The Tao of Relationships

The softening of man and woman is necessary for their balancing; it is the softness they find that assures their togetherness and the hardness they keep that assures their separateness.

quiet words enter deeply and become the sustenance of each day.

Speak quietly and listen to the deep quiet within each other.

The bond that is between man and woman is softness that is hard and hardness that is soft. While it yields to change, it holds man and woman to each

Nothing is lost by emptying. The cup that empties to receive is still the cup; its form remains and its identity is intact. Only its condition changes so that it may receive.

Be with each other but do not possess each other. Grasping loses. Togetherness comes of itself. In daily affairs, tend to little things and great problems are overcome. Deal with trouble before it begins. Master the ordinary and the extraordinary comes easily. Trust the simple and find it in the complicated

Avoid confrontation, hardness meeting with hardness. The soft voice is heard long after the shout. Gentleness is stronger than anger.
Winning is a kind of losing and losing is a kind of winning. If there must be winning and losing, treat them as the same.

When two selves are clothed in pretense, they cannot come together; there is separateness in their togetherness, not togetherness in their separateness.

Man and woman grow together in the rhythms of the everyday; daily chores, comfortable silence, desires rising and fulfilled.
From easiness with the ordinary, togetherness comes quietly in the shared and simple commonplace.

Harmony is everywhere, so ordinary . . . it is commonly missed.