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

Doing

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

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

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

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

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Enlightenment for the selfish I

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

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

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

And so the quest for enlightenment.

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

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

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

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

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

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Where you are relates to your mind

A. A person sitting by the lake alone.

B. A young teen in a mall.

A. Has few thoughts in their mind and at peace.

B. Has many thoughts on their mind that flit and change frequently.

A. A bird passes by and attention is held briefly.

B. High frequency of flashing, bright lights, loud music, commotion, many people vie for attention.

Put A. in situation B. and they are very out of place. The same for B.

In fact if B. Showed up to the mall and no one was there they would be unhappy. If A. went to the park to find it full thriving with people they would be unhappy. Both A. and B. chose locations related to their mindset. Oh, Oh, Oh, you're unimpressed with this finding? Sounds obvious does it? Sure.

Yet how often people crave one thing and live daily in another. Crave the ocean and live in the city, crave a walk by the lake as they drive on the motorway. A simple point when made but so few live by it. Always an excuse.

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Those who live alone should have less thoughts. Those who choose simple foods should want for less in general. Those who don't crave for possessions should be more consistently happy. Those who love from the heart more likely to have long relationships.

Those who mix with many people have more on their mind. Those who love exotic flavours eat more meals that displease them. Those who crave material possessions are more constantly in need. Those who love flesh will never find lasting companionship.

Again so simple it need hardly be said but I see craving in everyone's eyes and peace in so few. I see a toothless old man as happy as can be, and in the same view a teenager with all the possessions you can imagine, but missing a smile.

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Want for nothing, it is all yours. Desire nothing and you're at peace. Or is this the other way around? I'm not so sure, but the fact remains, simple, solid; yet lived by so few.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Om harmony, Breath and Air

Pull a fish from the water and and it no longer feels quite itself anymore. Take the air from a person and they become quite agitated. Not long after either act, if the medium is not replaced, the entity will die.

It is possible to consider air as the a fluid that we move within and depend upon, few may doubt it. Health is certainly increased when by the sea or on a mountain top where the air is much purer than you are used to. Many religious traditions refer to the breath of life, holy spirit or other name that given a little open investigation could in most cases be referring to air and not anything more than that.

Breathing is an in-out-in-out harmonious motion. Well balanced in's and out's are most useful. Long deep breaths are more calming and if you notice when stressed your breath will always also be out of harmony. "Relax, breathe" you'll hear people say and "Breathe" is really the key there as once the breath is controlled the person will be calm. It is impossible to be breathing correctly and be stressed, not possible for long at least, the breath will always attune you back with the flow.

When relaxed the breath is right. When breath is right we are relaxed. Life also consists of many more harmonious acts that when out of tune signal problems and when in tune give rise to pleasure.

When we pass light into a prism it divides to its colour components. That original light is also from a previous breakdown and each new colour can also be broken further. You could imagine one very powerful, very slow pulse at the root of the universe or self that broken and filtered a trillion times forms the on-offs we perceive through our limited senses. All you see out and about is frequencies, waves bouncing around. That is also all you hear, touch even, taste and smell. On-offs of stuff in harmony or not.

One bad singer in group of many is quite audible. One tap on the triangle when a big band is in full flow and you'll hear it. A tiny mosquito bite on your whole body and you'll smack yourself. A tiny crack in a vast piece of rock under pressure and crunch it will shatter. On the level of the rock the harmony is deep within a crystal like structure, all parts very much in place and in tune, one steps out of line and the whole ensemble will crescendo.

Your life then is obviously best when harmony exists. The harmony of the breath of life; in with the goodness and out with the impure. Change is good when it fits the music but is unwelcome when a duff note or jarring chord is played when you were enjoying the tune. Relationships work well with two people who are two prongs of a tuning fork or two forks who ring to an agreeable harmony. Food, recreation, exercise, intellectual endeavours, spiritual practice, music and breathing, there is little here where the harmony is not a fitting example.

Harmony is a powerful model as we can relate to disharmony and aspire to harmony. It also gives a fitting model where we can imagine how things will integrate into our lives and a useful tool in locating the root causes of ailments. The model also aiding in getting us over bad situations as we can see how the disharmony has upset the ambiance but know that it will die down. You don't hit the cymbal or drum to stop it you keep at the bass line or harp strings, focusing on that which is right, and the grating noise dies down naturally.

Om.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Verrrrry interesting....

very very, interesting...

View it here

!!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Original face

Drop the desire for enlightenment and then you are "not-I" and you regain your original face.

Anyone seeking enlightenment is of course not enlightened. Nor could anyone ever be enlightened, as on enlightenment, there is no I.

"I seeking enlightenment" is bound.

"Enlightened" is no-I, free.

So drop the idea you could ever achieve, as that achiever is not even possibly real. Drop the idea of an achieving entity so there is no longer a desirer; and then you reach the non-I, and there is enlightenment...

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The one you are is that which is

"The one you are is that which is"

You get it? or

"The one you are is the be what am"

"The out there is not"

"The in here is not"

"The out there is you"

When you eat or breath there is something appearing to be out that goes in. That boundary you have a notion of is imaginary. Truly the food was always and will always be you. It was you way before you ate it and it crossing that imaginary boundary where you tasted it and began to dissolve it did not mean it was outside of you and is now inside of you.

This whole thing is acting. This whole thing is the only reality and it has always been. With no time, no real dimensions, it just acts. "You" then form time and ideas of separation "I ate the cabbage, I put it in my belly" - No you didn't, the universe acted and you got the impression that there is a you and some "thing" you did.

Few take on this as an intellectual endeavour to prove this to the intellect - "there is no I" - and they don't have to. The goal is truly to heart it, no thought, no logic, no analysis, just be it. Very very very few have done that.

Yet it is the only way it could be, it just is that way, recognised or not, it is.

Many just live with the false illusion, few try to work out the truth, very very very few live it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

What to do in killing I?

It is not to remove this "I"

It is not to work on the "I"

It is to recognise the true reality

and that is absent of any "I"





To work on the "I", to improve, or fix,
To aim to remove the "I" or prove it unreal,
are to re-enforce the "I" which is to enforce an illusion.

To recognise the true nature of reality will kill any idea of "I"
Job done.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

True self-help

As all is you, you are that (explained in many posts including the two below this one) then the only true self-help becomes evident and powerfully present.

All action "you" do is the action of the universe and is an action on and to your true self.

You stir up anything and you are doing that to yourself.

Now this smells like Karma but is not to be mixed with any preconceptions you may have of that term. Karma in a pure sense is "action"

"Karma. Firstly is not rebirth or past lives, but action, make, do, work or deed. Karma can relate to the result of past deeds, but that is more properly known as the phalam, or fruit of action."...

All I am really pointing out is that you are the universe and not you who thinks it is "I". There is a colossal difference and the idea most people carry with karma is that they must be good, do good, or they carry good or bad due to past good or bad - I say NO.

There is no past or present to carry that from or to, there is no I who could carry it. The true I is the action of the universe.

So the only true self-help is good action right now, in every now - absolute presence.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

No there no me no worries

Lets begin from the dual position that all I's live in.

There is perceiver and perceived.

Now:

Turn off perceiver -> there is nothing perceived.

or

Turn off perceived -> there is no perceiving.

So that dual split that people see as real and have so much trouble shaking is not even possible. It is not and can not be the case.

These emotions and feelings and qualities good and bad that are applied to things, they are only possible when there is an "I" saying they are there. And I has no reality, so what of these qualities?

They are a delusion of illusion.

There is no separation, there is an action: all.

You have very little choice in the face of this truth - you simply have to be blown away by it. You, the I is blown away.. it leaves only the true reality.

This is bliss.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Now has already happened

It has gone already. and this new now is also gone.

I have the pleasure of working during the week with a guy who gets very angry and stressed, he is one of the many things in my life that I use to re-emphasise truths.

He will be angry at things past, things happening, and angry about future events that he is sure are coming. So he is almost constantly annoyed with life. It is all someone else's fault and he is always right.

Thursday he had a new iPhone, he was pissed off at some lack of features and then the day went on, annoyed with this, with that, with this coming. He also makes many definite plans. "From now on I am leaving at 6 on the dot, I don't give a fuck what anyone says" and come 7.30 he is still there working and annoyed at something new. "I can't go home can I? That stupid so-n-so had that last minute job and now I'm expected to finish it"

During this time, I do the task at hand and sip my tea.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wei Wu Wei (Author)

I just can't ever be bored of this man. He is a dead man. Rotten, dusty and no fun at parties. But when he was alive he wrote some great books on Zen and Tao and now many of the best quotes sit here:

Wei Wu Wei Bits and Pieces

I was going to post a number of them but it is impossible to select some as worth posting with out posting them all - so off you go, take a look (link).

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Buddhist Economics

I found this on Awake in This Life ...

it is a quote from Buddhist Economics

"To organise work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure."

"While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is mainly interested in liberation. But Buddhism is “The Middle Way” and therefore in no way antagonistic to physical well-being. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern—amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results."

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Buddha was right

When I looked into Buddhism numerous times on my spiritual journey it would often induce a little depression and misalignment with the world. I though that this must be either due to me needing more work or because the teachings were contaminated and I was not seeing what the Buddha intended his teachings to carry.

I would always default to my position of "Tao-but not wanting to call it tao-nature-freedom-be-yourselfness". Not letting my mind be shaped, just reflecting and letting go, walking my own way. The message from Buddhism seemed to be that you could attain a "perfection" but Tao and life showed over and over that perfection is a bad, impossible, unnatural, tough and transient delusion.

Then though, as I walked the path of me, I discovered that that was just what the Buddha had done and said others should do (you're reading this and aiming for the comment button to say how obvious that is but ..). This may seem obvious; even I had grasped it by logic, said it, written it, "known it" - but only on it being the case within, was it a real truth.

And I have to say, looking back at similar times to today and today, there is an incredibly powerful energy, devoid of good, bad, I, you, this that, happy, sad - which does manifest as a bliss, sitting ever present behind every act of the universe.

I did have to unlearn a lot, forgive, accept, meditate, work - work not to achieve but to unachieve the "qualities" life had instilled my ego with, to uncover a truth that the Buddha had too discovered and wished to share with the world.

He was right, it was always there, will always be, we just have to see the obvious and this does take some work; just not perhaps of the kind carried by the mountains of text in the Buddhist canon, but just work to be sure you are being the real you and not the one shaped by the external world, family and peers.

As the 130 year old woman said of her life now, "It is nice to have no peer pressure".

He was right. Anyone following him is a fool. Anything written is dirt. But is sure is a powerful truth resting behind the mask.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

If you place 1000 taoists at 1000 keyboards, eventually this will happen..

I enjoy following the posts of the rambling taoist and today he has made one of his best posts to date, so here it is in it's entirety...

"A common theme of modern life is self-improvement. Lose Weight. Stop smoking, drinking or overeating. Get more education. Gain job skills. Drive a faster car. Get a boob job. Try a variety of remedies for patterned baldness. Learn a second language. On and on it goes...

But, if the truth be told, none of these things changes you or me. It does indeed alter the manifestations of who we are, but it doesn't change the essential essence.

The you or me that exists down below the multitude of human-constructed layers just is. It doesn't need to be improved; in fact, I dare say it would be impossible to alter it one way or the other.

Some folks of a religious ilk might define this essence as perfection. You won't find me using such a term because who is to say if our essence is perfect or not? I happen to believe that perfection is yet another human construct that doesn't exist independent of the human mind. In other words, Tao isn't perfect; it just is what it is.

It would do all of us a lot of good if we could learn to eschew the manifestations and accept ourselves as the essences we are. But to lead a life in the human sphere of consciousness, we must pay some heed to those outer manifestations.

What I believe it boils down to is one of the overall themes of Taoism: balance. We need not to define ourselves solely by external definitions. When we do just that, we fall into an eternal trap. No matter how hard we try to be the prettiest, fastest, strongest, most youthful person we can be, there will always be someone who is prettier, faster, stronger, and more youthful than we are. It's like running a race on a treadmill; no matter how hard and fast we run, we don't seem to get anywhere!

So, if we want improve "ourselves", we should do so for internal reasons with the understanding that all we are doing is improving the vessel we're housed in or benefiting the mind we engage the world with. We're not genuinely improving ourselves because because the self -- itself -- needs no improvement.

Copied word for word from the rambling taoist

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Inside and outside of happiness

Happiness and sadness are felt inside. People look for it outside.

Look within and you can never be without.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Mrs Tao on happiness

I asked my wife what she would say to people who may come to this blog. She said:

"People should realise just one thing that 'nothing lasts'. Everything you have is going to disappear, you buy something new and it is already starting to get old. Ok if you have it but don't worry if you don't."

She is quite direct in her words.

I mentioned a passage of the Tao Te Ching that "the sage is one who watches the world and keeps their true focus on what is real". She has never read the TTC so was not too taken by the quote, she said:

"People don't have to want this and that for themselves, they should want it for the world. I don't want a simple life for myself, to be happy and healthy with just enough, I want that for everyone."

She went on to talk about "e ba" big car and "e ba" louis vitton handbags, how people buy pressure and problems, not happiness. (e ba is an impolite Thai term).

I mentioned how the things we have are still perfectly useful and that someone with an iPhone was already in the position that newer models were coming out all the time. She said:

"They are not selling you anything useful or making you happy they just want your money. To be happy you just have to live like this" (refering to us as we walked) she looked around and laughed.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Graphical Happiness Meditation

This goes back a long way to the way my dad introduced me to drugs, not as in gave me drugs, but educated me on them.

He was always open and when I asked what the man chicken in our garden was doing to the lady chickens he explained at great length. I apparently listened with great interest, nodding at the right times, and walked away seemingly a wiser young 5 year old than before.

I returned later in the day to ask "but dad, how does he squirt it through the shell of the egg?"

With drugs he classed everything together, seeing no use in boundaries we got the chocolate, caffeine, nicotine, heroin, lsd, lecture all in one. All these things gave an Up that was followed by a Down. The problem with the more addictive ones was that the first Up was never matched, and the Downs went lower - dragging the baseline down with them so that with no drug the person felt worse than they had previous to ever taking drugs.

So when the Change you Mind Change your Brain lecturer mentioned a similar wave of happiness in the talk he gave it got me thinking again.

He said it was possible, and scientifically measured to be the case, that mediation can lift your baseline of happiness. He did not go into great detail, and I have not read the report, but it is quite easy to infer that a well practised mediator can have a unhappiness that is still higher than a day-to-day persons happiness.

like my graph will now show:

^ Meditator's High
| Meditator's Baseline
| Meditator's Low
| Normal folks High
| Normal folks baseline
\/ Normal folks Low

(You're probably fairly blown away by my graphing skills so take a breath to get over it...)

and here we go, Enlightenment in a scientific way may still be a normal state with highs and lows but even the lows are comparatively high compared to Mr and Mrs average.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Buddhist Science of Happiness

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao