August 21, 2023 – B

This photograph reflects an abiding truth of life:
Luck--also called "Grace"--is the foundation of life.

An hour earlier or later and this photo isn't there.

Every photograph is like that,
we walk into a scene with a camera
and greet what greets us there
as a sheer coincidence of grace/luck and timing.

In five minutes the tourists will descend,
or the wind will pick up/die down,
or the light will change...

Our life hangs by a thread all the time.
What are the chances
that we are here/now/as we are?
Who would have bet on it at our birth,
or ten years ago?
Yet, here we are.

Who would have guessed it?

There is no way of mastering the art of luck/grace
beyond the old saying attributed to about 600 people:
"The harder I work/practice, the luckier I get."

This holds up over time regardless of the work/practice.

The old Taoists and the older yogis before them,
and who knows before them,
relished knowing that it is all luck,
and the harder we work/practice, the luckier we are.

The catch is that we can't be lucky/graced
the way we want to be lucky/graced.

Luck happens all the time
but it happens in its own time,
in its own way.

The Tao is just that way.
Tao is another word for luck/grace.

Those who are aligned with, 
in sync with, the Tao
are luckier than those who are not.
But, they aren't able to predict or determine
the nature of the luck that guides their way
through their life.

It's all a matter of chance,
of luck,
of coincidence,
of synchronicity
(Which is a term coined by Carl Jung
meaning "fortuitous coincidence,"
since some coincidences are not apparently fortuitous).

Living in accord with the Tao
positions ourselves to be lucky
in ways that do not seem to be lucky at the time,
but turn out to be amazingly fortuitous over time,
which makes "synchronicity" meaningless,
in that who is to say what is fortuitous and what is not?

Everything is only apparently fortuitous
or disastrous depending on how things seem to be
at the time that judgment is made,
but, remember, the worst things that happen to us
can turn out to be the best things that happen to us
over time, and vice versa.

So when do we say, "Lucky!" "Unlucky!"?
We just keep living in sync with the Tao
and let our outcomes be our outcomes,
knowing that nothing is ever over
and all of our outcomes are even now
becoming other outcomes,
and will spin out on and on forever. 

All we have to focus on is living in accord with the Tao,
and letting things happen as they will,
trusting that the more successfully we do that,
the luckier we will be.

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