The Time is Tao: Living Day by Day With Delight
About this book
Award winning Taoist author, William Martin, has explored the classic, "Tao Te Ching," in a daily personal journal that he shares with readers in this edition. Each entry combines verses from the Tao with his own poetry and prose in an intimate and practical manner. He states, "... The Tao Te Ching stands as perhaps the most revolutionary, transforming, and counter-cultural treatise ever written. If you spend a small portion of each day with it, letting it’s message gradually seep through your conditioned defenses, you will find your life profoundly changed and your perception of the present social order turned on its head. This book is a record of my own continuing journey day by day with the Tao Te Ching. Each entry begins with a few lines from the Tao Te Ching in my own translation/interpretation, followed by a short piece of my own poetry and a paragraph of prose reflection. I don’t represent these entries as “wisdom,” but simply as honest reflections on the paradoxes and conundrums of my life, viewed from a Taoist perspective as they unfold day by day. They are brief, in keeping with Lao-Tzu’s classic warning, “Those who speak, do not know. Those who know, do not speak.” They are also repetitive because Lao-Tzu repeats certain fundamental themes throughout his book. These themes also repeat in my life, presenting themselves over and over, each time from a slightly different perspective. Each repetition spirals my understanding ever deeper into the Mystery of being alive. As always, I do not speak as one who “knows.” I speak as one who wonders, wanders, and ponders the Mystery of life, which will always be unspeakable, but always available to the direct experience of anyone who pays attention."