A Time for Danger

A Time for Danger

Chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching sounds like it came out of the Bible's Book of Eccliastes:

There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
A time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.

Probably most people could accept the premises of these verses pretty well, except the last two. We have the idea that there is NO good time for being in danger, and that if this is our present experience it needs to be changed as quickly as possible.


Danger is threatening and disturbing, something to be avoided if possible - unless it involves voluntary risk taking as in sports or investing.

Still, even in these arenas we typically hope that the potential risk does not turn into actual injury.


But if we examine the major turning points in our lives, the times in which the greatest growth or real development occurred, we might discover that danger, whether real or perceived, was behind them.

Those occasions place our sense of reality, of who we are and what life is, on the chopping block and deliver us into the hands of a death experience. It is probably true that death in some form is an ongoing constant leading from the flat plain of "safety" to the painful but beneficial stripping away of personal illusion and false belief.

Perhaps ultimately there is nothing BUT danger...and also nothing but safety within that danger.

But until this is true in one's own awareness, the experiences of apparent danger culminating in the death of something near and dear to our hearts surely must continue.