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March 31, 2005
Longevity
Contemplate in the morning.
Pull weeds in the afternoon.
The joys and labor of a single day
Are part of a whole journey.
If all you want is spiritual realization, it isn't that difficult. For the average person, a dozen years under the guidance of a good teacher will probably give it to you. That's shorter than what it takes to be a good musician, athlete, or artist. It's even shorter that the time it will take you to collect your pension. If you have the good fortune to study with the right person, you can succeed in a relatively short amount of time.
But after you get it, then what? Many of us place such an emphasis on attaining realization that we may forget to put it in context. What actually matters is to walk Tao, maintaining vitality until we meet our end in a timely way. Spiritual realization is essential, but it is not everything.
A starving person dwells inordinately on the thought of food. Likewise, a spiritually hungry person can only think of realization. One who has food can place it in the right context, just as one who has understanding can place it in the correct perspective. Followers of Tao therefore do not emphasize enlightenment as an ultimate goal. For them, realization is a means, not an end. Their emphasis is on the act of living. They use the word longevity, not because they want to live forever, but because it symbolizes their determination to live the entire course of their lives well.
I like the image of the cake with ereference to the starving person - let them eat cake!
I think a lot of Americans are starving spiritually. The religious experience of most Americans is limited to Sundays at church, maybe a Christmas Eve service, the occasional wedding or funeral. Most americans don't think about their spirituality on a daily basis, ands those who do are often misguided about what that really is. I remember finding one of my mother's journals to God, praying for God to answer her. I was sad, thinking if only she had sought her answers within herself, she might have found them.
I try to find the spiritual in the everday and the ordinary. My garden offers the best consolations, my pets give unconditional love, my family my greatest joys. I like to think we are all a part of the same thing, the Tao if you will, and the life we live is at its best a joyous celebration of that. I like the idea of funerals and wakes being a joyous celebration of a person's life, rather than the mourning of the loss we feel. I think if we focused more on that, it would be easier for us to deal with death and loss.
I've had my share of death and loss, and gotten over my fears of death and of losing others for the most part. I've gotten over my fears of abandonment, my own ego's desire to be the center of everything and the reason for everyone else's care and concern for me. Now I have the freedom to care and be concerned for myself, and others, without the fears and jealousies that held me and others back from life. I enjoy the people who come my way, but no longer have the need to hold onto them, to force them to be with me or notice me. It is so much more about choice, my own and others, to do what is right for us. I suppose some can call that selfishness, if they like, but to me, it is the most selfless thing of all.
Living well is indeed the best revenge. It doens't mean living a long time, or being rich. It means you live your life being in the moment, moving with the flow ofd Tao, and enjoying your life, whatever it brings you. it doesn't mean you won't ever be sad, but it means you know sadness will not last, and there will be joy again - if you let that joy return to your life in whatever ways it can.
Posted by donna at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 30, 2005
Federal Crime
It certainly ought to be a crime... so why isn't DeLay in jail? He's broken enough laws already....
Posted by donna at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
Oh, indeed they are....
t r u t h o u t || Best. Picture. Ever.
Go see!
Posted by donna at 06:33 PM
Neuroscience for Kids - awesome site!
The smell of a flower - The memory of a walk in the park - The pain of stepping on a nail. These experiences are made possible by the 3 pounds of tissue in our heads...the BRAIN!!
Neuroscience for Kids has been created for all students and teachers
who would like to learn about the nervous system.
Posted by donna at 01:58 PM
Disengagement
Wearily I open my prayer book,
Sepia photograph of sage on amber page,
Flaming raven Sanskrit, strange syllables,
Intone, chant, repeat.
Number vows with beads:
Every resolution is inspiration petrified.
There are some days when one is disengaged from Tao, not interested in devotion, and everything just becomes an empty form. Gone are spiritual bliss, deep insight, and integration with the rhythm of the universe. Instead, there is duty, form, and stiff discipline. One can try to remember the reasons for one's quest, think of the achievements of the past, reaffirm one's goals, and still not be inspired to do one's practice. What do you do?
Every once in a while, it is permissible to skip things for a day. If you are angry, under great stress, or ill, then it is best simply to rest. But if one has made vows, it is only a matter of laziness or indifference, then you must exert your discipline and practice even if it means that you are just going through the motions. In at least half the cases, something significant will happen. The rest of the time, going through your forms is in itself a good practice. It builds a tremendous momentum that will manifest itself in later times.
I try to think about Tao every day. Some days I don't, and find myself even more in Tao than when I'm deliberately thinking about it. I'll go on vacation, and find myself so into the things I'm doing on vacation, so into the flow of life itself. So I guess the practice of thinknig about Tao does lead me more into being with the Tao even when I don't think about it. But I certainly don't let it become a chore. I don't think spirituality should ever be a chore or something you have to do. I spent enough boring Sundays in church as a kid to know that isn't worth it.
Posted by donna at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2005
Interpretation
The sage whose words are ambiguous you call great.
Those who advocate discipline you shun.
With one, you treat words the way you want.
With the other, you resent having no quarter.
It is unfortunate that we need the words of the wise. Though they are essential to our beginnings on a spiritual path, they can cause problems because they must be interpreted to be understood. Because words are imperfect, every generation rewrites itself.
People love ambiguity, especially when it comes to religion. They can interpret things any way they want. If they are unhappy with the cast given to a particular teaching, they invent ways to circumvent it, which is why we have so many authorities, schools, and sects.
It is no accident that the most revered sages are dead. They aren't around to correct our misguided notions, to change their teachings, or even to make mistakes that might mitigate our reverence. Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tzu -- how many of us are actually devoted to the wisdom that they embodied? Or have we made them mere screens upon which we project our own ideas?
It is important to spend time with a living teacher, one who can correct mistakes and discipline you. But the object of such study should not be the creation of a new orthodoxy. Rather, your goal should be to bring yourself to a state of independence. All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life. Then, even the holiest of words are only words.
“. . .There’s glory for you!” (said Humpty Dumpty.)
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously,
“of course you don’t—till I tell you.
I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘nice knockdown argument,’ ”
Alice objected.
“When I use the word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather
scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to
mean —- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words
mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to
be master—that’s all.”
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
I tend not to pay too much attention to people's words. I pay a lot more attention to what people do, and to the feeling I get from a person. Perhaps that's why I find myself so annoyed at much of what is going on in America today. People who call themselves Christians want to tell others how to live, when Christ himself would never have acted the way they do. They live in big houses, drive fancy cars, vote to cut their taxes, and claim to be Christian? Please. Sell the house and SUV and go live among the homeless and take care of them - then I might believe you're a Christian. Father Joe is a Christian.
I think Christ would be very annoyed at much of what has gone on in the world in his name. But then, so would Mohammed. I haven't seen many Buddhist who seem to deliberately distort the teachings of Buddha, but then I haven't lived in a culture where that's a dominant religion. As to Lao Tzu, well, I suppose there have been distortions of Taoism, as when it was popular with the Chinese wealthy classes. These days I find most Taoists pretty reasonable people. But in our culture people turn to Taoism as sort of a spiritual last resort after they've become disgusted with the actions of those of other faiths and need some spirituality that makes sense.
Posted by donna at 08:44 AM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2005
8.7 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia
Magnitude 8.7 - NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
2005 March 28 16:09:36 UTC
Preliminary Earthquake Report
U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center
World Data Center for Seismology, Denver
A great earthquake occurred at 16:09:36 (UTC) on Monday, March 28, 2005. The magnitude 8.7 event has been located in NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA. (This event has been reviewed by a seismologist.)
Magnitude 8.7
Date-Time Monday, March 28, 2005 at 16:09:36 (UTC)
= Coordinated Universal Time
Monday, March 28, 2005 at 11:09:36 PM
= local time at epicenter
Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location 2.065�N, 97.010�E
Depth 30 km (18.6 miles) set by location program
Region NORTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA
Distances
205 km (125 miles) WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia
250 km (155 miles) SW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia
535 km (330 miles) WSW of KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia
1410 km (880 miles) NW of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
Location Uncertainty horizontal /- 4.6 km (2.9 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters Nst=239, Nph=239, Dmin=538.5 km, Rmss=0.79 sec, Gp= 25�,
M-type=moment magnitude (Mw), Version=8
Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID usweax
Felt Reports At least 50 people killed, 100 injured and 300 houses Destroyed on Nias. Extensive damage on Simeulue. Felt in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and as far north as Bangkok, Thailand.
Posted by donna at 02:19 PM
Integration
Be still to know the absolute.
Be active to know the outer.
The two spring from the same source,
All of life is one whole.
In stillness, one seeks the absolute Tao. There is neither beauty nor ugliness in it. Because it has no opposites, it is called absolute. By contrast, nothing of this world is absolute, because all things that we experience are relative.
Seeking the absolute may be among the greatest goals, but you cannot remain on your meditation cushion forever. You must go out and explore life as well. This is the investigation of the outer Tao -- that aspect of Tao that flows through all existence. You must not fail to explore anything that interests you. Any skill you want to master should be learned. Any subject that arouses curiosity should be examined. Every insecurity should be overcome. Every question should be answered. If you do not do this, then you cannot freely flow with the outer Tao : Every one of your uncertainties will be an obstacle.
Initially, it will seem as if there is no connection between your time meditating and the outer things in your life. After all, the masters themselves constantly stress the difference between the spiritual and the social. But eventually, you will reach a point where the quiescence of contemplation and the activeness of living are integrated. Then there is no anxiety about whether one is living a spiritual life or not. You realize that it is all part of the same seamless whole.
Posted by donna at 10:55 AM
March 27, 2005
Ostara
Why have holidays? Today, they are simply a tradition, but once, they meant survival. The holidays were kept so people would know what to do and how to survive, and celebrate doing so. If you just made it through a hard winter, congratulations. Go find some eggs in the forest and perhaps a few rabbits to kill, and let's eat. But how do you remember it's time to find eggs and rabbits? You have a holiday about eggs and rabbits, and make up a nice story to go with it that you will remember.
And so we get into the complicated pagan traditions of celebrating the Equinox, mixed with the complicated tradition of hunting for eggs and rabbits, mixed with the Christian church coming in and appropriating pagan holiday festivals and adapting them to the Christian religious celebration calendar, and you end up with Easter.
See this summary by Mike Nichols this history, for instance:
In the Roman Catholic Church, there are two holidays which get mixed up with the Vernal Equinox. The first, occurring on the fixed calendar day of March 25th in the old liturgical calendar, is called the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (or B.V.M., as she was typically abbreviated in Catholic Missals). 'Annunciation' means an announcement. This is the day that the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was 'in the family way'. Naturally, this had to be announced since Mary, being still a virgin, would have no other means of knowing it. (Quit scoffing, O ye of little faith!) Why did the Church pick the Vernal Equinox for the commemoration of this event? Because it was necessary to have Mary conceive the child Jesus a full nine months before his birth at the Winter Solstice (i.e., Christmas, celebrated on the fixed calendar date of December 25). Mary's pregnancy would take the natural nine months to complete, even if the conception was a bit unorthodox.As mentioned before, the older Pagan equivalent of this scene focuses on the joyous process of natural conception, when the young virgin Goddess (in this case, 'virgin' in the original sense of meaning 'unmarried') mates with the young solar God, who has just displaced his rival. This is probably not their first mating, however. In the mythical sense, the couple may have been lovers since Candlemas, when the young God reached puberty. But the young Goddess was recently a mother (at the Winter Solstice) and is probably still nursing her new child. Therefore, conception is naturally delayed for six weeks or so and, despite earlier matings with the God, She does not conceive until (surprise!) the Vernal Equinox. This may also be their Hand-fasting, a sacred marriage between God and Goddess called a Hierogamy, the ultimate Great Rite.
The other Christian holiday which gets mixed up in this is Easter. Easter, too, celebrates the victory of a god of light (Jesus) over darkness (death), so it makes sense to place it at this season. Ironically, the name 'Easter' was taken from the name of a Teutonic lunar Goddess, Eostre (from whence we also get the name of the female hormone, estrogen). Her chief symbols were the bunny (both for fertility and because her worshipers saw a hare in the full moon) and the egg (symbolic of the cosmic egg of creation), images which Christians have been hard pressed to explain. Her holiday, the Eostara, was held on the Vernal Equinox Full Moon. Of course, the Church doesn't celebrate full moons, even if they do calculate by them, so they planted their Easter on the following Sunday. Thus, Easter is always the first Sunday, after the first Full Moon, after the Vernal Equinox. If you've ever wondered why Easter moved all around the calendar, now you know. (By the way, the Catholic Church was so adamant about not incorporating lunar Goddess symbolism that they added a further calculation: if Easter Sunday were to fall on the Full Moon itself, then Easter was postponed to the following Sunday instead.)
Incidentally, this raises another point: recently, some Pagan traditions began referring to the Vernal Equinox as Eostara. Historically, this is incorrect. Eostara is a lunar holiday, honoring a lunar Goddess, at the Vernal Full Moon. Hence, the name 'Eostara' is best reserved to the nearest Esbat, rather than the Sabbat itself. How this happened is difficult to say. However, it is notable that some of the same groups misappropriated the term 'Lady Day' for Beltane, which left no good folk name for the Equinox. Thus, Eostara was misappropriated for it, completing a chain-reaction of displacement. Needless to say, the old and accepted folk name for the Vernal Equinox is 'Lady Day'. Christians sometimes insist that the title is in honor of Mary and her Annunciation, but Pagans will smile knowingly.
Whew! Sure gets complicated when you take on other people's traditions! And all that just so we would have some idea when to gather eggs and find bunnies, and learn when to plant crops once we started agriculture, and now it's a big Christian holiday. Wow.
And of course, it's all about rebirth, since spring brings everything back to life as the sun rises higher in the sky and th eweather warms up again. So where does that whole resurrection myth come from? Again from Mike Nichols:
Another mythological motif which must surely arrest our attention at this time of year is that of the descent of the God or Goddess into the Underworld. Perhaps we see this most clearly in the Christian tradition. Beginning with his death on the cross on Good Friday, it is said that Jesus 'descended into hell' for the three days that his body lay entombed. But on the third day (that is, Easter Sunday), his body and soul rejoined, he arose from the dead and ascended into heaven. By a strange 'coincidence', most ancient Pagan religions speak of the Goddess descending into the Underworld, also for a period of three days. Why three days? If we remember that we are here dealing with the lunar aspect of the Goddess, the reason should be obvious. As the text of one Book of Shadows gives it, '...as the moon waxes and wanes, and walks three nights in darkness, so the Goddess once spent three nights in the Kingdom of Death.' In our modern world, alienated as it is from nature, we tend to mark the time of the New Moon (when no moon is visible) as a single date on a calendar. We tend to forget that the moon is also hidden from our view on the day before and the day after our calendar date. But this did not go unnoticed by our ancestors, who always speak of the Goddess's sojourn into the land of Death as lasting for three days. Is it any wonder then, that we celebrate the next Full Moon (the Eostara) as the return of the Goddess from chthonic regions? Naturally, this is the season to celebrate the victory of life over death, as any nature-lover will affirm. And the Christian religion was not misguided by celebrating Christ's victory over death at this same season. Nor is Christ the only solar hero to journey into the underworld. King Arthur, for example, does the same thing when he sets sail in his magical ship, Prydwen, to bring back precious gifts (i.e. the gifts of life) from the Land of the Dead, as we are told in the 'Mabinogi'. Welsh triads allude to Gwydion and Amaethon doing much the same thing. In fact, this theme is so universal that mythologists refer to it by a common phrase, 'the harrowing of hell'. However, one might conjecture that the descent into hell, or the land of the dead, was originally accomplished, not by a solar male deity, but by a lunar female deity. It is Nature Herself who, in Spring, returns from the Underworld with her gift of abundant life. Solar heroes may have laid claim to this theme much later. The very fact that we are dealing with a three-day period of absence should tell us we are dealing with a lunar, not solar, theme.
Well, whatever one celebrates, It's spring, and that means new life, warmer weather, and gardening! Yeah!
Posted by donna at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
Retrospective
You could labor ten years under a master
Trying to discern whether the teachings are true.
But all you must learn is this;
One must live one's own life.
When one starts out learning a spiritual system, there are many absolute assertions that the masters make. They must be accepted with a provisional faith; each must be tested and proved to yourself before you can believe in them. You will be exposed to all types of esoteric knowledge, but you need only be concerned with whether or not you can make them work for yourself.
There will come an intermediate, joyous point where you find that certain techniques work even better than the scriptures claim. In the wake of these discoveries, you will also find that life continues to be just as thorny and problematic as ever. Does this mean that the study of Tao is useless? No. It only means that you have been laboring to equip yourself with skill. You must still go out and live your life to the end.
When you look back and realize that you have been absorbed the teachings so thoroughly that they have become routine, it is not the time to reject the system you have learned. It is time to utilize what you have learned. You must express yourself, take action in the world, create new circumstances for yourself and others. Only then does the long acquisition of skill become worthwhile.
“Any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question…Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.”
-- Carlos Castaneda
I grew up in the Presbyterian church, and that was a church and faith that had a lot of heart. I've attended the Community Church near my home, which is a Unitarian church.
hBut I've studied a lot of other faiths as well - Budhism, Hindu, Judaism, Islam - and eventually came to realize the message is always basically very much the same, what differs are which gods and which prophets the religion tells you to accept. And I got to the point where I realized that each of these various faiths posits itself as The One True Religion, and began to ask why they couldn't *all* be equally true. Then I read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth and Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Karen Armstrong's A History of God (all highly recommended), and realized that all the hero's journeys of the various religions (Budhha, Christ, Mohammed) were very much the same.
Then I remembered what Jesus said about there being many paths. And thought about how many cultures have never heard of Jesus, or how many people lived well before that period in time. Christianity is so tied to western thought, so dismissive of eastern thought, even though the Jesus mythology is based on Egyptian mythology and other mythos. And I guess it kind of crystallized for me that this must simply be a way of filling the basic spiritual needs people have, and all the ways religion has been used as a tool for power and control.
What originally attracted me to Taoism is that Jesus referred to himself as "The Way, the truth, and the light". Tao is translated as the way. I think of it as the process, the way things work, rather than an actual pathway. There is a process to finding one's spirituality. The problem with religion is that it shortcuts the process, gives you an easy answer rather than making you think about things for yourself.
Taoism doesn't do that. Taoism says, here's an idea, think about it, go look for yourself in the world and see how this works. And that is how I think spirituality should operate. There are reasons all the religions come back to the same points over and over. They are operating manuals for life. And taken in this way, they work. But trying to force others to operate in the world exactly the way you do is ridiculous. We are all different, and what works for one won't work for all. If you use religion as a tool to run society, you can apply one rule to everyone - but you will still have rebellion, you will still have individuality and the special case, and eventually the society becomes corrupt. If you offer a spirituality that allows everyone to be spiritual in their own way, you give people a choice.
Of course, there are many who just want to be told what to do, and for them, religion is the answer. But for those who seek and need a choice to learn how the world really works, Taoism is a belief system that can work.
Posted by donna at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)
Intellect
Scholars, drunk on words and obscure meanings,
Weave a tangled web of concordances.
Simple practice never occurs to them.
Give up education, and the world will be better.
There are many who seek Tao through intellect. They revel in thousands of coincidences, seek similarities in all the world's religions, conduct learned discourses for enthralled audiences. But they would reach the truth faster if they tied their thoughts to experience.
The intellect is inherently dualistic. It makes distinctions and creates new connections between concepts and calls that "meaning." This type of analytical thinking is extremely limited in the face of Tao, which is not fully rational, nor fully quantitative, not fully describable. Though most followers of Tao are learned, they also realize that the intellect is but one aspect in what must be a multifaceted approach to Tao.
It is said one must give up education, not because we should be dumb, but because we mut seek a level on consciousness beyond the intellect. We must study, but not to the point that emphasis on experience and meditation is lost. If we can combine the intellect and direct experience with out meditative mid, then there will be no barrier to the wordless perception of reality.
As much as I like to think about Tao, it is not when I'm thinking about it that I most experience it. I am most with Tao when I'm in my garden, when I'm out in the world enjoying the sunshine and plants and fresh air, or when I am quietly meditating. Even as I put together my musings, I am distracted by the Tao - cats to pet, dog to pet or let in and out, a drink to refill, a bird to watch, the noise of workers removing wallboard that has had water leak in and ruin it.
So much going on!
And this is a relaxing day. On a busy day, there is so much more. Life is constantly going on around us. The Tao is always busy, creating, changing form. We watch in amazement as the world changes around us. How could we possibly keep up with all this intellectually? Oh, look! A rose is blooming! I am constantly distracted by all that goes on around me. Intellectually, I tune this out to write, but really, I am aware of all this going on. If I were only to listen to my intellect, I would miss so much of life. Oooh, stretch - feel muscles rearrange themselves... Turn down the heater that is getting too warm on my leg. Readjust my sitting position. See? there is alway all this going on...
Posted by donna at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Parting
painting by Melissa Egan, Parting Ways
You and I assumed forever
When we became companions.
But now, unhappy, you are leaving.
The sky turns to bitter candescence
Unslaked by resignation.
There are times when we have been lucky enough to have companions on our spiritual path, but the time of parting often comes without welcome. When our friends decide to leave, we are often left with doubt, confusion, and sometimes guilt. Anyone may leave the path. They won't suffer damnation; they will only walk a different path.
The rule for those who follow Tao is this: Walk the path together as long as you can, and when you must part, never hold your companion back.
Should one seek to have no feelings at all regarding friends? After all, the sages constantly warn against attachment. Yet emotion is part of what makes us human. We may understand philosophically why a companion must leave, but we need not deny our feelings as we walk on alone.
This is a difficult topic for me. Parting from friends has caused the most sorrow in my life. Losing my parents was awful, but expected - you know at some point you have to face death. But friends deciding to walk away? Who ever expects that, when we have enjoyed and shared so much together. You think such friendships would last, but then, they don't, and you are left wondering if you ever really knew that person, or yourself, at all.
For me, those partings were a result of my haiving an illness I was unaware I had - bipolar disorder. I knew my sister and nephew had problems, but I had been told I was fine. Then I had a full-blown bipolar episode after losing a good friend from my life, and realized the past losses were a part of that same pattern - the massive high at their friendship, the obsession over the loss of friendship, and the excessive attempts to restore the friendship were all symptoms of the same illness.
But do others ever understand mental illness? No, not really. They can sympathize, perhaps, but to accept that someone has overcome this beast and welcome them back into their life is beyond most people, I think. The hurts are deep, and forgiveness does not come easily to everyone.
For me, it was a lesson in having compassion towards other people, knowing they are not always fully responsible for the way they act or what happens in their lives. I am far more accepting of others, far more open in many ways. And yet, I have refrained from developing new close friendships, perhaps out of fear of loss, perhaps just because I no longer need the attachments I did in the past.
But I don't walk my path alone. I have my husband, my friends, my children, my family members, and my kitties and golden retriever (who is an ever-loyal companion). And my feelings towards those I've lost as friends are pretty well resolved. The love is still there, the door is always open, but I accept that they won't be back. Their path is different, and diverges from mine. There are stories I wish I could tell them, questions I would like to ask, but those are wishes, not needs. I have my memories, and my love for them, and that is all I need.
Posted by donna at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
Attunement
Traversing sun leads to a new season.
Vernal breath attunes the leaves.
Tao is here. It is we who are not always in harmony with it.
Tao proceeds on its own way. It is we who are not ready to follow.
Tao is absolutely sure in its movements. It is we who involve ourselves in amusements.
Tao has no consciousness, yet it is supreme. It is we who think compulsively.
Therefore, tuning ourselves to Tao is the basic task. We must make ourselves the perfect instrument, much in the way a beautiful harp has all its strings adjusted. If we are less than sound, how will we harmonize with the universal music?
Once we are attuned, we can become open to Tao. Where it leads, we follow without hesitation. Just as a musician expresses individual talent and understanding and yet blends with the swelling magnificence of the orchestra, so too does the follower of Tao remain human and yet in harmony with the universal.
When the sun begins its new pattern, spring follows. The air warms, and the world rejoices. A new breath comes over all things, and even the trembling leaves are attuned to the vernal rhythm. Turn your face to the sun, as flowers know how to do. Turn your face to Tao, as we should all do.
We're in the tail end of a spring storm right now, so there's not much sun out today. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit brighter.
And I'm a bit more focused on current events right now than keeping up with my Tao studies. Reading the economic blogs, working with my MoveOn group, and such. For some good reads today, try maxspeak, angry bear, and brad setser. That's about as far as I've gotten today, so guess I'm having a pretty slow day, really.
Just caught a tiny bit of sun as it disappeared over the hill behind my house. Normally I post my Tao posts in the morning, so it's strange to get to it this late in the day. With both boys home from school there were a lot of distractions today, and my email has been busy. I've been posting my thoughts on current affairs to my email groups, and that takes some time and effort to really think about what I want to say. Mostly trying to encourage people to make sure their financial affairs are in order and not to be in debt right now.
I feel a bit more secure in that most of my family is financially stable, other than my sister and nephew, who I worry about. But with inflation edging up, and the US deficit and trade imbalance so large, it's hard to feel good about where the country is financially. We are so far out of tune as a nation with where we need to be, and it's difficult to see how we can get on track. Our congress is sidetracked with circuses like the Schiavo incident instead of paying attention to our economic situation, or the general health care crisis that is coming. While Bush tries to convince us social security is in trouble, the deficit skyrockets with military spending and the health care crisis looms. Why is one woman's life so much more important than everyone else's health care? How about being fiscally conservative instead of just trying to rewrite the social contract?
Posted by donna at 03:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Sailing
Infinite expanse, sleek ocean teeming with life,
Turbulent, virile, ever-moving spread.
Seamlessly laid to the brilliant sky.
I float on you in my fashioned womb,
Sustained against your green-black depths.
Those on land never understand maritime life.
Those of the sea are intimate with your moods;
They navigate but are ultimately helpless.
Destinations become useless, drifting the sole reality;
A sailor's fears dissolve into acceptance.
Tao is sometimes compared to the ocean. Its depth is immeasurable, its power rules all who enter it. We seek to sail it with our knowledge of knots, direction, mathematics, and charts, yet our understanding is incomparable to its vastness. The young have great ambition about exploring both above and below the surface, while the old have given in: They know that there is no other alternative than to accept the ocean and float upon it. One who accepts is sustained. Those who go beyond its terms meet death. Thus the wise say that they float here and there without care; they trust in the overwhelming power of Tao.
I guess I'm still young enough to want to dive beneath the surface and explore what's there. Snorkeling in Hawaii last summer was pretty awesome, and it was nice to share that experience with the kids. I've always liked to explore the depths, but am starting to become more at peace with floating along and just drifting. But I don't think I will ever be content to just sit in the harbor.
Posted by donna at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
How to avoid being Schiavo'ed
U.S. Living Will Registry: About Us
U.S. LIVING WILL REGISTRY
Living will - health care proxy
U.S. Living Will Registry
Registration is FREE.
You must register through a Member Health Care Provider or a Community Partner.
Once registered, you are registered for life. If you register your advance directive, you will receive an update form annually so that your information will always be current. There is never a renewal or update charge. The Registry provides this service free of charge through its member Health Care Providers and Community Partners so that everyone can participate, and cost will never prevent anyone from registering these important documents. Health care providers (hospitals, doctors, skilled nursing facilities, nursing facilities, home health agencies, providers of home health care, ambulatory surgery centers, and hospices) will have access to your documents, and your privacy and confidentiality are always maintained. For more information on how the Registry works, visit
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After your document is registered, you will receive notification by mail, along with labels to attach to your driver's license and insurance card stating that you are registered with the U.S. Living Will Registry, and a wallet card listing your Registration number. Once registered, your documents and emergency contact information will be available to health care providers across the country. You will have peace of mind knowing that your wishes will be available whenever and wherever they are needed. Your family will not have to make difficult decisions on your behalf, and by having your wishes available, the problems that can occur when family members disagree about treatment will be avoided.
If you already have an advance directive, find a member Health Care Provider or Community Partner through which to register it.
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Posted by donna at 06:37 PM
Vultures of Life
Kudos to my friend John Pierce...
Posted by donna at 03:20 PM | Comments (0)
Opposites
Before emptying, there must be fullness.
Before shrinking, there must be expanding.
Before falling, there must be ascent.
To destroy something, lead it to its extreme.
To preserve something, keep to the middle.
Although we speak of opposites, they are not truly antagonistic elements. All opposites are part of the same entity. Like a two-headed snake, opposites are two parts of the same whole. They define one another, as black defines white. They alternate with one another, as war alternates with peace.
Whenever any phenomenon reaches its extreme, it will change toward its opposite, just as the darkness night begins to change toward dawn, and the coldest winter is followed by glorious spring. Therefore, anything that one wishes to destroy need only be led to its extreme or crushed while it is just appearing. For example, the two easiest times to destroy a tree are when it is so tall that it is about to topple or so young that it can bee easily uprooted.
The same principle holds if one wishes to nurture something. You can prevent its destruction by bringing it close to, but not over, its apex. You can take a branch from an old tree and graft it. This is the wisdom of the middle ground. Followers of Tao change a situation when it reaches its apex. By joining their efforts to a new situation that is just budding, they attain perpetuity.
In order to contract a thing, one should surely expand it first.
In order to weaken, one will surely strengthen first.
In order to overthrow, one will surely exalt first.
"In order to take, one will surely give first."
This is called subtle wisdom.
-- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
I suppose I'm really very yin for the most part. I've been more agressive and controlling at some points in my life, though. Part of Taoism for me is really accepting the feminine in myself, since there were times when I was young I really wished I were masculine in this patriarchal, male-dominated society.
America is very much at the extreme of the yang forces right now. I'm doing what I can to accept that and be amused watching the right wing extremists pull out all the stops and take us to the edge of reason, but, at times I still find myself angered by it all. I know the change will come and the fall will happen, but not knowing when or how, it's difficult to put up with where we are.
So I do my bit to work with the progressive forces, lending what support I can to the progressive effort, knowing it is the next force that will grow and dominate eventually. But it is so young still, and growing quickly but perhaps not soon enough to stop us from going over the edge completely. I know it is too large to be crushed, now, though. The roots are already deep, but the tree is still so young...but I think the old tree of the progressives of the past would be proud of us, even as the right keeps trying to finally topple it.
Posted by donna at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
March 20, 2005
And the same goes here....
Left2Right: memo to House Republicans
memo to House Republicans
Posted by David V. on March 19, 2005
To: House Government Reform Committee
From: James David Velleman
Re: My Advance Directive
Having discussed with my wife how I wish to be treated in case of irreversible brain injury -- a private matter that I choose not to air here -- I hereby inform you of my refusal, in advance, to respond to any subpoenas with which I may be served while in a persistent vegetative state. Since I will not in those circumstances be able to assert this refusal, or my preference to be held in contempt of Congress, I am asserting them publicly now, in the hope of forestalling such ghoulish theatrics on your part, which would richly deserve my contempt. Should this hope be frustrated, I have instructed my physicians and my attorney to deny you access to my hospital room.
Posted by donna at 07:07 PM
Spring
Sun and moon divide the sky,
Fragrance blooms on pear wood bones;
Earth awakens with a sigh.
Wanderer revels on the path alone.
It is the time of equinox, when day and night are briefly equal. This day signals the beginning of spring, the increasing of light, and the return of life to the frozen earth.
Of course, this day only represents a moment in time. Spring has long been returning, and we know that summer will soon follow. The cycle of the seasons will continue in succession. here is no such thing as a true stopping in time, for all is a continuum. Nature makes its own concordances as a mere outgrowth to its movement, it is we who see structure and give names to pattern.
But who can begrudge temporary pleasures to a solitary traveler? Let us go out and enjoy the day, revel in the coming of spring, rejoice in the warming of the earth. For though the ground may be covered with frost, movement and growth are taking place all around us. Beauty bared fills our eyes and makes us drunk. As we wander the endless mountains and streams, filling our lungs with the breath of the forests, let us take comfort in being part of nature. For life has enough misery and misfortune. Philosophy reminds us enough of the transience of life. Give us the charm of the ephemeral, and let it silence all who would object.
Ah, Spring! Now it's time to get to the gardening in earnest. The roses are all beginning to burst out, the irises are blooming, everything is covered in new growth this year thanks to the heavy rains we've had. Everyhere something is growing, blooming, and the breeze is blowing, and life is just so.... ah.....
Posted by donna at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
Fear
Trust the gods within,
Accept given boons.
Illusion is reality's border:
Pierce fear to go beyond.
In your meditations, you will meet gods. These gods are nothing more than the holiest aspects of your own mind; they are not other beings. Your inner gods will grant gifts of knowledge and power. You can trust your gods. They will never betray you for you cannot betray yourself.
Such trust dissolves fear and regret. You will find a resolution to your inner conflicts. The gods will direct you to forward to the very border of reality itself. On the other side is vast profundity, the ultimate nature of existence. But the border can be crossed only if you have resolved all fear and regret.
All fear comes from our sense of self. When we stand at the border of reality, we are afraid that we will lose our identities by plunging in. We are afraid of being destroyed. But we came from Tao in the first place. We are Tao. To return to Tao is not to be negated, but to become one with the entire universe. True, we will no longer be who we are now, but we will be one with Tao. In that state, there is no need for fear.
What does this mean:
"What we value and what we fear are within our Self?"
We have fears because we have a self.
When we do not regard that self as self,
What have we to fear?
-- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
"I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
--- Frank Herbert, Dune - Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
It's perfectly rational to be afraid of some things, particularly things that are likely to kill you, like falling from a great height. It's also rational to fear the loss of someone close to you, since that is such a huge emotional loss. The problem comes when we let fear overwhelm us to the point that we can no longer respond to life, or when we create irrational fears that are really obstacles to the things we want to accomplish in our lives. If you aren't sufficiently afraid of the things that can truly harm you, you become something of a thrill seeker, deliberately needing a new challenge to threaten you and provide an adrenalin rush.
So fear is a useful emotion, but only to a point. When you find fear overwhelming you, for whatever reason, it's important to understand what you're really afraid of. For me, my greatest fear was abandondment, especially after losing a parent. What I get from the Tao though is the understanding that since I am part of Tao, Tao can never abandon me. So now I'm no longer afraid of people abandoning me, and in fact, find myself quite comfortable just being alone and by myself again. I don't choose to be alone constantly, but am quite happy when I am alone.
Understand your fears, and then work to overcome them. Start just facing that fear for a brief time, in your mind, until you can face it in the real world. Then work little by little to face that fear and stop avoiding the situations that cause you to have that fear. Over time, your fears will start to fade as you move to be more with Tao all the time.
Posted by donna at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)
Darrell Issa - Proudly covering up gay prostitutes in the White House
Posted by donna at 04:02 PM
March 18, 2005
Fate
Dispel time
And you will
Dispel fate.
Fate is the force that interferes with our lives, wrecking things at the worst moments. Yet what we call fate is nothing more than the consequence of our own actions. Each time we act, we generate a chain of events that is tied to us completely. The faster we run from these links, the faster they follow us. They cannot be severed; our every act binds us further.
The operative element here is time. The events of the past are the curse. Beginning followers of Tao learn to manipulate past, present, and future. They learn how circumstances operate and seek to take advantage of that. More advanced followers of Tao eschew this process of manipulation. They obliterate all regard to past, present, and future as definitions in order to negate the concept of fate.
In order to attain a state of being where there is no past to weigh upon the present and no future to be determined, followers of Tao must reach a profound merging with Tao. The follower then acts no differently than Tao would. There is no fate to oppose them, for they are existence, they are causality, they are Tao itself.
Of course, since the Tao encompasses everything anyway, we are already Tao itself. What it really takes is a realization of this, and then you stop complaining about fate. We are where we are in our lives by the choices we make. Yes, things happen to us we have no direct control over, and I think this passage is a bit simplistic in not acknowledging that. That is what people really refer to as fate, when they feel they have no control over events around them.
But we do have control over how we react to the events around us. We can realize this and manage our own reactions to what happens around us.
73. Fate
The brave and bold perish;
The brave and subtle profit.
The subtle profit where the bold perish
For fate does not honor daring.
And even the gentle dare not tempt fate.
Fate does not attack, yet all things succumb to it;
It does not ask, yet all things answer it;
It does not call, yet all things meet it;
It does not plan, yet it determines all things.
Fate's net is vast and its mesh is coarse,
Yet none escape it.
-- Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching
Desire nothing, Chafe not at fate, nor at Nature's changeless laws. But struggle only with the personal, the transitory, the evanescent and the perishable.
-- Helena Petrovna Hahn Blavatsky (1831-91)
Russian-born theosophist
What we really control in our lives is the present moment. If we live without regretting the past, without fretting about the future, and use the present moment as best we can, aware of the consequences of what we do now to the future, then we are doing all we can to live our lives the way we want them to be. That is the real understanding of the Tao, i think - to live in the now as if it is all that matters, because, really, it is.
Posted by donna at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)
March 17, 2005
Sanctity
Every soul is inviolable,
Any though can be private.
The deepest goal is to
Find sanctity's source.
The body may be ravaged and hacked to pieces, but the mind may never be invaded. It is only when we permit others to influence us that our minds may be entered. Evil may thrive on enslaving us physically, emotionally, or mentally, but it can do so only be deception. That is why we must remember the sanctity of our own souls. Our thoughts are private. As long as we are determined, evil cannot sway us. People think that others can read minds or that the gods watch our every movement. No master, no psychic, no god can enter our inner gate if we choose not to let them in.
By withdrawing into the sanctity of our souls, we can also know ourselves. This effort cannot be carried forth by others. It can only be accomplished through the self effort of living and engaging in ongoing contemplation. Only we can enter the most sacred core of our beings and find the secrets of life.
I tihnk we all have a place within ourselves that we identify as our own, not shared with anyone. The thoughts that we don't share with others are the most sacred part of ourselves. The things we do by ourselves that others are not a part of, those are our sacred rituals, not things that are performed in public. The only real prayers are private prayers, the only real sanctity is in ourselves. That is the inviolable space.
Posted by donna at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2005
Breakthrough
Lake shadows color of cold,
Willow branches weep ice.
Swan rises dazzling in the sunlight.
After long self-cultivation, one's accumulated energy reaches a threshold and then bursts out full, breathing, and vibrant. Without the careful building of momentum, this moment of release would never have been possible. With long years of preparation and experience, the freeing of the soul will not be mere dissipation but will be so strongly focused that it life's one into a higher state of awareness. When one's spiritual energy emerges, it feels like a swan rising from the water.
Once you have reached this level of stored energy, you will be a different person. On one hand, you may take genuine comfort in the point of attainment that you have made. On the other had, you now see all the other possibilities that remain for you to explore.
With the emergence of great possibilities comes the need for responsibility. If you diverge from your life's path in order to explore new vistas, remember how far you are flying, and remember to return at the proper times. Only you can decide how to arrange your life. Once you are a strong flier, you must still use wisdom to direct your flight.
I have rater mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, it is great to think that at some point, there will be a breakthrough and from that point on everything will be a wonderful flight of the soul. The problem comes when we sit around waiting for some breakthrough instead of simply enjoying our lives for what they are. The real breakthrough, it seems, is to realize that you can find happiness and fulfillment in the everyday, the ordinary, and that you don't have to wait for some altered state or brteakthrough of the soul or some fantastic ecstatic experience to happen.
Life is full of extrordinary possibilities. So what. Life is full of ordinary life, too. Enjoy ordinary life to its fullest, and it will all seem extrordinary. That is the real breakthrough.
Posted by donna at 10:08 AM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2005
Accumulation
An opening in the stormy sea,
Gold deposited on bones.
Once accumulation has begun,
Take care not to interfere.
There is a fable about a pious man whose father had just died. A geomancer instructed the son to bury his father at the mouth of a sea cave. The sea opened at this spot only once in a hundred years, and a family who utilized it would experience great fortune. Although he had misgivings about this unorthodox location, the son threw the casket into the waters at the indicated time.
For weeks the son doubted what he had done. He eventually went to a competing geomancer, who, out of jealousy, advised the son to raise the casket. The son did so. When the coffin was brought up and opened, the man saw that a fine layer of pure gold had already been deposited on his father's bones -- a clear indication of the auspicious transformation that had begun. In regret, the son wanted to throw his father back in, but it was too late. There was no remedying what had been done.
Spiritual practice must be uninterrupted. We may be anxious because we see very little happening on a daily basis, but we must be patient until we can see what the accumulation of our efforts yields. Self-cultivation means steady, gradual progress. To stop prematurely would be more disastrous than never having started at all.
Learning builds daily accumulation, but the practice of Tao builds daily simplification. Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contradictory thinking is eliminated. Then one does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. One who wins the world does so by not meddling with it. One who meddles with the world loses it.
-- Tao te Ching, 48. Lao-Tzu
The story is very Tao in that it illustrates the benefits of just leaving things alone and not meddling with them. That is pretty much how I feel about my spirituality these days. I practice being spiritual in my daily life by not meddling with things, letting things progress naturally as much as possible. My son wondered today how it was he came out ok without his parents meddling in his life like his other friend's parents seem to do. I just smiled and laughed.
Children grow best when they are appreciated for who they are, allowed to grow in their own way and time. So it is with all things. Even with ourselves, we have to patiently cultivate our own spirituality, not dig it up by its roots or try to make it grow faster by adding a lot of fertilizer (dogma) or too much water (flooding ourselves with an insistence on immediate enlightenment) or trimming ourselves too much to fit another's idea of what our spiritual practice should be. Everyone has to find what works best for them, and respect the choices of others for their own spirituality.
Be patient with others, and patient with yourself. Then you will see results.
Posted by donna at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Affirmation
Stand at the precipice,
That existential darkness,
And call into the void:
It will surely answer.
The precipice represents our dilemma as human beings, the sense that this existence is all too random, all too absurd. Is there order? Is there a force directing things? These are the important issues, so important that we cannot rely on scripture, but must instead explore on our own.
The followers of Tao compare the void to a valley. A valley is void, yet it is productive and positive. The emptiness of the valley permits water to accumulate for plants. It allows life-giving sunlight to flood its surface. Its openness gives comfort to people and animals alike. The void should not be frightening. Rather, it contains all possibilities. Peer into it, call out, not just with your voice, but with your whole being. If your cry is deep and sincere, an echo is sure to return. This is the affirmation of our existence, the affirmation that we are on the right path. With that encouragement, we can continue our lives and our explorations. Then the void is not frightening, but a constant companion.
The ancient followers of the Tao
were subtle, mysterious, and penetrating.
They were too deep to be fathomed.
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Hesitant, as if crossing a winter stream.
Watchful, as if aware of neighbors on all sides.
Respectful, like a visiting guest.
Yielding, like ice beginning to melt.
Simple, like an uncarved block.
Open, like a valley.
Obscure, like muddy water.
Who else can be still and let the muddy water
slowly become clear?
Who else can remain at rest and slowly come to life?
Those who hold fast to the Tao
do not try to fill themselves to the brim.
Because they do not try to be full
they can be worn out and yet ever new.
-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching 15
The void is simply what comes before everything else. What comes before us? We really don't know for sure, only what we are told and can figure out. We came from our parents, we can see that is obvious as we have our own children. But over time, what came before is lost. We don't know our original ancestors, what their world was like, how they lived, etc. We can only guess from the few clues we find.
And the origins of the universe itself? All we can do is peer out at what light comes to us on this world, and make our best guess. The origins of matter? Every time we think we know what things are made of, we find ever smaller particles, finally just sources of energy. And what came before that energy? The void. That's all we know of it.
Nothing scary, just things we don't know. And the unknown doesn't have to be scary - just unknown. It becomes fun eventually to learn things you didn't know and find out new stuff, so discovery of new things does become a constant companion. And discovery of the void is the most challenging thing to learn about of all.
Posted by donna at 01:35 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
Entertainment
The mind that turns ever outward
Will have no end to craving.
Only the mind turned inward
Will find a still-point of peace.
It seems people never tire of seeking new thrills. They crave entertainment, and they want newer, sharper experiences. Events do not even need to be actual -- people are more than content with recreations, displays, and stimulating machines. Music must be amplified. An historic location must have museums, shops, and festivals. Life must have elaborate ceremonies with images, music, speaking, dining, and drinking.
Followers of Tao regard all reality as being projections of our minds. All phenomena are subjective and relative. Therefore, it is folly to further entangle ourselves in confusion. True reality lies in withdrawal from the swirling variations of the outside world. It lies in looking within and then slowly peeling away the layers of subjectivity. What will remain is not a core of objectivity, but a kernel of truth that absorbs rather than reflects. If we enter into this kernel, our minds cease to continue their habits of creating stimulating realities, and we enter into a silence that feels perfect and whole.
I'm easily entertained. The comfort of a good book, a golden retriever curled at my feet, or a cat in my lap is quite entertaining. I don't watch much television anymore, pretty much only listen to music while I'm driving, and am not much of a thrill seeker these days. Quiet meditation is a lot more fulfilling for me than an evening of noisy crowds.
Posted by donna at 10:40 PM | Comments (0)
Flat Busted Up
From my artist friend John today:
Posted by donna at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Independence
A solitary crane
In the winter
Needs no jewels.
A single crane standing unconcerned in the in the falling snow is the very image of independence. It needs no one, it is secure in its environment, and it is capable of going through life alone. Its independence stems from self-sufficiency.
It needs no clothing, no wealth, no status. It is content, even glorious in its naked identity. So too with ourselves: There is no need for dazzling clothes, an impressive career, an awesome temple, not a bejeweled master. What we want is something far beyond such externals.
What facets of your personality are encumbrances? What personal aspects prevent you from being independent? These are the areas that will define your self-cultivation, for you must strive to stand alone. This doesn't mean that you won't ever join with others, but you will do so as an individual who will cooperate just as much as is necessary. In this way, you will never be lost in a group, and you will never fear being alone.
I have an almost instantaneous reaction to the word "Independence" - it is a mix of happiness, joy, and pride. I love being independent, not needing to rely on other people. At times I am almost counterdependent, going too far in my independence, and I have to remind myself that our lives are always interwoven with those of others, unless we truly choose to become the hermit in the hills.
But I am reminded that I have and need others in my life, that I am not now and never have been fully independent, and probably never really will be. I think I will always need people to love in my life and care about, and want others to love and care about me as well. So perhaps the Tao and i will have to disagree a bit about needing full independence, just as the cranes above recognize that they need each other and dance in joy to attract each other.
I look now at how far our country has leaned in its independence, and I know it is a false house of cards. If China and Japan choose to call in our debt to them, the house falls down. Soon we'll see the effects of becoming an arrogant nation, thinking we are above needing others.
We all start dependent as children, and some of us grow to be independent of most others as adults. But there is a higher value even than independence - interdependence - being able to be relied on by others and to rely on them as well. That is the value I strive for in my own life - to be someone others can count on, and know others well enough to identify and rely on those I can count on. Only in interdependence can everyone achieve together what no one could achieve alone.
I would like to see America become that kind of country as well. Not one that stands alone, but one that stands with others, and works with others to make everyone's world a better place to live - not just the wealthy and connected, but all people, of all countries. Isn't that a more worthwhile goal? Isn't that worth trying to create in America, instead of a rogue nation that walks by itself, and lets the poor and sick starve while the wealthy live high on the hog? I think so, anyway.
Let's celebrate our independence, indeed, but make the long-term goal to be able to celebrate interdependence day, and invite all countries to celebrate with us. What a sight that would be!
Posted by donna at 11:35 AM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
Illumination
Fire feeding on fire.
Everyone understands that burning wood produces fire. But when fire feeds on fire, that is a rare condition that yields the greatest illumination. Two flames come together and yield light more magnificent than either could have given forth alone.
In the case of community activity, this means that when one cooperates with others, the accomplishments are greater than what the individuals can do on their own. Such a situation requires a harmony that will generate ideas, inspiration, as well as momentum for growth and action. If the combinations occur properly, the results will be like fire upon fire and will illuminate the world. Sometimes, the combination comes down to just two people. If two people join forces, neither sacrificing their individuality, but only lending their power to an endeavor, there will be a wonderful situation that will both benefit others and encourage greater growth in the two people as well.
Fire feeding on fire can also mean the swift exhaustion of all energies involved. One must be careful not to lose one's own personality in any joining. The idea is integration, not assimilation. No matter what can be achieved in joining with others, it is wise to remember that we each walk this path independently. The ultimate truth of the journey and its final rewards are still for each of us to face alone.
The Shining of the Sun and Moon
The way the sun works, it climbs into the sky in the daytime, thus illuminating the outward, then goes behind the earth at night, thus illuminating the inward. The way the moon works, in the first half of its cycle it produces light, thus illuminating the outward, then in the last half of its cycle it withdraws its light, thus nurturing the inward. Sun and moon, illuminating outside and inside, are all one light.
What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of using illumination. If people can use illumination outwardly, be careful about what they say and do, refrain from any inappropriate conduct, not dwell on anything but the Tao, not be distorted by the power of sensuality, intoxicants, and material goods, not be seduced by wealth or status, success or fame, not be stained by mundane feelings connected to worldly situations, then they can illuminate the outward as do the sun and moon.
If people can use illumination inwardly, do away with falsehood and maintain truthfulness, leave confusion and return to reality, learn to master emotions, clear up feelings, clean the mind, melt away the human mentality and activate the awareness of Tao, carefully avoiding even the slightest errant thought, then they can illumine the inward as do the sun and moon.
When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.
Awakening to the Tao
By Thomas Cleary, Liu I-ming
Illumination is an interesting word. it can mean to light from without, or from within. In this world, all our energy originally comes from without, from the sun. Within ourselves, all our energy comes from within, from inside ourselves. We can be illuminated by the light of the sun, or by our own inner energy. When we connect with other people, we can make use of even more energy to accomplish greater things.
But another part of illumination is to shed light on other things, to reveal that which was hidden and bring it out into the light. If we ourselves can cast a strong light, we can illuminate those things around us and bring them more clearly into focus, both for ourselves and those around us. Tao helps strengthen that inner light so you can see things more clearly.
Posted by donna at 09:50 PM | Comments (0)
Creativity
Storm breaks into pieces,
Clouds charge the horizon.
Revolving of the heavens
Generates all movement.
Without movement, there could be nothing created in this universe. The revolving of the heavens can generate wind, rain, thunder, lightning. The revolving of the earth enables us to have day and night, the very cycle of the weather, the seasons, and the growth of plants. Movement is responsible for creativity.
Followers of Tao value initiative, but mere aggression is not enough. One needs creativity. This can mean the ability to solve problems, to think of unusual strategies, or to compose poetry, music, and painting. In all these cases, one moves in concert with Tao not by blind aping, but by giving intelligent counterpoint and harmony. Creativity does not mean the arbitrary making of something out of our cultural minds. Rather, it is spontaneous movement in tandem with Tao, a movement that will generate life and not misery for others.
One has reached the ultimate levels of creativity when one has mastered a skill so thoroughly that it can be forgotten. Look at heaven and earth. Do they think about creating the weather, the seasons, and the cycles of growing? They only go on revolving according to their nature, and the rest is generated without any thought or work on their part. This is truly effortless action and is considered the highest skill that a follower of Tao can attain.
Do you think you are creative? Most people don't believe they are, and yet they create something every day - a meal, a letter, their appearance, a joke, a story, whatever. Our society works to tell us we are not creative, pouring images of pre-fabricated products at us so we don't have to think about creating things on our own. When people had to build their daily needs for themselves, they felt more creative. How many of us play music in our homes anymore, write letters to each other, simply talk to each other to create our own entertainment? I think the popularity of blogging comes from our need simply to hear and tell stories to each other.
When I am working on an art project, I get into the creative flow, very much in the moment, with the Tao. When I am in my garden, creating new life by planting seeds or trimming plants to enhance their beauty, I feel this same flow. These days I can sometimes get into it just talking with people or going about my daily routine, as I learn to be more aware of my surroundings and what is happening around me and within me. I look at my blog posting and see the header of "Create New Entry", and get that satisfaction of creating something new, a thought I hadn't realized before or an idea that just popped into my head. I know these things were really there before, but I hadn't verbalized them, just as I often see an image of what I want to paint or know how I want a plant in my garden to look before I trim it.
Creativity is about taking what is in our heads and making it happen, whatever that may be. We are all creative, every day, every moment, since we are making things happen merely by our existence and presence in the world. So don't say you are not creative - you are.
Posted by donna at 09:01 AM | Comments (0)
March 07, 2005
Returning
Frederick Goodall, Returning from the well
Watercolor, 1867
Angles against lavender sky
Flung far across heaven's vault.
Unfettered, swallows
Circle back to the nest.
Swallows are famous for their daring speed and the unpredictable path that they take in flight. Yet no matter how far they fly, they circle back to their nests.
The idea of returning is significant for all of us. We must work, explore, travel, and make our achievements in life. No matter how much we strain and how wide we wander, we all need some lodestone, some center from which to operate. For some of us, this is a place, a home. For others, it is merely withdrawal into our own hearts.
Followers of Tao believe that there is a core spirit to which each of us should return. This core spirit is increasingly obscured by our own thoughts and the complexity of civilization. All education, while a necessary evil, is a stain upon the primal soul. Therefore, returning is a process of simplification that throws off the unnecessary problems of socialization. One gradually peels back the layers and makes one's way back to the unsullied, pure inner person. The time to do this is long, and one needs a great deal of guidance and self-cultivation to achieve it, but until one returns to the natural state, one cannot truly hope to be one with Tao.
Today is indeed a day of returning for me. We've returned to our home to San Diego, after getting my sister-in-law and her husband movied in to their new home in Tucson. I get to return to my blog posting and my normal daily rtoutines. Spring is returning to San Diego, bringing out all the flowers. So I'll be out in my garden, which is one of my ways of returning to a more natural state.
I started reading Antonio Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness" on the trip home. In it he talks about core consciousness and the core self, as opposed to the autobiographical self. He describes the core self as "a transient entity, carelessly re-created for each and every object with which the brain interacts." I read that and thought that is the Tao way of seeing, where we see each object we come into contact with as if we are seeing it for the first time. And I think of T.S. Eliot's poem:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S. Eliot -- "Little Gidding" (the last of his Four Quartets)
I think what Tao is about is returning to the core self, the real self that exists without all the crap day to day living piles on top of us. To live without regrets about the past, without expectations about the future, just enjoying where we are now, being content with who we are and what we are doing, no matter what that is. That is the goal of studying Tao, for me, for now.
Posted by donna at 10:02 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
Articulation
The painting is by Cynthia Bux, Mooroopna, Victoria. It represents the coming together of groups of people at a waterhole. Each of the images is representative of a group of people from different parts of the Australian continent. The eggs of each group represent the birth and growth of knowledge which is shared when people come together.
__________
Rain dripping from eaves
sounds nature's poetry.
We speak and write to
Explain ourselves.
Knowledge of Tao lodges in the same part of the mind as poetry. That is why the ancients expressed themselves in verse: There is the same quick perception.
When we are in touch with Tao, it is not our academic learning that is speaking, but the spirit of Tao itself. The old texts are very specific about this. That is why there is such a vast difference between the words of scholars and the words of a practitioner, just as the words of academics differ from the words of poets.
At the elementary stages of study, we need to articulate our experiences and let Tao flow through us. Followers of Tao frequently use writing, art, and even poetry as tools for self-discovery. By articulating their experiences, it helps them to understand the stages they are going through. Once they can do this, it satisfies and neutralizes their rational minds. The process clears away intellectualism and leaves the true Tao, which is not subject to words or images.
articulation
n 1: bringing articulatory organs together so as to shape the
sounds of speech
2: the shape or manner in which things come together and a
connection is made [syn: join, joint, juncture, junction]
3: expressing in coherent verbal form; "the articulation of my
feelings" or "I gave voice to my feelings" [syn: voice]
4: (anatomy) the point of connection between two bones or
elements of a skeleton (especially if the articulation
allows motion) [syn: joint, articulatio]
5: the act of joining things in such a way that motion is
possible
I particularly like #5, joining things in such a way that motion is possible... that is how I think about Tao. Tao shapes things so they can come together in ways that make movement, or change, possible. Tao is the force of change, we are the point of connection. Tao brings us together and we communicate with each other to shape our world and create changes in it.
I love the image I found for this posting - it just speaks Tao to me...
I'll be off for a few days to help my sister-in-law and her husband in their move to Tucson. San Diego has become too expensive for them, so they sold their house here and are buying one in Tucson today.
Posted by donna at 07:31 AM | Comments (0)
1500
Yahoo! News - U.S. Troops Deaths in Iraq Top 1,500
The number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq (news - web sites) has topped 1,500, an Associated Press count showed Thursday after the military announced the deaths of three Americans, while car bombs targeting Iraqi security forces killed at least four people in separate attacks.
_______
Posted by donna at 07:19 AM
March 02, 2005
Interpretation
All that we experience is subjective.
There is no sensation without interpretation.
We create the world and ourselves;
Only when we stop do we see the truth.
The world exists, but we cannot truly be one with it in our normal modes of consciousness. Our minds know the world by constructing conclusions from the data of our senses. All that we know is filtered and interpreted.
Therefore, there is no such thing as objectivity or direct knowledge of the world. Everything is relative because we are each condemned to our particular vantage points. As long as we all have different perspectives, as long as perception relies on our senses, then there cannot be an absolute truth. All knowledge from experience, valuable as it may be, is imperfect and merely provisional.
Inner truth is only glimpsed by disconnecting the mechanism of interpretation. If we can withdraw the activities of the senses and isolate that part of the mind responsible for filtering sensory input, then we can temporarily shut off the ongoing process of interaction with the outside world. We will then be in a neutral place that is wholly turned inward. We are left with an absolute state, entirely without distinction or relativity. This is called nothingness, and it is the truth underlying all things.
We all think we are objective about the world, but we are really all subjective. I chose engineering as a career because it was "more objective" than music and theatre arts, my other major interest at the time. But the politics and subjective opinbios of those around me were still there, even if cloaked in more scientific terms. I was still subject to what others thought of me, even though what I did was as good as anyone else's work.
There is little we can do in this world without being subjected to the opinions of other people. But the world, the universe, the Tao, is not subjective. It is objective. It exists, with or without us. All that we can do is to live our lives as though they matter, even if objectively, it matters little if we are here or not.
It is our interpretation of events and the world around us that determines how we live. The more we live in harmony with the objective world, the world as it really exists, the less we will suffer. We will enjoy our lives more, be happier, be more fulfilled. We don't have to always be subject to what our senses deluge us with. We can retreat to nothingness, to quiet, calm, and stillness, and be renewed. Then our daily lives become a joy rather than a challenge, as each day is created anew, from nothingness.
Posted by donna at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
Formless Beginning
In the beginning, there was not the light or the darkness. There was the breath. The slow and steady breath of life emerging from the water - breathe in - the first lesson of life. Breathe out - the second. The third - don't stop breathing. Even in the womb, we breathe, learning to work the lungs so they are ready when we emerge into the air.
The air feels cold after the warmth of the water. The cold hits all the skin's nerves, almost painful. And another lesson occurs - cry for help. Cry for a warm body next to yous, a warm blanket wraped around you, warm arms holding your shivering, helpless body.
And another child is born.
Posted by donna at 12:53 PM | Comments (0)
The Sorrow of Darfur
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: The American Witness
So is it really genocide?
"I have no doubt about that," Mr. Steidle said. "It's a systematic cleansing of peoples by the Arab chiefs there. And when you talk to them, that's what they tell you. They're very blunt about it. One day we met a janjaweed leader and he said, 'Unless you get back four camels that were stolen in 2003, then we're going to go to these four villages and burn the villages, rape the women, kill everyone.' And they did."
The African Union doesn't have the troops, firepower or mandate to actually stop the slaughter, just to monitor it. Mr. Steidle said his single most frustrating moment came in December when the Sudanese government and the janjaweed attacked the village of Labado, which had 25,000 inhabitants. Mr. Steidle and his unit flew to the area in helicopters, but a Sudanese general refused to let them enter the village - and also refused to stop the attack.
"It was extremely frustrating - seeing the village burn, hearing gunshots, not being able to do anything," Mr. Steidle said. "The entire village is now gone. It's a big black spot on the earth."
When Sudan's government is preparing to send bombers or helicopter gunships to attack an African village, it shuts down the cellphone system so no one can send out warnings. Thus the international monitors know when a massacre is about to unfold. But there's usually nothing they can do.
The West, led by the Bush administration, is providing food and medical care that is keeping hundreds of thousands of people alive. But we're managing the genocide, not halting it.
"The world is failing Darfur," said Jan Egeland, the U.N. under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. "We're only playing the humanitarian card, and we're just witnessing the massacres."
________
The tragedy of allowing this to continue in the Sudan, while the world does nothing, illustrates so well where we are in this world. We can spend billions to invade Iraq, because there is oil, but in Darfur, where there is nothing we want, we allow a genocide to happen.
Bush's America is not about freedom, it is about power. The tragedy of Darfur makes that clear.
Posted by donna at 08:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 01, 2005
Sorrow
Van Gogh, Sorrow, 1882
Rain scatters plum petals;
Weeping stains the earth.
One can only take shelter
And wait for clearing.
When sorrow comes, its bitterness soaks everything. The sages say that life is illusion, but does that change its poignancy? Let us be sad; it is feeling that makes us human. If we gain enlightenment, understanding all life to be a dream, sadness and happiness will fall away soon enough.
The greatest sorrow of life is witnessing. Experiencing our own sufferings is not as difficult as watching others held in fate's mighty grip. Bearing our own problems is easier because we are always aware that we can exercise other options -- up to the final one. However, it hurts the most when we can do nothing for others. The greatest sorrow is to see those we love suffer helplessly.
When faced with a sad situation, it is best not to languish in it. We can change things by being with different people, moving to other places, or, if all else fails, adjusting our own attitudes to take the initiative. Sadness is transitory, like everything else. If we want to deflect it, we need only alter its context and allow it to be subsumed back into Tao.
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
-- Henri Nouwen
The Last Best Book of Everything
I dreamed of the ending An end-of-the-universe dream We wrote a book called "The Last Best Book of Everything" It was full of jokes and stories Full of love Poems and flowers and more It was sad, losing everything. But it was joyous, remembering What we had.
-- Donna Woodka
My flowering plum has dropped most of its petals now to the wind and rain, after being so gorgeous a few days ago. Now the leaves are coming out, and other plants have moved into the flowering spotlight, like my freesias. I grow many flowers, so I almost always have something blooming. But I do feel a tinge of sadness whenever a plant stops blooming, whenever something dies and I have to remove it from the garden. I console myself that they are making room for new things to grow, or stepping aside so other blooms can be the star for a while.
It's a lot harder to feel that way about the sorrows that befall us in life. Right now, my sister-in-law and her husband are having to sell their home in San Diego and move to Tucson, since they can no longer afford to live here. They have had a hard time, falling out of escrow, having the house then purchased by their real estate agent at a much lower price. The move is very difficult for my brother-in-law, since he has post-traumatic stress disorder and leukemia.
It's hard to see them move away from us, harder still to watch a loved one's health failing and seeing the dramatic changes it is bringing not only to his health, but to how he can live.
My nephew is bipolar, and right now has chosen to be off his medication and doing drugs. It's hard to watch him make mistakes in his life, harder still that I can't fix it for him. My sister is also bipolar, and extremely overweight. I can't fix that for her, either.
My brother and his wife lost their daughter this last year, about six months after my mother passed away. She had Down's syndrome and was on a feeding tube, but they still loved her dearly and losing her was hard for them.
So there is a lot of sorrow that is going on around me. And witnessing it is definitely harder than the sorrow I have felt over my own losses in life. I spent many years fighting depression before being properly medicated; I know very well the feelings of deep sorrow. I know that those times do indeed pass, eventually. But that is small comfort when you are going through those sorrowful times.
But the saddest thing for me, really, has been witnessing what happens with those who will not express their feelings. Those people who have cut me off from their lives, not even speaking to me anymore. They didn't care how much that hurt me, how deep my sorrow was at losing them. They couldn't express their own feelings of loss to me, even to tell me that they too, felt deeply hurt at what had passed between us, and missed me or regretted their actions. They couldn't express their own feelings. That is, indeed sorrowful. And I mourned more for them than for those people who are gone from my life to death, because I knew how those who died felt about me, their love for me, the passions and joys and sorrows of their lives.
To anyone you have differences with or feel sorrow for, let them know. Even if they choose not to accept what you say, you will reconcile your own feelings in your own spirit, and no longer be tormented by those feelings. Closure is a very important thing, and all people need to feel it when a life or relationship ends. Go to the funerals of your friends and loved ones, even if you hate funerals (we all do, really). Send a card to someone you haven't been speaking to. It will make a difference to them. Or, if not, it will make a difference to you.
Sadness is transitory. So is life. And isn't it better to make life more pleasant for those around you, to be there to comfort those who need it, to say, "I'm really sorry for what happened and I regret that I can't have you in my life" and to find meaning and expression in sorrow, rather than merely letting it pass without a poem, a tree planted, or just a soft prayer to whatever god happens to be around, or to the Tao itself.
Posted by donna at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)