In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran has included a selection from the Tao te Ching and entitled it “Mother of All Things”  I have written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.

Suffering

Open up the openings,
Multiply your affairs,
Your whole life will become a burden.
—Lao Tzu

It’s money money money money money, dancing on the green, the grass dollar bills beneath our feet, which we are too greedy not to gather.

Time is money.

Money is power.

Get busy.  Take every opportunity to get bigger and better.

Move quickly from one thing to another.

You’re the boss.

Stick your finger in every pot.

Forget simplicity.  Everything is complicated when the end justifies the means.

It’s always more.  It’s always me me me.  It’s always all you.

That’s why we hate you so much.  That’s why everybody loves to hate us and give us what we want.

That’s why we can’t stop wanting.

That’s why there’s never enough.

That’s why there’s no room for God, not one grain of God.

Life is about taking.

Until we can’t take it anymore.

There’s nothing wrong with money, if you’re not attached to money.

Power can be useful, when it’s power to do good.

And sometimes mystics keep very busy, serving their Higher Power.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting, when we want union with the Divine.

We gain nothing from taking.  Through giving, we gain everything.

Living simply completes us.  That is when we remember our True Self.

We are complete when we love completely, when we love those who have forgotten how to love, when we understand that those who don’t love are those undergoing the deepest suffering.