Life Wisdom - By Words of Taoism - Simplify your life - Taoism

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

We often fail to see what is right in front of our eyes.Free resources, books and more on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://wordsoftaoism.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠My blog ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://taoismteachings.substack.com/⁠⁠Music I use, as a playlist: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/spotifyzenplaylist⁠

An old gardener was renowned for the extraordinary beauty of his fruit trees. A young man came to ask him his secret. The gardener replied that there was no secret, only pruning. He explained that each year he cut the branches that would bear no fruit, those growing in the wrong direction, those stealing light from the others. Fewer branches, but more beautiful and more abhor branches. abundant fruit. The young man asked if it wasn't a shame to cut so many branches. The gardener smiled and replied that what seemed like a loss was actually a gift. Each branch cut gave its strength

to those that remained. The tree lost nothing. It concentrated everything. Our life is like this tree. Without pruning, it grows in all directions, scattering its energy into branches that bear nothing. We have commitments that take our time without nourishing us, possessions that take our space without serving us, thoughts that take our attention without enlightening us. Simplification is this necessary, pruning that allows what truly matters to flourish. It is not an amputation. but a liberation, not an impoverishment, but a concentration of resources toward what bears fruit. This pruning requires discernment.

It is not about cutting everything blindly, but about distinguishing what is alive from what is dead, what nourishes from what clutters, what corresponds to our deep nature, from what has been imposed on us from outside. For there is in our modern life a silent accumulation that occurs without our noticing. Objects pile up in our closets, commitments stack up in our calendars, worries multiply in our minds. We add ceaselessly one more responsibility, one more possession, one more activity, as if life's richness were measured by its clutter. And then one day we wake up exhausted, overwhelmed.

unable to say how we got here, desperately seeking space to breathe in an existence that has become too full. This overload is not an accident. It is the predictable result of a culture that values accumulation in all its forms. More possessions means more success. More activities means more life. More options means more freedom. I've internalized these equations with, without questioning them. And we spend our days adding, acquiring, accumulating, convinced that happiness lies somewhere in this surplus, that we need only have a little more to finally feel.

Could experience tells another story. Surplus does not fulfill. It encumbers. The possessions we accumulate end up possessing us, demanding our time, our attention, our energy to be maintained, stored, protected. The commitments we make end up holding us, leaving us no space for the unexpected,

for rest for the simple joy of being. The options we keep open end up paralyzing us, condemning us to the anxiety of choosing without ever tasting the peace of having chosen. The simplification we speak of here is not an organizational text. technique or a tidying method. It is a profound transformation of our relationship to life,

a fundamental change of direction. Instead of adding to find happiness, we learn to remove to reveal it. Instead of seeking what we lack, we discover what encumbers us. Instead of running toward more, we stop to appreciate enough. The Taoist sages,

spoke of this simplification as a return to the essential, a progressive stripping away of all that is not necessary. Lao Tzu taught that he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough. This phrase seems simple, almost naive, but it contains a revolution. It suggests that the feeling of sufficiency does not depend on what we possess, but on our relationship to what we possess, that we can be rich with little or poor with much, depending on whether or not we have discovered

that mysterious point where need ceases and surplus begins. This point is not the same for everyone. There is no universal formula that would say how many objects to own, how many activities to maintain, how many relationships to nurture, Simplification is not an asceticism imposed from outside, but an intimate discovery of what is truly necessary for our flourishing.

What is essential for one may be superfluous for another. What nourishes one life may clutter another. The work of simplification is therefore first a work of self-knowledge, a patient exploration of what truly matters to us, beyond what culture tells us we should want. To begin exploring for ourselves, we need only ask a simple question. Why?

Why do I keep this object I never use? Why do I maintain this commitment that exhausts me? Why do I pursue this goal that no longer makes my heart sing? The answers to these questions generally reveal layers of motivations we were not conscious of. We keep out of fear of someday lacking. We maintain out of fear of disappointing. We pursue out of fear of admitting we were wrong.

Beneath accumulation, there is almost always fear. To simplify is therefore first to face these fears. It is to recognize that we often use surplus as protection against life's uncertainty. We accumulate possessions to feel secure. activities to feel important, options to feel free. But this security is illusory. This importance is fragile. This freedom is a prison.

Possessions can be lost, stolen, destroyed. Activities can become impossible from one day to the next. Unchosen options haunt us as much as they reassure us. Surplus protects us from nothing. It only weighs us down in our flood. light. True security comes not from what we possess, but from what we are. It comes from the confidence that we will know how to face what comes with whatever resources we have at that moment. It comes from the discovery that we need much less than we thought to be happy, that our capacity

for adaptation is far greater than our fears suggest. This inner security is not, not acquired by accumulating more, but by experimenting with less. Each time we let go of something and discover we are fine without it, our confidence grows. Each time we simplify and find more peace rather than less, a Zen master was receiving a university professor who had come to inquire about the way. The master served tea. He filled his visitor's cup and continued pouring even as the cup overflowed. The professor watched the tea spill across the table, then exclaimed that the cup was full,

that it could hold no more. The master replied that like this cup, the professor was full of his opinions and speculations, and asked how he could show him Zen if he did not first empty his cup. The story is not only about beginner's mind or intellectual humility, it speaks of the prerequisite for any transformation. As long as we are full, nothing new can enter. As long as our life overflows, no grace has room to slip in.

To simplify is to empty the cup. It is to create space for what is not yet here, for what we cannot foresee, for what perhaps awaits us beyond what we have planned. This empty space frighten. many of us. We fill it compulsively as if emptiness were a problem to solve rather than an opening to welcome. We have a free moment and immediately we seek to occupy empty closet and immediately we think about what could fill it. We have silence and immediately we turn something on to cover it.

This flight from emptiness is perhaps the deepest root of our accumulation. We pile things up so we don't have to face the space, the silence, the nothing, and what that nothing might reveal to us about ourselves. For emptiness is not truly empty. It is full of presence, full of possibility, full of what can only emerge when we stop or saturating it. The contemplative traditions have always known this. Silence is not the absence of sound, but the presence of listening. Space is not the absence of objects but the presence of our availability. Free time is not the absence of activity, but the presence of life to itself. When we simplify, we do not create nothingness. We create the conditions for something else to

appear. Simplification touches objects first because that is where the work is most tangible. Everything we possess occupies not only physical space, but also mental space. It asks to be thought about, managed, maintained. Even objects we forget in a drawer exert a subtle pressure on our psyche, a kind of background noise that consumes our energy without our being aware of it. Lightning our material environment also lightens our mind. This is not a metaphor. It is an experience anyone can verify, but simplifying objects is only a beginning.

It prepares us for the subtler work of simplifying our commitments, our relationships, our thoughts, for the same mechanism of accumulation operates at all these levels. We say yes to too many things. We maintain connections that no longer nourish us. We entertain preoccupations that serve no purpose. To simplify means learning to say no, no to what does not correspond to our deep values, no to what takes us away from the essential,

no to what fills without nourishing. This no is not a rejection, but a protection. It protects our yes, it gives it its strength and meaning. One who says yes to every, truly says yes to nothing. Their yes is diluted, weakened, deprived of substance by its very profusion. One who learns to say no discovers that their yes becomes more whole, more committed, more present. They can give more to fewer things, and this concentration produces a quality of experience that dispersion never allows. This requires an honesty with ourselves,

that can be uncomfortable. We sometimes discover that things we held dear have not nourished us for a long time, that we maintain them out of habit, out of fear of change, out of loyalty to a version of ourselves that no longer exists. We discover that commitments we present as obligations are actually choices we could undo.

We discover that our complicated life is often the result of our own. own decisions and that we have the power to decide differently. This realization is liberating but also destabilizing. It deprives us of the comfortable excuse that our life happens to us, that we are victims of circumstances beyond our control. It places us back before our responsibility, our capacity to choose, our freedom. This freedom can be frightening because it implies that if our life is too complicated,

we have something to do with it. Not through guilt. The cultural forces that push toward accumulation are real and powerful, but through recognition of our power to resist them, to choose differently, to simplify. Simplification is not a single event but an ongoing process. Accumulation does not stop because we did a big sort once. It resumes insidiously pushed by the same cultural forces and the same inner fears. Simplifying is therefore a practice.

A regular return to the question of the essential. A vigilance maintained against the natural tendency to add. It is not a state to achieve, but a direction to maintain, not a destination, but a path. This path has its own rewards, which are not what one might expect. One might think that simplifying impoverishes experience makes it duller, less varied. The opposite occurs. When we have less, we appreciate more. When our attention is not scattered among a thousand objects,

it can truly rest on each one. When our time is not fragmented among a thousand activities, thousand activities, we can be fully present to each one. Simplification does not diminish the richness of life. It concentrates it, intensifies it, makes it perceptible again. There's something paradoxical in this discovery. We accumulate to have more experience, more pleasure, more life. But accumulation itself makes us incapable of tasting what we have accumulated.

We own 100 books but have no time to read. We have a thousand entertainment options, but are too tired to enjoy them. We run from one activity to another without ever stopping long enough for anything to truly touch us. Profusion creates superficiality. Abundance produces famine. Simplification reverses this movement. It makes us capable of depth again. With fewer books, we truly read the ones we have.

With fewer options, we truly savor those we choose. With fewer activities, we are truly present to those we do. Quality replaces quantity. Intensity replaces extent. Presence replaces dispersion. We discover that we never wanted many things. We wanted much of a few things. And only simplification allows this.

a hermit lived in a hut with only a bowl, a blanket, and a few clothes. A traveller visited him and, seeing this bareness, expressed compassion for such a poor life. The hermit looked at him with surprise and replied that he did not understand, for he had everything he needed. The bowl allowed him to eat and drink. The blanket kept him warm. The clothes covered him.

What more could he want? The traveler insisted that he had nothing for entertainment. The hermit smiled and replied that he had the sunrise every morning, the song of birds, the murmur of the stream, the stars every night, and his own breath reminding him each moment of the miracle of being alive. Then he asked the traveler with all that he possessed whether he could say as much, This story invites us to question our definition of wealth. The traveller had much but did not see what he had.

The hermit had little but saw all that he had. The difference was not in their possessions, but in their gaze. And this gaze can change without our needing to abandon everything. We can live in the modern world with its necessary complexities. while cultivating this capacity to see what is there, to appreciate what we have, to recognize when enough is enough. Simplification is also a question of rhythm.

Our modern life is fast, too fast for anything to truly take root. We pass from one thing to another without transition, from one experience to the next, without integration, from one project to another without true completion. This speed creates a particular form of clutter, the clutter of time, the saturation of lived experience, the impossibility of digesting what happens to us.

To simplify also means to slow down, to create spaces between things, to allow time to stretch enough for life to be lived and not merely traverse. This slowing down is not a loss of time, but a transformation of our relationship to time. Time is an enemy, a scarce resource to be exploited to the maximum. In slowness, time becomes a friend, a space where things can unfold at their own pace. We discover that much of our agitation produces nothing useful, that it is movement without direction, without fruit.

We discover that we can do less and accomplish more, be less busy and more effective, have fewer activities and more life. There is in this simplification a form of respect for life. When we accumulate compulsively, we treat things and experiences as disposable, consumable, replaceable objects. We swallow them without tasting

and immediately move on to something else. When we simplify, we honor what we have by giving it our full attention. We treat our life as something precious rather than as a resource to exploit. This change of attitude is perhaps more important than the number of objects in our closets. When we possess much, we live in the illusion that we are autonomous, that we need no one, that our possessions protect us from the vulnerability of being human. When we possess less, we rediscover that we need others to share, to borrow, to support one another. This rediscovery is not a weakness but a return to the truth of our condition.

We are social beings made for connection and mutual aid. Accumulation isolates us, simplification connects us. A village had few resources, but much solidarity. Each family owned a few tools, a few utensils, a few provisions. When someone needed something they didn't have, they went to ask their neighbor. Things circulated, bonds were woven, community grew stronger. Then the village became prosperous. Each family could buy everything they needed.

Visits between neighbors decreased. Borrowing ceased. everyone lived in their private abundance. The village had more wealth but fewer bonds. People had more things but felt more alone. A village elder sadly observed that when they were poor, they were rich in one another. And now that they were rich, they were poor in their solitude.

This parable does not condemn prosperity, but it illuminates what can be lost in accumulation. Voluntary simplification is not a return to poverty, but a recognition that certain riches, connection, sharing, mutual aid, can only exist when we accept not having everything by ourselves. It creates the conditions for exchange, generosity, relationship. It takes us out of our bubble of illusory self-sophistic,

to bring us back into the living fabric of human community. Simplification ultimately touches our very identity. We tend to define ourselves by what we have, what we do, what we have accomplished, my work, my house, my car, my successes, my projects, all these material and symbolic possessions constitute the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Simplifying shakes this thing that is.

simplifying shakes this story. If I am not my work, who am I? If I'm not my possessions, what remains? If I'm not my accomplishments, what is my value? These questions can be dizzying, but they open onto a profound freedom. Beyond all that we have and do, there is something that remains, something more fundamental than all our surface identities. The contemplative traditions, call it by different names, essential nature, true being, conscious presence. It is not something we must acquire or become. It is what we already are when the layers of identification are removed. Outer simplification brings us closer to this inner simplicity,

to this identity that depends on nothing external that remains when everything else has been taken away. To return to this simplicity is to return to the source. It is to find again what was there before the complications accumulated, before the identities superimposed themselves, before the surplus obscured the essential. It is like a stream that had been clogged with debris and that we progressively clear.

The water was always there, flowing beneath the obstacles. We do not create something new. We reveal what has always been present. A master asked his disciple what he had learned after years of practice. The disciple replied that he had learned to meditate, to control his breathing, to observe his thoughts, to cultivate compassion. The master shook his head and said that all this was very, very good, but he had not learned the essential.

The disciple confused asked what the essential was. The master replied that the essential was to unlearn, to let go of all the techniques, all the methods, all the acquisitions until only what cannot be removed remains. What would remain then would be what he had been seeking from the beginning. Simplification is this unlearning. It does not add new skills or new possessions, but removes what clutters.

It does not build a new improved self, but clears the essential self from what obscured it. It is not a path towards something we do not have, but a return to something we have always had, without knowing it. This return happens step by step, We begin with the most visible, the objects that clutter our space, and we progress toward the most subtle, the thoughts that clutter our mind. At each stage, we discover that we need less than we thought, that the dreaded lack does not occur, that the space created fills with a quality of presence that clutter made impossible.

We discover that simplification is not a deprivation, but a liberation, not a loss, but a lightning. And in this lightning, something surprising happens. Life does not become smaller. It becomes larger. It does not become duller. It becomes more vivid. It does not become emptier. It becomes fuller with a different fullness, that of presence rather than possession, of being.

rather than having. We discover that what we sought in accumulation, security, satisfaction, meaning is actually found in its opposite. That the path to more life passes through fewer things, that the way to true wealth is simplification. So perhaps you could begin today, not with a great upheaval that would try to simplify everything at once, that would still be of four of violence against yourself. But with a small gesture, a first opening, a beginning of questioning, look around you and honestly ask yourself what serves you and what encumbers you. Look at your schedule and ask yourself what nourishes you and what exhausts you. Look at your thoughts and ask yourself which ones deserve your attention and which ones are just spinning in circles.

Then you will finally discover the essential that truly animates you and find that simplicity which makes life lighter and more alive.