Worship with your conscience,

Receive grace with humility. Guide with awareness, Lead with modesty.


The altar is a tool. If we kneel before it an say we have done wrong, we
are really telling that to ourselves.
If we give thanks for our good fortune, we are expressing our modest appreciation for good luck. There is no outside force listening
to us. There is no divine retribution for our wickedness. The altar is merely symbolic. Those who follow Tao use it to focus their self-awareness.

When we step away from the altar, we should not lose
self-awareness. We should not take the fact that worship
is symbolic to behave in immoral ways. Instead, we still
have to act with a conscience and lead others without
manipulating them or taking advantage of them.

It takes maturity to grasp that there are no gods and yet
still behave as if there were. It takes insight to know that
you must be your own disciplinarian. Only the wisest can
lay down their own “divine laws” and find guidance as if
they were truly heaven’s word.


GUIDANCE
by Deng Ming-Dao
from the book
365 Tao Daily Meditations