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

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

2 comments:

Sandeep Kodam said...

nice one...thanks

The Rambling Taoist said...

I hadn't really thought of it in those terms, but yes!