Tao In You

We mold clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that makes the vessel useful.

                                     — Laozi Tao Te Ching 11

To appreciate the value of things around us, look beyond the surface.

A pot is useful not for its clay, but its emptiness.

For the same token, you as a person is useful not for what you look, but what you do. 

Money is useful not for its paper and denomination, but the happiness it can bring.   

A house is useful not for its pillars and wall, but the empty space in it where you can live in and build the family bonds you treasure.

Knowing the difference between the being and non-being in Tao makes your life more fulfilled.

Picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steveleenow/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

If you want to be happy, chances are you’d be unhappy.

If you’re happy, you don’t have to think about wanting to be happy. Happiness comes naturally from factors like love, contentment and pleasure that make you feel good, not the thought of wanting to be happy.

When you want to be happy, it can be that factors like sour relationship, failure, stress, and what not are making you unhappy. Such factors, unfortunately, will not go away with the thought of wanting to be happy.

If you want to be happy, learn to accept what life is.

Learn to flow with life.

Learn to see happiness as a process, not a destination.

When you can accept what life is, you will be able to accept what come with it, good or bad.  You will see whatever good or bad as a process that you have to live with. The question is how you want to live with it: in happiness or despair.

Being happy, in this case, becomes a way of life, not a desire.  It becomes a choice, not good to have.

This is more likely to make you happy, rather than simply wanting to be happy.

Know the white,
yet keep to the black;
it is the pattern of the world.
Flow with the pattern of the world,
you are constantly in the path of virtue,
and returning to the infinite.

Lao Tze Dao De Jing 28