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If the age was suitable and their mission a success over the empire, they simply effaced themselves in the unity which prevailed. If the age was unsuitable and their mission a failure, they fell back upon their own resources and waited. Such is the Way to preserve oneself. Those of old who preserved themselves, did not ornament their knowledge with rhetoric. They did not exhaust the empire with their knowledge. They did not exhaust virtue. They kept quietly to their own spheres, and reverted to their natural instincts.
Source Chuang Tzu, chapter 16, §3 · 📖 Read the full passage
✨ To meditate on today
According to Chuang Tzu, the sages of old, born in an age that could not understand them, sought neither to know everything nor to control everything: they kept within themselves the original simplicity and waited in peace. Today, faced with a situation you cannot change, give up forcing: do what depends on you, then stay in your place, calm, taking care of your inner peace.
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