Ever Felt You're Being Stared At - Your Mind Is Not In Your Head

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao Essence Zen Rot

It can't be touched, seen, tasted, smelled or heard. Not sensed one bit. It must be nonsense, make no sense, not sensible, or you're not sensitive to it.

It was what was when you were being a new born baby, when you were making no sense of the world. You were taught separation, gradually, taught to differentiate, name and categorize things, you were acted towards as if you were a thing with a name and in time you adopted the name and accepted your separation. By your adolescence your sense of self was so concrete that you'd spend nine hours in ten dedicated to your sense of self, comparing it to others, adapting it, dressing it, wishing for it to get naked with and sense some carnal essence. The true self that was being the baby, was being the adolescent, had been ignored like the glass of a TV screen is missed when characters enthrall.

In later life you saw the world in a new way, the seemingly concrete sense of self was seen to be just a sense and perhaps even nonsense. A wisdom was born that all was one and that this sense of separation was constructed, acts of this constructed self were more often seen as play acting, puppets on the stage, puppets who'd forgotten the same puppeteer had a hand in both.

In time a seeking was undertaken to discover the lost self but the methods and even the doer of the seeking were rooted in a world, that of concept, so traps lay at every turn. A simple truth emerged though, so clear, so obvious, so simple, this, is it. Sitting or walking one day, or in some other simple act, painting, gardening, washing potatoes, you were struck. Behind the watcher was an infinite oneness that did not judge, name, sense, rejoice or complain, it enveloped the totality. The being you were when you were a new born child.

In this complete emptiness you were present and whole, yet soon, natural habits began to whirl up from a lifetime of beliefs that only the learned program of 'me in the world' was real. A change had occurred though, the programmed self had meet and been struck by a timeless self and the programmed self had a natural attitude to this, it wanted to be, have or use this new discovery to draw it from suffering.

It seemed now perhaps that these two selves were incompatible or living them was unhealthy, the new books you were drawn to spoke of the constructed self as negative and the true self to be something to be sought with all you could muster, in fact the wise on these subjects said there was nothing more important than the discovery of the true self. You thought it through, hadn't you rediscovered it by doing nothing though? Hadn't it just made itself apparent one day through no effort? Wasn't it already the case at birth? You saw this to be the case, oneness was the case, the problem then? Was the constructed self!

Now Zen sickness had set in its rot. You tried to remove you. This terrible joke had you in its grip. Stories of great blissful ones who had achieved this mighty feet of ridding themselves of the constructed self leaving them in everlasting bliss, fueled the very egoic self onwards in the task equivalent to a knife trying to cut itself out of existence. You'd been better off when you were unaware of the true self, you had the act well played, you were the best there'd ever been at playing you. You could not go back though, a window had opened and you could not live this side of it without its presence drawing you to the other side.

So far this story is, in a general case, the story of the common spiritual seeker. What follows is perhaps and hopefully what it takes to end the journey.

You can see both selves as you are the glass in the window, not a third self, but the non-self. You can look out into the projected and constructed world of the conceptual self in the world and you can look inward at the essence. No need to affirm or deny either, the magic is that you are infinite Tao and by way of infinity you can act a role where you are separate. To act the role convincingly and to provide infinity with a show of ceaseless wonder, you forget your true nature and you live out a role where you are not in control. Feel privileged that you can see both ways, enjoy what the show brings and live free of fear as you're, as you came to realize by peeling potatoes, infinite oneness. Tao.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Guilt!

Is it guilt keeping you from the ultimate freedom?

"I wish to be free!" Said the pupil "What is keeping you from this freedom?" Asked the master "......nothing is!" Said the pupil as he realized his true nature

Years after this old Zen story people are not freed by simply realizing that nothing binds them as, something is binding them! The world has become so much more complicated, religions and beliefs of the common man, such as those passed on via the media, bind people in guilt. Fundamentally, ask anyone, all they want is happiness and the avoidance of suffering, yet this simple drive that drives all humans, and many animals even, has been made taboo. In seeking what is wanted people are reminded to consider the needy and the environment. You'd be showered in stones for claiming that the needy need no help and nature can manage alone.

How has this come to be? How can anyone be born into a world and then require charity or support? The world can sustain us all, where did this problem come from? It has been manufactured. Naturally there is plenty, but, by design, it was stuck in a box and the system, brought about to be now commonly accepted as normal, is that we are to buy what we need or await charity. - Madness.

Now when the common man, spiritual in nature as we are, follows the base directives of his human code, seek to be happy and avoid suffering, he's riddled in guilt as, there are billions who can't eat! Think of them! Well hang on a second, we shout, I'm a living being on this living planet, I did not subscribe to ideas older than me (which I therefore can not be legally bound to as I was under the legal age of consent when they were made) that say nature is an asset owned by some and to be sold with the dire consequence of global poverty.

Before any law or statue be made or upheld then the freedom to seek happiness, avoid suffering, and eat freely from earth must first be upheld as inalienable.

In fact that freedom exists and all ideas that it does not have no real standing.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Guilt! ...ends

A mentioned in the post titled Guilt! there are reasons and ways, millions of them, that excuse us from freedom. Things such as guilt over our basic need for happiness, guilt that arises when we consider those worse off than ourselves. Who is the poorest person here on earth, where is the saddest caged animal, which of all the ongoing wars is most terrible, which injustice or act of oppression most terrible, who do we help first in disaster? Must we solve these before we get to being happy ourselves? Must we allow only the poorest to get what they need before the rest of us? Compassion alone is quite a trap when not intertwined with wisdom.

There is a natural draw towards happiness in us all which can't be stopped. The wisest level of happiness is contentedness and this has been said again and again in Buddhism and Taoism. Too little is bondage, too much is bondage. In the middle as we are then we should all be content and only a shift in our seeing can bring about that freedom. It is apparent to us all that suffering and financial richness are complimentary and apparent also that they pre existed this birth and will live on after death. We will likely have ideas on how to fix these issues and we will certainly have views on how they could be better. This is the case also with war, politics, animal rights, workers rights, aiding the sick, the aged and so on. There are situations that outlive us, possible fixes, certain better ways, compassion draws us to thought, aid or charity, and only wisdom combined with this can lead us to freedom.

In the land just to the borders of wise compassion live other viewpoints such as "well we're alright... I can't think about all that... They'll be ok... What can I do?... and so on. These views are selfish and we don't wish to leave compassion and wisdom for selfishness, that would not allow for contented freedom at all. We likely see that these views are part of the perceived problem. Our ultimate aim is freedom and to get there we need to consolidate our issues on this meta problem, or do we?

As it is us seeking the freedom and release then perhaps the wisdom and compassion need first to be provided to ourselves. To see that we make up for a fraction of all of this and hey, it's not us fighting, oppressing, stealing from nature to leave natures humans short of her gifts. We do though here balance and perhaps make excuses for a certain selfishness and I'm aware that can be said of any solution. Wisdom and compassion for ourselves does though have absolute validity and absolute necessity. Should we not provide ourselves with this then we can not possibly extend it to the world and we will be as much a part of the problem as any other thing we cite.

We only care for others behavior (good or bad) if we are not content in ourselves and so for that contentedness to be the case we stop the urge to change the world and we look inwards. Inwards we see a human like any other who wants happiness and the avoidance of suffering. We add to this that seeking happiness is the definition of sadness and we see wisely that the world has been this way our whole life and much longer so while compassionate to this we accept that only an inseeing compassion can benefit. Finally we see that the greatest freedom emerges from this; that; We can not change the world, only our attitude towards it. The greatest freedom comes from being free from the desire to prove ourselves free.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

wise a heartfelt talk on oneness

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Age?

How old are you?

Which bit?

What on earth do you mean by which bit?

Well my spine and my teeth are about 7 years old. Some internal organs range from 3 to 5. The bulk of me is not much more than a year at most and much of me is very new. Since I started answering this question some parts of me have been replaced with parts now only seconds old.

I didn't mean that actually.

Oh, sorry, I got you wrong. I see you must have meant another thing, ok. I'm infinite, I have no finite age as I gave rise to time. I am. I am being, awareness, Tao.

No, really, I just need to know your age in years. Since you were born. Seriously Sir, I'm just doing my job and need to know if you are old enough to rent this video.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Information Singularity - LOVE

When it was foreseen they called it The Information Singularity.

The Information Singularity is the point where the amount of information and the ability to process it both increase at such rates that an infinite amount of information appears in a finite time - this time will be in the next decade.

For now we have been used to computer speeds and processing abilities doubling every so often. Your computer would go out of date in a year, then 6 months, then 3, then almost as soon as you'd left the shop. We have also seen how parents asked children how to program the VCR timer, then how to remove a virus, then how to set up their smart phone. Kids are so good at adapting to new things that the age a child needs to be to interact with technology and their marked superiority to adults is also moving towards its own near zero singularity. Technology could well be linked to, controlled by, and relayed to our minds, by our minds and so a new born child may possibly be born into the world where multiple languages, martial arts, mathematical skills and so on are fed to the developing brain of newborns even developing babies in the womb.

If this sounds far fetched this is simply because your brain is getting rigid with age and further reason why children adapt so well to new technology.

Open Source is what has given us Linux, Google (at least parts of what they do), Android, the Creative Commons license, open scientific development, open forums, TED, and a host more. We have developed a sharing of information and the universe is approaching a point where it will be able to store, adapt and process this information. Many illusions will be shattered.

Will the universe attain self knowledge? Will humans realize complete compassion for themselves and all life? I can only foresee good from all of this as, when we know all about all (though this will still be limited as we can never know the knowing of the knowing), then the result can only be love.

How will people promote war and sell weapons when we know for sure that we are all one?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

have you ever done a thing 2

In an infinite universe it can be of no surprise at all that some apparent forms believe they are "doing it".

The next time you're turning left, turn right.

Or was the decision already made?

Ok, the next time you are about to turn one way, go the other.

The next time you decide to drop something, don't.

On the next beat of your heart, give it an extra special pump.

See that thought that just arose? Did you plan it?

Stop thinking. Decide to do it.

Decide to get younger.

Make a conscious decision to sleep for two minutes starting now.

Write down one thing you've ever done by your own free will that you can prove absolutely was the case.

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Empty your boat, admit there is no driver. Does Tao do? If it does it must do in opposition to something else. For you to "do" then you must be something other than Tao.

To argue for or against this is to follow your true nature and this will be the only thing you could have done as, you are the dance of Tao.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the universe and Tao have no form

The universe and Tao have no size shape or form.

Language has no real meaning.

Just because you were taught to say Bob when someone asked your name or tree when you saw such an apparent form, this does not give reality to either the noise you made or the event pointed at. It does not mean that a tree can float alone in space and bear fruit.

Having the words good and bad does not mean such things exist anywhere. Where does the nose become the cheek? Is there a line splitting the two or does the absence of a name for the area between mean that there is nothing there?

Too caught up in language, and failing to remember that the name is not the named, people can easily find themselves incarcerated in brain cells.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Where were you before Birth?

I was an ever ceaseless changing and I transformed to a peopling universing. In which changing form I changed form again and again and I seemed at times to be a separate person.

In this form I noted that all around changes, nothing remains the same. Weather, apparent forms, light becoming dark becoming light, always shifting.

So too this apparent viewer, always shifting, pulsating, vibrating and so it came to be seen: I was still as I'd always been, as before my birth, now as I will be after, an ever changing.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Being Pleasure

Just being there right now. Being, is precisely the Tao.

This is the ultimate realization, the ultimate place to be, the purest thing to see.

All action you hope and dream for, all the alternatives to now, all the future wishes and activities, be they for financial comfort or spiritual enlightenment. Not one of them can provide you a lasting state like that which is behind your nose as a result of that which is under your nose.

Being itself is wonder beyond any measure of pleasure.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

did you ever do a thing?

Did you decide to take up residence in your mothers womb?
Did you decide to open your eyes? Did you decide to see shape and form? Did you decide to hear?
Did you decide that sprouts would taste bad?
Did you decide when to start walking?
Did you decide that you'd be pulled towards earth and not repelled?
Did you decide when to have the best day of your life?
Did you decide when to have your most embarrassing moment?
Did you pick the right apples at the market?
Did you choose whether to pass or fail your test?
Did you know by the second when thunder would strike?
Did you decide which color would be your favorite?
Did you decide by the decimal place when to sleep?

Did you ever do a thing?

Do you have one example of where you ever dictated a single thing in your life?

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Watching Tao Dance

Two meditators faced each other and after periods of silence, occasionally spoke.

I see the happening that you call eyes are slightly open and occasionally flutter.

I see the happening that you call breath occasionally deepening and occasionally fading.

I see the happening that you call neck occasionally rolling under the weight of the head.

I see occasional movements at the waste and in the legs as you make for comfort.

It all seems to be happening, one big happening, all by itself. I can only note parts, parts I make with my mind.

I see the happening too, here it is, just presenting itself. Parts are fleeting ideas taken from the unbroken one dancing, the uni verse.

I see thoughts stirring you up.

I feel them, I'm relaxing now.

I see you attempting to relax.

[a long silence]

There for a while there was complete relaxation.

Still a movement though, the dance never stops!

Were I this relaxed at work I'd be as out of touch with Tao as a shark in a bath. And were I as crazy as I need to be at work when I dine with my wife then I'd soon be single.

Yes each move is the expression of Tao, the right one in each moment.

I see you still now but I know your heart is pumping, your lungs rising, your energy pulsing.

This is Tao, just as a savage dog fight is too.

May we remember that no matter our so called actions, it is only ever an appearance, a little abstracted happening, in the never ending dance of one.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Dogen, Chuang Tzu and Confucius entered a bar.

The bar tender asked them what they would like to drink and Confucius thought for a second as he was not sure he should drink. During these seconds of thought Dogen struck Confucius on the upper right arm with a stick and shouted "Your thoughts take out of line with Tao, wake up!". Chuang Tzu laughed and sipped on a glass of wine.

Dogan laughed at Chuang Tzu and wondered how he had a drink already and why he had not offered one to the others. Chuang Tzu explained that he was a regular in this bar and so the drink was placed in front of him almost before he took a seat most evenings. After getting more drinks for the three of them they moved to a table near a window, it was still light outside and there were activities to entertain them in the cold street.

Confucius noted some old people who appeared to be in love walking one way and in the opposite direction some local youths seemingly up to no good. He began to state how society would deteriorate if the youth did not take wisdom as their guide. Chuang Tzu laughed again and slid back in his seat. Dogan leaned over the table to the relaxed Chuang Tzu and said "Look here old boy. You're getting drunk too quickly, don't you see that your drink dulls your senses from the pure being within?". Chuang burped, stood up, turned towards the bar (and within the motion farted), then strode over to buy another round. When he got to the bar he asked for a large jug of wine. Heading back to the table he thumped the vessel down so that it splashed.

Dogan was sitting very still, his first drink was still barely touched and he appeared peaceful. Confucius appeared in deep thought still watching passers by. Chaung asked Dogan "Have you ever entered the forest at night and seen a tree which deserved a good spanking for not being right in the way it stood?", he turned to Confucius, "Have you even seen a group of rats around the rubbish cart and questioned their organization?". He poured his glass until it was brim full, swigged it back and settled in his seat awaiting answers.

Dogan was quick to reply and said "No twig is out of place in the forest and no bird song is wrong". Confucius was in deep thought, partly over what he had been asked but also still over the people he saw going by outside in the street. Chuang Tzu turned to Dogan "Quite" he said "No leaf out of place. Can we question man and say that one of them is out of line with Tao?". Dogan looked at Confucius and then back at Chuang "No, it seems no matter what we do, that is natures expression. We can feel sorry for some folk though." As both men smiled they looked back at Confucius.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Cause and Effect

Because and Defect

Have you ever taken an event you had an opinion over and traced the line of cause and effect back to the root cause? If you have then you've either decided; Tao is defective or cause and effect is a false model.

Case One: Tao is defective. Now this case was a bit of a joke but maybe you exist. (see later).

Case Two. Cause and effect is a false model.

What is causing me to write this? You need a me. So it's my Mum's fault!?

For any cause-effect relationship you assume two points, the cause and the effect, but all causes in this model are the effect of a previous cause. You must eventually conclude that there was some beginning to all of this and it made a mistake. Ah you see, you did fit Case Number One after all.

No ok, back to Case Two. There can not be a complete cause and effect model that does not have a creator and a defective one at that. Cause and effect is flawed as an explanation to anything. This being the case you can not blame anyone or anything for the way they are.

I've said in many ways and at many times that: Life just seems to happen, and you can't alter it one bit. The only thing you can alter, if even this, is your attitude to "what is".

Seems to be this, seems to be that... Love it it or hate it, seems to be the only choice you have.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Someone is Wrong!!

See more from XKCD


Time to write a letter to the editor to complain!

If someone seems to be wrong, they're not really, as everything and everyone is just an expression of the whole.

What perhaps is really meant is that "I'd feel wrong doing that".

(....and they'd probably feel out of place being you too..)

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Tao that can be Taoed

The apple that can be told does not taste of apple.

Here's to the pointless activity of talking about Tao! We all love to do it.

No apple is the same, taste, texture, skin, form - We call them all by the same name though, apple.

No experience, no person, no act is ever the same. Even the supposedly rigid things in our lives like computer programs, clocks and machines don't repeat actions perfectly over and again.

"Windows error: it seems you were in the middle of something important. Whatever it was, it's gone and there is no going back. Click OK to lose all of your work and never see it again. OK."

We are determined that words have solid unchanging meanings, we label things, even processes, as if they were perfectly repeatable and only ever the same.

Your actual experience though is of an ever changing reality.

Are you a process or a thing?

The sun is seen as and named as a thing. On brief inspection though the raging furnace it is is seen to be a rapidly altering process. There is no difference between a lump of concrete or rock and the raging sun apart from relative speed of process.

Is summer a thing or process, is a storm a thing or process, is the battle between cobra and mongoose a thing or process, is your heart a thing or process, are you a thing or process?

It's all an ongoing flux with no fixed form. A process, indefinable. Not the name.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

"I think therefore I am", should just have been "I am"

"I think therefore I am."

There is an I who is in thought and an I who is am-ing. More grammatically there is an I who is in thought and a being (I am).

The I who is in thought is either: 'I being in thought' or 'I am thinking'. The I am or the beingness precedes the whole event.

The statement could be rightly reduced to "I am".

If it is not reduced to simply being or I am then it reads as follows:

"I am thinking therefore I am"

Which is circular, if not slightly backwards reasoning. After all who is the I am who is thinking if they are not the very same one being?

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Mind over (doesn't) matter

Terminology traps. Is it mind, is it brain, the grand Mind? Is it ego, is it anything else? Does mind come first or does the brain produce mind?

None of these are really problems, but for the dualistic nature of language.

There is simply thinking. Thinker and thought are not separate.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

There is only oneness, Tao.

Enlightenment is the acceptance that there is no one to be enlightened and as the seeker dissolves so too that which was sought is no longer separate.

There is only oneness, Tao.

• Biologically it could be the time delay that the front brain requires to perform its operations that causes humans to be so self conscious and to feel strong separation.
• Linguistically it could be that as we grew up everything we learned was in a language of duality and so we can not think in concepts or explain idea that are not dual.
• Culturally it could be that generations before us have lived in suffering believing they must fear an almighty, that life is preparation for afterlife, that choices are made and reward or punishment ensue.
• Socially it could be that we act in hierarchies, groups, pairs or alone and in all of these roles we reaffirm the false belief that we are a separate part in the greater whole.
• Philosophically it could be that we echo ideas that "I think therefore I am" but fail to question how there seem to be two I's in the same sentence. We trap ourselves in Noun does Verb even when the active and the passive are one.
• Politically we are told that you can drag a cart with two opposing horses and make valuable progress.

For whatever reason they feel it, feeling separate, people will seek reconnection.

There is only oneness, there is only Tao, appearing as whatever it appears to be and it is nothing more than an appearance seeming to happen. All that comes goes, nothing that arises in mind has any permanence or reality. All arising will dissolve as the the source is an apparent arising too.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Learning to speak in the non person tense

The being speaks absent of person. There is no personal pronoun, there is no action then attached as no doer. This seems to be the prime Wu Wei, non doing as there is no one to do.

Life living, being happening. No one alive, no happening to anyone. No personal story, no attachment to events or things, primarily as there is no one to produce a relative.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

being not trying

You were once a child with no expectations, no elsewhere, no if only. In time you became a slightly older child who had expectations, places you should be, wishes, desires and regrets.

You sought what was not and you sought reward.

Return to the presence, realize there is no where to be, no where to go, no thing to have. Returning to that which you were, dropping the habitual urges.

This reconnection, simple, effortless, not done. Completing yourself by receiving a gift not given, content of a meal not eaten, loved by the love of loving.

Being not trying to be.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The symbiosis of our Dolby Stereo brains.

Symbiosis is where two animals live together in such a way as their lives depend on one another. Birds and bees are a remote symbiosis but jellyfish are a very close symbiosis. In a jellyfish there are two animals, the animal which can float and digest food and the animal which can sting prey. There really are two animals living as one, biologists will tell you more but I'll have to move on to my next point.

Our brains have been thought to operate different sides of our bodies and have distinct functions. New discoveries now tell us that functions are in truth mixed over the hemispheres but distinctions do still remain. Einstein noted how we are ruled by the lesser good half of our brains, that which splits things into bits and groups and that we really should give more attention to the half of our brain which sees wholeness. Neuroscience is proving his little notion is near true, one side of our mind does work on splitting things into bits while the other does work on the wholeness, but we have a 3rd part. The two functions are very very immediate and reactionary, the 3rd part of our brain at the front operates by sitting back a little from the immediacy of things.

We have then a Dolby Stereo brain, and as we can place a sound in the room by spotting the difference in time it takes the sound to reach each ear so too we have stereoscopic thought.

Now all the brain is for is movement, things which don't move don't have brains. The sea squirt begins life with a brain and it moves about, later in life it finds one place to stay for the rest of its life where it lives more as a plant than an animal. As soon as it find the place to stay it digests its own brain as its first meal. This is really true, please again seek the advice of a biologist on the how's and the why's. Our brain is big and complex because it must move hands, a tongue and it must drive a big floppy gangly body through life. It is very very difficult to make a robot do any one task we can do, years of programming, but we can do many things at once and adjust for variables. Our brain is for movement and, it's pretty damn good at it.

When we look at the world then we use one half of our mind to break things into bits, one half to see the whole event, and the frontal section we use to step back and build possible futures and outcomes. We use another part of the brain (don't ask me which) to take these 3 views on the same event and decide our best move. This is Dolby Stereo thought.

With this new information in mind we can possibly see how different people see the world in different ways. A person who is "Part dominant" will have differing views over a person who is "Whole dominant". The part dominant will insist that things have strict order and can be organized and the whole dominant will be more aware of the symbiosis which the delicate natural balance of our planet depends upon. One with a very decent frontal section will be able to map out possible futures where the part dominant rules the planet or if the whole dominant were able to bring back the Yin Yang balance a little and move us towards the future Einstein and the Eastern Philosophers would have hoped for - a future where we think and operate as the whole and not as competing parts.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Have you ever seen an Ego?

Have you ever seen an ego?

Surely not but you have seen egoistical behaviour. Ego is a behaviour or thought pattern and not a thing in itself. Isn't it now more simple to see how to drop the ego? It is not a thing we're stuck with but a conditioned or untamed thought process.

"I'm not happy but if I got that X, then I'd be happy." - Says the egotistical mind pattern.

"I is nothing but happiness and this is only missed because of that egotistical mind pattern." - Says the true self.

The more we sit with inner peace the more we can observe that constantly lacking ego popping up demanding medication - and we can see it as what it is and let it go.

Following or answering each and every whim of the ego will lead to deep sadness as true peace is our true being, the ever present stillness within.

Luckily ego is not a thing you are stuck with but a behaviour pattern which can be unlearned.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Free Will?

I was unable to alter the title of this post. I could easily edit it at any moment, but it seems I'm not about to. And who is this I who could or could not and who wrote?

Were free will the truth of the matter, then wouldn't millions wake up, late, tomorrow feeling great, skip work and go flying? Wouldn't they then return to their rich life and have superbly passionate sex with the partner of their dreams who never ever farted?

Most people wish or will for a life situation quite different from the one they have, do they then have free will? Can anyone reading this, have not have started reading it? Can you relive that last embarrassing moment and avoid the slip up? Why with free will did you make a complete tit of yourself last Tuesday?

Given that you can't change the past, or do anything other than what you're doing now, or shape the future, then is this "I" you say you are anything? Is there a separate agent there or if free will is not the case aren't "you" just one of trillions of illusions inferred by one indivisible wobble? To be continued (?)

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Common Potato

Are you the action or the replay?

Are you the light collected by the the iris or the prejudiced playback?

What is it to recite that which may have been before (in your opinion) and speak of it as it were a solid immutable truth, rather than to carve a unique path which is what it is?

Can you build an ego you're happy with on the works of others or would you rather stand alone right in your shoes?

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Normal is great

Enlightenment could be a thing of the past. By the old standards, most of us are probably enlightened or more. Smarter too.

I say this because children understand gravity and teenagers understand that E=m, maybe they don't understand the maths, but they intuitively know. Einstein got there by intuition, the maths came later. Lau Tzu got there by intuition (he never read a book on it), Buddha too. In those times, there were many people who didn't get these things, they thought that angry gods brought rain and famine, that the world was flat and things moved down.

Now we don't, we're generally more enlightened than before. We don't on the whole believe in gods, we do have more intelligent concepts for things than we used to. This is said even given that in a few years we will be exposed as dumb by new thinkers, for now though, we're good.

What is this enlightenment people seek, what is this perfection, this release? Just exposure or admission of an inner imbalance? Not to worry, that's being human.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Appeal of String Theory - It is Philosophical

String Theory has great appeal because it gets right to the core with little missing, no room for error, no room for god or mystery and is very philosophical nature. This philosophical leaning is what leads many scientists to dismiss it "unprovable, like philosophy" they say.

Strings are so minute you could never imagine, fantastically smaller than any particle you've ever been asked to imagine. Excellently for me string theory drops the old Newtonian idea of 'little balls spinning around one another' for good. Removing the conundrum of the infinite regression of splitting something only to remain with smaller parts you now wish to spilt.

Strings are either loops, like the one causing gravity and witnessed by school children who place iron filings near a magnet, or like open two ended strings. Strings vibrate, they vibrate in 11 dimensions and we see the result of 3, feel the result of 1 (gravity) and count our days in another, time. We are not sure we interact with the others, maybe we do but until then we'll say they are dark, unseeable, in nature.

The vibrations can ring on so many notes we'll never hear but some common vibration patterns will seem like standing waves to us and children will be able to rub some off a balloon and play with the static charge and scientists will be able to smash some waves and call the resulting burst of energy a particle. These waves have set amplitudes so lead to assumptions of a group of particles with repeatedly constant values.

There are no parts or particles in string theory though only a reason for why we think we see them. String theory is all about a vibration. My only remaining questions as I marvel at it are: what vibrating in what and what of awareness? How are we aware of all this? Are strings thought patterns in the great awareness? Does this now fall flat at yet another infinite regression? Maybe opening up those final dimensions we can answer these questions.

Unfortunately, I'm not that smart.

Fortunately, I'm not that smart... Maybe the mystery is much better than the answer.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Darryl Bailey

Dismantling the Fantasy

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Chocolate Tzu

I was mulling over String Theory whilst eating some chocolate cake when I accidentally awoke to the enlightenment all around me. Nothing matters as nothing is matter. Everything matters as all Everything does is materialize.

I did spend probably slightly too much of last week thinking about New Physics as I came across so many great thinkers who set my mind rolling on possibilities of finding this one thing, this one indivisible that all came from - then I saw, as I chewed on my cake, that absolutely every single one of theses theories, bar none, were that particular scientists new religion. Each one of them, realizing it or not, even if speaking out against religion as they spoke, was pedaling a new god and a new path to realigning with that.

"This is beyond great!" I realized, this marks all off these grand theories as bunk and I need not waste another moments thought on any one of them aside from to say "no thanks!".

All these (very intelligent and very interesting) people were doing in their own way was speaking of what they believed to be, and could nearly but not quite prove, their own cause, or root, to our being. God. Religion. Did they miss this? They were denying religion then forming their own.

As I am quite firmly against religion, religiously against religion, you may say, I was happy to see that the extremely captivating arena of physics was just another set of systems and dogmas to be cast aside on the path of freedom, self authorship and simple happiness.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Arcs over dimensions

Arcs over dimensions. (Oh my Buddha he's talking that physics stuff again!)

Have you ever squinted your eyes at night and seen tiny arcs of light around a bright light source? You may have seen the phenomenon if you saw a bright light in the rain at night, or if you've hallucinated at all, even if that be due to tiredness or illness.

You're aware of the arcs that magnetism follows on a magnet and may have seen visual representations of the magnetic flux over the earth, the one that birds and dolphins align themselves with to navigate. Even insects of various varieties have been seen to align their dwellings with such lines. We don't see them.

We should not be too mystified by extra dimensions but take this example. A 2D scientist has witnessed a point, then later another point. He measures what happens in between and there is this mysterious 'slight absence of light' path along his 2D world that joins his two points. He will spend his life mystified as to how the point "thing" moved A to B leaving this strange trace but there was no physical presence of the object as it travelled. In 3D we see what happened. A ball was placed on the ground and kicked A to B and only the shadow seemed to move in 2D, the ball itself travelled "Extra-Dimensionally". That scientist may drive himself wild in the search for something he can't conceptualize.

Currently, in fact for the last 45 years if you're Stephen Hawkins, the big question has been of gravity. How does it appear so weak compared to a small magnet that can overcome gravity's power so easily and then so much weaker again to the bond between atoms and again to the one between nuclei? If light is not travelling in our dimensions and as far as it is concerned it never leaves point A, it simply arcs A to A via nowhere, and magnetic flux does not go North to South but arc around the magnet or planet then can't we see that gravity is arcing too?

For light to arc but be seen by all observers then this explains how light "particles" seem so small as the large energy in a photon E .... bla bla Einstein. So too gravity must arc around huge bodies in space and its effects be wide felt, so it would seem weak in our 3D measurements. The "Strong Nuclear Force" seems strong in our 3D world (holding both you and your laptop together, and the floor too) as the energy within a tiny atom only has to arc near zero distance.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Consciousness is both the only certain thing we know and the answer we seek. Some call it Tao.

No one is anything but consciousness. You may deny all you like but not being conscious.

Asleep you dream. In wake you dream? Or you see the concrete reality? You can't say either way.

Matter is provably empty space and so fits what we deem to be consciousness right now, it is natural though to see matter as solid, liquid or gas and to imagine it is made of parts. This view though is experimentally provable as not to be the case. It may be difficult, depending on how old or educated you define yourself as, to ever break free of the solid matter model. New generations will see matter as it is, immaterial.

The speed of light squared is perhaps the first very important thing we ever paid no attention to at school. We were told Energy equals Mass multiplied by the speed of light squared but we were too busy wondering what colour Yo-Yo we'd like from the shop. We never paid attention to it and never gave it another moments thought. We did though learn that we square things when talking of flat area. An area of space will be the size that light could travel in size per second. If this space contains large bodies then the flat area of space will be bent, lights path will be altered and the large body will roll about in the bent space. Light though did not travel at all. This was one seconds cognition done in and by the brain. The actual reality is unseen, we see only the minds interpretation of the data.

As the mind interprets data it builds a little past and a little forwards to give a more convincing model. In doing this it says light went A to B, light though did not travel or even exist, only information existed and was decoded as what you saw. Science insists on measuring the mind made illusion but then discounting consciousness as something which came about from this dead lump of flesh called the brain. This method is completely backwards akin to breaking open a TV set to steal a car on screen. So convinced by the mind model the mind can not make the leap and accept that the car was in a different place and time and may not even exist any more.

Our world view, though shifting, is fundamentally flawed and there are 3 paths to fixing it. We confuse ourselves with science, we accept and attempt to decipher what great masters have said years before us, or we discount all concepts and start again with intuition only - build from the only known fact, that we are conscious.

(I bet no one read this far.)

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Optimism and Simplicity

All our models from space to humans, to behavior, to technology, to growing a garden are that things grow in complexity.

You'll have questioned gardening with reference to perhaps a Zen garden, and you may then have referenced to technology and thought 'well, it makes life easier/more simple' but look again. Complexity is how things intertwine and together the sum is greater than the parts so even in a perfectly minimal garden there is a greatly complex network and getting organic about it, no collection of roots, fungus, minerals and worms can ever be said to be "simple".

Taoism speaks commonly of simplicity. I can see clearly how if humanity resisted the urge to get complex and see growth as positive and if they instead chose willingly to not grow and to only take on new ideas that helped all and at no expense to anything from community, to environment, then the world as a whole would be in a much better and safer place.

Were the wise Taoists aware that complexity is inevitable? Were they fully aware of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Probably yes they were in their own way just as we are too, we may well be drawn to complexity but see the huge benefit of simplicity, they as we can could see that complexity comes along anyway, societies, children as they develop, spare rooms, galaxies and gardens grow constantly in complexity. Maintaining simplicity even as complexity takes its natural path is wisdom indeed.

It is not too late to embrace simplicity, you do not need to allow pessimism to scare you off and have you think that "we've gone too far!" you can instead see that simplicity can not win against complexity but the inertia it offers and the peace of mind it provides are of great benefit to you and all. You'd be better off to live simply and peacefully in the face of epidemic complexity than to fight back. As you'd be better not to place a spoon in an ocean to fight the tide.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Material Excess

We may well concern our minds as we watch the world increase in material consumption, but materialism may well result in Buddhahood.

These devices we are using to read on the World Wide Web will all become old very quickly. New devices will age faster than the ones before them as technology advances move exponentially on. At some time, we'll reach the event horizon where new will become old so quickly that material goods will devalue greatly to the ego.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Evolution

Spiral the Tai Chi and allow in your mind the yin and the yang to fray at the edges and tear off into smaller versions which mix a little into the edges of the large pieces you began with. This is how I imagine life growing in the universe. Life is present from the outset but takes no form but as soon as environments form then life begins to take form too, mostly at a shape, size and form we'd never recognize and then very occasionally at sizes we do, hello lion, and at sizes we later come to see, hello bacteria.

For me though this is not individual beings who grew from a dead organic soup, but all parts of the dance. Individual births, deaths, comings and goings, lifespans and so on are nothing in reality; they are only relevant to apparatus that particular being needs to make to get by in and navigate their environment. Life itself is always one life reorganizing itself to suit the environment, an environment that is also at one with life.

Find no surprise that as we alter our environment that we'll need to change too. This is why Taoism is sensible about and sensitive to our environment.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why I Love to Read Scott Bradley, Our Modern Taoist Classic

Scott is trawling the best of the dust left behind by the greats and trying to pick the minerals from the silt. Refusing to build his ideas from foundations of air.

I will often write of "obvious, just this" fluff but Scott won't and my replies to his posts are commonly my saying "but isn't this obvious, can't it just be seen that" and, no, from his perspective it can't, it must all be sensible, no accepting any one idea without it seeming to have meat.

We're all aware of the same magic, we're all awake to the mystery, but we have unique paths to explaining this. 'Why explain it at all?' is a common question raised both by seekers and by the masters in the classics they research. The answer is we are attempting to point to the gateway we wish others to enter and if we can explain what we see to ourselves, then others will be aided. It's fun and pleasurable too.

Was Chuang Tzu really enlightened, completely and utterly? Or was he just another Scott with a nice talent for storytelling?

We're all in the same boat, the feeling of separation but the inner realization all is one, and all is well. Chuang Tzu and Lau Tzu both spoke of how the world as a whole was messed up and out of line with Tao, but then also how all was well and nothing could deviate from Tao. In this way, they were admitting that they too were just as human as the rest of us. We know the show is this incredible Oneness but we still allow ourselves to be amazed that within an infinite possibilities "bad stuff" still occurs.

Given that Tao is infinite, unfathomable, can it be surprised that there are beings who don't get it? Can we be surprised that oppressive rulers exist? Not really. History shows us again and again that there are the 'bad' and the 'greedy' and there are always too the 'good' and the 'wise'. This is my personal reason for having no TV and not following news and not being hung up over the terrors in the world - They'll always exist in infinity. I'd rather just dedicate myself to inner calm and peace and share that with those around me.

By not reading the news and being caught up in the fluff of the world I am able to dedicate much more time to exploring the fluff left behind by the wise and I quickly exhausted Taoist literature and moved like many do to the Buddhist, Zen/Chaan, Vedantic stuff. I was very happy when Scott popped up on the Rambling Taoist with new books I found just as enjoyable as the Chuang Tzu. Books such as The Life & Teachings of Zhouzi, The Tao of Dark Sages and The Book of Chen Jen - All excellent reads due to the humour and subject matter. He should be published!

Check them out!

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao With No Limit

Tao, an imagination with no limit, unfathomable depth. Into the deep water we plunge, molecules swirling, clear shimmering above. A fish pops out from a rock, chews his meal and spits. A limited mind could never reach this, only unfettered can Tao dance beyond, an infinity beyond.

A tree grows, twisting its fibers, digging into the earth, breathing, building meat from air. What more?

Could you imagine this? Mind so limited, always stopping to evaluate personal gain, Tao beyond, never seeking a lot for itself, gives rise to infinity.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Your Sadness or Happiness Contribute to the World

Only happy people can fix the world in any meaningful and enduring manner.

A serious caring or a passion motivated by disgust or any common motivation which sends a person forth on a mission to save the planet is less effective and even detrimental to the cause.

I feel that we can all relate to my point but for rigorous doubt brought about by peer training, a doubt so engrained that you're already arguing inside at the mere suggestion of an alternate view. 'The worlds problems are serious' you may say.

There does appear to be a many generation belief that life the world and the issues faced by us all are to be taken very seriously. Perhaps the daily news is a partial cause but perhaps it is feeding people just what they wish to consume.

When people are driven by anything other than happiness they will be able to bring about absolutely anything at all, except that is for happiness. The recording of bird song won't provide eggs.

A serious want and desire for change will certainly raise a person to act no doubt, they may kick start a whole movement. Never though will the result be the same as one brought about by a person who was happy from the core of their being.

'How is one supposed to be happy in a troubled world' a serious person would naturally ask as I raise this point, and fortunately the answer to that goes to clarifying my case.

A person who embodies and shines happiness has an incredible effect on those around them. If your child was very sick and in a place of recovery with many more sick children, would you hope the nurses were serious in making the children better or very happy in their roles even when things appeared bleak?

Smiles and pleasant surroundings are powerful aids to recovery. genuine smiles have powerful effects on others, warmth and happiness in one person can fill a room. You've experienced that and you've experienced too how a bad mood rubs off on others.

Let's again take a child's view. Would a child like a serious or a happy dentist, would they like to visit serious grandma or fun grandma. Would they like a stern man in a suit to organize their birthday party?

Do we want stern men in suits to organize our future?

A happy person has happy ideas and wishes to spread happiness, they spread happiness even to the sick and the needy. Someone who takes matters seriously will likely offer serious solutions and rather than replace your frown with a smile they'll advise you wear a hat to cover it.

So then are you thinking about the world as a terrible place with serious problems to be solved or are you happy with a happiness that will rub off on all you meet and a happiness that will make your every act more beneficial?

If you see the worlds problems as maters to be upset and serious about, I'd say you should steer clear of helping. Test this yourself take two similar acts in your life, live it out once with happiness and once with seriousness.

Seriousness is a man-made disease, terminal in nature.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Is Your Solution a Reaction?

If your solution is a reaction, then it is flawed.

Consider an island of 3 families and over time a situation has emerged where one family has gained power enough to overburden and stress the others. If these two oppressed families act in almost any way to this, then the result will be substandard and liable to failure. If they instead free themselves from the idea they are oppressed and begin a whole new way they are free and their freedom will last.

If the two families stood against the one, then they are saying that that one family had power and they believe it to have strength. If they act their own way, they are saying they have the power and that which the one family believes they have is not upheld.

If the two begin to farm alone, trade free of the one, decide their own motivations and goals, then the one will go hungry, become poor, or join them.

If the two had approached the one asking for permission or requesting right procedure in bringing about their wishes, they'd have got nowhere and simply supported the false claim to power the one family had made.

Apply this simplified example to the world.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Compassionate Model of Happiness

Compassion is proven scientifically and in real world cases to be the root of true happiness. All other sources of happiness, such as material goods, activities or relationships, can be taken away and the result is sadness. Compassion cannot be taken away, but it can be ignored. It can be ignored and replaced by selfishness - but we can be compassionate to selfishness too.

A lady sits home alone and the door-bell rings. She is not expecting visitors so she ignores the bell. From the window she sees a man she does not know and she decided for safety to ignore the bell for 20 minutes of ongoing ringing as she selfishly protects herself.

Compassion may say that she should answer the call as this person may need help. Compassion for her says she may well be right to ignore the bell as he may have other plans.

Compassion for him, even if he has evil intentions, would see that he has a past leading him to such behavior.

Sitting by with compassion for what is happening anyway and cannot be changed would leave all parties with an "empty boat" and ongoing happiness. When compassion moves to selfishness any party in any case can then move from compassion towards self centred desire and an unhappy act will emerge.

And so if it does we can be compassionate towards that as we see why it happened. We, compassionate to all events, can remain happy no matter the outcome.

Compassion without wisdom though can lead to misunderstanding the real issue and can lead to self/desire driven goals and rationales, and this is dangerous. Compassion with true wisdom will always see the whole picture and will be free of self. As a person donating to charity and picking up a receipt so they can claim a tax break is apparently different to a person helping a stranger anonymously and with no expectation of recompense.

Being compassionate to all removes you from the selfish separate (and provably illusory) self "I" and it results in scientifically and real world case proven happiness.

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Reboot your mind

Recognition recognize re wire the cognitive apparatus so that a new link is made.

Information place "facts" in-formation, in an acceptable formation.

Is this what it takes for that thing called awakening?

To disturb a persons normal way of thinking so as to force a recognition of the same old information in a new way.

For anyone to have the information they hold already recognized as something quite new.

Methods used in awakening can be negation and paradox. "This can't be the case with/without this." "This can equally be the case along side that being the case." and for the mind of the person to be cracked from its rigid way and reconfigured in a new way.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Happy to Have No Choice

When I was born I was completely happy with my face as I didn't think about it. When I was a teenager I was not, it had spots. Now I'm older I don't think about it. Except just now ending this thought.

When my parents got me an old 2nd hand bike I was completely happy with it, over the moon, I'd go everywhere on it. When I was a teenager I had a really cool bike I'd bought myself, I was not happy with this bike as there were so many other ones on offer. Now I just ride an old bike, 2 wheels is good enough for me, no frills required.

When I borrowed my wife's iPhone I thought "I just don't need this thing" but I got hooked on one simple game on the phone, it was fun! Now due to work and life I have my own Android phone and the hundreds of games on offer stun me with the inability to choose one at all, and when I do I'm dissatisfied with it. I'm about to leave the teenage phase and take the adult perspective again "I don't need this thing!".

When a sad person considers their life they say "I don't like my X" "I made a bad choice with Y" "Why can't I have a Z?". When a happy person considers life they say "actually I don't think about it".

Overwhelming choice is, overwhelming, and leads to dissatisfaction. When your only meal is rice and dried mushroom, and you're hungry, you eat it like it were the best meal you'd ever had. When you sit in the best restaurant money can pay for and choose from the most amazing menu you've ever seen, you're in line for dissatisfaction. "Waiter, this Matsutake salad is slightly too khaki in colour when it should be buff, take it back at once!"

The simple life is promoted by Taoist philosophy, can you see why?

This is a TRT echo post where I repost posts I have made on TRT back here on my home blog. See more: Index.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs

Here's a funny idea for you.

If you knew you were to die as a species and you were as flawed, unwell prepared and selfish as humans are.. you may try this.

Send a huge nuclear bomb first, followed by a space ark with people on it. Send these up into space and towards the best bet planet to live upon. This could be as local as Mars to Earth or much much further away a planet and towards what we now call Earth.

The bomb would strike the planet first and kill all who may live there (dinosaurs) and the space ark would arrive much later with the soon to be cave men.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

ancient wisdom?

Mankind used to believe that all there was to know was held by past masters and that knowledge were either; still with some, lost, or possibly even held occult in secret places out of our reach perhaps even to be used against us.

Now with each step we make we see that old ideas crumble. It is what we know now that is the highest knowledge. With time this too though will become dust.

The only immovable knowledge is still: That knowledge is limited.

Maybe then aside from scientific breakthroughs, that immovable knowledge was held by all of our ancestors.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

my theory of everything

Time did not exist until someone said it did. A universe in a state of any arrangement whatsoever but with no one there could not be said to be existing in time, especially time with a set direction.

Take an ocean tide. This way, that way, the tide swaps sides. That is perfectly reversible so has no time line or arrow of time. Now place an observer in the picture and they will insist on an arrow and direction of time. They make time where there was none.

Rather than try to predict the universe previous to right now and need to guess, especially to need to theorize before the start of the big bang (if there were one*). Science can not tell us the early moments so let's leave the guess and start right here with what we do know.

What we do know is that we live in a universe which is accelerating in its expansion and increasing in entropy. From that we can say that this will continue for some time along our imagined direction arrow of time and it has no good reason to decrease in entropy, size or acceleration.

The universe will then be massive and very very sparse, but at very high entropy. As expansion continues then even the most massive bodies will be minutely small relative to the universe's size.

Even now with increasing size and at increasing acceleration the entropy will 'seem' to drop. The overall size and pressure of space will render any bodies more and more insignificant to the norm state of things. We have no real say whether the massiveness of space may force solid bodies to evaporate or otherwise disappear but even if they don't the entropy would seem to drop off.

Entropy has no real reason to always increase and the nature of randomness is that from this state the next step could well be a slight contraction. From this all of the energy in space and any little bits of matter (little relative to the size of the universe even if vast by our standards) would accelerate "inwards". This would lead inevitably to a small point of intense energy, initially quite high in entropy but reducing to a tiny dot of near or true zero entropy.

Then boom! Expansion and increasing entropy. And in all of the random possibilities, "hello!" the universe would be as we see it now. Tao, somewhere in the early middle of the Yin Yang cycle would sit on a train on a smart phone and write this.

* Note I do not need to say a big bang existed but instead reach a place where I predict there will be one and from here I result in a cyclic, fully reversible theory not dependent on a linear time arrow.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why we produce time and why it is of no use.

Infinite randomness. Why we produce this illusory time in our heads.

Low entropy, knowable simple less possibility of there being a difference.

High entropy, the opposite.

This is why you know your past but not your future.

It's why you know when you were born but have no idea when you'll die.

(Aren't the worst people the ones who say "You should have done it like this." As there really is no alternative)

My friends were talking about someone who could see the future and none of us believed it so were joking around the subject.

One of my friends said "I have a very similar skill to the man who can see the future."

We said "Oh yes?"

He said "I can see into the past"

"Ha Ha! Very good!" we laughed.

Some skill indeed! We can see what could never have been different.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Funny spirituality posts

Monk Mojo is posting again.

There is a little more activity than normal over on his blog, check it out.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the greatest minds

From my research over the years of the greatest minds and thinkers I've found the following.

They don't know anything for sure.

Two highly educated people can give two perfectly good and well reasoned, fully convincing arguments on the same topic and provide solid evidence proving outright the exact opposite conclusions.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Things and happiness

Things can make you sad but you do not need things to make you happy.





~

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The power of 100 suns, accident or design

That sounds a very grand title for a post but is really a minor post just to tell you about this.

In Sydney's already lovely Darling Harbour area they have developed further still. There is now a great interactive children's adventure playground, a host of new restaurants and offices and all housed inside or next to a grand modern building.

The buildings design had to suit various needs for it to fit the surroundings and one major feature is that it curve its length to fit the shape of the land it occupied. As with many modern designs and especially in Sydney the buildings entire face is glass.

As the building is curved but the glass covers flat there is a curious feature that is unlikely to be by design but I wonder how during design this was missed. I was sitting in the shade close to sun set and as people passed by me I could hear groups or pairs of them all commenting on the heat. Only when I stood up did I see and feel what they were talking about.

The sun was hitting us to one side as it dropped in the sky but the reflection of the sun in every window hit us too. It was like being the insect subject to the small boy science experiment with a magnifying glass or like being at the focal point of a satellite dish.

As the sun set and the shape of the building reflecting the sun back and inwards to this central point it really did heat that one area up quite a bit.

Strange design or curious accident?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

All the jokes you'll ever need in your next anti-god conversation

These are all the best jokes, witty put-downs and intelligent one-liners you'll need in your next anti-god conversation.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why I don't vote

Until these and more begin to be the case, you wont find me voting in elections.

No one is left hungry.

Money is not made from debt.

Arms are the very very last resort and are used with regret against aggressors. Never as attack or to bring about change.

Issues related to individuals are left to individuals. The government has no say over what an individual chooses to do. Recommendations are the limit of their power, not enforcement.

Votes are not cast by the population to choose a leader who then does as they please, votes are on issues.

Leaders are remodelled as public servants and not powerful directors.

Happiness and freedom are the main priorities.

Rulebooks are simplified and not built upon.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why you're not continuously happy and how to be

This is a very well put version of something I very often attempt to vocalize

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

What is Wisdom

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

A bitch and a moan down at the Pyramid building site

"Why can't we have a new sense or power?" he asked "Wouldn't it be so cool to evolve and develop some new power and shake free of this stale world we live in?".

You have incredible senses, how about seeing, to see objects, cast in front of you, in bright colour, visual forms created by sense apparatus and projected by the brain out there as some colourful visual world.

This sounds a little odd to describe just how amazing sight is but also it demonstrates how we can not truly imagine any other sense but the ones we have as all thought and description is for and of what we do have, to imagine and describe another sense altogether is quite a leap of creativity and of descriptive ability.

Take the pineal gland, the 3rd eye, that which sits in reptiles still with light sensitivity and sits for us deeper in the brain, could it be sensitive to presence? The trigger that lets you know you're being looked at, when someone is behind you or when you "just know" something?

"What if the pineal gland or some other could give me the power of telekinesis?" he asked "wouldn't it be so cool to move things without touching them?"

You can move things without touching them, use a machine. And you can move things quite easily, you lift things with your arms and you do a little work. Are you fascinated instead by how telekinesis would not really be work as in the end it would be you know? You'd be sitting in a large open mine with your buddy's standing complaining about the boss "I work my third eye off for this prick every day. Lifting rocks for this slime ball - why can't we invent machines to do this for us?".

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

non doing is not doing nothing

Now retired he said to his son in the garden, as he pulled a weed and his son sat lounging, "I'm not sure what to do in my retirement as suddenly, from being a dedicated worker with a set routine, I have nothing to do".

"That's great" his son said "now it is time for you to let your mind regain its youth and to be at one with life".

The son explained an idea known as 'wei wu wei' to his father as the elder moved his position to the next area of garden needing attention.

"I should do nothing?" The man asked his son after the explanation. "Lie there lazily like you?" He laughed.

The younger one explained the contrary. He said how neither of them were doing anything only one of them thought they were. That doing nothing was allowing things to go as they naturally were whilst only being the awareness of the moment and not the doer.

As being the doer, even of a lovely act, is naturally tied to future outcome or past incentive. Being the awareness of the moment, letting life go ahead was instead was so peaceful, even around acts of mayhem as, it's happening anyway, thoughts wont change it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

the lesson from broken ribs

What we, the police and I, should learn from my broken ribs is not: 'respect the law' but 'respect each other'

The law did nothing. Was not broken or upheld.

Had the police respected people more than the law then we'd all be better off.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why try to describe the indescribable

For as long as we know, as the oldest known written work to us is on this subject also, man has attempted to explain the indescribable.

We do it today as keenly as ever, why?

I know my reason and I think it goes for many. You find something that resonates so deeply with you that you first try to explain it to yourself. The offshoot is that you want to share it with others. As a man who has opened the curtains to see spring time is likely to wish to rouse his family and neighbours to look out doors with him.

The problem is that this resonance rang from no particular source, it came from no book, from no retraceable action, from no stimulant but it rang, it rang with clarity and it was life altering.

With no place to point people to we try in as many ways as we can to clear the path, we try perhaps to cut the crap, condense, reword, clarify all that we find points but does not strike. And so we go on, attempting to describe the indescribable, just hoping that others can by chance open up to and feel it too.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Assaulted by the police - Follow up

I recently reported how I was assaulted by the police and now I have the follow up.

Of course this is just the mini drama of the self I call I and so not a scratch or blemish on the real.

Again, this is said without prejudice to the case and with paraphrasing......

My friend who had attempted to film the assault actually due to technoineptness took one still photo..



..I was keen today on meeting him as to what his side of the story was.

His reply is here in the closest I can to the way he said it.

"You were talking to the police and I didn't know why you'd done it and I approached you all to hear you talking about rights of the police and transit officers to see tickets. They asked you then to move on and stop wasting their time and you said 'OK' and went to move.

In a flash one took the lead and said 'we need to see your ticket' and he grabbed your arm, the other officer swooped in too. One placed a handcuff on the wrist of the arm they had caught hold of and you were noticeably shocked. As a pair they grappled and pulled and one swung his leg to take your legs from under you and you went to the floor."

He said further: "I didn't realize until I asked other people but they can not use cuffs unless they first place you under arrest and I think they had assumed by then you were a criminal and they'd find something on you. They had you on the ground and one was shouting all this stuff at you, the other emptied your pockets and your bag."

He retold the full story in a similar way to the way I remember it only from the altered perspective on being an onlooker.

After I had been let free I thought I had lost my phone but had been ordered off the premises so my friend returned to retrieve it.

On returning my friend gave the police far more of a challenging verbal to and fro than I had. Remember that I as a curious foreigner had asked the police what rights they had to see my train ticket, I had done this out of curiosity and with the childish naivety that they as public servants would like to help me by answering.

On the other hand friend who approached them after the event had an exchange more like this.

"He's lost his phone, where is it?"

"In his pocket mate go and tell him to look"

"What you did was well out of line. He didn't deserve that"

"Is the guy mentally retarded? What was he thinking talking to us?"

"Are you a doctor with the knowledge and know how to claim his state of mind?"

"He must be mad or schizophrenic to come up to us like that"

"The only schizophrenia I saw was from you two politely talking to him then in a flash jumping on him, cuffing him and abusing him. Sounds to me like you're the ones with the problems here."

"Look have you got a ticket mate?"

My friend took out his wallet, looked in side it and replied "Yes, thanks I have"

"Are you going to show it to us?"

"No, you asked if I had one and I do"

He actually said quite a lot more that I can't do him justice by typing closely enough to the way he said it so I'll leave it there.

It is apparent thought that his exchange was far more confrontational than my simple question I had posed which lead to my beating and being assaulted.

After my friend had finished telling me of that episode I had missed out on I said 'And now just imagine as a tourist I had simply been asking for directions, would I expect the same attack to be launched at me?'

He said well I don't think so but I can see your point, you were simply a man from out of town with a question on his mind. As I know you are not going to take action for now then I may take it upon myself to write a letter to the police as to how I fear for the safety of tourists in my country due to the outrageous behaviour of the police.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why God is not Tao

from LinJi

Just This One-Mind
The Master told Prime Minister Pei, “Each being, whether a Buddha or an ordinary sentient being, is just this One-Mind, there is nothing else. Since beginningless time, this mind is neither created nor will it perish, it is neither blue nor yellow, having no forms or features, neither existing nor non-existing, neither new nor old, long nor short, large nor small; it transcends all limits, words, expressions, traces, marks and opposites. This very essence is it; as soon as thought arises it is not. Like the empty space, it has no boundaries and is immeasurable. This One-Mind alone is the Buddha."

You'll hear that of Tao, you'll hear it of Buddha Mind, You'll hear it of Brahman but not of God.

If anyone does describe God in that way then they are not using God in the modern vernacular and will likely qualify that point as they write.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

What good is God?

On Truth is Within there is a piece called "What use is God?"

I felt like commenting but then realized I had lost the email account I used for Wordpress logins. As I could not comment over there I'll make my point here.

To someone claiming God is real and that arguments against the existence of God are puerile I'd say this...

"Are you God?"

They'd answer "No".

I'd say "So then God does not exist"

As explanation I'd point out that if God was Omnipotent, Omnipresent, and so on, yet this person said they were not God, then case closed.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Physically assualted by the police

Last night I was assaulted by two police men and am now in a state where I can not move at all without pain. I'll keep the details scant in case I am able to have them held accountable for their actions and I do not wish a blog post to spoil any official statement I make on the case.

This story is told then without prejudice to the case.

For a few weeks now as we approach the train station together after work on Fridays a friend and I have enjoyed debating the power and roles of Transit Officers. These people wear a Police like uniform and enforce train tickets. We were quite certain that there was no law regarding train tickets and these people were not able to enforce a law even if there were one. I had stood on a couple of occasions asking these people, politely and inquisitively, what powers they had and how they were to enforce them. Last week even I had a very fun chat with two of them as I travelled on the train. Partly I was attempting to see if they believed they had actual power and the force of the law and partly I was trying to get their side of the story where they have a job as well liked as parking wardens and tax collectors. They were simple and friendly and really did not know much of the rules they were upholding or have any idea if there was a law or if they had the power to enforce it.

Last night as we approached the station our conversation naturally veered to the subject and, tickets in pockets, we walked through the open gates on to the platform area. Two police men were standing together and as their role is to 'Serve and Protect' and they are public servants I approached them to get perhaps a final clarification on our investigation.

"Yes" one said (quite aggressively as I look back on it but I was polite and smiling and continued without noticing the aggression.

"Hello" I said "I'm just curious as a man travelling what power anyone has to see my ticket"

...hey, sometimes I do stupid things...

One said "I have the force of the law, I can ask you to show your ticket"

"Is this some kind of statute?" I asked "as there is no common law regarding train tickets."

"It's the law mate now move on"

"Ok I was just curious"

"Right we need to see your ticket"

Holding food in one hand I said "it is in my pocket"

With barely a beat the two launched at me, wrestled me to the ground and thrust one hand cuff tightly around my right wrist. My food went one way, my glasses flew from my face and went another.

They pulled and tried hard to get my left arm into the cuffs. With some effort they cuffed my arms together behind my back and had me on the floor against a wall. My friend under much protest from the police retrieved my glasses grabbing them just before one tried to crush them under his foot.

I was quite taken aback and asked them to please loosen the right cuff as it had cut into my wrist causing pain. I also asked them to let me have my glasses as forcing me to deal with them whilst half blind was unfair. They denied both counts and picked me up only to throw me down again with force.

One rifled my pockets and bag. He pulled out a picture of my wife, copies of my books (0n such subjects as pacifism), a sandwich box, green tea bags, along with various random bits and bobs. During this time the other police man never stopped shouting obscenities and abuse at me. Amongst his rants were that I was mentally retarded, should be on medication, stupid, likely on drugs, had broken the law, was wasting his time, had broken the common law and should respect the law. He stated several times that he and his colleague had asked me a total of 9 times to show my ticket - Each time he said this I asked him to not lie to me.

The situation dragged on, I could barely see, was in pain from the manhandling, handcuffs and I noticed blood on my face through the corner of my eye. The situation only ended after they had called in my details and banned me from the train station for 24 hours. They demanded I left, uncuffed me and sent me away.

As I went to move and gather my belongings from all around the floor I noticed the extreme discomfort I was in. Not only sore spots, bruises, a swollen and cut wrist, I also had severe pain in my chest from what I later learned was the knees of one officer as he pinned me down. Right now I can lean to type but if I wanted to shift position even to move for my tea cup it would be a slow, considered and painful move. I did not sleep last night due to discomfort. I may need time off work.

I know I was stupid to approach these men now. I fully accept that.

If two everyday people had done this to me it would be assault, as it was two police men it is still assault.

As I was not arrested for any crime, I was carrying a valid ticket and so on I did not commit a crime or even an offence.

I am guilty it seems of asking a public servant a question he did not know the answer to.

Let that be a lesson to anyone. Be polite, carry a ticket and ask a question of a police man - this will get you physically assaulted.

"Serve and Protect" is their motto. Public service is their role. Physical and verbal abuse is their action.

Picture: For having a train ticket

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

now again

No one: 'it's now you see, always now, you'll never be anywhere else'

Some one: 'get a grip of course I can do things at other times than now. I'll have breakfast in the morning'

No one: 'you'll have breakfast when it is now, you can't eat it in the future'

Some one: 'so I'll eat it in a FUTURE now not THIS now'

No one: 'your point is simply proving the fallacy of language and not the quality of your argument. Try to come and speak to me when it is not now.'

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Walking to the place water goes

We were walking to the waterfall and as the path was unclear we wondered at times if we were going the right way. Of course, in the end we made it there.

Once there we watched water swirl and turn and at different paces take different paths over the top and down the fall. Sticks and leaves too took turns through currents, slow paths, swooping paths, a moment to spin in an idle current and then to accelerate over the edge and down.

Each going exactly the right way.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Welcome to Nonduality

This is a very good blog

Welcome to Nonduality

You'll notice there is no comment facility on the blog but the posts can stir you to wish to comment. All you can do then is keep the conversation to yourself and let the points made sink deeper.

And another here

Radiance of Being

Where Rodney will take comments and respond to emails.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao