Straw Dogs and the Sacredness of Now

by Virginia Underwood

In Taoist philosophy, there’s a verse that has lingered in my consciousness like smoke after a fire:

“Heaven and Earth are not humane.
They regard all things as straw dogs.”
— Tao Te Ching

In ancient China, straw dogs were ritual objects—treated with great reverence before a ceremony, then cast aside afterward. Their purpose was sacred, but temporary. This Taoist metaphor points to the impartial, impersonal nature of the Tao. Life flows, not according to our desires or attachments, but according to its own rhythm. And everything, no matter how meaningful, eventually returns to the earth.

I didn’t truly understand this teaching until I went through the fire.

Quite literally.

The Northern California wildfire that swept through my life took everything—my home, my belongings, my job, my identity. Spirit had whispered to me for years about detachment, but I hadn’t yet grasped what that really meant. I thought I understood non-attachment as a spiritual idea, but there’s something different about watching the smoke rise from the ashes of what used to be your life.

It taught me this: everything is temporary—our possessions, our roles, our carefully crafted identities. They are all straw dogs. Sacred while they serve, but not meant to be clung to.

And yet, within that painful truth, there is also immense freedom.

The same teaching showed up again in the most ordinary and extraordinary experience of all: motherhood. There were days when my children screamed from hunger after I hadn’t slept a wink, when I felt stretched beyond the limits of love and exhaustion. But those moments, too, passed. The sleepless nights and toddler tantrums faded. And now, they’re grown, out chasing their own adventures. I see now how brief and sacred that window of chaos and closeness truly was.

This understanding has humbled me, especially around my own sense of self-importance. We want to be seen. We want to matter. Sometimes we are recognized, and sometimes we are invisible. Even those who leave the largest footprints—Buddha, Gandhi—will one day be forgotten. In ten thousand years, who will remember? In a million years, will any of it remain?

This is not a reason to despair. It’s an invitation.

An invitation to return to now.

Because now is the only thing that has ever truly mattered.

Not the legacy, not the likes, not the illusion of permanence—but this breath. This moment. This fleeting, unspeakably sacred sliver of time where you are alive, awake, and aware.

Like the straw dogs, what we hold today is precious. But it is not ours to keep. We are asked to love it fully—and let it go.

So the real question becomes:
Can you meet this moment with reverence, knowing it will pass?
Can you love without clinging, serve without seeking recognition, and show up fully for your life even as it slips through your fingers?

That is the essence of the Tao.
That is the freedom hidden in the fire.
At least, from my perspective….