Bernard Lietaer - The Future of Money - Full Book

The same distinction is made in martial arts, where Eastern traditions talk about the 'soft eyes' which enable you to see at the same time your protagonist and the surroundings. Fly-fishing requires similar 'soft eyes encompassing both the spot where the line is dropped and the entire river, in contrast with the 'hard eyes' used for bait-fishing where the focus remains only on the float. People who are good at bird or whale watching report exactly the same process.

In short, Taoists are fly-fishing, while our very language tends to keep us stuck with bait-fishing (see sidebar on Lao- Tzu).

For example, how many of you have read correctly the title of this section: 'AU is about balance'. Have you automatically read 'it is all about balance', which has a different meaning? Or did you just decide that it was a typo?

If this text were written in Chinese ideograms, its readers would immediately understand what is referred to: the whole exists only because of the balance between the two parts. 'Ah is about balance' is illustrated by the classical T'ai Chi symbol (see Figure 9.4) where the black and white create a single whole through their balanced interaction. Notice that not only does each opposite shape the other, but that at the heart of each polarity, the opposite is also present (the little white dot in the black side of the symbol) (Figure 9.3).

On a lighter note, a similar point is made in the pun about a Buddhist monk requesting a food vendor: 'Make me one with everything.'

The point here is to illustrate the subliminal power of our language, which automatically makes us, read what we expect, rather than what is there. Our very words will automatically make us project and see polarities where, in fact, harmonious interaction may be present as well, or even predominantly present.