Lost In The Tao: Reflections on Taoist Living

By William Martin

William Martin continues to explore the Tao as a practical path for the modern person. His collections of short essay and wisdom poetry maintains the simplicity of Taoist writing while exploring the complexities of modern life. This volume looks at such diverse topics as simplicity, solitude, pleasure, consumerism, social action, aging, self-discipline and many other pithy examples of how a Taoist understanding of life can lead to deeper satisfaction, contentment, and joy for people of all ages and spiritual paths.

William Martin is the author of the best-selling "The Parent's Tao Te Ching" which has been supporting and inspiring parents for the past fifteen years. He is also the author of "The Couple's Tao Te Ching," "The Sage's Tao Te Ching," "The Tao of Forgiveness," "A Path and a Practice," "The Caregiver's Tao Te Ching" (co-authored with his spouse, Nancy), and the eBook, "30 Days of Tao.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Martin
• Release date: Nov 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310028953

William Martin

The book Swamp Angels: A Family of Limpkins started with the photographs. I live in North Florida on a lake next to a huge woods. The lake is filled with weeds and wildlife: turtles, fish, alligators, frogs, snakes, mud puppies. Some times there are eagles, ospreys, anhingas, beavers, otters, deers, raccoons, turkeys, foxes, armadillos, wild hogs. For about 5 years I took many rolls of film with my first good camera, a Canon A 2e with a Canon telephoto lens. It took gorgeous photos. I am an inexperienced amateur, and often the light was dim, or I wiggled the camera, or the canoe rocked, or the critters came right at me and the telephoto would not focus. I did see wonderful things following wildlife around the lake but many photos were not sharp. Most of the pictures were taken with Fuji 600 film and look great on a well printed page. Very warm colors.So my dear friend Carolyn Aidman was looking at the photos about the limpkin family, placed in chronological order. She said that it would make a good children's book. I said fine, but only if she would be my partner. Many years pass. Voila. We both have done some writing and editing but this was very hard in every way. We both have always loved nature, and I was a biology major for two years, but neither of us has a deep knowledge of science. We got great help from limpkin expert Dana Bryan PHD, who lives in my town of Tallahassee. He reviewed the manuscript for scientific accuracy and also added more interesting facts about limpkins.It is a wonderful world.William Martin

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Introduction

Here are more words from a man who believes that words are dangerous and misleading things; who tries to live the wisdom expressed by the Chinese sage, Lao-Tzu over 2,500 years ago whose core advice was; Those who speak, do not know. Those who know, do not speak. and, The tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Writing, of course, is a form of speaking. Why, then, do I continue to speak that which cannot be spoken and to write that which cannot be written?

I write because it is my craft and art. I have nothing else to offer in way of return for the privilege of life, and it has indeed been a privilege. I try to express my gratitude by being awake to the direct experience of this life. I owe to life the effort to see it as it is rather than through the conditioned filters of my mind. What I see is what I write.

I'd never considered myself a revolutionary. I lived through the '60s without really understanding the counter-culture movement of the time. I graduated from university as an electronic engineer and followed my conditioned mind down a conventional path of family and career. As an research scientist with the Navy, I avoided the first-hand horrors of Viet Nam and thus did not have the wake-up call that many of my generation experienced.

Without filling in the biographical details of my long journey, suffice it to say that I have gradually, somewhat unconsciously, become a dedicated revolutionary - a quiet revolutionary, not really a political revolutionary. Following the advice of Lao-Tzu, whose teachings are perhaps the most revolutionary teachings in history, I try to stay hidden and let the movement of the Tao accomplish its revolution in its own fashion.

I am, however, as are we all, an integral part of this Tao movement toward balance and I am compelled to play my own small role. I am a writer, perhaps a poet. Writers who write for revolutionary purposes, however, cease being writers and become propagandists. My role is not to convince or persuade, but to use my craft to express the heart of the Tao as clearly and aesthetically as possible. I believe a revolution is necessary but it must come in its own manner. I am a seed planter, a tender of a garden of words. What grows from the seeds must grow from its own inner nature, the nature of the Tao. I can’t stop the wheel of Yin and Yang from turning, but neither can I force it to turn faster according to my wishes.

This revolution will occur. The Tao is always restoring equilibrium to the cosmos. The mindless consumption, distraction, greed, fear, and ecological disaster we have wrought as a species will be brought into balance one way or another. We will return to simplicity, right livelihood, and caring relationship with the earth - either by mindful choice or by apocalyptic force. It seems to be up to us.

I’ve tried to write in a manner that will help the reader glimpse the underlying movement of the Tao rather than become lost in a sea of words. If my simple offerings are of help to you, my unseen friend, I am delighted. I offer this question to you and to all of us: What might life look like after such a revolution? Let's imagine it as best we can. Then, using these images let's begin now to live that way.

Peace to us all,

Bill Martin

Chico, California

Why Write?

I write because Basho wrote

beneath a banana tree.

The frog that splashed kerplunk for him

set free a song in me.

Transcending myths of space and time

his verse makes known to me today

the ordinary yet so sublime

that rests in grass and mud and clay.

He didn’t know that as years passed

his words would last so long,

I think he would be surprised

that I have heard his song.

I am, to him, the unseen friend

whom Emerson extolled

as the only audience one needs

to have one’s words behold.

"Who are you to set yourself

beside such men as these?"

has accused me all my life.

I finally have an answer: Me.

Will someone in a future I can not foresee,

wonder about a few words of mine?

I doubt it, but you never know.

If you are there, my unseen friend,

I wish for you green boughs above

and between your toes brown mud.

Enjoy yourself. And write a word

to someone else unseen.

Karma

I read once that human beings were, story-telling animals. This seems quite true to me . We not only tell stories but we, to a great extent, are the products of stories. In fact, story-telling is the root of the often misunderstood term, karma. Karma is essentially the cumulative effect over millennia of an almost infinite variety of stories - stories about how to understand every aspect of life. We learn the stories of who we are, who we are not, how we should behave, how others should