better to read Ae than Lao Tzu. But the effect of such grandiloquence as these Eastern oracles is deflationary, not edifying.

If you are looking for the Way,
May I suggest:
Go down to the river,
Throw a stick into the water,
Watch the Way the stick goes,
The stick knows the Way.
=

Some rivers are hardly more than open sewers. The Los Angeles is just a concrete channel full of litter that finds its way nowhere. The Humber is, well, like going to Hull. The Fleet, the Colorado, the Neponset, even the big muddy in its own way, hardly know where they are going before they're gone.
东方神秘主义的主张关闭了除门徒以外的所有审问途径，而西方，在最好的情况下，邀请了除门徒以外的所有审问方式。在需要追随者的地方，开拓是不受欢迎的。正如萨蒙·拉什迪所说，一个不能容忍嘲笑的宗教就不值得信仰。

你现在是不是在讨论道教的观点“我们做而不做，一切都完成了?”这其中的意义对我来说一直是相当难以捉摸的。

Conveying meaning between and amongst us is not a unilateral responsibility. What the statement above might mean is that agency is middle voiced, but who is to say? A style of exposition that cuts off the flow of responsibility, that sets the "master" above the "disciple" voids the meaning.

I am unfamiliar with Taoism. Have not yet mustered the initiative to investigate it. Whenever I read (or read about) such things, I try to resolve apparent paradoxes associated with those teachings, for example the question: what is the sound of one hand clapping? Eastern philosophies are notoriously playful with paradox. Perhaps this is one reason why they appeal to western intellectuals and philosophy-oriented individuals and groups. The notions of metaphysics are often intricate and impossible to unravel because they may have more than one meaning, or, if they ARE merely playful paradox, they may have no meaning at all, other than to compel us to think a bit more deliberatively and contemplatively than we are used to thinking. If, then, there is no sound to one hand clapping, then might we conclude that if there is no one around when a tree falls in the forest, that said tree makes no noise? Well, we might. Or maybe not. It is all pretty fascinating, at any rate.
在某个宇宙中，甚至有可能什么都不做，却把所有的事情都做完。我想去那个宇宙看看。但现在，我倾向于遵循我去世已久的祖父的方式，尽管是一种简单得多的方式。他出身贫寒，家境贫寒，他的人生哲学就是:物尽其用。爷爷对悖论既不感兴趣，也不喜欢。它不能给人提供食物，也不能给人遮风挡雨。如果有人问他，森林里的树倒下了，发出了声音却没有人听到，他可能会“拍那人的头”。他不是一个可以随便玩弄的人。
HGN.

Making do is certainly analogous to the sound of one hand clapping. Its sound is frustration. If it isn't you're not really trying. Stoicism is a more coherent and concrete form of presenting the same idea, and, as usual, vapid Eastern notions are presented as somehow more meaningful than the Western consensus that responsibility of meaning conveyed is on the shoulders of the speaker, not the disciple, one's intellectual rivals also have a right to know what you mean. Maybe there is meaning that in ordinary terms seems ineffable, but "you'll see...," is not a "path", it's spite. When I hear a tree fall in the woods I don't have to see it to know what it is, and if I know the wood well enough I might even know which one. And if I come upon the fallen tree without having heard it fall, not only do I know it made a sound, I can pretty much know what sound it made. It is not vapid to say this, but it is vapid to imply there is no sound to one hand frustrated by its lack of a responding partner in the dialogue. It is therefore as unworthy of a dope-slap to expect the forces in the world that frustrate one's effort to put a roof over one's head or feed one's family to account for the injustice of it as it is to expect a reasonable response to a reasonable critique of a vapid assertion.
Think of it this way: There is a wilderness. You say you've been out in it and know you're way around and can show me the way to the unicorn you say you saw there. But when pressed for clear direction you respond with something analogous to "go and see!". Well, this is all well and good if indeed there is a real place there with a real wonder to behold and a beaten path to follow there. But if a true wilderness, with no landmarks or trails, with you as the only explorer leaving no trace there but your hopelessly vague assertions, well, there may be something to it, but it is highly irresponsible to call it a path, and highly unresponsive to responsible criticism of what, devoid of that responsiveness, can only be spiteful misdirection.

So, it is a few days later, and I have now begun reading a bit about Tao, or taoism, or whatever it is proper to call it. My introduction comes through Volume II of The Great Philosophers, by Karl Jaspers.He gives a short account of Lao-Tzu, wherein a few gems from the Master are listed. I find them noteworthy, mostly because Jaspers tells us that there are no playful or, as he says it, irresponsible paradoxes, associated with the Tao. Well, everyone has his own take on paradox, so we are all welcome to that. Additionally, though, the sayings are poignant, and, sometimes, witty. And we all could use a grin, now and then:
1. In penetrating the four quarters with your intelligence, can you be without knowledge?
2. A wise man has no extensive knowledge; he who has extensive knowledge is not a wise man.
3. One may know the world without going out of doors. One may see the Way of Heaven without looking through the windows. The further one goes, the less one knows.
4. To know eternity is to attain enlightenment. And,
5. He who does not know eternity runs blindly into disaster.
好吧，你来了。道回避那些顽固地寻求它的人。当你的眼睛试图注视它的时候，它就消失了。很像我多年前经历的一系列超自然现象。有那么多明亮而虚幻的蝴蝶。
A fellow seeker,
HGN.