The day the stream froze

For thousands of years the best wisdom was passed on by word of mouth, adapted to needs, forgotten, made anew, and referred to as the words of the "Old Master". No one knew of the Old Master as it was said that the best masters were unknown. All good wisdom that came about was credited to the Old Master as if to give the wisdom reverence and to save the modern thinker the egotistical disgrace of attaching their own name to generic and flowing wisdom.

There came a time when the new art-form of the written word was spreading from the cities where it was invented to the people who wandered the country. In the hands of one very talented writer and poet this written word was inked onto bamboo strips and was called the Tao Ching, The Great work of The Way. Later this talented writer wrote the Te Ching, The Great work of Virtue- he naturally attributed these works to the Old Master as they had been passed on for so many thousands of years by word of mouth and he simply laid them down in ink.

Some years later the writer took a new angle and wrote some amusing tales referring to the Tao from the perspective of a wise sage called Chuang - these funny tales captured the essence of the Old Masters sayings but were seen as a little to wry to be attributed to Mr Lao. After later reworks and further contributions from other authors this work came to be seen a the pinnacle of this kind of thought, capturing both the essence of the wisdom and the humour of those "on the way".

On another continent the words of a man who actually said very little, The Buddha, were also written down for the first time and embellished with poetry and so on. Much of the repetition and the numerical memory techniques employed by the word-of-mouth masters previous were maintained in these written works and volumes were written where the 5 of this and the 8 of that rambled on for pages and pages. Reworks of the concepts came to be know as the Diamond Sutra, Flower Sutra and more, all lengthy remixes with plenty of author-added bumf embellishing the few spoken words of the inferred master and author. In fact in years to come the Buddha said "I never said that! They made it so complicated!".

And so the stream froze.

In years to come wisdom was no longer passed on by word-of-mouth, adapted to needs, forgotten and reworked - it was instead referred to as sacred, set in stone and not to be swayed from.

So I ask you to take the words, feel their essence and then flow on. Burn the book and follow the smoke.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

All is change vs stillness

There is an interesting paradox raised by the two notions of change and stillness that emerge from Vedanta, Taoism and Buddhism. All three of these philosophies tell you that 1) All is change and the change is the flow, and you're that. 2) That perfection is the stillness, center of the wheel, balance.

Change and stillness are really yet another dualistic interdependent pair so settling with one or the other is incomplete. You can only see all change from the standpoint of complete stillness. You can only infer complete stillness from the notion that all else is change.

If you imagine that there is just this Tao, undivided, seeming to change, then that is one thing changing and not something changing relative to another. Within this one ever changing non-thing [Tao] is this notion of you. If you say you are the change then you split this undivided whole. If you say you are stillness then likewise you split the whole.

Interestingly though if you are perfectly in-tune with the flow, then that is stillness! You're not flowing against, or still in relation to, you're right with it - so the paradox resolves and dissolves.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

For anyone finding life at all confusing, worrying or out of whack

.. Just remember that a dark alleyway or room can be scary, but when you turn on the light, or go there on a sunny day, it could be the sweetest place you had ever been.

It's all perfect, it is just the way you look.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Your challenge if you believe in cause and effect

We only speak in cause and effect because those who made our language believed in cause and effect, and so the subject does the object in all sentences.

The above sentence speaks of cause and effect, due to structure of the syntax ("..due to those who made the language we now do this..") - while in meaning it discounts cause and effect! Haa haa.

Yet there is no cause and effect as if you counted back to infinity, you'd need a beginning, an initial cause that all this is the effect of. Yet there is no start to infinity and there is no such structure or mechanic.

What is the cause of the cause, of the initial cause?? An infinitely looping question that proves infinity and disproves initial cause. Only the questioner may start or end it. The aware one who has the question and satisfies itself with either false ideas or acceptance of the impossibility of an answer.

So if you are one who insists in cause and effect then you may take the following challenge:

Tell me where it all began. And where that start came from.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

inclusive

Our boss had yet another day off work recently for an important Jewish holiday. I jested with an older workmate at how I may become a Jew as they get so much time off, I explained to him (with tongue in cheek) how this important day was in celebration of the Jewish people being blessed for this and that - and I ended, still tongue in cheek, on 'What lucky people they are'.

Point missed the older workmate said "well we are too". He did however make a very fine point that "heaven is here, this is paradise, many don't know it but it is what you make of it that counts". Wise words there.

On the note of them and us, the 'we are too' statement, well this is the basis of an all too easy trap to fall into. If you are in another religious group or even if you are non-religious then you are in a group. I can not be critical or apart from any religion without 1) upholding it as a genuine thing 2) being in a group myself. So I'd be more inclined to say I am one with you all, just being.

We are all being and can't deny it, this is where we share perfection. The group, religious, otherwise or even non-religious are mind-made groups, full of division and the inevitable fall-out.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

stunned

I used to look forward to now, and here I am, looking back.

I used to know that once I arrived here and now that everything would be as it is, just as it was. And it is.

It then came as no surprise to me that once I arrived here, I'd be just where I was when I started, here.

The journey was so short that the time it took was my whole life and infinite eons.

I arrived before I had the notion of an I who should go.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Bad Language

Often in posts I used to have a small point to make but the bulk of the words I needed to type were serving the purpose of explaining or getting around the limited and dualistic language we have at our disposal.

Over on Daily Cup of Tao I made much more effort to keep posts short and to skip the explanations. Often with that method I leave gaping holes in explanation and posts can be seen as riddles, meaningless or open to interpretation.

It seemed to me that the more words used then the further the mind was from the truth, that famously "can not be told". It now takes a reader who is in the correct mind-set to read the posts who will gain from them. The number of words required to pull the reader into the place they need to be to "get it" plus the number of words needed to explain what the words mean in that particular case, would defeat the nature of the blog.

I still feel that Daily Cup of Tao did work, say once a week on average, there'd be a post that captured the essence in a few words.

Here are some examples of difficult concepts:

I - We are so used to I being I that when we are reading a post that is using I for the undivided totality, then the meaning is blurred or lost.

i-ego - For many people this is precisely the same as I and not a laughable construct of the mind.

Myself and my self. Powerful difference, not know by many. There are billions of myself's, constructed I's but only one self.

Nothing and no thing. "In awe of no thing", "in awe of nothing".

Awareness as different to consciousness, as different to being ... With so few words at our disposal that all have different meanings to different readers. Many words that have dual nature implied within them. Who is aware, conscious, being? and I'm talking from a state where there is no who.

It really takes a reader who has already done a lot of their own ground work to truly get posts that are written in just a few words and carry subtle messages. Luckily in the time the blog has been alive several of those readers have found their way to it and I'm sure more will given time.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Angelina Jolie looks like Michael Jackson

Movie review: Salt.

For the 2nd half of the movie SALT Angelina Jolie looks like Michael Jackson. For the whole movie she does things that only the Terminator could do 20 years ago.

Angelina Jolie does the Michael Jackson Thriller video.

This combination, plus Russian accents, symbolism, wigs and false teeth, makes for a ripping yarn.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Friendship of fools

The friendship of fools is the boisterous and exaggerated friendship that is displayed with public displays and loud expressions.

The friendship of the wise seems rude as often no words are said, affection displayed or care made apparent.

The friendship of fools comes in crests and troughs, and always breaks.

The friendship of the wise is tranquil.

The drunk drinks to quash the mind.

The fool jests to kill some time.

They take this pleasure to fill a void, but what the wise one has is being on his side.

Where one takes company, goods or leisure, to smooth over cracks and gain temporary pleasure. The other is always in content of caught, being anti what passes, fluid as gases, in awe of naught.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

So why are you here?

At an office party, all that small chat:

"so why are you here?"

"Well, I'm a customer..

"I know the boss..

"the family..

"I do the accounts..

"I used to work here but...

"There was a time that me and her used to be partners and now..

"I've been here since it was called...

~Now go back, to the event that preceded that event, and before and before, ...

You'll find they are all here because the universe had a beginning!

A what?

Cause and effect so ingrained in the modern psyche that people will give you one localized reason for being here that is built off a previous event that given all of our histories... we are all here because our parents mated within a certain time frame and back far enough we are all here because of the big bang.

!!

What modern day nonsense superstition this is!

No one understood when I said

"I'm here because I Am

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

time becomes a loop

The time came where there was the ability to google search for sections of reality unabated by time. Your child google searched for you, watched a generated 4D holo-movie of your youth, and realised you did all the same stupid stuff you told them not to.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Interconnectivity

I'm on my computer looking at my blog - This means that, even though me and the keyboard are in Australia, parts of my computer also exist in the USA, and in cables under the oceans, and in signals bouncing of satellites in space, and in my mind, and yours.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

who is the you?

You know that you who you say you are? The one who went to bed age 4 woke up the next day and the one who grew to be 14 and went to bed later and the one who fell asleep last night, the one who woke up this morning. You know that person? One person?

The body has certainly changed, you don't fit in that old shirt any more and you're not quite as cute looking. When you doze off at night, is it you who dreams? The dreams seem mostly to have you as actor, a similar you to the one who fell asleep and the one who will wake up - where is that you though when you are in deep sleep? Is that you a fixed solid unchanging you? - Don't just read over these questions, answer them: Where is the you in deep sleep?

Who is in charge, who's breathing? Automation? Who is beating? Same one who beats all day? yes? Where are you though? Asleep? The you who is awake now, they sleep?

Is the you who you say you are a collection of ideas? A you who exists when the thinking mind is active and disappears when it sleeps? So by day you are a mind in a body in a world but at night you are a sleeping body in a bed and no mind, no ideas, no constructed self..

This you who you are so sure you are seems a little wispy, a little uncertain: at times it is a collection of qualities, ideas and beliefs, opinions and values - at other times it is an automated, unconscious, body - a sleeping body that has non of these mind qualities that live all day.

You won't say you are a body who wakes and sleeps, you will insist that these transient ideas that arrive on waking and disperse on sleeping are what define you. Well what an unreliable you you are! I can't rely on you to give me your wonderful you opinions on life when you are asleep, I can't get good information from you while you dream - I must come to you for those 16 hours a day when you are awake as you are only you then.

Who are you?

You're not that.

You're not that mind as it comes and goes. You'll insist also that you are not only the body as that lump of flesh is doing nothing. Who are you?

Behind all is "awareness" as who knows they were asleep? On wake your mind infers that it, the mind, must have been asleep, but the mind is wrong. There is a subtle and incredible state behind all states, one preceding mind, with no use for memory and so impossible for mind and memory to have as conceptual parts. When you are asked who you are your mind runs through memories and constructs a you, but this you is made of false and changing parts. Fall asleep and that you is gone so no matter how well the mind is convinced of itself, sleep, and it is proved wrong.

An ungraspable root exists. Ungraspable as it precedes all grasping, all doing all thinking, consigning, all sleeping, all waking, all being. This subtle core is the root of all and is awareness - as what can exist that is not held by awareness? Awareness precedes all division so this root - that we all must be - is one awareness. We are not the mind, the body, the automation, the ideas, the constructs, the changing, we are - awareness itself, and by this root all can be.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

infinitely creative but no more than it ever was

Get a hold of a few artist submitted web links and refresh them every few seconds:

You'll see new photos, new creative stories, new digital art, new ideas, new songs, poetry, tips, - With each second the universe, via one of its human forms, has outputted a new creative idea. The universe has reshaped and the infinite fractal of creativity now loookks daferoont thaan iit diiid beefooour.

Star systems have reconfigured, gas clouds have a new pattern, smoke, clouds, water ripples, streams, nipples, word associations, manifestations, ....

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao