For every act of evil, there is an act of beauty. You Can't Change the World, Only Your Attitude Towards It.

Interdependence. You the powerful entity

You don't need to understand the following picture from a technical standpoint but only need to see the interconnections and then go from there.



What it shows is how the larger packages on my computer depend in the smaller less visible ones - we may compare this to a world map showing trade, we may compare it to the interrelations of species over the food chain, we may see it as a mind map for our beliefs and values.

What we should all be able to see is how the big ideas we have and the giant corporations in the world and the largest of animals and he greatest of achievements all depend on intricate interconnectivity. Of course a large TV network or a large fashion brand know that they would be nowhere without an audience and they build the bonds as tightly as possible. They are not though the strong one on the relationship, far from it.

Great power exists and is transferred over these bonds and while the large seem powerful they are in fact in the weakest of positions. What I may do is generate this graph like so: "red green blue bacteria" - here all that depended on bacteria would be red, bacteria would be green and all that bacteria depended on would be blue. I may then call it again with: "red green blue lion" - all that the lion depended on would be red, the lion would be green and all that depended on the lion would be blue.

Can you imagine the two maps?

Little depends on the lion but the lion depends on much.

All depends on bacteria but bacteria depends on little. It is also very adaptable and can alter host or dependency with need.

To adapt is to survive.

You won't see a lion switch to a wheat diet, with no meat it would die. If people as a whole decide that they do not like a certain corporation, TV show, person then quickly that large entity suffers. If that large entity turns against they whom they depend on then the suffering reflects back and hits them.

The smaller we are, the more adaptable, the more we can yield, the more we can serve, the more we can share, the more we can cooperate over pretend borders and divisions, then the more we are a powerful survivor.

Humans do have a very varied diet and the ability to live 50C below zero and 50C above zero, but we can't get by without air, bacteria, water, and amino acids. We sit in a precarious position one that environmentalists and politicians will use to control mass thinking, but a position also that shows our great strength in overcoming control grids.

The first grid of control to escape is the hive-mind and to not hold up and adhere to the large accepted norms. The second control grid to escape is that of in and out groups where the situation in Thailand is a current example. All people are for Red or for Yellow, they polarize over this fictitious divide and they battle, they battle for the detriment of both sides and the victory of an invisible control and manipulation agent. This is the same in war, politics, religion and packaged for mass consumption as sporting events. "I love Manchester United - I hate Real Madrid" and the owners of these teams quaff champaign and get driven around in Bentleys. Many control grids exist and they operate by the old divide and conquer techniques and by the falsely presented dependencies where we are lead to believe that we need Nike, we need a government, we need Coke, we need Microsoft and not that they depend on us.

Once the false grids are escaped and the true dependencies seen then the true power is seen, it is seen to be you as the most powerful entity you know.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

I hear you smelly dog

You're a bundle of touch who then makes a world in his mind.

In the kitchen is a rustling of packets and a clatter of pans. This image is made by you as you touch the air and register tiny fluctuations with a very sensitive bit of skin secreted in the side of your head. As you have two of these, one on each side of your head then you can register the difference and so place the sound in space as being 'over there'. The sound is made in your head from this information registered by this sensitive touch of the air.

You can't touch the light in the room next door but be it light or dark in there you can still hear the dog snore. You touch the light in your vicinity and from that you form an image. You touch chemical trails in the air and from that you make a smell and you register that the dog has now entered your local space, as you look right you sense light bouncing off his body and form his appearance.

As you reach down his wet nose touches your hand and you move it back to stroke his head.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Songs of praise

Of all the various yogas then the devotional branch was the hardest for me to relate to, I even held a strong derision and distaste for it seeing those who sang in praise as missing the deep thought and analysis I saw as essential to spiritual growth.

My mantra was more "see everything as a trick question and get to the root" and far and away from one of "sing in praise, love" - to that I would say "Bleugh!". I saw those who sang in praise as being some of the most easily lead and the most lacking in genuine self discovery.

Tonight then it was a shift in scope when I found myself in one of my superbly contented states, free from thought, wish, need or desire, sitting contentedly as I often do, to then suddenly, from the depths of my gut, sing a home brewed mantra of some description.

It really made sense and I only snapped out of it as my natural urge is with all things to explain them and find their worth. This was something quite new, something without obvious value but perhaps richer than true love.

To sing openly and whole-heartedly, selflessly, was special as my mind was gone. I was singing as, well, why not?! Here I am, what else is worth my time other than to enjoy and echo this being upwards and out of my lungs?

It just made sense, felt right, to sit and make noises in recognition of my amazing dance of infinity.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

A trip into the third eye

While meditating just recently I entered a naturally occurring hallucination, one which took me through the 3rd eye and into new worlds, worlds of answers, clarity and some interesting shapes and patterns.

It was clear to me that once the ego is gone then all desire is gone too and without this monkey called ego we really have no wants or needs, all is perfect.

I was also given the idea that there is only one 3rd eye, that on this side of it we are us, separate selves and a world, and through and beyond that one 3rd eye we are one, undivided, complete.

The vision was so vivid that I can recall it at will even now and the state of pleasure is ongoing.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Indifference - Hitting water and making no ripple?

A dog is relaxing when someone walks over and pulls one of its whiskers out. The dog snaps. Can we blame the dog?

If this story was of Buddha then it would be different. Buddha would be relaxing when someone pulled out one of his whiskers. We would be lead to believe that he did not react.

If a Zen master was relaxing and someone pulled one of his whiskers out we would be lead to believe that the master would either not react or would, in a flash, react and then be over it.

If Chuang Tzu were relaxing when someone pulled out one of his whiskers then he would have written a very poignant, likely funny, story about it.

When my wife pulled out one of my whiskers when I was relaxing I said "AW fuck!" and she laughed at me.

I have a scar/amount of missing skin above the nail of my index finger where I once went to pet a dog who was not a friendly as I had imagined. He bit my finger and took a little flesh - my fault, hands up (what hands I have left), my fault.

If you slap at some water you'll get splashed, if you chop off your finger you'll bleed, if you fart in an empty lift someone will get in it, if you drive in haste you'll get held up.

Indifference is not then this perfect state of non-reaction, as if that were even possible, it is to know that these patterns exist and to then not be surprised by their occurrence.

Perhaps indifferent to the re-action (that is unavoidable) and not indifferent to action (which is as impossible as hitting water and making no ripple) - and even to laugh at the simplicity of it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Compassion is a terrible gripe

Someone I know had a shocking upbringing and years later is still in-touch with those memories. They now watch documentaries and dramas about people in similar poor and shocking situations and dream of affecting some change.

It brings me down to think about it but I don't avoid that, I listen, pay attention and share their burden.

If we were to watch a field of Zebras and we become emotionally involved with a new offspring, then we see the local lions come and take her, we will react. We could get upset and we could see it as the way things are. So when another race look upon the human race and see the abuses one to another, then they could also react in either of the two ways, compassion or dispassion.

As humans we see certain abuses of strength over those who can not protect themselves as more real and more touching than those of animals and we also have perverted justifications of self status: You may see an anti abuse protester eating a lamb sandwich, you may see a charity collector drive home in a nice car.

India was my most real experience of the human condition; slums, disfigurement, disease, lepers and even a man lying on the street one day, body twitching repeatedly as people walked around him. The next day the body was still and come the evening he was pulled, stiff and dead, onto a horse-drawn cart. I also saw bodies floating on the river Ganges all swollen, some partially burned some only infants. During that experience I saw terribly sad looking people and in amongst it all I saw some very very happy (looking) ones.

Within the swell of humanity were street people who you would see crapping at the side of railway lines, cleaning teeth with dirty puddles and sticks they had chewed the end of to make soft, cooking captured animals and birds on fires made from plastic and rubbish. They commonly had many children running around them and the woman would quite frequently be pregnant or have a very young child strapped to her. The children in these cases were often very wild but, seemingly, happy.

It is often my thought that children adapt to what is. I have seen as many children happily playing with dirt and leaves as I have seen children of the wealthy throwing food-additive-fueled tantrums. It seems the conditions of the child are not a direct threat to inner happiness until they have grown to see greener looking grass elsewhere, and at that point they may form some angst.

The person who I spoke of at the beginning of this piece was one of those happy looking children, playing in dirt, no clothes, hair pulled from head to show baldness as this was the only way to stop itching, not loved, left to fend alone and abused by locals and family alike. They grew to be a wonderful example to us all but they can not shake this compassion for others in similar situations.

I find compassion a burden but I do not consider myself completely dispassionate. I, like us all, would love to have a world free from these issues but I have also been to more than one place in the world where vast percentages of our race live with this as reality and no alternative. Compassionately I feel for them and righteously I tell people who are rich by comparison (our average Westerner) to "shut the fuck up, stop bitching and get real" when I hear them complain over their petty complaints.

We can not stop the Zebra being eaten and humans are far from perfection, this is the way things are. Yes I feel for those with railway sidings as bathrooms, with sticks as toothbrushes, with cow shit and plastic as fuel, with abusive relatives, neighbors, with disease we can't imagine the burden of, with all of the shades and colours of the human condition. I also feel for the wealthy who can not find happiness and for the lucky who feel incomplete. I feel for the baby Zebra but I accept this is the reality we see.

I often conclude in post after post that the most important thing is that which is seen when we alter perspective: Not this world view of human beings in a sea-stress-of-bitterness, but being itself. How magical it is that this even exists! the wonder of being-awareness, the truth that behind this mind-made life and death is the same root; whether you live as a rich man or you float dead on the Ganges aged 6 months you were the magical play of infinity.

Suffering is a man made disease and it is a choice to live with it or not. If we did not look to alter the world (which we can never do) and instead look to alter our own viewpoint (which is easy) we can then each move to live with an appreciation of the magic and wonder that brings about this life. That is the only change that can actually come about: To change focus and reaffirm the world as wonder and not horror. When we escape compassion and dispassion and move to direct awe of being then we are not perpetuating the churn of greed, desire and poverty but all sharing the one thing that is infinite and absolutely equal amongst us all - Tao.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

When people shout...

...they are always shouting at themselves.


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To expand upon this point I mean to put over the idea that people are shouting at their own inability to control a situation. Shouting at a child, a co-worker, another driver or so on is the person truly just voicing some anger at an external target rather than at the direct source. As to shout at the real source they would have to point blame at themself and their failure at managing.

Also when people exclaim at failure, the shouting is for the same reason, an outward cry at their own incompetence.

The lesson then is twofold. When you are on the receiving end of shouting you can see the other person is upset over their shortcomings and you can help. When you are the one doing the shouting you can draw quickly to the real cause and hone in on your own shortcomings.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

political fish of change

In the ocean most people are plankton.

Those in council or politics who truly work for positive change are few, far between and as ineffective as a small fish on directing the ocean.

The big fish, the sharks and the whales are the many who enter politics for the free ticket: keep the system churning, disrupt the little fish and some just hoover plankton. Their aim is not change but just to maintain a self feeding system, one which smashes positive progress, justifies their own roles, feeds them and little by little removes rights and wealth from the true blood of the ocean.

The tide is Yin Yang, no matter how the big fish affect change in the ocean they can never stop the tide and natural ocean currents. Although the big fish will often tell the plankton that tidal changes are due to plankton's ways and so tax should be raised to stop it.

The Taoist, seeing how it all is, sits in his boat and in thousands of years all he has seen is natural patterns.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The worship of Gods then is nothing but a fear based one or an egotistical pacifier.

You get from meal to meal without food. You get from drink to drink without liquid but you can't stop your dependence on air for a second. You're either moving it in, out, or holding on to it, constantly. Could air then be the Holy Spirit, something truly worth worship?

A miserable boss may tighten down on his employees lunch breaks, may take a stern view on coffee or drink breaks, may be happy to deprive you of family time or sleep, but he will never say a bad work against the Holy Spirit and claim control over your breathing.

A tired and stressed person stands with tight shoulders taking quick shallow breaths and when the stress subsides he will take a sigh of relief, one big long breath. A relaxed person will have slow, deep breaths, from his heels, and nothing will bother him. Is one closer to God?

I don't think so at all- but air is after all far more tangible than God, this conceptual being worshiped by adults as Santa Claus is by children. No air, dead. No God, things are just the same only less wars.

If I stand firstly and say that air is far more important than God then I would like to go a step further and destroy the farce of worship more so.

To worship a fictional entity is silly because the presence of a fiction does nothing on a moment by moment scale for you at all. Worship of air then is far more real as to go for a moment with none is death (I mean no air at all and not just holding your last breath for a while).

If the presence of something means there is life or no life then we could raise the question as to whether it deserves worship. We do not though worship the water cycle, bacteria or carbon. People choose to worship concepts, we are a species enslaved by mind and idea.

Worship itself is dependent on the thing being worshiped. Air in this case is an essential ingredient to worship of air: No air, no life, no worship of air. So worship is pointless, a back-tion, it is an aside to living, a waste of time.

Worship of a fictional God is done for one of a few reasons; Fear of not doing it, egotistical embellishment from doing it, a habitual act not yet questioned and cast off, cultural norm and the fear of stepping out of line. As billions worship one god so billions more worship a different God or no God at all. Still we live on. If a billion took to not breathing the fallout would be far more noticeable.

The worship of Gods then is nothing but a fear based one or an egotistical pacifier. The worship of something truly essential to life, say air, is more tangible yet pointless as if there were no air then the worship itself would be impossible. Worship either way adds nothing to the relationship of man and air.

Take air away from one man and God away from a believer, they will both thrash, both go blue in the face but only one will die from the asphyxiation.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

flow on

I really love this line over at Son Rivers

"we interrupt this stream for an important rock"

That sums up so well and in a lovely pictorial way how we are a stream of consciousness flowing and getting caught up again and again with how important one little pebble is. Keep flowing and the rock wears away, disappears, keep flowing and see where we are now and not get hung up over a long past obstruction.

I'm reminded how on a rafting trip my Dad suddenly felt the need to stop our raft so he grabbed hold of a tree that was overhanging the river. The raft kept on going full pace and my Dad was left hanging from the tree.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

spontaneity and impulsiveness

I still love the Hua Hu Ching for its plain and clear Taoist passages. The first 50 or so chapters and the last few being the best. I have a little feeling that the Confucians, religious Taoists, Yogic Taoists and even some modern people have had their way by adapting and even adding a number of the latter passages.

The small point that got my attention today was the difference between impulsiveness and spontaneity. Zen by way of Taoism focuses on acting spontaneously and the Hua Hu Ching at one point advises against impulsiveness.

What is the difference? it is a very large difference indeed. Impulsiveness is not so impulsive as you may imagine. Like we say that wisdom is not so great when it arises from a learning experience, it is much greater when it is of the no-mind and comes via direct action. Wisdom that arises off the back of action is a shadow and while useful and character building it is clouding the very next moment with mind-grinding and ego.

Impulsiveness uses the mind, it is a reaction. The thing occurs, it is mapped as emotion and thought, plays off other thoughts and then happens, some time later, seemingly 'impulsively' it is an echo, clouding the now moment and full of error.

Spontaneity is the action of true no-mind wisdom. It acts the moment perfectly well. The person is controlling the moment by being well ahead of it. Never is he reacting or planning his next move, retaliation or attack, but always is he bubbling in that timelessness where now is made.

After all we all know that now is truly the past. We take a while to consign reality and make it into our own delusion/illusion/moment/"reality". That which is sensed has time, our senses take time, our processing of that, our thoughts, impulsive or not, take time and the true now is long gone.

That is how impulsiveness is not spontaneous at all and this is one of many ways a Zen master could check his students understanding of the Tao, he could set up a situation and monitor how the student used the mind. The more the mind was used then the less spontaneous the action, the more the mind was used then the more impulsive or thought the action. In these cases it would be common even after a second or so of time for the master to be seen yawning at the slow response.

Tao does not think, or plan, or act. It does nothing so linear or slow. It operates in the time before now. This is not of course operating in the past! but operating, by our linear perspective, before we notice - And this would be one way to point out the difference between spontaneity and impulsiveness.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Failure is the mother of success

Over on Daily Cup of Tao I said:

"Attempting perfection, you show all your faults.
Accepting your faults, is perfection.
Aiming to please, failure.
Being, easy."


If you're always trying to be right then wrong is hard. It you're always trying hard not to fail, then failure is tough.

A useful meditation then is one of acceptance of this point:

I will not always be right, often I will be wrong.
I will not always do things well, often I will mess up.
But it is true that I will not always get things wrong,
and things will work out just right.
When I am truly honest I see that I have no control either way; I could only have done what I'd done, I will only ever do whatever it is I will do, I can only do right now what it is I'm doing.

Want life to be different? It can't be. It is this.

That is why: "You can not change the world, you can only change your attitude towards it."

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

tao

The wisest things are never said.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the sex life of the inside of a ping-pong ball

Only now do I realize I was given my first Koan whilst at school and it removed the traps of logic - blowing my mind wide open to the infinite.

As a punishment from class in school bad students may be given "lines". The teacher would demand 40 lines of "I must not be bad in class" or "I must not spell absolutely with two l's" or some such thing. As we grew older the punishment may be a more structured affair: "200 words on the life and times of Margaret Thatcher" or "1000 words on electron orbits". It may have been urban legend but word went about that one teacher had demanded "3000 words on the sex life of the inside of a ping-pong ball" and my mind was blown open as I meditated on the emptiness intertwined with potential void therein.

I hoped and hoped to meet that teacher and be given the punishment. Oh all those days messing up in class in the hope of being served the perfect essay title to expound my youthful philosophies.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

bhogi bear

Heard of a Bhogi? He does Bhoga to realize the absolute. A Bhogi is the opposite (in a way) of a Yogi. Both the Yogi and the Bhogi look to yoke or join with the supreme but one chooses to abstain from the world and one chooses to drown in it.

A Yogi may use Asana body poses to unite his body with the spirit, he may eat only the freshest newly grown parts of a plant, he may breathe the sweetest of air in the deepest of manners, cleansing, extending the life of the living body.

A Bhogi may delve into the pleasures of the world. He may say that sex is pleasure so then pleasure away! He may get lost in music, in tastes, smells, experience.

The Yogi says of the Bhogi that the Bhogi depends on the world for pleasure and so when those sources of pleasure are not there then happiness is missing. So he says the path of the Bhogi is a mountainous track.

The Bhogi says of the Yogi that the Yogi misses so much. Why have this world these senses, live this experience without living to the edge of experience.

From a wise masters perspective he sees that Yoga and Bhoga are paths to the same place. He watches how the Yogi attempts to extend a life that will still end, he watches as the Bhogi chases pleasure endlessly while missing the ever present root of pleasure.

The master is. This is the middle way.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

:-{D

I got; nothing to do, nothing to say, no where to go,

I got; nothing to be, no one to see, no way to say,

I'm not; no one, someone, anyone, besides the one,

I play; as I like, do what I like, surprise myself, play in disguise,

I play; dumb, wise, underdog, overlord, middle man, everyman, woman,

I play; as being dog, think I know god, fear dog, fear god,

I wake; up every life, realize mind made strife, realize myself, play as myself, forget the overlord, feel for the underdog, get wise, play dumb, have fun, laugh 'till death come,

I write; because I have fingers, I live; because I know no other way to be, I see; because all there is is being, I'm fascinated because I am aware of myself, playing an infinite dance.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Incredible

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

How the fuck can sex be a sin?

Firstly I deny there being such a thing as sin anyway so to draw a line and say "You may enjoy tasting food, looking at nature, listening to music but you MUST NOT enjoy sex, especially with yourself" is balmy.

This debate must have occurred on a thousand occasions so I have little to add here. In fact the debate must have gone on for generations and if it went on for generations, then, someone was fucking during that time.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Diaphragmatical breathing

The single most important thing I was ever taught is breath control and from there the path to peace was laid.

With empty and relaxed lungs (the state after a normal out-breath and not the state of complete exhalation) you push out your diaphragm and gradually inflate your chest up to your neck, just like if you'd been filled with water, the air fills the bottom and gradually up to the top. Then you allow the diaphragm back in, pull it closer to your spine and you expel the air up emptying the top of your lungs and throat last. The exhale should take longer than the inhale did.

You'll instantly be more relaxed and you'll also be sitting much straighter. A very good part of the cross legged pose you see many of the yogis and deities in is that is straightens the spine and makes this breathing easier. One good way to sit that is not too hard and also does not look too out of place in public is to just raise one leg up in a cross-legged position as the other hangs down normally - this is enough to straighten the spine.

Sitting and straight spine aside you should be able to incorporate the full diaphragmatic breath into any part of daily life; Waiting for a bus, elevator, web page to load, any time when you may be fretting, toe-tapping or stressing - breathe instead.

This breath control is very calming and healthy for mind, spirit and body.

It is useful to be aware of breath, this constant flow of life, you breathing from birth to death, is often short and shallow and this is always when you are stressed. Make correct breathing a habit then naturally you will be more relaxed and able to handle life.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

42 the answer to life the universe and everything

Your only goal in life be you a runner a couch potato a family guy a hobo is to recognize that you are infinite - beyond this nothing matters.

You just have to, by any means, have that realization hit you in its undeniable fullness, then all is bliss.





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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

I am infinity having an experience

I am, that is what I am, who I am, I am infinity having an experience, one of an infinite experiences but I am infinity having an experience, I just am.

There is no world with a me in it, that old idea I was sold as a kid - not true! that was waaay false.

I am infinity having an experience, not the world and me in it but me, this, experience, being, the universe, raaaaaaaaaaaa, intense being, looking at myself, the world, myself as my jelly eyes react my energy acts and bursts and flows and dances and experiences itself through me, for me, by me.

aaaaaaaaah this is wonder beyond words! Unsayable, unspeakable, blissful being!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the way to fix the world is to just be the peace you wish to see

I keep finding myself rewording this very same point over and over. It echoes back to me when I see people living their lives and commenting on the world as is.

Logic seems wishy washy when it is used to point out truthful paradoxes and this is perhaps why I try to reword this point over again. It is circular logic but I feel true in heart.

Here are 3 more attempts to add to my list of previous efforts:

'You are best to have no desire to alter the world or yourself one bit (unless the altering of yourself is in line with this point). The wish to alter the world is the very same wish that lead to all the problems that are seen as requiring fixing.'

'The desire to alter the world is the very same desire that lead to the problems in the world and therefore to leave well alone until balance is regained is the only sane way back to perfection. (and in a way therefore, no matter how bad the world can seem, it is in fact perfect as is but for the constant attempts at fixing it).'

'Seeing the world as imperfect and requiring a fix is precisely the same attitude that lead others before us to screw the world up. Realize it as perfect and not something that can be shaped by human desire and melt back this very instant to that very perfection you desire in the future.'

In line with the point I am making I shall now not attempt to alter it again.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

iMind

iMind

No one knows what is in my head so it may as well be nothing.

I could invent a world of stress and have it here or I could just have nothing,

from the outside who'd know what I have in here?

To be thoughtless, careless, to do things we see as dumb that have effect on others or the environment - NO, not this kind of thoughtlessness!

Emptiness of thoughts, no thoughts at all, or no attachment to those that naturally float by - That is the way to Be.

It all eventually goes the same way and has the same outcome whether I sit in a bundle of thoughts or none at all.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Imaginary conversation with your boss.

Dear Boss,

You are aware of my dedication and strong work ethic. I can be relied upon to do my best and this has lead you to place much responsibility on me. Of late things have become a little out of hand and I must raise these issues.

I have decided the best method would be a conversation that neither of us took part in. The reasons are 1) time is precious and we have little enough without spending in a meeting 2) There is only one possible outcome.

Here is the conversation we do not need to have but should be aware of nearly having:

I enter and sit.

You provide a little small talk and attempt to relax the atmosphere. Seeing I am relaxed you give a little speech on how great I am and the future of the company. Hoping I have lessened the acidity of my complaint you allow me to speak.

I Raise the issues I have in a deliberate and succinct manner. I offer a few versions of a more desirable way but concede that given the circumstances things could never have been different.

You offer some solutions along the lines of "Could you have..? and "You could have.."

I respectfully tell you why in the current flow of things those solutions could never have been.

You consolidate and you offer the option to come to you with any future problems and you assure me that things will change. You thank me for raising the issues and for my dedication to the company and my job. You wish me and my family the best.

I thank you and leave.

The result is that things do not alter one bit but I feel better for speaking and you show up for golf 30 minutes late.

..so to avoid the need for that conversation. There it was.

You may copy and paste that to your boss as required.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Pyjama Dharma

90% of the reason I made the blog Pyjama Dharma was because it was a good name. The other 10% was a place to put lazy posts. As it happens I am now too lazy to maintain that blog and admit it was more name than substance.

Pyjama Dharma is now closed and so here are the highlights of the posts that appeared there:








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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the study of metaphysics

i did metaphysics until I realized there was no me to do it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Someone killed, something tragic, something wonderful and something magic..

have all happened a million times before over millennia.

Don't sweat the small stuff and also note that, given time, the big stuff is small stuff too.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

up's and down's

Don't judge a whole year by just one day.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Seasquirt

All the fuss it takes to feed a human is quite laughable to the seasquirt. I read about the seasquirt in a book some time ago so can not remember the name to reference it properly.

The basic life of the seasquirt is to be born and then find a place to take root. This is the hardest job it does in its life, find a place to hang. Once the seasquirt has found a place then it takes a hold of the rock and sets about reducing its brain size. It really does this, it has done the hardest thing it will ever need to do so it casts off this unwelcome baggage of excess brain that after all will just consume power for nothing.

On reducing brain size the seaquirt takes to squirting. It is basically a tube shaped muscle that sucks in sea water and squirts it out again. In squirting, all of the nutrients it will ever need are pulled into its body and all of the unwanted waste is expelled. Its whole body is mouth, gut and, well, the mouth is also the anus.

Perfect.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Making a Difference

All the problems in the world arise from someone attempting to fix something that was not in fact broken. Faulty perception leads to their desire to fix nature, which leads to imbalance.

Being anti-this is to be pro-that. Pro-this is anti that. Anti or pro something is the very nature of the war they wish to stop. Conflict comes as they set up their desire vs the supposed reality.

Only in embracing conflict as a whole and seeing what it is made of can you in fact quash it by the root.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Non-Doing, Meditation and Slacking

I slack, therefore I am.

Sit on your ass in the US, your arse in the UK, your whatever-you-want-to-call-it in wherever-you-are and you'll be a slacker.

Sit back on your haunches in China, Japan, India, South East Asia or many other places and you are held in high esteem.

If you run around doing lots of stuff in the UK, USA, or other such nations they'll congratulate you for it. The same activity in India and they'll wonder who put a chilly up your whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Is it simply that it is much hotter in India and so sitting is more sensible, or is it because sitting is seen as achieving in one continent and lazy in another that this divide occurs? You could well argue that in a cold nation like England people were motivated by harsh conditions to build houses, develop, invent stuff, get drunk and pick fights (both in the pub and over the globe) and that in India people were more able to sit out under the warm starry night philosophising over just the right manner to sit still. But then what of China? There they have every weather condition from sun burn to snowstorm and sitting is a well held virtue.

How is this laziness justified? Well in a way it is not as why should you justify something you have no problem with? and in a way it is justified with such notions as Wu Wei and Zen.

Non-Doing

Wu Wei can be interpreted many ways even by the Chinese and so then we can interpret it in as many ways as we like. This is how such classic texts as the Taoist Tao Te Ching do so well in mass publication - they are open-ended and can be interpreted any-which-way by anyone open to read them. Wu Wei can be seen as pure slacking. It can also be philosopised over deeply to mean allowing the universe to do as it does and not interfering in that with your silly little head.

You're late for the bus, it pulls away - a straight runs after it, a slacker waits for the next one. Each person then claims their method brings about the intended future (getting to destination on time or meeting that stranger who later became your ex-wife) - both were in fact the only future there was ever going to be as - we don't do the universe. It does us. Which pats the slacker firmly on their back and justifies their late arrival to work that day.

Yes the slacker is right but by the same token, so is the straight. But it is the understanding of the vast infinity in flow, and being able to dance along with it that makes slacking the way and the objective.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

if an erection falls in the forest do you go blind?

Another good post over at Son Rivers blog.

He asks "if the body falls in a forest and there's not a single identifying thought about it, are you really dying?"

The mind ties the body to the idea of you when truly you are neither the mind or the body.

When infinity dresses as a mouse and loses itself in the game of being a mouse it plays and wins. When infinity dresses as a human it often surfs this wave of being lost in the game and wondering what this game is all about - mind made suffering.

When infinity dresses as a politician it plays the game so convincingly that it gets all concerned that there is no game at all and life is deadly serious. In this guise it will enforce rules, justify taxes, control over others, even war in the name of upholding the rules of the game.

When infinity casts off these shells it is always the same once again.

When a man knows he is playing the part of himself and is not so attached to the roll, he lives freely and can fall in the forest or dance in the rain, no loss no gain.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

by Son Rivers

Read the original post on the original page by the original author

Quote ""

a leaf falls and the leaf is mourned until the branch is seen as source of leaves

a branch falls and the branch is mourned until the tree is seen as source of branch

a tree falls and the tree is mourned until the earth is seen as source of tree

the earth falls and the earth is mourned until the universe is seen as source of earth

the universe falls and the universe is mourned until nothing is seen as source of universe

nothing falls and nothing is mourned

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao like gravity

A nice analogy is that Tao is like gravity in that you can see the effects but not the thing itself.

The problem with the analogy is that Tao is not a thing that acts, it is all. One would need to redefine gravity away from the common model to draw a clearer comparison.

If you took gravity as, not a force that acted on objects, but instead as the natural way that objects were drawn to be near one another, then you draw closer. Still no good though.

We can't talk of Tao or draw analogies as it is beyond that. It must be remembered that analogies and descriptions are of Yin, Yang or Te, not Tao, which is beyond description.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The dysfunction of "you are"

"You are that" "That art thou" ...........and so on.

So the reader says "Yes, I am infinite, I am the universe, " ... even "I am God"

How wrong this is!!

...but also how right.

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WRONG SEEING:

You are: A fake, idea, separate self - claiming it is perfection.

RIGHT SEEING:

You are: Awareness, infinite, Tao. That is all you are or ever were. Now you manifest as a trillion forms and you have dropped the false association with one of them.

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Who are you trying to convince?

It is this fake self that is attempting to convince itself that it is infinite. What a joke. On casting the false aside then you are then and only then your true self - and nothing is gained by this. Nothing for the ego to hold or claim.

Unperfectable, awareness itself, burning intensely under its own flame, forming magic for its own enjoyment, dressed as a naked monkey who reforms, and reforms in a dance of creativity.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Awareness

When trapped for a word, I often choose awareness as the root, non-dual, state - that which we are.

Consciousness has the obvious dual notion of unconsciousness as life, has death.

Awareness could be said to have unawareness as its opposite but in the case of being unaware, the person is always aware of something else. In sleep, in a coma even, the person may be said to be unconscious, but not unaware. Unaware of surroundings maybe but not unaware of being, they still tick, they still "are". There is still a root that preexists all states so that they may reemerge, wake up and say "I was asleep".

The voyage the body makes where in a female form it produces a new body self inside its own body. Given time and development that 2-body body seems to separate, at least over the spatial dimensions and it becomes mother and child - truly just an ongoing process of the human system getting on. There are not 6billion humans but 6billion apparent bits of me. There are not a trillion species but so many versions of me. The lines drawn of baby-person-death are mind made and ignore how this process required all other beings, we may say especially mum.

My mum split in two and now she is a little wrinkly and she is a man. She also split again a couple of years after so she is actually a little wrinkly, a man and a younger lady too. Her love and care here could be demonstrated over and over by her sacrifices and the numerous times she has put her new bodies over her own bodies needs. But that perspective is all too human.

A tree in an ongoing organism, during the life of one body it spreads over the land as new bodies who do the same. This treebeing is an ongoing flow. When one tree seems to die it is still very much alive. This tree is as old as time and lives forever by dying. There are not so many trees, just one that flows on, changes form.

How the tree "knows" or does what it does, it just does - Same with us. Sometimes one of our bodies has a special talent and it is held high in appreciation by others who take pleasure from the talented ones gifts. Sometime a body is a burden to others but we carry that weight, we do our best for them as we are one sharing this infinite unfolding transition.

There is life unfolding, never dying just taking new form. The root to all of this is the non-dual awareness. Tao. Infinite, birthless, deathless.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao