When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
It puzzles people at first, to see how little the able leader actually does,
and yet how much gets done.
But the leader knows that is how things work.After all, Tao does nothing at all,
yet everything gets done.
When the leader gets too busy,
the time has come to return to
selfless silence.
Selflessness gives one center.
Center creates order.
When there is order, there is little to do.