My permaculture teacher posted this on Facebook: his interpretation of a few verses of the Tao Te Ching. This post is partially in response to the thread LDAHL started about "The Case Against Living"

Recognize beauty and ugliness is born.

Recognize good and evil is born.

(As soon as one brings the world of human values into the mix and you call this plant, animal or landscape beautiful and that one ugly then one has slipped into the realm of human fabrication.There is no such concept in mother earth’s heart as far as we know. Human values may be useful, in so far as we recognize their limitations and actively practice non-attachment to them.)

Is and Isn’t produce each other.

(Just observe, fully attend to the now, in the first and primary process of reading a landscape. It is not a matter of whether any aspect of a place is or isn’t.T his is about being in a place.)

Hard Depends on easy,

Long is tested by short,

High is determined by low,

Sound is harmonized by voice,

After is followed by before.

(Everything is relative and experiential. Our thoughts are often preoccupied with judging an event, an experience or a moment or a object to discern some quality about it. This takes us away from the present and distracts one from noticing the essence of a phenomenon. A designer will be able to better see the nature of things without putting observations into a hierarchy.)

Therefore the Sage is devoted to non-action,

Moves without teaching,

Creates ten thousand things without instruction,

Lives but does not own,

Acts but does not presume,

Accomplishes without taking credit.

(This is the expansive self. Cultivating as a tool for change the sense of self that is interconnected to all beings through all time. To tap into this as designers, as the Sages do, we need to be, to just be, in a place through many faces of the space. Nature moves and we respond with no need to process mentally a lesson that we feel viscerally. Tune into your sense of living to heal the ancient relationship of humanity with the entire web of life. By tuning in we turn on and emanate and radiate ways of being, living, and perceiving that will inevitably create health diverse mature forests, entire landscapes and communities of prosperity that ail continue long after us.)

When no credit is taken,

Accomplishment endures

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(A truly evolved being is inspired to care for, love and heal the entire family of life on this divine planet. The primordial wonder of the universe is here now to notice and breathe and participate with by virtue of being a wondrous being on this earth today!)