Brilliant

I leave it to you to Google this yourself

"The Story of India"

find either YouTube or better still the torrent of the whole series. It is a great documentary by the BBC on India and our own history, every single one of us, dating back to times 10-15,000 years ago, with wheeled vehicles, horses, complex written language and, surprise surprise, people taking a concoction of Opium, Cannabis and Ephedrine to induce spiritual dimensions.

From this came the writing, the oldest known historical text, the Rig Veda a text that had been passed on orally previous to the writing and one that combines the spiritual past of man and the historical bricks-and-mortar past too.

An amazing history that was kept alive and lives on in India today! over 10,000 years later!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The non-fix

I've said this so many times and even heard that it is not so original at all, recently on a new recording (to me at least) I've head Alan Watts quoting someone saying similar in 1945.

The idea is, and I just restated it yet again over on The Rambling Taoist in a comment;

"It is those who attempt to shape the world who make such a mess of it. My choice then is to not attempt to fix the world, lead by example in doing this, and just wait for nature to correct the balance (as she does so well). Interference no matter how well intended always, no exception to date, messes things up more."

I prefaced the statement with a question "Is the following an excuse or wisdom indeed?" and after posting I went through a routine in my head.

A) States the above " "

B) "The fact you began with a question means that you are unsure of yourself and my answer would be; yes, it is an excuse, and further that your method of not-fixing is a method in itself so also fails by its own definition."

A) "Ha, well done, but my non-fixing is wu wei and right along side Tao, I do not do I just allow her flow, and trust the solution will come."

B) "The fixer is also going with the flow and maybe it seems cross grain to you but this is the very fix Tao has in mind."

A) "Indeed we can say of the Amazon that the destruction is a great thing as all that needs to be reborn must first die, all that is to grow a new must first be destroyed. I am however talking of the path of nature. While man prevents one forest fire, thus saving that which should never have been saved, he also destroys another patch of land for financial gain and this land should not have been destroyed. In either way it is the great way of nature to redress balance and grow back. This, natures way, is the Tao I will not stand in the way of. The fix for me is to let her be the clock for what perishes and when regrowth shall come and let man find wonder in that so he does not need to seek wonder in destruction. Destruction that is an outward expression of inner disharmony."

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Everyone does something and this is the world

It seems to me that everyone does something and it may well be that the daily routines of a materialistic day-to-day person are not different to those of a sage or nun who follow routines to keep them focused on what they believe to be real over what they believe to be not.

I accept all of these ways as being the way in motion but I am inclined to think that those who live more simplistic lives are less troubled by the world and so live in a more sustained and comfortable manner.

This is what these people MAY do on a daily basis.

"Enlightened" (not that we really know)

Sit in silence, smiling or content. May answer questions when asked.
Eat minimally. No intoxicants. Likely to have a base they rarely stray from. Pleasure is from being itself and having no distinctions to trouble the mind.

Set routines may involve a rarely changing pattern of sitting in contentment. Likely to have people bring offerings of food and so on.

Sage

Happy free, learned. May live mainly alone, may have followers and visitors they answer questions of or guide. May often wander may have a base.
Will eat light or in some cases eat heartily if circumstances say so. May use intoxicants. Likely to eat from nature and gifts.

Set routines could be strict, such as waking, eating, meditations, praising, mixed with seemingly random fits that follow nature.

Saint

Eats light to normally, no intoxicants. Gives and gives. Always looking to help others. Lives frugally, moves frequently, rarely a fixed base. Sole aim to help others.

Set routines likely to involve prayer, reading of scripture, giving respect to images and or places in nature.

Mystic

Likely to live alone and only mix with similar folk. May interact with day-to-day people to give medicine, healing advice or so on. Eats light, from nature and some gifts. Likely to use intoxicants to enter states and explore realms not normally seen. Likely to wander and have a number of places to stay which are likely nature based.

Routines could well involve intoxications, nature based events such as events defined by star positions, seasons. May follow pilgrimages to set places at set times.

Master

Likely has a base, may wander. Strict diet. Likely to want to give out teaching and likely direct in methods. Probably reads, may write or use art such as painting, carving or gardening to display creativity and to occupy time.

Routines likely strict such as waking, meditation, worshiping of past masters, teaching times, eating times.

Monk/Nun

Strict diet, perhaps strictly enforced exercise, culturally related say tai-chi, yoga, martial art..

Usually a very strict routine of devotion. Much time spent following set patterns of wake, prayer/meditation, eating, and routines defined by the master.

Religious

Religion a key part of life and time spent but also involves family. Time spent in contemplation. Not so strict diet but some restrictions. May restrict intoxicants or use a select few. Likely to pray quite often, likely to seek and take advice of leaders and attempt to adjust inner cravings into line with defined betterment.

Routines will involve daily routines of work and family mixed with weekly and yearly cycles of key events.

Half/Half

Lives a normal life of work, family friends. Has a calling or tradition to uphold but this is not the key drive in life. Eats freely and intoxicates as defined by the law of the land.

Routines are to wake, work, eat, shop, seek release, seek entertainment, seek self gratification by betterment over people in similar places to them and seek to change their life on a scale as defined by material ownership, external looks and money.

Not really

As above but spirituality is likely to be rarely fulfilled bar for occasional interest in self improvement books and systems pointing to increasing material gain by spiritual half-truths. Most pleasure taken from material goods and intoxicants.

Not at all

Completely involved in daily routines of work, family, entertainment, material goods. Distaste or no interest in a spiritual outlook finds the material world enough of a distraction and only growth seen is in material ownership, status gains and dull intoxicated highs.

No path

Wanders out of society with no spiritual calling. Eats by availability, intoxicates by necessity, also by availability and solely as escape. A wanderer with no path. Generally a life of suffering.

Routines involve set patterns of wandering, scrounging.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Waterfall Awake Nature Pt46

Live first at peace with yourself. Discover your spirit, then your true nature, work from the inside out; arrive at your new ego last with a new realisation of oneness and compassion for all life. The new you and new others will come together to form new influence over anyone you interact with. By understanding your own true nature first, you discover the nature of all and you will carry this with you in every act until with a world of newly awake people we will have evolved into a heavenly reality and not the hell most people claim to see on earth now.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

A tidbit

America spends more on prisons than schools and a majority behind bars are there for drug crimes.

What that means is that society has chosen and embraced tobacco and alcohol as intoxicants and anyone choosing another intoxicant (although many of them are not intoxicating but spiritual in nature) are worthy criminals worth more than educating the youth.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Shaman Documentory

On the subject of documentaries I'm revisiting one I had watched before, it is also (along with the one recommended down the page) very good.

Shamans of the Amazon

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Best Documentary I've seen in a long time

Holy Men and Fools by Michael Yorke

Here is Dr Michael York discussing the movie after a screening.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Waterfall Awake Nature Pt45

*deleted* very long and rambly.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The holy spirit

I had a bit of a joke post about breath being more important than god some time ago but now reading the Upanishads there is a clear link between the holy spirit, air and the reason that the holy spirit can not be tainted.

The reasoning in the text is of how sight may be tainted (by the mind basically) to form good and bad sights, so too sound, so too smell, taste and so on. Breath however is untainted, being both useful on in and out and never having a quality good and bad attached to it (unlike smell, taste, sight, touch, sound) - The sacred spoken tone of Om is this resonant purity and (although translated to English using English terminology) there is a strong feeling that this is the holy spirit, breath itself.

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Additionally if they were all tripping on Soma and the sights, sounds and so on could lead to dualistic good and bad trips, then perhaps this holiest of holy syllables, Om, was a way of getting a level.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Rig Veda the magical mushroom mystery tour

Read the Rig Veda (oldest known written text dating 4-12,000 years old) and tell me it is not about drinking a hallucinogenic potion to induce spiritual highs.

And that lead to the mother religion of recent years, Hinduism, which can easily, by anyone with an eye half open, lead to Christianity and so on.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Immortality again

I've been attempting to research the Chinese side of the Tao again and its not too fruitful. My attention was perked up by a visit of an Anglican priest to a Taoist retreat on an impossibly high and steep mountain but the insight was minimal. Further searching has lead me time and time again to the Taoist side of Taoism that I find all flowery and insubstantial. I am as you will have gathered into philosophical Taoism and even as such I often use that to springboard into my own take. Even given the title of this blog Tao for me is just a philosophy that at best points the same way as me but not something I label myself as. No label is me.

Now time and time again the Taoist ideas on immortality pop up as you research this area and I have voiced my own opinions on this subject before but am inclined to do it again. The view is nearly always that one may cultivate their human form so that it either lasts longer than average or even escapes the grips of death altogether - and for some reason people find this desirable.

I rarely get too tied up in ideas that speak of "this energy, this avatar, this method, this becoming" or so on, I nearly always speak instead of an inner completeness, a non-divided oneness where "I" is the totality and "I" is not a separate entity - by this view I see immortality as something quite different to the standard view.

In the complete oneness model which pure Taoism, Zen, Ch'an, Vedanta and others speak of there is no separate self and so you are already infinite, you exist previous to such mind made notions as time and neither the minor blip of human existence or the huge scales talked of in the physics of space are more than fantasy created to explain something already misunderstood. Like a chess piece attempting to explain the universe by the constraints of the game he believes to be real.

You're infinite, deathless and immortal because you are the infinite dancing and so you are the reason for time, not some entity constrained by it.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

parsley sage rosemary and time on my hands

The unenlightened state is asking what it should do to become enlightened( - seeker), or lower down the scale it is asking what it should do to ease the mind, to occupy the mind or so on( - general person in day-to-day life).

Prior to this state was the non-asking state and unmanifest energy, be they for the sake of vocabulary, Yin and Yang. The person was undisciplined so this state was not maintained and Yin or Yang were allowed to rise out of balance or they began to dance in a way. This activity gave rise to a person-world and the person was lead to ask either "what shall I do to occupy myself" (- general person) or "What must I do to gain enlightenment" (- seeker).

The general person we know looks to the media, entertainment, self gratification and other such fixes which temporarily occupy the mind and distract it from unease. We also know though how this leads to more unease, the care of opinions of others, the maintenance of the distractions and an inevitable tumble as mind again takes over.

The seeker is attracted to distractions but is aware of methods to draw the mind not to distraction but back to its root. Not to satisfy cravings of imbalanced Yin and Yang but to instead cultivate Te from this interaction and use that energy to draw back to the root, to neutralize the imbalance and again settle to the Tao, the state where all just is.

A master, can see the patterns arising early and cope well with them, they may also have routines in life that help them stay centered and so less liable to suffer imbalance.

A sage is so rooted that such rises and imbalanced moments are mere shows that go to enforce their solid unwavering grounding.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Waterfall Awake Nature Pt44

[Things Te would say.]

Heaven and hell are only experienced by us in life. You could have been a mother of a bomb victim or a young father in Africa of a family all with AIDS. You could be miserable because you care about something someone said, even though their intentions, reasoning, your comprehension, mood and more stood between them and you, you chose to occupy a negative created by your interpretation, you chose! You could be an old man by a lake fishing, wearing ancient clothes, and a huge contented grin. You could have used your brain, looks, physique or a skill to make money. Your bank balance could have over 8 digits. You could be anyone and you are just that to someone. Let us act as one and feed the world first, then form an economy afterwards and stop acting with individual importance, no matter how small or controlled it seems, it’s there. Yes you have desire; you want to be who you want to be. So do. The world is made entirely of great people who will live together joyously when they are free from influence which places them at odds with others. The actual guys in the armies fighting for fabricated (you know better than to deny this) reasons are guys who eat drink and think about sex and want to be happy. That’s the guys on both sides, they don’t really care which group of oil barons gets a particular contract, even if they don’t go to the same church. Why do we show allegiance in war when we would never kill a child, to a country who enforce tax and law on us including laws not to kill? Like we need telling! Why accept the reasoning? Why are these soldiers killing each other for men who wouldn’t even enter a fist fight themselves but do so want control of a certain flow of cash? Those ones who stand above us and decide there will is best. Leaders, are acting with an unchecked lust of result, they have decided that their thoughts are, in the main, correct and just and that countries and people of the world or small companies and people of the world can depend on their perception and desire over their own free will and wishes. They occupy these roles because we service them, by voting or not, we let them in, respect their claim of control, accept their reasoning and any action even when children die and millions starve. While we know that the majority of people interested in power mean well, they cannot bring about anything coherent or lasting, will make mistakes, and will be biased. This is not due to the minority affecting them, but by the impossibility of building static rules for a dynamic. Although anyone with the desire for rule should be filtered wisely if for no other reason than this desire, we are to believe that the best ones get the job. Even so the best intentions to rule without complete adaptability will fail some people by overly benefiting others and as people vie for a position in this fabricated divide we instantly develop a vast canyon of separation. The flow will absorb interference and unwittingly our actions will have effect, perhaps never connected or seen for years. But if you are still missing the evidence all around you…!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Nothing Tao Religion Tao Nothing

Nothing Tao/Dharma Religion Tao/Dharma Nothing is the path that life surely takes.

First there is no description then there is Tao, then come the religions, then through disagreement they are exposed, back to the simple Tao, and then forgotten again, nothing.

This does not need to be a cycle of many years though that we must watch or expect to end, not at all. As as one person somewhere is taking on a religion to serve some inner call so too someone is casting one aside. This cycle is more a natural intertwined system where all possibilities are always the case.

It may well be that you are leaving religion and seeing the purity of Tao, maybe you are seeing from the wisdom of Tao that simplicity needs no name - maybe you are upset by life and turning towards religion... so all of these go on together, but following this flow.

That is in fact Tao and that is in fact Dharma, the recognition of this natural flow and how all people are somewhere in it. Not that a great cycle is underway that we are all attached to, no, but that we all flow our own ways and that flow is.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

My greed

This is what I'd do with a whole ton of money.

I'd take a piece of land in a place with a good climate, encourage people who want to live from the land, do yoga, tai chi, or similar, read books, meditate, relax in hammocks, to join me and then I'd sit as one of them and enjoy my time.

With only such ideas as keeping the place neat and non-toxic to the nature we sat within there would be few other rules and these rules only to discourage the out right slacker from thinking this would be an ideal place to waste their life.

For most who chose to live so simply, meditate, read and discuss eastern philosophies, live from the land and so on the idea of keeping the place nice would be natural.

And their I'd stay.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Reclaiming the Unnamed

I'd shaved my hair. The reason is it is practical, I don't care how I look, I have a diastase for paying for something I don't really want and not liking the results, so I just shave it every so often.

At work someone I had not known so long asked why I had shaved it, so as the real answer is dull, I said it was for religious reasons. Naturally after the slight to and fro in their head of should-I-should't-I they asked me what my religion was, and as I don't have one I said, I have not named it yet.

This left them a little stumped but where most dull people would give an "oh, right" they smiled and said "that's good", which it is (even though they were still humouring me). It is very good.

Going back to mans' roots to the times that combinations of wonder and curiosity went to forming ideas on the world I'm quite sure that their first ideas were not to name and formulate their ideas. It was only when differing groups, much much later, attempted to communicate ideas did the names and formulae come about.

At the beginning when ideas are pure they are not trapped by words even the name Tao is a horrible trap leading to books and books, more and more words, just to attempt to get the definition right - and you can't. Dharma in many interpretations is the same as Tao, an underlying principal of the universe, but so too a million more words will be written on their dissimilarities. Nameless as I have often said is the only sure bet.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Waterfall Awake Nature Pt43

[End.]*

Yan and Yin realised Nirvana a few years later. They experienced a similar offering from nature and with Te’s guidance they knew there was no better way.

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All live in the Garden of Eden now. They will all die a natural death and meditate to the one they are so aware of, painlessly, with joy, as and when that natural part of the ripple occurs. The escape they all found was that ability to reach the state away from the pain of attachment and not following ideals set and perceived by others but realising everything has its own nature. Everything is at its correct point at any given time because it can only be that way. Whether sprouting, budding, flowering, cross-pollinating, going to seed or wilting, you will always have your root in nature.


*(Not quite. there are 47 parts.)

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Waterfall Awake Nature Pt42

He assured his parents that their choices in life and in lifestyle were good. Their choices regarding him had not only given him a chance of rebirth but had vastly enriched their existences. He assured them that there was a way and their path was a good one.

Yin and Yan lived out their years in harmony with nature. They spoke to Te using a meditation technique. Yan learnt much of science. With age he grew more spiritual, after all he had had some experience of religion now! And science, his life’s love, did hold answers that people in his mindset needed. One day there would be one answer for all, it would account for conciseness. Yan learnt that his own viewpoints were not entirely without merit. Just, maybe, needed, some of the words changing, and some new ones adding in their place!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao