This is why life is so funny

I'm pretending to be a universe here!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

hello universe

Maharishi was a fully realized individual who still asked people at his ashram to go easy on the trees. 'Don't over-pick, let them have their life too as they provide us food.'

It is always important to see who is talking. Maharishi speaking from the enlightened self would have no need to say this, or say anything at all - but in his role as guide he did say, as a human, and as a part of nature - 'hey, go easy'.

As stated in my post "I't's free but I'll give it to you for your soul" - a good Taoist would respect nature; this is them acting as a good balanced and rounded person, one who knows nature as our lifeblood. They may also say 'well, hey, this is the way' and watch as people carve the place up only to perish later.

My wife only recently commented how back home in Thailand it is near 40C all the time. People cut up the forests and use air conditioning all the time with no thought - obviously here the balance of nature is upset. OK in one way it will come right, nature will win back and men will fall for their errors, and in another way you can educate the families and people back there to respect nature.

As people we ask for others to act well. As a universe we can watch the show we make. Rather a show based on love.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Person and environment

Where is the separation between me and environment? It is solely in the mind, it does not exist in a place in space. There is no difference between me and environment, they are one divided only by ideas.

So part of me is running around lighting fires, splitting atoms, consuming - and another part of me is producing food, nutrients, air, cleansing water...

Divided only in mind, so I may say: 'Hey, less of that, more of that, please.' As this is just the mind construct saying what is seen when the one is divided to form a world, people and environment.

Together they are one, in parts they are yin yang interactions. Just a float in my boat and voicing opinion over what sights I'd wish to see.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

It's free, but I'll give it to you for your soul.

Why is it when you walk down a road in Laos (pronounced Lao) that you are constantly dodging potholes that drop down to open sewers, and when you walk down the road in Australia the road is smooth and well made?

Laos is the most bombed country in the world, bordering Vietnam it is 85% uncharted thick jungle and was bombed to hell during the war. The remaining 15% is mainly also jungle and the capital city Vientiane, bar the mopeds, is like a quiet village.

Australia is 82% desert/arid land and many towns are quite backward. The major cites though have incredible infrastructure, trams, trains, monorails, cycleways and are well signposted.

OK Australia is a near continent and Laos a tiny landlocked country but I just happen to have statistics handy and first hand travel experience of both places. The reason why one place has poverty and the other has affluence is all down to nature. We take what nature has as if it were free and infinite, we put a price on it and we get industrious in using these natural resources.

Where the best Taoist would be drawn to nature, to her upkeep and beauty, the typical 'developed' person lives off nature as if they were fire and she were coal. We draw and draw from her, and sit on top of this concrete jungle. Nature is a commodity, treated as free and sold for trillions. Pure profit.

Your country has rocks and bombs buried under the soil - you have potholed roads.

Your country has oil, uranium, metal, and carrots under the soil - you have a monorail.

No person is different but for the way their ancestors raped nature.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Book Giveaway

Due to incompetence, clerical errors and the position of the moon, I have needed to make 3 drafts of the Person of Tao book.

The first edition has a few spelling errors and some layout issues. It is also soiled by my mucky fingers. This will be first prize.

The 2nd edition has less spelling errors but I may have made the font too small.

The 3rd edition should be perfect, but of course I wont find the errors until I see it.

I will give away the books to the most worthy people.

Who are you?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

pure voice

A lot has been said about breath, words, mind and so on but here is yet another way to imagine words.

You breathe in energy and you expel impurities. This is mentioned in Yoga amongst other things: In with the good energy, out with the old: Hindus seeing that we eat and shit, we drink and piss and we also expel waste air.

I got to thinking about words and how the good air that comes into any mouth is the same purity, but the expelled words have various flavours, some beautiful and some with a nasty stench. The air comes in and it mixes with the mind to form words, what is expelled from the mouth as words is the reflection of the mind that flavoured the air.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

great religions draw you not push

There was a man selling the Bhagavad Gita outside of the market today. When he attempted his sales routine I simply said that I had read it and I continued walking. My wife asked me what "sect" he was and I said he was a Krisna follower, part of Hinduism. She said 'why do people have to be this religion or that religion?' and I quipped that it allows them to know who to fight when the war comes.

I considered it as we walked on and as my wife went about buying the vegetables from the market I thought how good she was. She was born to a Buddhist family, but as the one family member who does not call herself a Buddhist, she certainly has the highest understanding of the Buddhas teachings. She has a firm understanding of the Dharma, the core message, but does not call herself Buddhist.

So one who truly understands Dharma is no Buddhist. No one who truly gets the Tao is a Taoist, no one who has grasped the teaching of Krisna would need to sell the Bhagavad Gita. All of these works and the teachings in them are of great importance, but the idea that one would need to carry the label once the teachings were understood is wrong.

For the Krisna seller, who sees suffering, he needs to re-read the book: To see that the deamons and the angels, the good and the bad are all Brahmans body seen through the mind and that to slay the mind, to reveal the non-changing, to see that we are that, would release him from his trap. The book he is trying to sell can set him free of the very need to save others.

The same for any religion I can think of, if you "get" the teachings, then there is no need, in fact it is a contradiction, to go about forcing it upon others.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Expounding the virtues of the supposedly lazy

There will be a new blog

Pyjama Dharma

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Out of Office Reply

Reading the Wen Tzu.

Back later....

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Daily Cup of Tao - The Book

Watch this post for updates.

# Update to overrule all previous updates...

Buy the e-book (very cheap if you ask me, can be read on your iPad, not that you have one)

Buy a paper back Will be available from Amazon in a few months, until then, this is the way to get hold of it. Over 370 pages pointing to the true self, enlightenment and Taoist ways.

Get it for free (someday - Just keep following the Daily Cup of Tao blog until it completes.)

I am testing the water with Lulu and publishing the book there. I made it as cheap as I could and I wonder if it will sell.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Stop being so happy you miserable git

A's opinion of himself is this. B's opinion of A is quite different.

A is A.

To B, A is also A.

Yet theses two A's, the one as depicted by A and the one as depicted by B are quite different.

Which is the correct A? Is it the A who A believes himself to be or is it the A who B sees?

i) If the the only correct version of A is the one A thinks he is then B is wrong and the only correct version of B is that known by B.

ii) If the only correct version of A is the one known by B then A is wrong about himself yet he knows the only correct version of B there is.

Version (ii) must be wrong as if the only correct version of someone is that known by others then the differing versions these others all hold invalidates the claim. The only possible truth from this is that every person has as many versions of himself as there are people who know him.

Version (i) says that no one can know anyone but themselves and so there are as many versions of a person as there are people they know and just one correct version.

Both ideas re-stress a conclusion many would guess if asked: that the C who is your friend can be the C who is another's enemy, can be the C who is Dad, can be the C who is boss, can be the C who is the cool guy and can be the C who is "that bastard".

So what use is the idea of self?

A -"My god this dress makes me look like the most wonderful woman on the earth."

B - "My god, that man is wearing a dress"

C - "Oh my Buddha must they blaspheme"

The idea of ego-self, the qualities you bestow upon yourself are fantasy that go no further than your own mind. You can be a bumbling fart yet be in a room who consider you to be the life of the party - or visa versa or nothing of the sort. You can consider yourself right most of the time and truly be very wrong. and so on.

What does come over in life is that if you know a person who is always complaining about others; that everyone they meet 'is an idiot', 'does stuff wrong', 'can't be trusted', 'is a complete pain in the proverbial...', then the one common factor is this miserable git doing all the looking and opinionating.

If you meet a person who just has the most wonderful life and has a good day when others don't and can't see what everyone is complaining about and just thinks that life is hunkey dory morning glory 10 story love story then the common factor is them.

Put both in a room and the miserable git will find much fault in Ms happy and will no doubt find them a miserable bore. Ms happy will find the best in Mr grumpy but would prefer it if he cheered up a little.

So Grumps opinion is that Happy is an idiot. But Grump thinks he is completely right. So Grumps opinion of Happy is wrong/right?

and so what?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wheetabix and meditation

Eat Wheetabix and instantly rinse the bowl and it is clean.

Wait a minute and you'll have to rub at it with a sponge and soap.

Wait a few minutes and you'll be chipping it off with a knife.

So a good meditative mind lets things rinse away just as they happen.

And the less good hold on to each event.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Quiet Loud Mouth

One being quiet, the other so talkative. The talkative one feels uncomfortable in the presence of the quiet and begins to jibe.

"hey, shut up" he says sarcastically. "Less chat" he smirks.

The quiet one is likely to wish to react in a way of say this:

"Most of what comes from your mouth is pointless garbage, shut up"

but quietness remains and it passes.

Neither are wrong, both are being themselves. The quiet one more rooted and the loud one more attached and directed by the whims of a ceaseless mind.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wen Tzu Work for all

I think this was the point I forgot.

In the intro to the Wen Tzu the writer is talking about the idea of all people working in unity, all doing what they are naturally good at and doing it for the common good and not in competition. The reason this hit home was that on my way home from work yesterday I was chatting to a workmate over the exact same point.

We have a good team of people and naturally within that group there are friendships and conflicts, some people are drawn to chat together and some have grudges with each other. My workmate and I were discussing how we are both happy to take the seemingly lower position of helping another whereas some others are in a constant battle to improve themselves and take credit for jobs completed as a team.

A scenario would be that one person is rushing for a deadline and one of us will offer help in this. The person rushing may accept the help and then announce that they are going for lunch or a break or onto another task, thus leaving the person offering help doing the whole task. The double sting to this is when they return to grab the completed task and claim it as their own. This, under various formats, happens a lot, so my friend and I were talking up the dream reality of us all operating for the common good and leaving these petty games behind.

What the writer of the introduction to the Wen Tzu is doing is stating this same ideal but then stopping short of saying why this does not happen, not 2000 years ago and not now. This dream of all working for the common good is the gateway to murder: you set this dream of perfection and so you set the way for people to compete.

For this Taoist dream to be realized then much more wisdom from philosophical Taoism must first be employed, you see to expect all to work for the common good under the leadership of a company, state or country, there is already a hierarchy in place, that of a leader and subjects or staff. The common good in this case is not so common, all of these coworkers are in competition with each other and working for the good of their boss. So while the idea of working for a common good sounds very nice, the context is already set for decay.

So the author continues by saying that "What makes security secure can also create danger. Therefore when sages govern people, they see to it that people suit their individual natures, be secure in their homes, live where they are comfortable, work at what they can do, manage what they can handle, and give their best. In this way all people are equal, with no way to overshadow each other"

Natural contradictions occur even here: The sage "governing people" "encouraging people to do this do that" and so we must see all of this from another key perspective, that of non-doing. That would be the only true Taoist perspective and method that could truly work out and actuate this dream: the sage must allow all around to do as it naturally does, until nature is rebalanced. For a time the natural thing to do IS compete, is to rise and fall and take and lose until this balance has returned. People can't be told to live in order and the very desiring of it only brings about an inner conflict in the sage, person or in the leader. Wei Wu Wei is the way hey hey to have fields of whey corn and hay.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Wen Tzu

Here I am reading the intro to the Wen Tzu in English as translated by Thomas Cleary and as kindly donated to me by the Rambling Taoist, I am hit over and over by little slices of wisdom - that due to a lack of context will mean a lot or a little -

"Those who show their embellishments hide their reality"

- I am finally hit by a line later in the introduction -

which, looking back over the pages I have only recently read - i can no longer locate...

For sure there was some pertinent wisdom I was about to share and here it is, I have lost it.

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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

Compass points to Wow

I have a post due later in the year on Daily Cup of Tao about the way of seeing and a compass.

Compasses point North and so we see one way. At some point in my life my compass pointed South and I saw the world from a completely new perspective. I realized that while this new perspective was quite mind blowing (it doubled the size of my known universe) I could not live without North and so I took to balancing my compass to a perpendicular direction (East to West) and then to always appreciate life in these two perspectives: Worldly North and Spiritual South.

The way was to jump from "I-me-in-the-world" to "I-the universe and that old me as an expression of it".

Where I can see Ice melt and say 'ok, ice is made of water' and I can flick the rim of a wine glass, hear the "~tiiiing~" and say 'Matter is made of sound'.

In the past I'd have raised my eyebrows at such a comment as "matter being made of sound" and now I raise one and smirk knowingly with the other side of my face that it is more true than false.

~

I'm a Wowist monk. I am a Buddhist in that Buddha is in me not a dead man. I'm a Taoist in that I find balance and wonder in life. I'm a Vedantist in the way I see the infinite as one, indivisible. I'm married, used to take drugs, still like a very occasional beer, am vegetarian but for selfish reasons - I feel more healthy this way, I do a job, I don't own a TV, I don't follow the news, I meditate, I find wonder in every moment and if everyone was like me the world would be very peaceful indeed. Thankfully everyone is not like me, so life is all the more fascinating. And that is why the infinite incarnates in so many interesting ways - for love of the show.

Maybe you are a Wowist too?

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Thanks to the Rambling Taoist for writing a post on me today, and for the generous donation of The Book of Wen Tzu. Very kind indeed. Thanks.

*Bows, farts and glasses fall off*

Ta-Wan (Mr-Glasses)

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Errors made at reincarnation

Errors made at reincarnation.

On death a few people were given choices of rebirth.

The basic question being: Here you are, on the threshold of entering the One or the choice of rebirth, what choose you?

These people all decided on rebirth.

Person A, a boy, said: "I wish to be born in a world where every woman is beautiful" And so he was reborn as an ugly girl, and every woman he saw or met was indeed beautiful by comparison.

Person B said: "I wish to be reborn to a world where everywhere I look is an exotic delight" and so she was reborn in a slum in Bangladesh with a small TV set that played TV shows and movies where everywhere she looked was an exotic delight.

Person C said: "I wish to be reborn into a world where everyone is incredibly passionate" and so he was reborn to a nation a war where both sides were in a non-stop battle over religious differences.

~

So here I am not saying these cases are real or that we choose rebirth in this way, but I am saying to be careful over what you wish for in life. If you wish for everyone around you to be happy in your company, then maybe the result is that you die and your family are forever sad. Perhaps if you wish for money you never have love. Perhaps if you desire freedom you never make good friends.

Desire is a powerful force and all the best sages will say "steer clear of it".

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao