In yesterday’s post, I concluded: “Without being fixated on anything right now, how is it for you?”

Our untrained minds are like untrained dogs. The moment we see or desire something we bolt after it and get all tussled up in it. Or the moment we see or feel something we run away as fast as possible. Either way, we haven’t learned how to heel, how to sit still.

Paradoxically, sitting still is how we let everything unfurl. Sitting still, we unfixate, unscrew, unlock. Unfixated, unscrewing, unlocking, we remain completely uninvolved in all phenomena. Uninvolved yet, if need be, maximally, concentratedly involved. Uninvolved or maximally involved, however, makes no difference. We are immovable.

Or–to say the same thing–uninvolved or maximally involved, we roam as freely as the Daoist sage.

How can these two–utter stillness and roaming freely–be the same?

Utter stillness is the empty sky. Roaming freely is the liquid earth. Empty sky and liquid earth are one and the same.

When you cling and fixate, you make the sky into hard earth and the hard earth into stone. By this means, you make life hard.

The Tao, however, is easy. How come you keep making it hard? How come?