All Our Relatives

Image from Jose Luis G. Soler

“When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing. In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Dao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the…