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

Another good post over at Son Rivers blog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

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.

~~

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

Quote Myself

"Where Zen and Buddhism will say the truth, enlightenment, and so on can be reached through dedicated meditation and practice, a Tao master may sip some wine, fart, and go to sleep."

There I was innocently surfing the web, hoping to find some pictures of boobs on a Taoist website, and I happened across someone quoting me(!) - I googled the quote and found that 2 people have quoted it on separate occasions so I dug out the old quote that was hidden in a long waffley piece I wrote some time ago and have placed it here for the benefit of my ego. The piece ended with this:

"So look and learn but don't force anything, don't try to adopt things that just don't fit together with you. Don't get so tied to one shore that you miss the next beach. Don't get too comfy under one tree. Don't carry a pile of books around where there is loving living and dancing to be done."

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

My dogs best jacket

I asked my dog what she'd like to do for her birthday and she said she had nothing to wear and no money but wanted to have a nice run by the river and chew a stick or two.

I thought this was a great idea.

I asked my sister and she said her husband had exams, they were moving house soon, work was stressful and she may not get home in time to even have a rest before her birthday was out.

I thought "and you, human, are the smart one?"

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

In two different worlds on the same planet

My friend lives in a terrible world. I spoke to her and she lives in a world of rape war and hunger. Fear to live. I live in a world of intrigue and wonder so I was naturally curious how her world was so so bad.

We are near neighbors in the same city, how can my world be so so different to hers? I asked her; 'Where is all this happening?' 'Where do you get your information?' Well - she gets it from the news and on TV. "That is the real world, so full of bad people!" She informed me of this with a saddened tremble in her voice.

I wonder though as her "real world" is on TV and mine is by the waterside where I name the fish.. Which world is the real one?

Peoples real world consists of nothing remotely real and they import fear and anguish into it.

The bad people it seems produce TV shows! And may I suggest that if it has not happened yet, you put your TV on ebay and use the proceeds to buy, well, nothing springs to mind.. with no adverts telling me what I need to buy to better my life I'm a little at loss to find what I need money for.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

I saw a sad old woman today.

Reality views the world through a trillion pairs of eyes and no matter how good bad or mediocre the view, the being therein morns the thought of its own death.

It is the same Tao looking through every pair of eyes and so can not die as was never born. But it still 'feels' attached to each of its bodies as if it were the last, only or most important.

Missing from its narrowed off view that it is the I behind every set of eyes!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Spiritual Halflife

Like many things in a cyclic world there seem to be half lives. It is perhaps the nature of the fractal or our very slight view on the ultimate reality of pure stillness that bring about apparent motions of decay where things spin away, to an apparent future, in an apparent idea of time, apparently before our eyes, and so we say are real -- that we see nuclear like effects from the micro-scale playing before our eyes in the macro - "HEY THIS IS REALITY" he says confidently to mask the truth, so he can play out the game of life in the way it seems so real.

The formation of reality is such a part of us that we forget, but when macro life plays out like science we see in the micro, the patterns link and the oneness of all is seen and because the patterns on no matter which scale are all acting, from the one stillness, where there is nothing, then life as we see it is demonstrated to be just a dream that is to be enjoyed. Why all the stress and strain?

The strain of everything taught as "the new way forward" or acted out as the 'new best thing' or any 'dreams,' and so actions, built from a desire to have 'more this' or this new that, are chasing the trails of patterns playing out in waves and forming the very reality that they are acting out.

Chasing them forms the action of them running away and so it perpetuates.

Half lives as seen in nuclear physics act out also in medical research, behavioral studies and most branches of thought. You drink tea and 2 hours later you are high, 14 hours later the half life is over. You have of course re-topped-up the peak and so extended the time until the half life would regress but had you not the half life would keep on decaying. Every 14 hours you'd be closer by half to being ever free of caffeine. Notice you can never be 'ever free' as there once was a was.

Again action leads to the event in time, and that relates to a perceived event in the future, the mix forms apparent time as an effect.

Harmony and right action leads to a better way and forced reactive living scrapes and scrawls its way along, making more fuss and bother.

'Harmony' - "being the way and the objective" is the way of Tao, and half lives and harmony are seen in science life and nature. What we also clearly see is disharmony in life and it's self-perpetuating, rude, rumble, through dreamworld.

There is no need to upset the dream and have any suffering, at all, not one bit: but the bare-bottomed, small-brained, blast through a few thousand years of history, has made it so, and it is rattling on from Phd's being written over "a better world of unity, globalism and prosperity" where they can not pass the subject without quoting so many others that not one original thought exists, to a populous obsessed over this or that.

All we have to do is sit back, chill Winston, take a breather, and it will all sort out. The people we can't relate to, those who go to war, those who incite war, those desiring leadership or change, are effects of the drum solo being played out in the dream reality - it is bad manners. They will rattle to a halt soon enough.

So here we go onwards, keep the spiritual half life well from decaying, strive on! Sit down, for a lifetime.

---

Read That is That by Wu Wu (only if you want, of course)

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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

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

Live for 100's of years

Most people have school until ~16 (under half is leisure)

work for ~50 years (well under 10% is leisure)

retire for ~20 (mostly leisure but you sleep a lot and aren't so able)

of the 50 at work you have very little leisure time, always too'ing and fro'ing with even time at home recouping and preparing for the next day - time you would surely be spending differently if you had no work.

Of the whole lot you get ~32 years leisure time of a 86 year life.

~~~

However, if you live a simple life, not so desperate for wages to spend on things you don't really need - if you work minimal hours to have a simple life, you get a huge percentage jump.

If you say the normal person gets 100% life, then you, with a simple life get 5-600%, you effectively live 50 or 60 years longer than the average person.

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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

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

Icke Interview

This guy takes a beating for his views but his way of seeing reality is very much more healthy than everyday people and society. This interview tells you how he sees the way the world is controlled but also how he sees what reality really is and why...

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wu Wu - That is That - [no longer Free] ebook

The book can be summarised in this short poem:
"The way of Tao Wow".

~~~

That is That is a free ebook by WuWu and it delves into some of the issues met by everyday people such as love and death and some of the things on the path of the spiritual seeker such as enlightenment, what to do after enlightenment, and more.

Download That is That by Wu Wu The free ebook to keep or print. (The free period is over and the book should now be purchased from this link)

It begins;

"It is enough to accept that all is bliss and that anything else is a misinterpretation"

...and it refuses to allow you to have restrictive thoughts such as religion, political position, ideas of right or wrong as they are traps keeping you from the ultimate reality.

"If you take true spiritual truth and try to make a science or religion from it then you will fail."
- Hua Hu Ching

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao