Chapter 7

The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born;
thus it can never die.
Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself;
thus it is present for all beings.

Once again, Mitchell replaces "heaven and earth" with "Tao." Hmmm... he's got a line in here that isn't in the other translations I've been using. Checking... it does show up in a few other translations. "It was never born; thus it can never die" is the line in question. It is a very Taoist idea, so I figure that it's either an attempt to interpolate characters that have multiple meanings, or it's a line that shows up in some of the ancient texts but not others. Other translations render "it has no desires for itself" as "they do not live for themselves." Again we have the idea of emptiness and selflessness, letting go. Based on my experience, you can't really be, or even understand, yourself until you've lost a lot of the tensions that you think define you.

The Master stays behind;
that is why she is ahead.

Often "Master" is rendered as "Sage." Staying behind to get ahead is classic, and there's a version in The Art of War. "Better to retreat three steps than to advance one step," as best as I remember. It's also good push-hands advice.

She is detached from all things;
that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself,
she is perfectly fulfilled.

This, I think, is one of the most profound koan in all the eastern philosophies. Attachment leads to separation. Detachment leads to union.

Chapter 6

The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.

It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want.

~Mitchell's translation

The spirit of the valley does not die, and is called Mysterious Female.
The door of the Mysterious Female is called the root of heaven and earth.
It lingers in wisps; Use it without haste.

~Gibbs' translation

The valley spirit that doesn't die we call the dark womb
the dark womb's mouth we call the source of creation
as real as gossamer silk and yet we can't exhaust it.

~Pine's translation


There were enough differences here, and it was short enough, that I decided to post three of the translations. I notice that Mitchell again prefers to use "Tao" in place of anything remotely mythic. The valley is classically symbolic of Tao, as it is empty and water is naturally drawn down towards it. Next line indicates an opening of some sort from which the world, or maybe all worlds, come. I prefer Gibbs' term "root," here, as it is more suggestive of something that continues to nourish even after the 'birth,' and that ties it to the last line. Just as a tree draws nutrients from its roots, so we draw sustenance from the source of all creation.

One note: Red Pine's translation has doubled up a few lines in the on-line version that I link to at the side. I removed the duplication above, so that it now matches the translation in Red Pine's book.

Chapter 5

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.

Major paraphrasing alert, here. At least, the others that I'm using are similar to each other and different from Mitchell's. Here's Red Pine's version: "Heaven and Earth are heartless treating creatures like straw dogs; heartless is the sage treating people like straw dogs". Gibbs and Cleary both have "not humane" in place of "heartless," but according to Red Pine's commentary, the Chinese literally translates to "no heart". The meaning is about impartiality, as Mitchell's version indicates, but it loses the symbolism. Straw dogs were made for sacrificial ceremonies. The idea is that neither Heaven nor the sage favors Man above other creatures. This is in contrast to any sort of "special creation" or "in god's image" idea that we find in many western cultures.

The Tao is like a bellows:
it is empty yet infinitely capable.
The more you use it, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

Hold on to the center.

For contrast, here is Tam Gibbs' version:

"The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows,
empty and yet inexhaustible;
Move it and even more comes out.
Too many words quickly exhaust;
It is not as good as holding to the centre."

I find it interesting that Mitchell avoids using "Heaven and Earth," and changes them to Tao in this chapter. In ancient Chinese cosmology, there were three levels: Heaven, Earth, and Man (Humans if you prefer). Standing between Heaven and Earth, Humans were sometimes seen as a sort of bridge between the two. The first stanza establishes that humans received no special treatment from Heaven or Earth. The second describes the power available from being in the space-between. I don't know what the original Chinese was, but I see a lot of wind symbolism here. The "bellows," for instance, as a means of putting air where it needed to be to stoke a flame. Moving air, aka wind, brings weather and other changes, and can seem as solid as a rock. 'Speaking' here is mentioned as a waste, perhaps of air or wind.

There's also some good taiji push-hands advice in here. Find the space-between. Remain empty, relaxed. Hold onto your opponent's center. Until you can actually feel for the center, all the words in the world won't help you.

Chapter 4

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities.

This verse is particularly appropriate since I've been reading a book about the origins of "zero," including a great deal of discussion about philosophical implications. The idea of "emptiness" as a positive attribute still meets with resistance, even if zero is no longer considered heretical. Empty: ready to accept whatever comes, or nothing if nothing comes.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

Interestingly, Mitchell seems to have skipped a line, or else paraphrased it so completely that it's no longer recognizable. As for these two lines, there is a great deal of variety on the word Mitchell translates as "God". Cleary says Tao predates "the creation of images"; Gibbs says it "existed before the Ancestor"; Pine says "before the Ti". I have a physical copy of Red Pine's translation with some commentary on this issue. "Ti is the Lord of Creation. All of creation comes after Ti except the Tao, which comes before." There's also a comment about the missing lines: "Because of problems associated with their interpretation of the first four lines, some commentators don't think lines five through eight belong here."

With that in mind, here is Red Pine's translation, with those lines included:

The Tao is so empty those who use it never become full again
and so deep as if it were the ancestor of us all
dulling our edges untying our tangles softening our light merging our dust
and so clear as if it were present
I wonder whose child it is it seems it was here before the Ti

And Tam Gibbs:

The Tao is empty, yet when applied it is never exhausted.
So deep it is, it seems to be the ancestor of all things.

Blunting sharp edges, resolving confusions,
Diffusing glare, uniting the world:
Such depth, something seems to exist there.

I do not know whose child it is.
It seems to have existed before the Ancestor.

There's a hint of the "something" within the "nothing" in those missing lines. There's also a sense of the yin-yang symbol, with the dot of yang within the yin. Go deep enough in one direction and you come out the other side. Sharpen something too much, and it dulls.

Chapter 3

If you overesteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

Fairly clear in this translation. When people value material things above all else, stealing is inevitable. When some people are raised too high above the "common" folk, those folk feel as if there's nothing they can do, either to defend themselves or to better themselves. Tam Gibbs' version is slightly different:

Not honouring men of worth keeps the people from competing;
Not wanting rare things keeps the people from thievery;
Not showing off desirous objects keeps the hearts of the people from disaster.

Now I'm curious about the translation, as there's quite a bit of difference between "competing" (fighting in the Red Pine version) and "feeling powerless." It's an unhappy situation either way. Perhaps "powerless" would be better rendered as "desperate," since desperation might just lead to competition or fighting.


The Master leads
by emptying people's minds
and filling their cores,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.


The library on ISU's campus embodies the imbalance in western culture perfectly. It appears that the ground-level, the foundation, is ephemeral, barely there, smaller than the level above, and it becomes more and more massive the higher from the ground you get. It reminds me of the overemphasis on mental development, of filling the mind to overflowing, until the head is so full that the body can no longer support it. People fill their minds without ever developing their bodies. Physical prowess is almost worshiped, because so few people can be bothered to develop it. It's like building a house on "three rocks and a beer can."* Might work for a while, but eventually things are going to start collapsing.

Tam Gibbs' version is more explicitly physical (and Red Pine's is almost identical):
That is why the Sage governs himself by relaxing the mind, reinforcing the abdomen, gentling the will, strengthening the bones.


He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think that they know.

My interpretation of "lose" would be "see in a different light" or "lose our preconceptions of." More on the Buddhist side we might add "lose our attachments to." Gibbs and Pine have something more like "hesitation" rather than confusion, which makes more sense to me. Creating a moment's pause before acting

Practice not-doing,
and everything will fall into place.

They say that if one were to shorten the Cheng Manch'ing form, one could shorten it to "Grasp Sparrow's Tail," roughly the first 13 moves. One could shorten it further to just the five wrist changes. One could shorten it still further to just wuji: standing "doing nothing." Anyone who can simply stand there, doing nothing, mind empty and still, no effort, has no need of the rest of the form. I, however, am not there yet.

Chapter 2

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

As soon as beauty is defined, so is ugliness. As soon as goodness is defined, so is badness. I found it interesting that Dr. Levenson added another level in his own response to this segment. His version was that the problem with any ideal is that things tend to fall short of ideals, and this can drive a person to anger or despair. To me this is almost missing the point, as it just adds more layers of judgment, most obviously the judgment that anger and despair are bad.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

It's possible to take these verses to indicate an extreme form of relativism, but I see it more as recognizing the dependencies. You can't have an idea of difficult without having an idea of easy. If you know what high means, then not-high becomes low. But the labels are not the thing itself. Once something is labeled, it becomes difficult to lose the label and just see the thing. If you look at a car and think "car," are you really seeing the car, or are you seeing an idea of the car? You see that the car is silver, but are you experiencing the way the light shimmers at you so that you can see the silver? Words get in the way. They separate us from our experiences. They have their uses, of course, but sometimes we have to go beyond the words.


Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

'Acting without doing' is a big part of taiji. When you do the form right, you are completely in the moment, experiencing each nuance, aware of each motion, and because you are completely in that moment, it is not stored in the memory. There is nothing to store. I've had this for brief sections of the form (and the trick is telling whether it's really that kind of awareness or more mundane, everyday distraction). Cheng Manch'ing said that he had done the form perfectly three times in his life. Three times, all the way through with awareness. And he's the founder!

Living life without expectation is an interesting exercise. We all expect things. We expect that the sun will come up in the morning. We expect that the house will still be there when we wake up. We expect that the coffee cup will stay on the table after we set it down. We expect to find solid ground when we take a step. But as soon as you expect something, you've invested in that eventuality. The ground gives way, and you get angry, because it was supposed to be solid. The coffee cup falls and breaks, but it was supposed to stay on the table. Why? Because that's what was expected. True awareness is without expectation. It's open to whatever comes, and ready for whatever comes, and then ready for the next thing that comes.

Chapter 1

As a way to keep this blog active, I've decided to look at the chapters of the Tao te Ching. The translation we're using in my philosophy class is the one by Stephen Mitchell, which overall seems to be pretty good. I may delve into some of my other translations at times. We'll see. And I do not claim to be an expert on the Tao te Ching, by any means. I'm just a seeker, exploring the ideas I find.

Chapter 1

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

This sets up the distinction between what a thing is and our limited ways of labeling with words. There's even the suggestion that naming a thing changes it in some fashion, so that in one book I read (author and title elude me at the moment), there's the distinction between the 'Named Tao' and the 'Unnamed Tao,' which, ironically, is yet another name!


Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

In a quick scan through versions, these two seem to vary quite a lot. Gibbs' is similar: "Thus, if always without desire, one can observe indescribable marvels; If always desirous, one sees merest traces." Red Pine's is a bit different: "thus in innocence we see the beginning - in passion we see the end" Pine's is the least judgmental of these three. My understanding is that desire clouds our vision and thoughts. We see temporary sense-objects as somehow fixed and real, and miss the underlying essence of events. I may be missing a lot here!

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

And this section mitigates the negativity of the prior two verses, as both the illusion and the reality come from the same Ultimate Source. Let's see... Cleary says "Mystery" instead of Darkness... Gibbs, similarly, uses "Mysterious." Red Pine says "Dark Beyond Dark." All of these are getting at the idea of something hidden, something hard to see.


Translations on the web:
Mitchell
Cleary
Tam Gibbs
Red Pine

I'm using Mitchell because of the philosophy class; Cleary because I've read some of his other translations, though so far I'm not liking his TTC translation; Tam Gibbs because he was one of Cheng Manch'ing's senior students; Red Pine because I rather like his style.

Hopefully I'll get at least one of these up a week. We shall see.

Long Time

Wow. It's been almost a year since I posted anything here. I think maybe I'm finally healed enough to start posting stuff here again. I don't know. I read the stuff I was posting last November, and it feels like a stranger posted it. I remember the pain and confusion, but not the specific thoughts. Last Christmas was quite possibly the most miserable time I've ever experienced. I was severely depressed. "Holiday Blues" sound like such a petty, little thing...until you're the one going through them.

I even experienced a suicidal moment. A short moment, thankfully, but even that was enough to scare the hell out of me. It was partially chemically induced; I later discovered that ginger tends to exacerbate my "down" moods. But for one moment, I actually wondered if the world needed me in it. If it wouldn't be easier just to be gone.

In the meantime, I'd stumbled onto one of Thomas Ashley-Farrad's books on Mantras and chanting. That was one of the few activities that relieved my misery. It even seemed to help after I'd stopped. In that book, he mentions committing to a 40-day practice on a specific chant. That got me thinking. Why just chanting? Why not taiji and yoga? So sometime after Christmas, I made up a calendar to keep track, and decided that I wanted to make it through 108 straight days of practicing each art: one round of the taiji form; one yoga routine; one round of breathing exercises; one round of chanting.

108 days. It gave me a goal, something to focus on, and it meant I was doing something healthy for my body and mind each day. 108 days. Within the first month, the depression started to lift. 108 days. I was starting to feel like a human being again. 108 days. By the time they were up, I was mostly back to feeling like my old self. And I didn't want to quit. I even expanded the taiji portion to include three rounds of the form and one round of the sword form. I didn't quite make all of that; I missed a sword form on a day of long driving. But I have more than 200 continuous days of practice of everything else under my belt, now. And I want that number to keep growing.

There are no words to describe the pain I was in when this blog went silent. But I will try. Imagine that your heart has been raw and bleeding, but feels as if it has scabbed over. Imagine that, for some insane reason, you apply sand paper and remove the scabs, reopening all the old wounds and creating new ones. Imagine that the hurt goes straight to the core. On the outside, there's the deep, almost-black, blood, but through the cracks comes angry red light trying to burst out. The pain dominates everything. Little joys push it back for a moment or two, but then the pain comes crashing down again.

Some of the pain would have faded on its own with time, but I think my daily practice sped up the process. It also let me be aware of the process. The change was gradual. So gradual that I wasn't really aware anything had changed until I sat down one day and realized that I was happy about something. Actually happy. Then, realizing that I was happy made me happier. Now I get an echo of the old pain every so often, but all I have to do is think back to what it was like last year, and I nearly always have to laugh. The echoes are like papercuts compared to a gaping knife wound.

And maybe, just maybe, I've healed enough to start thinking about the world again.

The Edge

I think I have been mad for quite some time. Most of the past year, to be sure. For quite some time before that. Not the madness of insanity, though I would argue that "insane" is a fitting descriptor. No, this was a dull madness, an everyday madness, brought on by only thinking rather than seeing, listening. I think, perhaps, it was the pain of the past year that made me realize it. Once I learned to sink beneath the pain, sink the thoughts and be here, in this moment, and some moments are harder than others...once I learned to sink at will rather than at the whim of chance, I could tell the difference. With the mind not sunk, the thoughts race and race and race, and they think nothing of consequence, though each thought seems like the most consequential idea in all of the world. Sunk down, fewer thoughts come, and those that come have meaning. Substance. It is possibl to be aware of more than the square foot in front of your eyes when the thoughts are sunk. Possible to recognize your own pettiness and madness. So, for the moment, I am striving to stay sane.

It reminds me of when I started trying to incorporate the taiji walk into my everyday gait. My legs weren't quite strong enough to maintain it past a certain distance, yet when I lapsed back into the old way of walking, I felt ill. I preferred to sink my weight back down and let the legs work rather than fall back into former habits. That's what this is like. With the mind sunk down, everything is clearer, but it takes effort right now to keep it sunk. When it rises back up, the madness comes again, and I feel sick. Now, at least, I can push the mind back down, but there is some...mental strength required to keep it there. It took several months for my legs to build up to the point where I could keep from bobbing up and down as I walked. Perhaps it will take the same amount of time for my mind to stop bobbing up and down as I live.

Of Several Minds...

This past week, I think I finally figured a few things out. I've been in a great deal of pain since last February, but every so often it would...just...stop. I didn't know why, and invariably the surcease would not last for long, but there were these blessed moments of release. I think a big part of why I did so much hiking this past summer: looking for those moments of release. Those were even less lasting, but sometimes as I topped the rise and beheld the view before me...the beauty would overwhelm the pain.

The pain finally started fading in September. I started feeling more like myself. There were still some off moments, but overall I was above the "functional" stage I'd been at. Then last week I was able to observe one of the moments where the pain stopped. And realized that the only difference was that I had slid below the level of the bodily mind into...something else. The spiritual mind? Sounds too fancy. Maybe "the real mind." I had become so focused on the physical reality that I had lost touch with the real mind living beneath all that.

Could I have realized this sooner? Felt a bit less pain? I honestly don't know. I think the pain has to be felt, and moved through. Maybe I could have bought myself a few more respites, but that's about it. It was only after the pain had already begun fading that I realized it was all tied into the bodily mind. The real mind hadn't been touched.

A Tribute

The Crocodile Hunter, may he rest in peace, was one of the few public individuals who was clearly in each and every moment he had. Every creature he saw was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and he meant it each and every time. Whatever else he may have been and done, that is what I will remember about Steve Irwin. It is a lesson everyone could stand to learn.

Om Eim Saraswatyei Swaha

I found this mantra in Yoga Journal, with no real background presented, so I went to look it up. I was hoping to find a pronunciation guide beyond the one in yoga journal, or better yet an actual sound-file of it, but no luck. Admittedly, Wikipedia's Sanskrit page might be of use, but there's so much information there that it would take me quite a while to sort through. :^)

This is a mantra to invoke the energy of Saraswatyei: a feminine manifestation of the scholarly and artistic. The page linked to in the title identifies her as a goddess, but I see the gods and goddesses largely as symbols. They have a reality, but they are not the whole of the reality. Rather like words and language. The word stands for something in the language, but it is not the language itself. And, language-wise, I have found chanting in Sanskrit to be deeply soothing and energizing all at once. Back in my pagan days, I read that the reason for spells and such being in archaic languages was so that the analytical part of the brain would be quiet and the imaginative, evocative part of the brain would be active. I think that's what's at work with these Sanskrit mantras. Yes, there is a meaning, and we can look that up, but the words themselves don't have a direct meaning for us. Of course, if I ever get around to learning Sanskrit, that will change. ;^)


(Yeah... I haven't posted anything here for a while. For a while, when I thought about posting, something inside of me would freeze up. Then I didn't seem to have anything to post about. So I'm going to give it a try again and see if I can make this a regular habit once more. I've been wanting to start up for a while, but this is the first thing I found that both felt worth posting and didn't make me freeze up.)

Fear

"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 me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn to see fear's path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."

—Frank Herbert

[I]f you understand fear—which can only take place when you come directly in contact with it...—then you do something; only then will you find that all fear ceases—we mean all fear, not fear of this kind or of that kind.

—J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

They say that it's not the pain that bothers us so much as the fear of the pain. But even then it's not so much the fear as the avoidance of the fear. For a minor example, I used to have a minor phobia about spiders. I would avoid them and stay as far away as possible. Then one day I sat down and just watched some spiders, and they were fascinating, and beautiful. Fine, I will react if one is crawling on me and I don't know how poisonous it is, but otherwise there is nothing to fear.

Before my grandma's funeral, I forgot to pack anything nice to wear, so I went out and found a black taiji tunic embroidered with yellow dragons. My mom freaked out. She was terrified that Grandma's hometown friends would start spreading gossip: "Did you hear what Hazel's granddaughter wore to her funeral?!?" I said, "Great! I'll be immortal." Mom wasn't amused, and she was under enough stress already that I agreed to a compromise (a black Chinese style shirt with a black dragon; apparently it was the bright yellow that was freaking her out). But it's rather ridiculous to allow this sort of fear to rule your life.

Sometimes fear is useful: it tells us it would be a bad idea to go play with the growling bear, for instance. But if it freezes us in place when we should be acting, then it is no longer useful. It's not so much about "facing" the fear but rather "accepting" it. Fine. I'm afraid of "X". I admit that, I explore that feeling, and then I decide if an action is required. Most times, I find that it wasn't "X" I was afraid of, but some idea associated with "X", and then the fear would vanish. And, interestingly, when I'm really in a situation where fear would make sense, I am usually too busy reacting to notice. I remember a few close shaves on the interstate where I had to do some very careful maneuvering. If it had gone badly, I and my passengers might have been killed. But I wasn't thinking of that. I wasn't thinking at all: I was responding. It was only after the fact that I realized how close it had come, and by that time there was no point in fear. It was done.

Who for Whom

(This is from Thomas Cleary's translation of the Lieh Tzu, included in Tales of Inner Meaning)

Once a man held a huge banquet with a thousand guests. When someone presented a gift of fish and fowl, the host said appreciatively, "Heaven is generous to the poeople indeed, planting cereals and creating fish and fowl for our use." The huge crowd of guests echoed this sentiment.

A youth about twelve years old, however, who had been sitting in the most remote corner of the banquet hall, now came foreward and said to the host, "It is not as you say, sir. All beings in the universe are living creatures on a par with us. No species is higher or lower in rank than another, it's just that they control each other by ifferences in their intelligence and power; they eat each other, but that does not mean they were produced for each other. People take what they can eat and eat it, but does that mean that heaven produced that for people? If so, then since mosquitoes bite skin and tigers and wolves eat flesh, does that not mean that heaven made humans for the mosquitoes and created flesh for tigers and wolves?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One point of major annoyance for me is modern society's assumption that humans are superior to all other creatures. Yes, we can do things that other creatures cannot. We can build machines that emulate much of what other creatures do. But there is so much we cannot do that is done everyday by some other creature without effort. And even those things that we can do are forced. They do not come of themselves, but only after great effort. A bird spreads its wings and flies when it is ready. We have to dig materials out of the earth, build factories, design and plan and plot... and we call ourselves clever and powerful for exerting massive effort to do something that a bird does without effort. *sighs*

In the Fog

Yesterday, my family and I drove back from Colorado, from my grandma's funeral. I had the last driving shift, and the sun had gone down. Sometime before we made it to the Wyoming/Idaho border, I encountered a thick patch of fog. Then it was gone. Then another patch, and another, each one seemingly thicker than the last. Finally, the whole world was swallowed up in fog. I slowed down enough that I would have at least three seconds to react to anything that came out of the fog. Sometimes this meant 40 mph, sometimes 55 mph, depending on the density of the fog. I had been tired before I started driving, and it would seem that dealing with the fog should increase that tiredness, but it didn't.

Instead, I felt fully alive and awake. I was fully in the moment. I had to be. I had to be ready to react to a slow car ahead of us, or an animal running out from the side. It seemed that the world shrank down to the foggy dome around us, and I was one with that world. In fact, this driving was easier than the driving I'd done in full, clear daylight. Fewer distractions, and more of a need for mindfulness. I admit to feeling relief when we hit the clear patches, but while I was in the fog, the fog was all there was.

I ran across a few appropriate phrases and ideas this morning.

From Thomas Cleary's translation of Vitality, Energy, and Spirit: "Able to reach the point where there is no enjoyment, [sages] find there is nothing they do not enjoy. Since there is nothing they do not enjoy, they reach the pinnacle of enjoyment." When I am in the moment, I enjoy nearly everything I do. When I am not, when I am thinking of all the other things I would rather be doing, then everything becomes miserable.

From Larry Rosenberg's Breath by Breath come the ideas of vittaka: bringing attention to an object with both energy and mindfulness, vicara: maintaining interest in the object, piti: enlivened energy or anticipation, and sukha: the pleasure of peace and calm. These are ideas that come from the Buddhist practice of vipassana meditation. The first thing I found of interest is that I have experienced all of these states at various times. First in yoga practice, later in taiji and meditation. But they all came into play as I drove through the fog. I had to focus on the road ahead of me, and keep all my senses alert for any change. When something did change, I felt excitement/anticipation/adrenaline, and used that to heighten my awareness. Then when I found that I could meet all the challenges, a sense of peace and rightness descended over me. I did not fight the fog. I accepted and embraced it, and in doing so, I was able to meet it.

Shattered

If there's a trigram in the I-Ching for "shattered," then it aptly describes most of my last week. On Monday, the front left window of my car literally shattered while I was on the interstate. On Thursday, I found that my arrow had indeed hit its mark, but had not had the hoped for effect. On Friday, my last surviving grandparent died. So I'm a bit confused right now, in that I'm "supposed" to be upset, or angry, or...something. Yet, in this moment, I am content. Happy, even. I'm not entirely sure why, but I suspect it has something to do with "living in the moment."

I can make myself become upset. I can go back in my mind to Friday morning. I had slept on the couch in Grandma's basement, and around 6:30 my mom came down and turned on the light. I was awake enough to mumble "Was that really necessary?" I'm not sure she heard me. "...I think she's gone..." was all she said. That woke me up. Grandma went off dialysis on Monday, and she'd been fading fast ever since. I went upstairs and slowly approached Grandma's room. She was still, frozen in time. One hand half-clutched the rail of the hospital bed they'd brought for her the day before. One toe stuck out between the bars. Her mouth was open...eyes closed. I didn't really need to check for a pulse, but I did. "She's cold," I said.

When I go back to that moment in my mind, I feel the pain. Yet as soon as I bring my mind away from that moment, the pain goes with it. When I go back to the moment when I learned what effect my arrow had, there is pain. Yet in this moment, there is only piece. The past is gone. Only this moment remains. And in this moment, my grandma no longer suffers. In this moment, there is no more waiting. In this moment, I am at peace.

And, in the human way of things, I feel an echo of guilt that I am not dwelling on the past, not wallowing in the pain. But it is only an echo, and is easy enough to recognize and ignore. And the window that shattered on Monday...it got replaced on Tuesday. No one can replace my grandma, of course, but eventually that empty place will fill again.

Reality

(Note: This post is Babylon 5 inspired. The Vorlons ask "Who are you?" The Shadows ask "What do you want?")

There was a time when most of my actions were dictated by what I thought I was "supposed" to do. I'm "supposed" to get upset over things. I'm "supposed" to try and fit in. I'm "supposed" to get good grades. I'm "supposed" to pick a hard major, because I got good grades. It wasn't until I burned myself out doing a double major in four years that I really figured out that I wasn't "supposed" to do anything. I was just "supposed" to be.

There's a danger in that realization, though: the danger of then doing nothing at all. But at the time, I had spent so much time on what I thought I was supposed to be doing that I had no clue what it was that I actually wanted. I think that was my very first meditational experience, sitting down in a quiet place and asking myself, "What do you want?" I had no clue. The usual things that people list, like money, a job, a family, meant nothing to me. I think I spent a year asking that question before I finally decided that since I didn't know what I wanted for me, I'd just start sending out positive thoughts to the rest of the world.

Eventually, I answered the question, "What do you want?" with "I want to be me." It was a good, satisfying answer that brought its own question: "Who am I?" In college, I had defined myself in terms of my mood and my major, largely. And in terms of what I wasn't. I wasn't a Methodist any more. I wasn't a high school student. After a while, I wasn't a teenager. I wasn't really interested in research (so why the devil was I majoring in physics? because I was "supposed" to). I didn't have much else when I started asking "Who am I?" again. The most useful answer to the question turns out to be "I am me." But at least I have some positives to add now. I am a Taoist. I am a taiji player. I am a teacher. I am a writer. But those are what I am, not who I am.

The thing is, it's impossible to be who you are while you're busy being someone else. And whenever you do what you're "supposed" to do, you are being someone else. You are living up to someone else's expectations, fulfilling someone else's dreams. I don't mean to suggest that people skip out on obligations to others, but that we honor those obligations because we want to, not because we are supposed to. And if we find we have obligations that we do not want to fulfill, perhaps it is time to start asking "Who am I?" and "What do I want?"

Thoughts on Freedom

(Note: I will try to update more often... I just needed time to think some things through.)

Without a rope, people bind themselves."

When based on compassion, this can be a good thing. Though I may feel anger at someone, I do not loose that anger. Though, at times, violent thoughts may arise, I do not act on them (except constructively, by finding some useful and productive way to express such thoughts). Such binding is internal, not external. I know that I could do something, but I do not care for the end results, so I do not.

When based on fear, or craving, the binding is harmful. It traps us. We get caught in a web of "ifs" and "maybes" and fear of the unknown stops us from acting. But the unknown is all around us. I could die on the way to work this morning. I could be hit by a meteor while I sleep, or come into contact with a rare poison, or be attacked by a dog. There are more things unknown than known, yet these insidious mental "what-ifs" trap us, prevent us from acting.

I recently broke free from such a trap, and loosed the arrow that I had held onto for so long that my arm had begun to shake. I do not know whether it has hit its mark yet, nor do I know what effect it will have when it does. Yet in loosing the arrow I have freed myself. Oh, the "what-ifs" still rise up in my mind, but it is easier to let them go now. It may have been a foolish thing to do, yet it needed to be done.

arrow now in flight—
free only in the falling—
frees me while I wait

Frustration

*sigh* The more I read of both atheist and religious blogs, the more I think they miss the point entirely.

Asking me whether or not I believe in Tao is like asking me whether or not I believe in the table sitting in front of me. The question is redundant and idiotic. Asking me whether Tao exists is equally idiotic. How might I respond? Verbally, I would likely say "Mu." In person, I would probably pick up a glass and drop it on the floor. Or take a match and set a book on fire. Or wave a flag in the air. Or hit the questioner with a stick. If the questioner doesn’t understand, the question was doubly idiotic.

Yet I see people try to answer the question of whether or not God exists, and they actually answer with yes or no. If they actually understood the question, such an answer would be impossible!

There are several koans along this theme already, so this is hardly original, but I haven’t seen this precise version: The teacher spoke to the monks, saying, "Do you believe in the gods? If you answer yes, then the gods do not exist. If you answer no, then they do. How, then, will you answer?"

Another related quote/koan: "When we understand, there we sit while yes and no chase each other around the circumference."

The Iron Flute

About a week ago, I finished Nyogen Senzaki's The Iron Flute. It is a collection of 100 Zen koans, with commentary, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in either Taoism or Zen. Back in the archives, I've posted many of my favorites, so I won't post any here.

Each koan has commentary with it, and the commentary is iself a koan in most cases. However, my favorite part of the commentary is that it has been built onto over the years. Genro, Fugai and Nyogen have all added comments (Nyogen's being the most recent), and they weave together like a conversation, or sometimes an argument, clarifiying and confusing all at the same time. There are cases where the commentary opened my eyes to a meaning I hadn't seen before, and other cases where I thought I understood until I read the commentary.

One final thought. This is not a book to sit down and read all at once. Perhaps some people would get something out of it that way, but I sure wouldn't. I read this book slowly. First I tried one koan a day, then I decided that wasn't enough. I would read a koan one day, and reread it the next. Sometimes I would reread it the third day as well, but usually I moved on. So I've been working on this book since last August. It was well-worth it, and I'm sure I'll come back and reread them all again at some point.