Advices from Taoism

Technology provides man with everything that our ancestors could have only dreamt of in their time. If they are to look at us, see how we live and inspect our houses they will probably amazed with all sorts of high-tech things they see. From our living room adorned with the latest entertainment system to our kitchens complete with gadgets that does the smallest things for us, all their jaws would have dropped and all eyes would have popped out. The twenty first century was like Neil Armstrong’s small step in the moon. It symbolized our giant leap forward.

What is very ironic though is that this giant leap forward is not only a leap toward success. As the bad comes with the good, this leap forward also meant a leap toward bigger challenges, pressures and obstacles. It is no wonder then how our elders, seeing the way we live nowadays, sigh and say that things were so much easier back then. With the availability of resources that will make everything easier, there is no more room for errors. Only perfection is expected of everything and thus, the fast paced and stressful life of today. Most of the time, then, all we do is worry over matters that are important to us but did not happen as we hoped it would. In the same way, we, of course, do not accept this outcome, fight it and then get ourselves into more trouble.

But this is actually solved by simple advices I have learned from Taoism, as emphasized in wu wei or the action-less action. It stresses that in the midst of everything, one should be like a swimmer, where the best way to go is to swim with the current and not against it. It is becoming one with how nature is, with how things are. In the discussion of Taoism, I picked out two quotations, previously provided, that, for me, tell the most interesting pieces of advice.


Advice 1: “Things don’t turn out the way they are supposed to. But what can you do? You must take life the way it comes to you and make the best of it.” –Life of Pi

The best piece of counsel I have received in my life is that nothing is perfect. We cannot assume that everything will be exactly the way we want it to be. There will always be the ditches in the road and the wrong turns we take from the main road and we can never stop this from happening. It simply is just the way things are. I don’t mean that one has not to worry about things just because it is like that. Worrying is a natural part of the human mind and there is no reason that we shouldn’t worry. This worrying, in fact, is quite positive as it helps us concentrate more and focus on getting to our end goal. What I mean by accepting the way things are is that the “things” I am referring to are the end product of what happens around us. If the milk has already spilled, it is then useless to cry over it. One must learn to move on.

On the very first time that I had not received a medal for class, I was in one of my most depressed moods. I felt like such a failure. It was the same feeling when I fell in love and had my heart broken for the very first time last year. But I would always remember my mom’s lecture about my too idealistic perception of things. “All you have to do is do your best and if things still did not work out, then maybe it is not really for you.” With this, she ends her statement saying that instead of sulking around, I should learn my lessons and then use them to live a new one.

As I have, for so many times, learned in my sixteen years of my life, failure would always be a part of our lives. They are similar to the crosses we carry each day and the similarity is that we all have one. I have mine, you have yours and they have theirs. It is inevitable. The only thing we could do is live our lives the way we want it to. We should experience each day and live as if it will be our last. If somewhere along the way we made a mistake, this should not stop us from living life. There are women who got pregnant in the early years of their lives, raised their children alone but still managed to become successful in their lives. The success stories of formerly small scale businesses like Aristocrat Restaurant, SM malls and Jollibee is a good example. They all started the same way: a small business, a dream, some problems and determination and yet the obstacles in their way never stopped them from doing anything. It is just a matter of dreams and making things work that make these stories successful.

If we exude happiness and contentment in our lives, chances are the same aura will be experienced by the people around us. If we are happy with our world and the way things are going for us, then the people that care for us would be happy and contented too. They will also exude the same thing and affect the people who care for them. It takes only one person to change something and it helps to think that we could take part in this magnanimous thing. Imagine that: if we just enjoy our lives, then the people around us will enjoy theirs too. As the saying goes, smile and the world will smile with you.

We just take life as it is. We take pleasure in the good things and endure the bad. There is no point in carrying bitterness around for so many years. You could only waste a lot of energy and just end up poisoning the people around you with it.

It is actually similar to driving. It is inevitable that you could be in an accident, or that you may hit something, or worst someone. There will always be that chance. But that doesn’t mean that you should not drive anymore. All you have to do is take it as it is, be careful in driving and then if you make a mistake, learn from it and employ it in your life. There would always be faults in our lives and something is bound to end up wrong; but again, every song has a coda, whether it crashes or it fades away, but it is no reason not to enjoy the music.

Advice 2: “Never is force opposed with force, instead, it is overcome with yielding.”

In high school, one of my favorite subjects was Filipino Literature. I was a big fan of Rizal’s novel and I learned a lot from them. One of these pieces of wisdom was from the character Pilosopong Tasyo. He was the town’s wise man. Often, he is thought to be lunatic, as he speaks in ways undecipherable to most of the townspeople. But his words often hold as the greatest piece of advice in the novel. One of these advices is what he gave to the protagonist, Crisostomo Ibarra. It is similar to the quote given in our lecture on Taoism. He told the protagonist, “Ang umilag sa punglo ay hind karuwagan. Ang humarap sa kamatayan ay katangahan.” (To avoid a bullet is not cowardice, but to look death in the eye is carelessness.) It was a point where he told Ibarra that the he should first kiss the hands of his enemies and do as they wish before his plans, of setting up a school for the children of the town, could work.

At Ibarra’s end, he had difficulty following the advice of Pilosopong Tasyo. This is understandable because he is asked to bow down before his enemies, and yet what his plans are not going to be harmful to the people. Clearly, this is the last thing he wants to do. This is the last thing we all want to do. Like all advices, this is easier said than done. It is the easier option to succumb to your instinct and attack your enemy the minute you get hurt than to bow down to him. But we always have another option, and in this case, it is the way of the Tao.

Water, which has represented the Tao, will wear down a rock in the end; however big or strong it might be. Yielding to the forces around us does not mean we give up. It is just pretending to give up, doing as what your opponents ask of you. Only in this manner, you are actually manipulating them too. When they assume that you are already seeing it in their way, they would think that you will be one of them. This would make trust easier to come by and when you gain their trust, it is then that you could make them do as you please. In Ibarra’s case, this would mean that he could then do as he pleases, that his plans of a school will push through. But the story tells us that he did not do this, and thus, his plans did not go as planned.

Another example of this situation is the question, what is stronger, the oak or the reed? Anyone could easily answer it is the oak that stands tall, proud and high above everything that has greater power than the reed. Reality is that it is the reed that is stronger than the oak. In front of a great storm, the reed would bow down to the storm, even in the lowest possible way as if it is already kissing the earth. No matter how strong the storm may be, the reed would always protect itself by “giving up” to the great winds surrounding him. No matter how strong the winds may be he would come out unscathed. The oak in front of a great storm, on the other hand, stands with his head high on the ground. There would come a time, in front a great big wind that the oak would crack and his branches would fall down and eventually, it will lose to the storm.

Pride, especially too much of it, never did anyone any good. What the advice suggests, succumbing to your opponents, is the most difficult thing to do; but it is easily the best thing to do. When I asked my mom how she and dad got through many problems in their lives, she told me that it is a matter of giving. Giving in the sense that when my father’s hot tempered, she just lets him be and she avoids shouting or nagging and he does the same to her. If my father wants something to be done to the house, she lets him do what he wants, and in the same way, he also lets her do what she wants. I reckon that it is action-less action.

In my opinion, there can never be just one specific group of beliefs that a person lives by his lifetime because for me, it entails a mixture of everything you learn with life as you go on. Safe it is to say that you can never learn everything from only one source; you have to have other sources. In my case, it is a mixture of a little from everything and it is what suits me the most. In Taoism, these are the tow advices that I really believe in and I think are most needed by anyone.

What I find amazing in these two is the fact that I have heard so many people say it so many times and it is only now that I actually learn where it comes from. The fact that it has saved and helped me from so many situations before is what I find most interesting about it. In that way, it is not just a teaching or a lesson inside a classroom set-up. In this light it becomes more attainable and believable. It is non-restrictive and still it actually tells you to do something. Hard as it is to explain, these advices are exactly that, they came from wu wei and these example are, I believe, what most of us needs in the hassle and bustle of our daily lives.

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