One is absolutely sickened, not by crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.
Vacuity, tranquillity, mellowness, quietness and taking no action characterise things of the universe at peace and represent the ultimate Tao and virtue. Therefore abide in them.
Many people know so little what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves and find nothing! Therefore, they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves, either.
People will ask me: Don’t you believe in God? No, I don’t. I believe in two things above all: Nature and Love. Nature is all-powerful. Love is how I understand the good. It might have been nice to believe in God, often defined as all-powerful and good, but combining the two like that has always posed too much of a contradiction for my poor mind to believe in.
Life is as dear to the mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures.
