“Truthful words aren’t always pleasant.
Pleasant words are usually not truthful.
Wise men never argue.
Those who argue aren’t wise.
The wise man isn’t necessarily educated.
The educated man isn’t necessarily wise.
The wise man possesses nothing, he keeps nothing in his memory,
but he serves all and therefore he possesses everything.
Since he gives himself continually to all, in the end,
he gets what he never wished for.”

A nice extract by the philosopher Lao Tse, in The Book of the Perfect Path. It is worth re-reading and meditating on a little. Modern media have helped  to demonstrate that, after all, great western thinkers are close to the eastern reality. And great oriental thinkers are close to the western reality.
After all, simplicity and the calm and brave defence of truth, without conflict or confusion, are universal values. And oriental Man is discovering that universal wisdom isn’t confined to technological knowledge; it is beyond the achievement of material wealth.
 
Both in the East and the West,, Man is discovering that those who demand nothing, ask for nothing and wish for nothing for themselves, achieve everything, even what they had never wished for.
These are the real wise men. They don't allow themselves to be stepped on by others, but also don’t position themselves “on their toes”. They never accept tasks for which they are not prepared, but they try to accomplish everything they were assigned to. They always feel they are equal to both the intellectual and the illiterate. They tolerate false demonstrations of wisdom from the ignorant, and they make themselves available to help others find the true knowledge. They always consider themselves to be learners.
 
True wisdom is universal and therefore can be applied to the whole universe; it goes beyond the narrow limits of time and space in which Man has lived.

Quoting Lao Tse again:

“The incomplete will be completed.
The emptiness, fulfilled.
The bare, renewed.
The insufficient, enlarged.
The excessive, diminished.
That is the reason why the wise man embraces Unity
taking it as a model of the Universe.
As he never shows off, he shines.
As he never praises himself, he has merit.
Because he never fights, no one opposes him.
The ancients’ sentence was:
What is imcomplete will be completed.
Is it an empty sentence?
In the end, everything returns to perfect integrity.” 
 

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