Wheetabix and meditation

Eat Wheetabix and instantly rinse the bowl and it is clean.

Wait a minute and you'll have to rub at it with a sponge and soap.

Wait a few minutes and you'll be chipping it off with a knife.

So a good meditative mind lets things rinse away just as they happen.

And the less good hold on to each event.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Quiet Loud Mouth

One being quiet, the other so talkative. The talkative one feels uncomfortable in the presence of the quiet and begins to jibe.

"hey, shut up" he says sarcastically. "Less chat" he smirks.

The quiet one is likely to wish to react in a way of say this:

"Most of what comes from your mouth is pointless garbage, shut up"

but quietness remains and it passes.

Neither are wrong, both are being themselves. The quiet one more rooted and the loud one more attached and directed by the whims of a ceaseless mind.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wen Tzu Work for all

I think this was the point I forgot.

In the intro to the Wen Tzu the writer is talking about the idea of all people working in unity, all doing what they are naturally good at and doing it for the common good and not in competition. The reason this hit home was that on my way home from work yesterday I was chatting to a workmate over the exact same point.

We have a good team of people and naturally within that group there are friendships and conflicts, some people are drawn to chat together and some have grudges with each other. My workmate and I were discussing how we are both happy to take the seemingly lower position of helping another whereas some others are in a constant battle to improve themselves and take credit for jobs completed as a team.

A scenario would be that one person is rushing for a deadline and one of us will offer help in this. The person rushing may accept the help and then announce that they are going for lunch or a break or onto another task, thus leaving the person offering help doing the whole task. The double sting to this is when they return to grab the completed task and claim it as their own. This, under various formats, happens a lot, so my friend and I were talking up the dream reality of us all operating for the common good and leaving these petty games behind.

What the writer of the introduction to the Wen Tzu is doing is stating this same ideal but then stopping short of saying why this does not happen, not 2000 years ago and not now. This dream of all working for the common good is the gateway to murder: you set this dream of perfection and so you set the way for people to compete.

For this Taoist dream to be realized then much more wisdom from philosophical Taoism must first be employed, you see to expect all to work for the common good under the leadership of a company, state or country, there is already a hierarchy in place, that of a leader and subjects or staff. The common good in this case is not so common, all of these coworkers are in competition with each other and working for the good of their boss. So while the idea of working for a common good sounds very nice, the context is already set for decay.

So the author continues by saying that "What makes security secure can also create danger. Therefore when sages govern people, they see to it that people suit their individual natures, be secure in their homes, live where they are comfortable, work at what they can do, manage what they can handle, and give their best. In this way all people are equal, with no way to overshadow each other"

Natural contradictions occur even here: The sage "governing people" "encouraging people to do this do that" and so we must see all of this from another key perspective, that of non-doing. That would be the only true Taoist perspective and method that could truly work out and actuate this dream: the sage must allow all around to do as it naturally does, until nature is rebalanced. For a time the natural thing to do IS compete, is to rise and fall and take and lose until this balance has returned. People can't be told to live in order and the very desiring of it only brings about an inner conflict in the sage, person or in the leader. Wei Wu Wei is the way hey hey to have fields of whey corn and hay.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wen Tzu

Here I am reading the intro to the Wen Tzu in English as translated by Thomas Cleary and as kindly donated to me by the Rambling Taoist, I am hit over and over by little slices of wisdom - that due to a lack of context will mean a lot or a little -

"Those who show their embellishments hide their reality"

- I am finally hit by a line later in the introduction -

which, looking back over the pages I have only recently read - i can no longer locate...

For sure there was some pertinent wisdom I was about to share and here it is, I have lost it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Doing

The I concept and the thought of doing anything at all are incredibly silly, induce a lot of anguish and are, obviously, very egotistical.

Imagine a vast, infinite universe of rock, slime, very very large expanses of nothing, heat, cake, chickens and humans. Now imagine in that vast, bizarre infinity, there is one human who is sitting on a sofa thinking what to do tomorrow. This is madness beyond words! an incredible mental illness. He thinks that he can act on this vast infinity and have his way! He believes that he may decide to do something and it will be done by him! And if it isn't done quick smart with some financial reward then it is failure and a very important matter indeed.

The fact of the matter is that this vast infinity is not a dead lump of rocks, water, fish and chickens floating in unfathomable space. It is a dance of what we may deem energy, it is an expression of awareness, it is matter made of consciousness and within that dance little dances take place, such as universes coming and going. Within these little insignificant comings and goings of universes are smaller, less significant dances of solar systems, ecosystems, toilet cisterns, a sofa and a man, thinking about what to do next Monday.

When you leave the dance to look after itself, life is magical. If you make plans, they may fall in line with the dance, they may not. If you don't make plans, life always works out.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Compass points to Wow

I have a post due later in the year on Daily Cup of Tao about the way of seeing and a compass.

Compasses point North and so we see one way. At some point in my life my compass pointed South and I saw the world from a completely new perspective. I realized that while this new perspective was quite mind blowing (it doubled the size of my known universe) I could not live without North and so I took to balancing my compass to a perpendicular direction (East to West) and then to always appreciate life in these two perspectives: Worldly North and Spiritual South.

The way was to jump from "I-me-in-the-world" to "I-the universe and that old me as an expression of it".

Where I can see Ice melt and say 'ok, ice is made of water' and I can flick the rim of a wine glass, hear the "~tiiiing~" and say 'Matter is made of sound'.

In the past I'd have raised my eyebrows at such a comment as "matter being made of sound" and now I raise one and smirk knowingly with the other side of my face that it is more true than false.

~

I'm a Wowist monk. I am a Buddhist in that Buddha is in me not a dead man. I'm a Taoist in that I find balance and wonder in life. I'm a Vedantist in the way I see the infinite as one, indivisible. I'm married, used to take drugs, still like a very occasional beer, am vegetarian but for selfish reasons - I feel more healthy this way, I do a job, I don't own a TV, I don't follow the news, I meditate, I find wonder in every moment and if everyone was like me the world would be very peaceful indeed. Thankfully everyone is not like me, so life is all the more fascinating. And that is why the infinite incarnates in so many interesting ways - for love of the show.

Maybe you are a Wowist too?

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Thanks to the Rambling Taoist for writing a post on me today, and for the generous donation of The Book of Wen Tzu. Very kind indeed. Thanks.

*Bows, farts and glasses fall off*

Ta-Wan (Mr-Glasses)

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Errors made at reincarnation

Errors made at reincarnation.

On death a few people were given choices of rebirth.

The basic question being: Here you are, on the threshold of entering the One or the choice of rebirth, what choose you?

These people all decided on rebirth.

Person A, a boy, said: "I wish to be born in a world where every woman is beautiful" And so he was reborn as an ugly girl, and every woman he saw or met was indeed beautiful by comparison.

Person B said: "I wish to be reborn to a world where everywhere I look is an exotic delight" and so she was reborn in a slum in Bangladesh with a small TV set that played TV shows and movies where everywhere she looked was an exotic delight.

Person C said: "I wish to be reborn into a world where everyone is incredibly passionate" and so he was reborn to a nation a war where both sides were in a non-stop battle over religious differences.

~

So here I am not saying these cases are real or that we choose rebirth in this way, but I am saying to be careful over what you wish for in life. If you wish for everyone around you to be happy in your company, then maybe the result is that you die and your family are forever sad. Perhaps if you wish for money you never have love. Perhaps if you desire freedom you never make good friends.

Desire is a powerful force and all the best sages will say "steer clear of it".

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Enlightenment for the selfish I

Wishing to be free of suffering and wanting enlightenment are very selfish acts of the i-ego. Although if the mind is to be wrapped up in any matter it may as well be this.

The truth is changeless, it never alters one bit. There outside of the bounds of time and space it has no action or form and no duration. Precisely EVERYTHING beyond that one truth can be said to be the mind. The mind at play and the mind obsessed over itself. When the mind has conjured up enough splits and forms it takes refuge in a body it has made and it pieces together a little kernel, a local point that it uses to refer to, attach ideas and concepts to, and it knows this as i-ego. This i-ego forms a world for itself to play in. This may be known as the subjective world of thoughts. A set of local thoughts and ideas which go to forming a world, one of stress and anxiety, or one of joy, most likely one of variation.

At some point this i-ego can be stirred from its made up self, star of its own show, world and can be given the idea of a new view, one free of this churning and change. One that is free of suffering and so on. The i-ego-mind is naturally quite interested in this, it has spent many years giving value to things and it rates this highly. It would like to buy it, have it for itself, or perhaps, if pushed, do some quick-fix steps to get it.

And so the quest for enlightenment.

However, when the i-ego is told that the world it lives is in solely a fabrication, one made of mind, it becomes a little confused and decides this thing must be learned about. So it buys books, DVD's, the company of wise or flowery people.

Time and time again the i-ego is told that it must attempt to go beyond mind, it must cast aside its ideas and preconceptions, it must HAHAHA destroy the i, the ego, the mind! It is not too impressed by this and more often than not, sits at some half way house or gives in all together.

~~

But it is not so difficult as all that. There is the alternate route. [ego wakes up to listen eagerly] but the result is the same, ego, i, and all the falsehood must go. This route is inquiry. It is best done with as little learning as possible and it must be determined, it must deter mind.

The method has two prongs: Fork one is to find the source behind the source behind the source behind the ..etc.. Until it is recognised that the one element behind, happiness, joy, sleep, thought, emptiness, pre-birth, pre-time, pre-concept, is the same. And fork two is to recognise ALL that changes, all that is transient, as the show of the mind and nothing more than mind.

When all that changes and emerges and flows and goes is seen as mind. And the unchanging root is recognised as the root to all, then the joining of the fork at the handle can take place.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Daily Cup of Tao is now a full cup

The Daily Cup of Tao blog is complete. I have written and posted all of the 365(ish) posts and they will all come one by one, daily, until 30 Nov 2010. That will mark one year of mini posts from that blog.

This leaves me back here so in all likelihood new posts I think of will be posted here on Tao Wow and the daily mini posts will keep appearing over on Daily Cup of Tao all by themselves.

Now, some of you will have noticed that the blog there often has a lack in quality but each post meant something when I wrote it so I will refrain from editing them and just let them run their course.

For now thanks for keeping up with the daily posts and hopefully there will be something enlightening between now and November 2010.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao