What is Luck ?

There are no such things as luck and adversity.  The great Taoist teaching is the emphasis on being overdoing, character over achievement and clam over action.  But inner calm is possible only when man is not disturbed by the vicissitudes of fortune. There are no such things as hard knocks without advantages.

Nothing matters to a man who says nothing matters.  The desire for success means very much the same thing as the fear of failure.  The greater success a man has made, the more he fears a climb down.  The illusive rewards of fame are pitched against the tremendous advantage of obscurity.

An educated man is one who believes he has not succeeded when he has, but is not so sure he has failed when he fails, while the mark of the half-educated man is his assumption is that his outward successes and failures are absolute and real.

The goal of the Buddhist is that he shall not want anything, while the goal of the Taoist is that he shall not be wanted at all.  Only he who is not wanted by public can be a carefree individual, and only he who is carefree individual can be a happy human being. The wise warns us against being too prominent, too useful and too serviceable.  Pigs are killed and offered on the sacrificial altar when they become too fat.  Beautiful birds are first to be shot for their plumage.  In this sense, he told the parable of two men going to desecrate a tomb and robbing the corpse.  They hammer the corpse’s forehead, break his cheek-bones and smash his jaws, all because the dead man was foolish enough to be buried with a pearl in the mouth.