> Ideas and Insight <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

Drop it! Who are you kidding? Trying to fool yourself you understand it all or have an incredible piece of insight? Drop it!

I am my guru, you are your guru. Quote another and fail, follow the path of another and fail. Quoting is allowed when it expands your point or when you have personally grasped that same truth and wish to share it, deciding that the version you are quoting is better written. Apart from that you don't quote.

A wise man once said: "I don't know" and he was so so so right that everyone ignored him as his truth was too high for them, instead they turned to the person who's truth was very long and in depth and sounded important.

Nothing lasts. Nothing, not one thing has any real importance except nothing. No thing lasts, it is all in a state of change apart from nothing, only that lasts and it does so by maintaining the place no one else wants. All things, all ideas, all insight, come and go. They seem important, then they decay or lose relevance. Have a fantastic moment of insight, write it down, tell your dog, tell your best friend, tell your grandkids, tell yourself the very next day - all responses will be "Huh!? what are you talking about?".

Shut up, shut the fuck up and shut up.

Only have thoughts that are; funny, loving, positive, blissful, short, serve to douse other thoughts, or if you are going to think at all, ignore yourself, let your mind rattle on, but ignore it.

Empty the mind, don't decide what you are going to do when.. what you'll say to whom when... and so on. Just open to the Wow and be. As things come to you that need to be done you will address them with a perfect emptiness, your response to it will be perfect.

The biggest waste of mind is preparing to protect yourself. Preparing for say; the boss asking you about the thing you did wrong. Just don't bother with it at all. You have no finer response that to say "yes, I am not perfect, or pretending to be.". Wasting your thoughts on such things are 1) wasting valuable bliss time and 2) preparing for something that will more than likely not even happen and if it does, not the way you had it i mind.

I had a wise old friend who used to say that is was good to be paranoid, he would always fear the worst and prepare for the worst then then nearly always be pleasantly surprised that none of the bad stuff ever happened. This sounded like a great method to live by! But I came to realize not long after he died that he had wasted so much time in paranoia and was probably fearing what his wife would say when he got home right at the moment that a bus made him into a new paint job.

Don't think, don't worry, don't bother. Wander through your life, enjoy the bliss and when bad stuff happens, it will, just take it and drop it. Don't waste time thinking how you can learn your lesson from it or avoid it in the future, you can't and you already have. If you think you can think it through in your mind as so to learn then it is also possible, and is in fact the case, that the mind can do it alone without your interaction. You have already learned the lesson by getting though the situation, you don't need to think about it in words. Just drop it, move on, get back to being blissful again and well, I've had enough typing for now...

Go and do that nice thing you were planning on doing and stop thinking and reading will you?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meat and spirituality 3

Excluding the animals and nature, what are the benefits to the self of being vegetarian?

Imagine how the steak stays in the body so long and some fruit such a sort time. Different foods have differing demands on the body and deliver varying amounts of energy - they then go on to affect mood and more.

Anyone who has come across the Bhagavad Gita will know the Hindus and Yogis split food into 3 categories. For those of us who have not read the work then the categorizing is simple enough; Food that gives you fighting power, food that causes you to be lazy and the category that contains all the better more balanced foods.

Should you have an imbalanced diet then you could be aggressive or tired due to diet and then trying to combat that with other foods or medicines. Coffee is a good drink when needed but habitually consumed causes problems and may be a mask to a bad diet. Coffee can make you moody and the energy hit is not smooth. It may be just what you need occasionally in the morning but fruit is a better replacement. Fruit gives a longer smother energy burst that dissipates over a longer time avoiding the crave for another hit that coffee causes.

Green tea is a purifier and has many benefits to the body as does water. You should try to avoid (though not religiously to make it an inconvenience) mass produced drinks such as canned and packaged juices. All of the additives are giving the body odd unnatural hits and may just as likely be masking ill effects under their sugar hit. Drink is to hydrate and to nourish, not to pick you up or give "hits of vitamins" when a good diet contains natural and plentiful nutrients. Better pick ups than caffeinated drinks are good breathing and a good mind, craving drinks that provide vitamins and other things is evidence that your diet is not good. Meat eaters drinking vitamin drinks are common and fueling their own fire.

A vegetarian understands their body better. The food is used quicker, more efficiently and passed out of the body quicker. A vegetarian can tell the affect of food not long after eating it, knows what their body needs and what it doesn't. A steak eater may not know what is making them ill at anyone time as the amount of foods all being slowly digested at high expense to the bodies energy reserves is a mix of days, weeks and months of consuming.

Vegetarians, feel lighter, more healthy, positive and get ill less.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meat and spirituality 2

Again, if you are hungry, eat. Don't let ethics get in the way of your health. The lion eats meat.

I could eat meat for a week more easily than a meat eater could give it up. I know meat eaters are not going to easily switch but I would like them to consider and cut back. For those of you on the verge, who are probably vegetarian by nature but meat eaters by habit, it is easy and beneficial to stop.

Where we see a difference between lion and human is in how the human has taken to breeding, rearing and killing animals for the purpose of food, and so my case draws in part on suffering. Humans also eat meat by habit. Come meal time the human will be choosing which meat to have mixed in with their meal, not what to eat, but what animal to have as part of it. You may ask me how in an illusionary conceived world of no-true-self that suffering can be a concern in my argument and that would be to miss the nature of the illusion and compassionate intent behind curing it. The illusion is as real as it is not real, it is our reality, just not the ultimate ground of all being. The animal suffers as you do when attached to the local I.

If you killed an animal from a group and the members of that group came to look at the body, then they understand themselves as separate beings and they understand the loss of another. Where some fish may just turn on the carcass and eat, most mammals would nudge the carcass of another and we can infer, feel loss.

The lifestyle of the animals we breed for food is unnatural. Even if their upbringing was good, they are still guaranteed an early unnatural death. Take time to imagine the animal not the heavily marinaded, packaged remains that form your meal. The argument than meat tastes good is funny when we look at the amount of preparation going into meat to make it edible, the cooking, the flavouring, the processing. Then the vegetables, if any, are boiled and thrown on the side. Put more effort into the preparation of vegetables, fruit, nuts, soy based alternatives and you have culinary joy that gives value and pleasure to the cook and those who eat it.

Cooking is a lost art form in the west where value is placed on the speedy consumption of carbon copy food and even "healthy alternatives" are packaged in a way that two bought in different years look exactly the same.

Humans make themselves aggressive, sloth-like and heavy in not finding alternatives to meat. The lion is in tune with nature. She does not over eat, over kill or waste any of her prey. Humans eat only very select parts of an animal and discard the rest with less care than they did the life in the first place. Man forces nature to be unnatural and scars the earth.

A very high percentage of people, nearly all, eat meat by a convenience. If in preparing a meal each person had to kill and prepare meat from a carcass, they would find an alternative. My Grandfather was a butcher from the age of 12 to his death at 89 (choosing to volunteer beyond retirement). He knew some things about meat and would never eat a sausage he didn't personally make. Now think of the processing going into meat products to make them palatable, especially for kids; The process is to make them less meat looking and in doing so the product is very unhealthy indeed.

Not loving yourself you are not loving nature and the world you see is yours to suffer. Put value in what you eat and love yourself.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Infinite universe love

Love, when the mask melts between two people and the bliss of oneness becomes apparent through the veil of separation, is experienced by true lovers. The feeling of two people and one heart, or joining of selves, is the universe seeing itself through the disguise and touching bliss.

Enlightenment is the mask melting from over all things. The imagination swallows the universe, the ice caps the volcanoes the swelling oceans, the vast sky, huge planetary bodies in motion; the sound of rain, insects hiving, bears roaring, life, all sounds coming to Om; pulsating, merging, patterns of being, the energy united:- The "parts" unveiling to merge and display their pure unity with the true and only knower.

The loss of self and the finding of the one true self in a motion and the discovery of infinite bliss.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Nothing

I was Considering the book version of my writings today and this is how it will go;

Page 1)
The next page of the book will be the most important and true page you will see.

Page 2)
[blank]

Page 3)
The previous page was intentionally left blank to portray the most pure truth. When you have read and re-read the book over time you will only have to flick to page 2 to have it all. Then you will put the book away altogether and start living the truth and not trying to get it in words.

humans are always thinking something else, thinking they should be somewhere else and trying to come up with a philosophy that justifies them. Reading spiritual books, skipping the bits they don't get and nodding at the bits that justify their own ways. Deciding that if they read enough then eventually they will read enough lines they agree with and not have to do any work at all - instead be justified exactly the way they are.

Lazy? Normal and correct! That is what you do need to do, be you and leave yourself alone to be you. Stop the chatter, the internal monologue and just be. - You can't though can you? and that is why you are here reading.

The book will from here on in give you pointers on how you accept you, make yourself easier to be around and give you solid reasoning and answers to life's biggest questions. Then, when they pop up, you can pop them.

You are the key to a happy life. You don't fix the world to fix your view of it. You fix your view and the world comes right.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Happy New Year of the Ox

Time for the world to pull out of the mud!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Science of Spirituality

Look out happy and you see a happy world.

more good videos from Holofractalist

Also look how space is coming more and more to resemble the mind it is and not the barren emptiness of science of old. Read the latest news on Electric Universe.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Planning to be happy?!

Dancing around my room in a state of maddness? Happy!!

This is all there is,
here I am,
not be where when,
but here right now.!

For the 20 minute bus ride home I was in a state of satori and just in a perfect mind state, the whole world was bright, everyone seemed happy too. I got off the bus and my work mate said "I had a great idea on the bus" and I thought 'wow maybe the whole bus load of people were in satori' I asked him what his idea was. he said "i'm going to get 2 big bottles of beer not 6 small ones as its cheaper and will get me pissed enough". I laughed at how he could be having such thoughts while the universe was in perfection. Was he more right than me?

Chuang Tzu said;
"I do not know if what the world sees as happiness is happiness at all. As they are always on the verge of achieving it and never there, how can I say if they know what happiness really is? I only know that in stopping the searching, that is when happiness comes to me."

In that way, I in not looking for happiness found it, and my work mate was dreaming of a transient happiness that may never occur.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Time Bubble

1) This can be seen in a pictorial poetic way as the life of a bubble.
The air is infinite consciousness. The bubble contains a little air and considers itself conscious and unique. When the bubble pops its consciousness is released back into the sea of infinity of which it previously felt like a separate, unique part.

2) This can also be told in a much more involved way
The universe is infinite, not is terms of being huge beyond measure, but infinite as in immeasurable. It is precisely 1, indivisible. That 1 has no units.

For the universe to begin, something previously ended. Take note here though that a start coming from an end, is not a start at all but a cyclic motion.

Given the cycles in life, nature and the heavens then there is no actual time. It is only ongoing cycles that intermingle into infinity. The time we think of is linear and is a useful tool to us, but truly it is unreal, and only a creation of the human mind.

The tree, plant, vegetable, animal or human is an ongoing organism intermingling with all others. Take the tree. Its roots intermingle with the other trees so that under the earth you could not tell one tree from the next. The earth is an essential part of the tree and so with the intermingling roots, the shared earth, the air and so on the tree is not as separate as we may have imagined. Before the tree dies it is surrounded by its offshoots that appear like new younger trees but what we are seeing is the same tree with its new ongoing form. The tree has been alive forever it just changes form. Appearing to us like an old tree dying and young ones taking its place it is quite different, actually a cyclic ongoing form. One tree, not many.

Humanity is doing this too yet we feel more unique in our selves. We may not see ourselves as a continuation of our mothers but we are. Our mum at some point cloned and split into two beings, she nursed the new version of herself and then released it to the world. She continued to live and more often than not mum will expire before her offshoots do. You are your mum. If you are a lady then you are the true ongoing human form, you are where a branch continues into a longer one. If you are a man then you are the end of a branch carrying seed.

This ongoing human form and all of the other ongoing cyclic forms do not exist in linear time. Linear time comes about from our mind as a tool and that is all it is, not real. The linear time started at your birth and ends at your death. In terms of the universe that linear time does not have any meaning. The universe is infinite in time, not in vast duration, but infinite in terms of being immeasurable. You exist for the entire age of the universe. or rather it exists for as long as you create it so.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Eric Rants on The Great Mind

listen here This link will download the show to your computer so you can listen to Eric from Erics Esoterics and The Atlantean Conspiracy.

The show begins with a very good summary of how consciousness is primary and the convergence of new science and ancient wisdom. (As covered in great detail in The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra in 1975). The view is becoming more popular and now we have people like Eric and later we hear his parents feeling this truth and living by it too.

I would like to know if the knowledge is spreading or if I am naturally coming to meet more people with it.

Eric continues into the world of the unknown such as a meditation session that shut off the lights in his room, also touching on near death experiences (NDE's). NDE is an area of interest for me as I had one 3 years ago at age 30 and it crystallised the truth for me in a way far beyond words . I will leave it to you to listen to Eric's show and check out his blogs and I will see if I can put my NDE into some kind of readable format.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

serenity

From the Tao Te Ching but expressed very nicely (as ever) by Stephen Mitchell...

"I let go of religion,
and people become serene."

"When they lose their sense of awe,
people turn to religion."

Cast your imagination back into history as far as you can, even to pre history. In prehistory, no history was made as life was perfect. No one would have assumed they were right or there was any other way to be so they would have left not one mark on the planet. Life would have been whole, natural and in perfect balance so as not to leave a trace.

Everyone, by not even knowing they were good, was perfectly good. By not knowing to be good to people, they loved everyone as themselves. Without any ritual or structure they fitted in perfectly with the seasons and changes.

Everyone was a perfect awakened Buddha, yet would know themselves as normal. Everyone knew the way of life but if questioned could not tell you a word of how.

They acted perfectly and radiated good nature. Nothing as stagnant as institution could be conceived.

----

In our times there are awakened people, but they are seen as few and far between. There are many looking for enlightenment as something special. No longer normal it is seen as an escape.

We will not awaken the world, some people love the world of illusion and chasing dreams. We can not tell the wealthy car owner that the job is a mask masking the house, the house is a mask over the car, the car is a mask covering the suit, the suit is a mask hiding the ego the ego is a mask shelling the person and the person is a mask hiding infinite bliss. - They would rather the car and when it breaks, a new one.

The choice is to simplify yourself, then forget you did it. Be in balance and not know it. Have the truth but not own it.

When you meet the man in a suit he will wonder why you are so happy compared to him. Only you will know that what you have he can not buy.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

realization

Over on www.rebelzen.com I was playing with a point made there that "you do not enlighten but realize enlightenment" I replied with my customary "there is not a You to awaken, and enlightenment is precisely that loss of I".

But then, well, its all in this silly language we have and the silly way we comprehend. "creativity is not doing anything smart but just realizing a good mistake". Being dyslexic I have come to many good points by misinterpreting the actual point being made.

So, of course, in a way, enlightenment is realized. (my only argument being that it is not realized by little ego I). It is a realization where all the weight of the world is lifted so high off your shoulders that, like when you take off a heavy bag, you feel like floating. You dance a little and smile, and its funny.

In that way, I hope it becomes apparent the more I blog, enlightenment is not something that people must must work hard for, no sitting for 20hours and standing on your head in full lotus while sipping the dew of a green tea bag - it is right there as they say, but behind all the crap you are holding in its face. No meditating to achieve*, no following other people - just one by one drop your bags, take down your defences, lose the idea of ideas, drop all the insight.
*(meditation may be done and likely be done often by an awakened person, but it is not a means to achieve.)

People will of course turn to others for methods and for support, but hopefully that is just their way to soften the blow as the old notions are cast aside and seen to be illusion. When the mask is coming off one may look for justification elsewhere, but in the end it all has to go.

Do not fear, when it has all gone, there is only bliss. You didn't need a thing and you won't forget your name or house keys. When the mind is fully open then you will be brighter, all the ideas of old look silly compared to the no-idea infinite being.

Drop it, reason it away, don't do stuff, quit stuff, don't do anything, it is all being done, look, listen, touch. Touch your own fingertips and be here in the dance of infinite now.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

> What's behind your mask? <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

Background

There is an infinity, an undivided One. All dualisms must eventually resolve to that from which they were born and that is the unnameable Infinite One. Naming it causes dualism and is thereby pointless. Reason as much as you need to to agree with that, but I know for certain it can be no other way.

As there is something that is infinite, it means that everything is that infinity. There is no room for infinity +1 so You are infinity. You are Infinite Oneness but - - - you're not are you?

The Mask

You observe and something is observed. You by nature, not fault, rip the one into the many. The Infinite One is mother of the 10,000 things as they say.

So how is it that you get so tied up with the imaginary role you are acting out and not in fascination of the infinite one of which you are? You are deliberately seeing others as the mask they wear and you are identifying with your mask too. This is the fun of life. It must be for fun as you do not conjure up such an idea from infinity to deliberately bring about your suffering. Being a human in a mask and doing all the nice things humans can do seems to be a choice infinity makes even with the risk of seriousness as a side effect. Looking at animals and children shows how great it is when the mask is not taken seriously.

The masks make for very convincing disguises, we can't play this game without a very good act. We can come to realize by logic that we are all infinite oneness wearing masks and playing a game, but knowing that by reason is still not enough to explain the game.

Seeing Mask A destroy the nation of Mask B because of a difference in opinion is awful if you are Mask C observing. Even if you know it's masks by reason it's still horrible to observe. So we have to get beyond reason.

Yes on the human level, here with compassion as our highest attribute, the suffering of other humans and all life is heart wrenching. We would like to say "Look here infinity, lift your mask. See? it is you under there getting all serious. And it's you under the other mask too!" - but what can this achieve?

There is a danger that this view in the wrong hands or in the mind of an underdeveloped human (one convinced by the mask) that they can treat life as dirt. This however is not the level of awareness we need to be approaching this from. Approached from the correct level of awareness we result in extending compassion even further than that achievable on the human (mask) plane. Compassion goes from the high attribute and gift on the human plane to infinite compassion. Compassion with infinity for playing the game. Compassion for people who take the mask seriously, compassion for the ones who suffer due to another oppressing them. Compassion for the ones who never realise and die as the mask not as realised, awakened, infinity. Compassion for those who try to shape the world and destroy others.

Those who see the world as something that can improved upon, that can be shaped to benefit them, are missing the spiritual nature of the Earth and themselves. - If they realised this then they would not be attempting to extend life, gain wealth and power and so on as they would have all they need in one breath.

Ultimate compassion goes out to those who are so lost in the game that they conspire to fix the rules and by nature of their perspective ruin it for the many. When they become truly enlightened then the world will rest. Hiding behind secrecy, conspiracy, fallacy, is fooling them more than anyone else and that, in the end, is funny. The so called Elites are truly the most imprisoned. They have missed the true wisdom and in seeking to fix the human game are running to catch their shadow.

Sit in the shade, take off your mask, there is nothing here but infinite bliss.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Happiness is...

...to not want to change a thing.

...to not want to be anywhere else.

Even in the most simple situation, allowing the mind to wander at all rather than seeing "that right there" destroys perfection. Seemingly bad situations are only so when perception is tied to the objects and perceived qualities. A "right here" mind is so open as to attach to nothing and see only magic.

As a friend of mine today talked of how bad his day at work was I hit him with "we are on a rock flying through space!" and he got the point. There is so much magic in any one moment that to destroy it will false, paranoid, dwelling and self interest is crazy.

An ideal or developing spiritual mind is far more tame and requires only the slightest nudge to pull it into line. I like the way Allan Watts talks of a dance saying "it is not a race to reach the end of the dance, but to dance." and I often think of this as I cycle. Cycling is an activity where the end is not important, it is about cycling so by pedalling along you are drawn to be here now.

Also watching nature, seeing life getting on, grass standing back up after being trodden down, hearing a voice roar from a young birds mouth as if even he was shocked to hear it, watching an insect as it suddenly turns its head as animated as a cartoon, even the most tiny thing, the breath easing out of your mouth.

On the other hand TV is nothing to do with now! A TV viewer is deliberately, wantonly, and constantly, drawn away from now. The MTV generation go to a different "not now" every few seconds. But I must not spend too long on what is a removal from Now but more on staying with Now.

To describe being here is tough as it just is. You are never not here now but the mind is vainly trying to be somewhere else, vainly it says it could improve on this mere perfection! This "being here" has almost certainly been experienced by all of us but not always to the point of Satori. It may have been experienced but missed, seen as a passing good time and not as a state that can be eternal. The unique now of Satori, as opposed to just now, is being aware of the now without being drawn to anything within it, or being drawn to details but not to the why or how.

Now, with a bliss in mind, a stillness, a correctness. No will at all to be anywhere else.

When a person is there then they know true happiness and all ideas of wealth and gain seem laughable when such simple perfection is found. The whole world, all your past ideas, seem such a deluded joke in comparison to the vision of fascinating, perpetuating, perfection.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

I am your guru!

All is based on an assumption so all is wrong. When you find truth you can't explain it even to yourself and so because of this it would be terrible to have people follow you. Any leader must be unwilling and only there to encourage others on a similar path to continue walking, staying under a tree is nice but don't stay too long, don't follow someone else down a path, but if you meet, compare notes, that is all. Do not take someone's notes, just look at them and drop them.

Everyone to this day has been wrong. Those who were close to right had their own truth. It worked for them but failed for everyone who followed. To follow is to fail at the outset. A person wandering with no aim is more right.

As enlightenment is such a unique state it can have no verbal truth so nothing written or said about it has any value. No book, words or saying.

The purest doctrine is silence, the next best pointing. Those with any more are fit for nothing but confusion. The last thing to do would be to take it seriously.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Ethics - what's right what's wrong?

"Once people get talking on ethics and they start talking who's right who's wrong, it isn't long until they start killing to prove who's most ethical and eating each other raw"

Ancient Tao saying

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Sitting meditation

Sit down, meditate.











... (if you don't know what this means then please read Yoga on how to lie down and get the basics of meditation) - and also check out here now for what you are aiming at.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Ultimate Truth

I would like to post on the ultimate truth but can not. All writings on it are just dirt, shit, bile, garbage. No spiritual work exists, every word written or spoken on truth is like crap on silk.

The ultimate truth can not be known or said in such a sense as for language to hold it.
When it is truly known there is no knowledge of it.

This is a pity as now as I write as me to you I wish I could pass it on. I wish I could read it back and have it here, but no. The only way to get there again is stop the talk and just experience!

You are enlightened until you think about it or try to communicate it as then you are little I again and you just look silly. "He who speaks does not know, who knows does not speak."

The ultimate truth therefore can not be summed up in a book, a paragraph, a line, a word - but to sum up the ultimate truth it takes no words at all.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Where realities clash

I promote the spiritual view of life, what it could be, should be, and is to some people. There is also the "real world" - which is entirely false and can kill you. The vast majority of humans live in an entirely false world that they are convinced is real, and in blindness, will fight for.



Israel, one example of the (fake) real world going mad.

We live in a dream world, an elite know this and are shaping that dream to their own. On a human level it is abhorrent but justified by many self delusions as "just the way things are".

Please, whilst correcting yourself spiritually, do not let our planet body and dreaming brothers and sisters allow life to become an invaluable fuel for a fire that consumes and burns them as they watch in passive ignorance.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

An immortal truth - Can we start living by it, not just quoting it?

“It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one.”

BILL HICKS

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Yoga - what? why?

Yoga: To Yoke: To bring body and mind to one. Yoga is not moving the body into odd positions, that is Assana, a part of Yoga. Yoga comprises a number of activities from breath to diet to assanas.

The most important part of the assana regime is to get the body flexible enough to sit for extended periods. It is not to show how flexible you are as that is not required for spiritual gain only ego. If it is fun to do, do it, if you benefit from the stretching, do it, if you want to show off how long you can stand on your head with full lotus, then don't.

The poses are held to maintain the stretch but more importantly to hold the mind. A good yogi will be able to hold any pose so comfortably that the mind is absolutely still. Holding a pose and gritting your teeth has no benefit.

The most important gain is to be able to sit for an extended period to allow deeper mediation. The most important pose is Dead Mans Pose. Dead Mans Pose is how you begin an assana session, how you rest between each pose and how you rest at the end. It is the hardest to perfect and I recommend dropping all others and focusing on Dead Mans Pose because it is 1) great for the body and 2) a meditation pose. Perfecting Dead Mans Pose helps you learn your breaths (full yogic or diagrammatic breathing are easy to observe) and get deep meditation without concern for the body being uncomfortable.

From the Dead Mans Pose you should then put the base of the feet together so that your knees are off the ground being pulled down by gravity, and just rest there, continue breathing. With time and no effort the knees drop a little stretching the inner thigh. This is an effortless way to stretch the inner thigh and makes sitting easier. Then rest again in Dead Mans Pose to rest out the stretch.

When you have used Dead Mans Pose long enough then you know your breaths, have meditated deeply, and with the stretch exercise adapted your legs. You are now fit for sitting meditation, the rest of the assana work is not required.

Now sit upright and see how you can get your legs comfortable, back straight and join me in the next write up for sitting meditation. You will probably not find full lotus useful to you yet, also if you look at pictures of deities, they most normally sit in half lotus or an adaptation. Half has the major benefit that if in pain you can swap sides and adaptations of half include some solid sitting poses and no discomfort to the western body at all.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Orgasmic child birth

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Cycles & Circuits - An interconnected world

Watch someone playing a hand held game and you can see the circuit in place. The screen gives a display which is carried invisibly to the eyes, processed in the brain, signals sent down the arms, the fingers hit a button, the electronics process and on the screen either Mario lived or died, the signal is carried invisibly to the eyes a response is produced in the brain, signal down arms, etc etc..

Look at a tree. As you breathe the tree does too. What you pull in, it expelled. The bronchi in lungs resemble an inside-out tree. The process of breathing is not yours, you are in cycle with the lung of earth. I like to think the universe is 'a breathing'.

Chuang Tzu was challenged many times on the uselessness of his teaching and many times told stories of how uselessness is a great virtue. The huge gnarled tree that outlives the others was not fit for any purpose and so lived a grand long life. Chuang asked one of his opponents to tell him "of all the land, that beneath your feet or the rest of the earth, what is most useful?" The reply was "that beneath my feet" and Chuang said "if i remove all the rest of the land, leaving you on two foot shaped pillars and a gaping chasm around you, it won't be long until you understand the usefulness of the useless".

This debate is fun but my point is that there is no uselessness, Chuang too was saying that in saying useless is in fact useful. We have to see that all is interconnected, all exists because of the rest and so we find the unity in all things. We appreciate oneness.

By appreciating how you are not "that body" but the environment that you are in and your reaction to it - it will encourage people to make a better environment. Man's attempt to tame and control nature is completely over. Many still carry on in vain as they won't admit it or don't know how else to think but it can't last.

When we appreciate the circuits, the cycles, the interconnectedness and further when we see that this complete process is me! ..then we see that a chemical to make an apple grow bigger will affect the whole "I" and not just the apple.

We are, individually, each a very sensitive feeling element of the whole, something to stay mindful of in life is how you are constantly sensing; fluctuations in air flow, light, sound, a tiny waft of a smell can alter your complete train of thought, we are that, we are that special sense of the universe. We are inseparable, we are it, and our position is sense and feeling.

Most people seem void of both!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Thought provoking

It must happen, but the worse thing someone can say of a spiritual work is "Thought provoking". Complete understanding has no thoughts. Thoughts arise from an incomplete understanding and once caught can grow and grow. So when trying to pacify the mind, provoking thought is not good.

There is the Koan of course. "Where will the next raindrop fall?" designed to have no answer and stun the mind to silence so provoking no thought and is a genius of Zen.

We should be able to accept that "I (when I was the universe including the human under a tree when he became the Buddha) have experienced complete and full enlightenment. Therefore I as me now this idiot with a cup of tea and a bad hair cut am, without any thought, too able. All the thought and reason required for complete enlightenment has been done and my going over it again with my foolish mind will not help only hinder." This is where I laugh at Zen students following strict regimes and not one of them achieving enlightenment due to the very strictness. The Buddha never read a book on Buddhism!

But that is not to promote blind faith and that stupid misinterpretation of the New Age "I am enlightened". This is a misinterpretation of a tool used in the distant past. A student who had done the full work to become awake had one step left and the master would hit them with "you are awake" and the student would awaken. This however requires a knowledgeable master and not an ego saying "I am awake", what a joke that is.

So blind faith is a no and thinking to attain is a no.

Think and reason until you see there is no use in it, then whenever thought occurs decide if it is useful, it is very rare it is, so open the space (mentioned in the How to meditate" post and accept; "I am dumb to think my mini mind can do this, all the thought has been done and the proof is there" Boom.

"Fear is in your Head
Only in your Head
So Forget your Head
And you'll be free
The writing's on the wall
Free-yeah, And you can know it all
If you choose. Just remember
Lovers never lose
'Cause they are free of thoughts"
David Bowie

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Hijacking Humanity

Hijacking Humanity (movie)

Many movies like this exist. I only post this one here for two reasons;

1) A quote: "Grow yourself spiritually so as to remove yourself from their grip" This is the method I promote to beating the system. You must also watch such films and read such books to get the full picture of what it is you are escaping and how deeply entrenched the conspiracy is.

and

2) I forgot 2 I'll have to edit this post when I remember it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao Te Ching Audio Book

Stephen Mitchell's Spoken Tao Te Ching so very good.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

> How to meditate a brief note <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

I will mention this in many posts but to make the information more available to the passing surfer here is it.

You can not be enlightened. When you are one, then by definition,there can be no other, especially no you. So enlightenment is a very special state that has no doer.

So in proper meditation, you can not "do it" you can not do it to get to somewhere. Meditating the mind on something is duality, meditating by some method is dual if you use the mind, eyes, any such system.

So - Find the place between the solar plexus and heart, about the base of the ribs. Don't meditate on it or dwell on it as that is dual, just locate it, know where it is - It has a strong being so is easy to locate.

Now look out from there.

Look from that space. Using this space as your centre, as your root, is beneficial as it has no sense of time and thinks no thoughts. It links to a being that is undivided by sense or mind.

Also read this Here Now article

Look out from there and you will notice the rest falls into place. The breath falls into place, gets deeper and becomes unnoticed; you find a way for your body to rest, (obviously different if you are on a bus, by a lake, walking, cooking, or on your bed), and the non-dual meditation takes place of itself.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meditation and wisdom

A master does not have to meditate, there is nothing to do. By contrast someone with much baggage has to learn to meditate first before finding any benefit. They must progress and with time get better at it, work through tough issues, battle on. It is tough for someone with a whole world seemingly against them; commitments, habits, plus a past that they took no part in forming, even ingrained habits in the way thoughts are processed. It seems this mind must be opened then worked with. Further still there are barriers in the way people have learned to learn. There is so much to do.

Yet the master does nothing, and the best advice is to do nothing.

What happens is that when someone has that first realisation that something is wrong and needs to be made right that they find a master. This does not mean to find a guru. A master or teacher comes in many forms and you will have many on your path. (The trap of taking one guru, one path, is a hindrance.) Masters can be lakes, books, children, pets, forests, exercises, breathing techniques. Wisdom is everywhere. Something said one day that seems meaningless, something overheard in a passing conversation, a line in a book, can pop back to mind with great relevance in the future. Past actions can come back to haunt - this is all good. Nothing bad is happening, has or will. It all makes sense.

Don't hold onto bad memories, don't hold on to ideas. The more you learn the less you need.

Life can be plotted like a graph. Your life may seem like a distorted sound wave when seen as a graph, with no pattern only random ups and downs. The aim is a slow, smooth, sine wave. Waking through sleeping follows a sine wave, you will know how smooth or haphazard. Eating and work habits follow waves too, but all these waves interfere, the waves collide and the resulting interference pattern is your life, your wave.

Meditation smooths the wave, it brings waves into sync.

From entering the path from seeing something in life is not right you go about soothing your wave. Ultimately you can smooth your life wave on the grand scale of rebirth; you can be born very infrequently, very smoothly, very controlled. For now you may aim at smoothing your Samsara Nirvana wave - how often you are in illusion, how often truth. Until then you have many more waves to pull into line.

So the master would just sit still and the wave would settle. The unlearned will try to locate things that ripple the wave, that cause distortion and unbearable ups and downs.

To get from a false living to a true being there is a journey. A wonderful one. You will learn many truths that become false. Say you learn about Chakras and they give you great benefit in finding imbalance in your life. Then in the future you learn that Chakras are not even real and only apparent when they reveal themselves due to imbalance - This is not a bad thing, it is part of the journey. In finding stillness you will have to learn many nearly truths to help you over the false. Then it becomes easier as your knowledge of truth becomes more penetrating. Many nearly truths reveal themselves at just the right times, they help soften the fall from a false, but they must all be dropped in the end, there can be no crutch when all is one. No guru, god, method, style, ..

The hardest part of the journey is the begining as it is a journey - the end is a shock as you realize it was not.

If things don't make sense then you are not ready for them yet, or they are just false. Only in furthering your training do you develop your truth penetrating vision to see what is what. You will see through fallacies you will know when you are ready to adopt tools, say a year of yoga, and drop crutches, say yoga when it is no longer a tool. If you are not developing, then it is a crutch. All tools can become crutches so tools are both necessary and dangerous.

More confusingly still, once enlightened, tools are still required. Using a tool but dropping a crutch is an ongoing thing. In this world it is hard to remain enlightened, the wave can be slow and smooth but will still have drops. It is easier for a once enlightened to notice a drop and pull it back, but it is still required that they remain diligent and do. An awakened person can make many falls. Three of the worst being hiding, contentment and awe.

1) Hiding from the world when enlightened narrows and weakens the human, as a result the mind is weakened and the person can not relate to normal life. A great warrior is enlightened in daily life, rubbing off on normal people, spreading the wisdom and not sitting in a cave depleting life force.

2) Contentment in an enlightened person is a danger as diligence and mindfulness weaken, weakening the mind then the body. This going unnoticed, the person will have a sudden drop and will not be so ready to pull themselves back.

3) Awe. Being in awe of the one is dangerous as openness is lost to partial focus, the mind is narrowed, the body weakened but feels strong. The awe takes like a drug supporting the body and preventing the body from meeting its needs. The drop can be hard to return from as mind and body took solace in the greatness but gave nothing back, they took and failed to maintain, so that when the fall came they were weak and unready.

Be awake, be aware. Meditate in life not just in sitting. Open, watch. Watch the mind, watch the great mind, be at ease, be on the ready. In work rest or play; be a ninja in the way you act.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Elite manipulation of consciousness - Solidity is the great minds memory

Open your mind. Empty it. Now if something flicked in front of your eyes, you may not say it is real. If it flicked into view and stayed, you were able to approach it, touch it, you may start to consider it as real.

As a tree grows it places something very soft outwards to the world, with time it goes over and over that new growth until in years to come there is a solid branch. So where there was nothing in mind (considering the whole universe and more as the one mind) there is now what I call a memory of a tree in the mind.

Soil and dirt which can be blown by wind, moved by rain or foot, if it stays long enough in one place can become a certain kind of rock. A very solid memory in mind. One that will last and can even be taken, built upon.

Zen is the rock in humans minds that led to the base for such giants as the martial arts and medicines. Tao is the rock on which Zen stands.

But where is the difference between rock and Zen? Zen is only alive in the mind and not solid and graspable, so here we can see how if you want to make something exist in mind you have two paths. (People interested in conspiracy, political manipulation of power, sorcery can find great interest here.) To make something exist in the great mind, you repeat and repeat, feed it to the youth and they grow it and solidify it. This is how we can store something in your little minds, so why not the big mind? It is the same.

Elite Manipulation

The Tao Te Ching can be used for bad. You can take any passage, flip it, and rather than "to have the people at peace" you have "to have the people divided under your control". The so called elite will do this.

"Rid of formalized wisdom and learning
People would be a hundredfold happier,
- So formalize dumb learning to sadden peoples hearts

Rid of conventionalized duty and honour
People would find their families dear,
- place false levels of control in peoples lives, weaken the family

Rid of legalized profiteering
People would have no thieves to fear.
- build the world on profit and love of money

These methods of life have failed, all three,
Here is the way, it seems to me:
Set people free,
As deep in their hearts they would like to be,
- remove freedoms one by one, never stop

From private greeds
And wanton needs."
- promote a market of low chakra stimulating entertainment and make it doubly desirable and doubly profitable by making it illegal.

Easily in the wrong hands such wisdom can be twisted to do precisely what the wise man was warning bad leaders against.

So to be a bad leader and have the world as your own you make memories in the great mind. Deeply entrenched memories: huge solid buildings, palaces, parliaments, statues; so called cultural significance, love of institutions, pride, citizenship, love of learning and high art, the church with so many buildings. Instil ideas in the youth that will take aeons to undo. Would you be able to knock down a statue of the Queen or rip apart parliament? Say the world was flat? No. So these form grand memoires in the great mind that are hard to budge. Even if we destroyed royalty someone would be sure to want to maintain the buildings and a hundred future generations will hold the memory in mind.

This is how the mind has been manipulated, so do we make it better by fighting the institutions and buildings? No. When the mind is manipulated with such a science as this then they accounted for people who would naturally rebel, intellectuals and so on are provided side shows of conspiritaninment and smokescreening to test their wit against. The conspiracy exists but the level it is built to accounts for inquiry. The way is to form new memories in mind to take the mind back, it is vast, much vaster than the part that has been contaminated, we correct ourselves and with one more of us each day we take the mind back.

Build love, the thing that makes this easy is that the driving force of the universe is love. These "solid" institutions are transient The great universe is deathless, so this will be won, it is already won on the grand scale. Don't strengthen the synapses by going over the bad memories, move on. take back your own mind.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Meat and spirituality

I can not tell you not to eat meat. It may be perfectly right for you to eat it.

If it is dead, and you are hungry then great. Go eat.

Yet. If you are not needy for food supplies, you have to breed the animal as food, kill it prematurely just for food, it's birth was only brought about so it could be food, and the result is you are bigger in body than health and nature would intend, then maybe think about it.

Not eating meat does not lead to spiritual insight. I can not say "do not eat meat for 3 days and you will receive insight" so that is all false.

Yet.. One developing yourself, you will one day receive insight and that will tell you not to eat meat. Until that day, do as you will, but I know that on development of the self it will occur.

So not eating meat is not a tool for the spiritual path, it is a result of the spiritual path. Like many suggested means, they are in fact ends.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

An Unreasonable solution

Where do you get by reasoning Up and Down, Right or Wrong? only to another place based entirely on them! Rather than reason the false notions away you look out of the window fooling yourself of a unique view whist using them as a prop or stool to get that very window view. How silly it is to reason away false notions of language by using the very same.

There is no path as paths lead away. No method as a method requires I to do it.

So how then do you act if you can not be involved, are you just a passive onlooker? No, you can't be as that is I fooling itself that it is just looking on and not acting when I is still looking on, present and hoping no one spots him! We have to beat the ego away, but how if it not there? Only by reason, unfortunately, we must do what we know can not be reasonably done, use a notion to prove the notion is false. How ridiculous, and this is it. Reason and reason until you see that it is hopeless to do so. Then the ego can disappear in a puff of its own logic.

Look out from the heart, the breathing naturally alters (correct breathing is a consequence, not a means), the body looks for a place to sit (meditation is a consequence not a means), the mind is wide open, so open as to leave nothing out, has all the wisdom and compassion available to it (these are consequences not means) and the universe sits in perfection.

(And then you think about it, and spoil it all. The Buddha saying "I am awake" was not. For that moment he stepped to the un-awakened level to communicate the message, as masters do and have to do. This communication, one to another is not awake, Awake can not be communicated in words so all words are traps. This is why they say that "anyone calling themselves awake is surly mad" as no "I" can be awake. To talk from the non-I you don't make much sense.)

SO-- all these ideas of using compassion and meditation to achieve Oneness are self defeating and only a monk of many years can spot this. That is what the masters do is set tasks with the intention that the student can realize for themselves. As the truth can not be told in words this is perfect for a monk but has lead to a million false teachers passing on the lesson and not the solution! As they have never found it they convince themselves and their unwitting student that the lesson is the goal, reinforcing the very I they seek to to lose and blinding themselves to from obvious.

----
stop.
----

We can only know the flow by having known the still. Only know being by our knowing non-being. Don't reason this as you trap yourself, just know it without reason. It is the ego that is reborn over and over into this trap. With practice (of non-practice by no-one) you can spread out the ego rebirths. Stop coming back so often to Samsara (I looking forward and back) and stay with Nirvana (no I bliss). There is no I only a continuum of consciousness. Unlearn the tendency to return by the fact that this can not be denied. But never never affirm it or deny it, as to do so is to maintain the idea as something reasonable, and this will have the ego convinced that I can be awake and you have to read it all again.
So next time, do as you are told and Stop!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

> Here Now <

This is a Tow Wow Important post

We are never not Here Now. We are absolutely always from birth, through every action, to death, Here Now.

We are never in the past or the future, they are unreal, just ideas, but our minds insist in wandering off into the unreal.

We choose to avoid reality, this here now and go off to a side step, a distraction, thinking a thought that takes a past or future idea, plays with it; a false thought based on a false notion - and choose to deliberately avoid the very thing we seek.

And the seeking itself is like stepping forward to achieve standing still, an impossible method.

Crazy as it seems we are the barrier to finding ourself. There is no one who can be awakened, no one to be enlightened. When "One" is found then by definition there is no other, especially no you. No seeker.

A method to finding now is to look out from your solar plexus or heart. Don't use eyes or ears as they are filtered by the mini mind that is trained and has the nature to form time and analyse. It does this as it is too weak to comprehend the "Now", the "One" so it splits, measures, analyses and gets lost in its own fallacies.

"The eyes do not look, they absorb. The mind is responsible for looking; its failure here is the splitting of one of the sensory inputs into values, good and bad. These only exist due to the mind itself – here is the illusion." (source: me)

instead ...

"Your empty mind,
is your full life;
The impenetrable solid reality,
is the ungraspable mind." (source: me)

Our mind is useless, our language contaminated with rules that split the mind. Drop it all and then you are left with "Aaaaaaaa!" Here Now! it was there all along, Bliss!

Also see How to Meditate

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The secret future

(I posted this as a comment elsewhere but have decided to add it here as a post too)

It does seem more and more likely that we have little say in our life at all and connecting with the false I on this ride is absolutely guaranteed to bring ups and downs.

4 people are driving up a road expecting to turn left. The fist turns left and feels nothing. The 2nd turns left and is convinced he can see the future. The 3rd meets a diversion 'turn right' and feels anger. 1 lucky, 2 deluded, 3 dumb. Only the 4th person who drove to the junction with an intention to turn left but acceptance of change could take left or right, even a flat tyre with a smile.

The only thing a sorcerer needs to do in opening a door using his mind is not sit for years to train the mind to do the act but sit for hours and train the mind to believe he did it when it eventually comes about by itself.

I am currently amused by those who say they can shape the future. Instead I feel that by perfecting how we see "now" then there is no future to need to or wish to alter. It is so egotistical to say that (the false local) I knows better than the true I, that which is the universe experiencing in a trillion forums, infinitely creative. The best events are not only unplanned, but beyond the (little) I to ever make happen.

There is a natural act which can be unlearned but in our society is trained harder into us to feel I exist and have a role in choosing my path.

The only path to serenity is to find fascination in the whole, then it is all a beautiful adventure.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wise Words - Wei Wu Wei

"There is no mystery whatever - only inability to perceive the obvious."

Wei Wu Wei an Irish(?) man writing some time ago after and during his path to awakening. He studied Tao and Zen along with various philosophies spiritual and not and left behind a number of books. Occasionally he gets lost in the very language and set of ideas he is working with but more than occasionally he gives single lines and simple passages that open the mind to truth.

On the whole, I love his work and find it opens doors. you can find it here. It is probably not for someone early on the path of seeking truth as some concepts he refers to as fact may be too early and so confusing to some. For those close to awakening, those who experience Satori but fall back down again and need a lift up, and those who are awake and aiming to maintain the state (yes awake requires work to keep as well as to get in the first place) I can not recommend this enough.

Wei Wu Wei bits

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Story of the monk

A Zen story that captures Zen and Tao very very well, I love it!

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The master took his favourite pupil to one side and sat down with him by the lake.

"I will be passing away soon and I want you to take my position. Here I am passing on a book of great old wisdom that has come down the ages from master to master. Generation after generation of great masters have there words here, I have even added some notes of my own and they will surely help you along the way."

The student grabbed the book with both hands, threw it to the ground and set fire to it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Story of the Fisherman

This seems to be based on a story by Chuang Tzu

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A fisherman is done for the day and he is lying down, relaxing beside his boat, smoking a pipe.

"Why aren’t you fishing?" a rich passer by asks.
"Because I have caught enough fish for the day," the fisherman responds.
"Why don’t you catch some more?"
"What would I do with it?"

"You could earn more money, was the reply. You could put a motor on your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more fish. Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets, which would bring you more fish and more money. Soon you’d have enough money to own two boats... maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you’d be a rich man like me."

"What would I do then?" the fisherman inquires.

"Then you could really enjoy life," says the smiling rich man.

"What do you think I’m doing right now?" answers the fisherman as he gets even more comfortable in his seat and smiles back.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao