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Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclen
by smacktoward 7y ago
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
-- Tao Te Ching, ch. 9, Stephen Mitchell translation (http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=9&a=Stephen+Mitchell http://taoteching.org.uk/index.php?c=9&a=Stephen+Mitchell)
- _xander 7y agoThank you for this. > Keep sharpening your knife / and it will blunt Particularly resonated with me. I was so frustrated to find grinding through skills and development courses after work left me burned out and, all things considered, a poorer thinker.
- eitland 7y ago> Keep sharpening your knife > and it will blunt. With real modern knives this doesn't make sense if you know what you are doing. Either I am missing something or something got lost in translation?
- rckoepke 7y agoMy guess: Sharpening is the process of removing material, if you sharpen a knife forever it will grind down to a useless stub. It is possible something got lost in translation, or possible that the metaphor isn't quite as satisfying as some of the others used.
- cjhopman 7y agoMaybe in another 1500 years, bowls will automatically resize to whatever we put in them and that part won't make sense anymore either.