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Main Index
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not interfere with the natural course of the incoming breath, develops the profound quality of giving charity and his desire to receive will disappear by and by. By observing a person's breath, you can see whether he takes more pleasure in giving or taking. You cannot escape from breathing.
A miser takes no pleasure in letting his breath go; he only takes pleasure in taking it in. Psychologists say that it is not money alone that the miser cannot let go off in life but everything else also. He lives in a sort of state of constipation throughout his life. Ninety-nine per cent of the cause of constipation is the miserliness of the mind. A miser desires to keep everything to himself so he cannot even let his bowels empty. He even tries to stop his outgoing breath. He is eager to take and very much afraid to give. But the law of life is -- that the More you give, the more you will attain. If you are niggardly in letting out your breath, you will attain nothing. How can you? You will only succeed in collecting foul air within, carbon dioxide. There are about six thousand air-sacs in our lungs. We make use of about fifteen hundred to two thousand of them only. Two thousand air-sacs are always filled with carbon dioxide. We never empty these out. We thus collect filth within us and live merely on the surface.
The Tao-sadhana believes that the breath should be thrown out as much as possible and we should ignore the incoming breath because it happens by itself. The greater the quantity of breath thrown out, the greater the quantity of fresh air that will go in.
This emphasis on throwing out is in order to increase the possibilities of giving in your life. All the anger, the greed, the jealousy within us, is because of the fact that we want to take but we do not want to give. All the complications and involvements in our lives come from this fact that we are greedy to take and have no wish to give. But one who cannot give receives nothing, and one who gives, receives back a thousand-fold. Another thing: if we give iron, we receive gold in return. Exhale carbon dioxide and fill yourself with the life-giving oxygen. This is a scripture for our whole life.
Lao
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