Beauford and the Sage

In Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, tells us that Beauford's friend Larry Calcagno gave Beauford a "copy of Lao Tzu that he nearly always carried with him and was fond of quoting."

Numerous Lao Tzu quotes reference the Sage, and some translations refer to the Sage as female. I wonder if Beauford decision to call his 1967 portrait of James Baldwin The Sage Black had anything to do with his knowledge of and affinity for these references.

The Sage Black
(1967) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Leeming does not indicate whether Beauford had favorite Lao Tzu quotes, or what these might have been. So I'm sharing several of my favorites, which I'd like to think Beauford would appreciate.

"Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity."

"If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. For truly, the greatest gift you have to offer humanity, is your own transformation."

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."

"When you realize nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you."

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present."

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong."

"Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful.  You can mold clay into a vessel; yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful.  Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house;
but the ultimate use of the house will depend on that part where nothing exists.

Therefore, something is shaped into what is; but its usefulness comes from what is not."

"Matter is necessary to give form, but the value of reality lies in its immateriality. Everything that lives has a physical body, but the value of a life is measured by the soul."

"At the center of your being, you have the answer."

"To a mind that is still the whole universe surrenders."