No Illusions, No Resistances - Lao Tzu

Source: http://www.ijourney.org/index.php?tid=606

Can you coax your mind from its wandering and keep it to the original Oneness?
Can you let your body become supple as a new born child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things?

Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing,
acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control,
This is the supreme virtue.

Act without doing, work without effort.
Think of the large as small, and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task with a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great: thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty, she stops and gives herself to it.
she doesn’t cling to her own comfort: thus problems are no problem for her.

The Master gives himself up to whatever the moment brings.
He knows that he is going to die, and he has nothing left to hold on to;
No illusions in his mind, no resistances in his body.
He doesn’t think about his actions; they flow from the core of his being.
He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death,
as a man is ready for sleep after a good day’s work -- Lao Tzu (translated from Tao Te Ching)

Time & Tide Wait for no Man

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning. – The Buddha

Time runs out so soon! - Eknath Easwaran
In our teens and twenties, even our thirties, we have ample margin to play with the toys life has to offer. But we should find out soon how fleeting they are, for the tides of time can ebb away before we know it.

As we grow older and our family and friends begin to pass away, we see how relentlessly time is pursuing all of us. There is no time to quarrel, no time to feel resentful or estranged. There is no time to waste on the pursuit of selfish pleasures that are over almost before they begin.

All-devouring time follows us always, closer than our shadow. As long as I live only for myself, as a little fragment apart from the whole, I cannot escape being a victim of time. It is good to bear in mind how evanescent life is so that we do not postpone the practice of meditation.

Poet Bhartrhari expressed this succintly thus:

bhogaa na bhuktaa vayameva bhuktaaH
tapo na taptam vayameva taptaaH .
kaalo na yaato vayameva yaataa-s
tR^ishhNaa na jiirNaa vayameva jiirNaaH

Pleasures have not been enjoyed by us;
we have been consumed in the pursuit of pleasures.
Penance and austerities have not been performed by us;
we have been burned by the practice of tapas.
Time has not just passed by us;
it has ravaged us without our consent.
Our desires have not been fulfilled;
we have been drowned in our desires.

Swami Vivekananda described our situation caused by desires/expectations thus:

If we examine our own lives, we find that the greatest cause of sorrow is this: we take up something, and put our whole energy on it–perhaps it is a failure and yet we cannot give it up. We know that it is hurting us, that any further clinging to it is simply bringing misery on us; still, we cannot tear ourselves away from it. The bee came to sip the honey, but its feet stuck to the honey-pot and it could not get away. Again and again, we are finding ourselves in that state. That is the whole secret of existence. Why are we here? We came here to sip the honey, and we find our hands and feet sticking to it. We are caught, though we came to catch. We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life. We are being worked upon by other minds, and we are always struggling to work on other minds. We want to enjoy the pleasures of life; and they eat into our vitals. We want to get everything from nature, but we find in the long run that nature takes everything from us–depletes us, and casts us aside.

Had it not been for this, life would have been all sunshine. Never mind! With all its failures and successes, with all its joys and sorrows, it can be one succession of sunshine, if only we are not caught.
in the net of expectations, desires)