12 Jul Lessons from the Tao (No. 7)
Happiness is everywhere and nowhere; happiness is all around us and inside us; happiness is in what we do and in what we don’t do. This weeks eNewsletter brings you the final Tao story with yet another important message to stimulate your thinking…
The value of nothing…
…this is a great story describing an incident in the life of the Japanese emperor Hirohito. Now, being the emperor in one of the most frantically Confucianist countries in the world is not necessarily all that relaxing. From early morning until late at night, practically every minute of the emperor_ã_s time is filled in with meetings, audiences, tours, inspections, and all manner of other important things. And through a day so tightly scheduled that it would make a stone wall seem open by comparison, the emperor must glide, like a ship sailing in a steady breeze.
In the middle of a particularly busy day, the emperor was driven to a meeting hall for an appointment of some kind. But when he arrived, there was no one there! The emperor walked into the middle of the great hall, stood silently for a moment, then bowed to the empty space.
He turned to his assistants, a large smile on his face. _ã–We must schedule more appointments like this,_ã he told them. _ã–I haven_ã_t enjoyed myself so much in a long time!_ã