A Year With Verse #10

Verse 10 of the Tao Te Ching: Patience, Breath, and Letting Go

At the beginning of 2025, I set a simple but meaningful goal: to spend time with Verse 10 of the Tao Te Ching. Not in a rigid, disciplined way, but in a way that allowed space for flow—sometimes reading slowly, line by line, and other times skimming it to see what spoke to me in the moment.

What has surprised me is that no matter how I approached it, this verse always circled me back to the same truth: patience.

Patience has become, in many ways, the master teacher. And for someone like me—whose attention is not always steady, who can be easily drawn away by an arriving or fleeting thought—patience is not something that comes naturally. It has to be practiced. It has to be lived.

Verse 10 reminds me again and again that life is less about control and more about connection. And through its lines, I’ve found different entry points into this practice.

Line by Line Connection

A daily meditation practice

The first line: Focus and Attention

The verse begins by asking if we can embrace the unity of mind, body, and spirit without separation. For me, this is an invitation into focus. It reminds me of the importance of intention—not just in the big things, but in the small, everyday moments. Where is my attention resting? Am I truly present in this conversation, this breath, this act?

In a world filled with distractions, this first line feels like a gentle reset button. It whispers, Come back. Be here.

The second line: Awareness in the Body

The Tao always brings me back into the body. This line reminds me to check in with the weight I’m carrying—the stress, the pressures, the burdens of expectation. These don’t just live in the mind; they live in the muscles, in the breath, in the posture of how I hold myself.

When I stop and notice, I can begin to release. Awareness itself is a kind of healing.

The third line: The Breath as Clearing

This is where breath becomes medicine. The verse speaks of cultivating clarity, and for me, the breath is the pathway. Each inhale gathers, each exhale releases. With each cycle, the debris of distraction, attachment, and tension is swept away.

Breathing this way transforms the ordinary into the sacred. It becomes a practice of purification—nothing dramatic, just the simple rhythm of life itself, honored.

The fourth line: Letting Go

Letting go is always easier said than done. But the Tao is not about force; it’s about flow. This line asks: Can I allow things to be as they are?

So often, the pain we carry is not from what’s happening but from our attempt to hold on, to control, to resist. The fourth line gently invites me into surrender—not as defeat, but as release.

The fifth line: Trusting the Natural Order

Trust is the natural next step after letting go. When I stop clinging, I open to trust—the trust that there is an order to things, even when I can’t see it. This doesn’t mean life is always easy or that challenges disappear. But it does mean that beneath the chaos, there is a deeper flow.

For me, this line has been an anchor. Trusting the natural order is not about passivity, but about aligning myself with life instead of fighting against it.

The final lines: The Universe Provides

The verse closes with a profound reminder: when we let go, when we truly release our grip, the universe provides. Not always in the way we want, but often in the way we need.

This has shown up for me in surprising ways—an unexpected conversation, a moment of clarity, a door opening just when I thought it was closed. It has taught me that letting go is not the end of something, but the beginning of receiving.

Living the Tao

Spending time with Verse 10 this year has shifted something in me. What began as a goal has become a practice of living.

Patience. Presence. Breath. Trust. These aren’t just abstract teachings—they are daily companions. And the Tao reminds me that wisdom is not meant to sit on the page; it’s meant to be embodied, breathed, and lived.

The Tao does not demand that we master it. It simply invites us to walk with it. Verse 10, in particular, invites us to remember that everything begins with presence: with the breath, with the body, with the willingness to trust the unfolding of life.

In the end, this verse has reminded me that the practice is not about control but about connection. When I release, I return to what is real. When I trust, I return to what is whole. And when I wait with patience, I see that the universe has already been providing all along.

✨ The Tao is not far away. It is right here—in the breath, in the body, in the quiet trust that life is unfolding exactly as it should.