Church of the Churchless

Time...the essence of enlightenment?

Einstein showed that we live in spacetime, a continuum comprised of the familiar three dimensions of space and the much more mysterious dimension of time.

Nobody knows what time is really all about. Not scientists, not philosophers, not mystics. And certainly not theologians.

We have a sense of it passing. But the theory of relativity proves that this sense differs for people in different circumstances.

Two events, simultaneous for some observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock.

Astronomers look up into the sky and observe stars in distant galaxies. Their vision is of a natural time machine, because the light from those stars can take from minutes (our Sun) to billions of years (the edge of the universe) to reach us.

So they are looking back in time. It takes about eight and a half minutes for light to reach Earth from the sun. Thus if the Sun disappeared, it would be take that long before we knew about it.

What has already happened at one place in space hasn't yet occurred at another place. Scientists say "a supernovae just took place in galaxy X." But that could have been billions of years ago.

Now is relative. The "power of now" is a popular notion (and a best-selling book). However, there's more to time -- and reality -- than our now.

All those galaxies millions and billions of light years away have their own nows, as do all of the inanimate and (likely) animate entities elsewhere in the universe. We can grasp this intellectually, with difficulty, but it's very difficult to actually experience time markedly differently than we do now.

Sure, time slows down and speeds up for us -- a subject that has been of more than a little interest for me as I grow older and a week rushes by in just a few days.

I've learned some tips to make life seem to last longer. However, seemingly the best thing would be to view time in a completely fresh fashion. After all, most -- if not all -- of our problems arise because of time.

No time (as we know it), no arising. Or setting. 

I'm clueless about what would replace our normal sense of time. But I've been reading a book, "The Tao of Meditation," that has given me a new perspective on what enlightenment might be all about.

A different view of time, the fourth dimension.

Man is the ruler in three dimensions, but he is the pawn of time. He has no control over it and no ordinary means of comprehending it as a dimension. Man is born and dies in time, and in between he only perceives the now-present, now-present, now-present of it.

When he is twenty he can't see himself at sixty. When he is sixty, the young man of twenty is gone. He admonishes, "Know thyself," and forgets himself from minute to minute, unable to see the ends of his words or actions, or the beginning of the chain in which he is linked.

Appealingly, the book doesn't offer up much of an explanation of what a more enlightened perspective would be like.

What would be the fourth dimensional view of time? We can't talk about that because we have no way of knowing about it. It is beyond all three dimensional knowledge; it is a part of the Tao. Whatever we might say would be pure superstition or fiction. 

Still...

The purpose of T'ai Chi Chuan is to seek stillness in motion. The aim of meditation is to seek action in inaction. This is experienced from the sense of their opposites within motion and within tranquility.

It is possible with patience and persistence to feel, as if intuitively, very subtly, very delicately, the nature of time. By following this feeling we may move close enough to the border of the fourth dimensional world to get a glimpse of that reality. This is the first stage of enlightenment.

Well, as I so often say: maybe.

What I like about this notion of enlightenment is that it doesn't involve any supernatural journeying -- no soul traveling, no grand mystic ascent, no exploring of any spatial realm other than where we are right now.

Perhaps it's time that is the dimension to be more fully understood, not so much space, whether physical or metaphysical.

Albert Einstein:

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest ... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

A Tai Chi teacher: someone who doesn't know the way

Here's one of the reasons I enjoy Tai Chi (and it's associated philosophy, Taoism) so much: a Tai Chi teacher isn't looked upon with special reverence, just respect.

After having experienced a spiritual path that places the master, or guru, up on a pedestal, it's refreshing to practice Tai Chi -- where the teacher is looked upon quite differently.

I like how John Lash, a Tai Chi teacher himself, puts it in his book, "The Spirit of Tai Chi."

No one can know with the mind what Tai Chi and the Tao are. These are things that cannot be grasped with the mind. One can only stand in awe of them. The Tai Chi journey is thus a journey without signposts or guides.

This means that the traveler is completely on his own. There is no guru, guide, or authority that can say, "This is the way." Each of us must find our own nature and flow with it where it leads us.

...The Tai Chi school is a ship that sails towards the Tao upon uncharted seas. The teacher is the captain of the ship. He is a captain who does not know the way, but he can handle a ship and has a good feeling for the sea.

He guides his ship by relying upon his own intuition and his past experience of the journey. He has no chart or guide.

...In other words, the Tai Chi teacher is experimenting with life. Every second of his life, he stands at a crossroads with no sign to point the way.

...I am a Tai Chi journeyer. I do not know where I am going for I have never been there. 

So are we all, when it comes to the course of our lives. None of us knows for sure what will happen after we take our next breath.

And nothing at all of what will happen after we take our last breath.

[Next day update: Today The Rambling Taoist has a post that reflects the watery theme in the passage above. "A Diving Platform" points out that the core writings of Taoism aren't scriptures to be taken as gospel, but as a platform to dive in on your own from:

In this same vein, the works of these three visionaries provide great insight and a foundation into Taoist philosophy. They tease out ideas and concepts that often seem foreign and contradictory. Their purpose is to provide you with a place to gain your footing. But none of them want you to stand there flat-footed -- they want you to dive into life and to swim in your own direction at your own pace!

Which reminds me of another reason I like Tai Chi: my teacher encourages us to modify the forms (or "dances" of Tai Chi movements). In traditional karate this is a big no-no, unless you're an umpteenth level black belt.

But we frequently add moves, or take some away, in traditional Tai Chi forms. Individual expression is encouraged, rather than discouraged. When you feel the Tai Chi spirit moving you to move in a certain way, you follow it -- rather than thinking "Oh, no, I'm doing something different!"]

kkk

Erotic dream stimulates philosophical thoughts

In the almost-five-year history of this churchless blog, erotic dreams is a subject that hasn't come up for much discussion. Time to make up for the omission.

I don't have erotic dreams very often. But last night featured an interesting and pleasurable brief one -- nicely PG rated for open sharing.

I was walking down the side of a road. Glancing down, I saw an youngish attractive dark-haired woman lying on her back, arms by her sides, eyes open, completely relaxed.

Moment of decision.

In a flash my mind chose between (1) continuing on my way, and (2) stopping to kiss her. A whole lot went on in that millisecond of choosing, but the outcome felt absolutely clear and correct.

Kiss.

At first she was passively receptive. Then, actively inviting. The vibe was "zipless fuck." Except sadly, the dream ended with the kiss.

Now, on to the philosophizing. The most interesting aspect of dreams is that they take place entirely within one's own mind. My brain was producing both characters in the fantasy: me and the woman.

In a way (and I don't want to think about this too much or it will creep me out) I was kissing myself.

In the "real" world outside our heads, people interact with other people -- not just themselves. This makes moral and other sorts of decision-making more involved. We can't always go with our snap intuitions, as I did in my erotic dream. (Or if we do, we have to accept cause and effect consequences that aren't usually present in a dream.)

I've enjoyed pondering the notion of desert island morality. However, we don't live on desert islands where, like the "Lost" TV series, we can forge new identities with little or no connection to the life we've lived before.

Except...in some ways we can. Which is one of the messages of "The Untethered Soul," a book I wrote about in a previous post.

The author, Michael A. Singer, talks about the teachings of Taoism in a final chapter, noting that "it discusses that which is very difficult to discuss" -- namely, the Way that enables us to live life most pleasurably and productively.

There aren't any rigid rules regarding the Way, or Tao.

You can't say, "When heading down a road, never stop to kiss a desirable person." Or, "always stop." It depends on the circumstances. You want to avoid the extremes of being hit with a sexual assault charge or losing out on unexpected joy.

In his chapter, "The Secret of the Middle Way," Singer says:

In the Tao of sailing, the balance point is not static; it's a dynamic equilibrium. You move from balance point to balance point, from center to center. You can't have any concepts or preferences; you have to let the forces move you. In the Way, nothing is personal. You are merely an instrument in the hands of the forces, participating in the harmony of balance.

You must reach the point where your whole interest lies in the balance and not in any personal preference for how things should be. It's that way with all of life. The more you can work with the balance, the more you can just sail through life.

Effortless action [wu wei] is what happens when you come into the Tao. Life happens, you're there, but you don't make it happen. There is no burden; there is no stress. The forces take care of themselves as you sit in the center. That is the Tao. It's the most beautiful place in all of life. You can't touch it, but you can be at one with it.

Eventually you will see that in the way of the Tao you're not going to wake up, see what to do, and then go do it. In the Tao, you are blind, and you have to learn how to be blind. You can never see where the Tao is going; you can only be there with it.

... If you cannot see the way, all you can do is feel for the edges. But if you feel the edges, and don't go there, you will stay in the Way. That's how you live in the Tao.

The edges are extremes.

Extreme emotion and feeling nothing. Activity and passivity. Masculine taking charge and feminine letting go. Talking incessantly and listening all the time. Continually stopping for a kiss and never doing so.

During the churched phase of my life, I enjoyed the feeling of surrender that came with accepting a set of moral and lifestyle rules. What my spiritual guide or guru commanded, I tried my best to do.

Now I realize that this same sensation of surrendering to a higher power can be had without personalizing the entity to which you're deferring. Life itself can be that entity, that power.

Singer writes:

Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself. It is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. It's about not resisting energies as they pass through you. If you have difficulty doing this, don't get down on yourself. Just keep working with it. It's the work of a lifetime to become that open, that complete, and that whole.

The key is to just relax and release, and deal only with what's left in front of you. You do not need to worry about the rest.

...You truly can reach a state in which you never have any more stress, tension, or problems for the rest of your life. You just have to realize that life is giving you a gift, and that gift is the flow of events that takes place between your birth and your death.

To comfortably handle this flow of life, your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough to encompass reality. The only reason they're not is because you resist. Learn to stop resisting reality, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like the stepping-stones of your spiritual journey.

Bruce Lee's Taoist life lessons

Most people are familiar with Bruce Lee as a famous martial artist. Lee's philosophical accomplishments are less well known. But they are part and parcel of his Jeet Kune Do artistry.

This morning I couldn't resist -- I jumped ahead and read the final chapter in Daniele Bolelli's "On the Warrior's Path: Philosophy, Fighting, and Martial Arts Mythology."  It's called "Epistemological Anarchism, The Philosophy of Jeet Kune Do."

Bruce Lee's philosophy is rooted in Taoism. The past few days I've been enjoying some spirited discussion about Taoism in comment conversations on posts here and here.

I've been arguing that philosophical Taoism (as contrasted with its religious variety) isn't metaphysical or other-worldly, but instead is focused on the art of earthly living. Bolelli's description of Lee's Taoist leanings fits with my conception of Taoism.

Bolelli notes that Lee was at odds with much of Chinese culture, since religious Buddhism and Taoism, plus the rigid moral structures of Confucianism, don't fit with the iconoclastic Jeet Kune Do philosophy.

As we can see, then, Lee's love for philosophical Taoism and for the most radical aspects of Buddha's teachings was hardly in line with the diluted and simplified forms of Taoism and Buddhism favored by the masses. HIs philosophical outlook was therefore more at odds with Chinese tradition than consistent with it.

...By rejecting Confucianism and choosing to embrace the antiauthoritarian viewpoint of philosophical Taoism, Lee allied himself with the fringe-dwellers, the outcasts, the mavericks, the philosophical outlaws, the misfits of Chinese culture.

Ooh! Count me in! Those are my sorts of people. Following my sort of philosophy.

Whereas the philosophical Taoism and the Buddhism embraced by Lee can be subtle and paradoxical, Confucianism offers the security of precise formulas and simple, straightforward rules. Philosophical Taoism requires great sensitivity to be grasped. Confucianism is very easy to follow. Philosophical Taoism mocks rigid laws. Confucianism reveres them.

The philosophical side of martial arts is near to my heart, because I spent nine years studying traditional Shotokan karate -- an exemplar of a Confucian style (though Shotokan is rooted in Japanese culture).

About the time my churchlessness started to flower, I got disenchanted with the rigidity of Shotokan karate. I shifted to a mixed martial arts style and enjoyed the much looser dojo atmosphere (which included a photo of Bruce Lee on a wall).

After three-plus years of that, I've been Tai Chi'ing it for about five years (yes, Tai Chi is a martial art; even more, my instructor likes to say that it is the foundation of the martial arts).

So my evolution has been in the direction of Bruce Lee's Taoist Jeet Kune Do, whose basic precepts are "using no way as way" and "having no limitation as limitation." Lee encouraged his students to question everything and find out for themselves what works, and what doesn't.

Rather than establishing a new style, he [Lee] created a major controversy by suggesting that martial artists should be constantly involved in a process of research that never crystallizes its findings into a finished product....To Lee, an endless process of trial and error was therefore preferable to establishing one's day intuition as an immutable law.

Good advice. I've stopped meditating the way I was taught in my true believing phase, because I didn't feel that it was doing for me what I wanted. Now I'm much more eclectic.

Just as Lee used "whatever works" as his guiding philosophy, I don't feel that I need to follow any set of moral, ethical, or meditative dogmas. I'm still a vegetarian, but I drink a glass of red wine most evenings. I still meditate every morning, but I vary between mantra and mantra-less awareness, and worry a lot less about how much time I spend on my cushion.

Bolelli shares some good Bruce Lee quotations:

How can there be methods and systems to arrive at something that is living? To that which is static, fixed, dead, there can be a way, a definite path, but not to that which is living. Do not reduce reality to a static thing and then invent methods to reach it.

True observation begins when one sheds set patterns, and true freedom of expression occurs when one is beyond systems.

Knowledge is fixed in time, whereas, knowing is continual. Knowledge comes from a source, from accumulation, from a conclusion, while knowing is a movement.

Jeet Kune Do favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms and since Jeet Kune Do has no style, it can fit with all styles. As a result, Jeet Kune Do utilizes all ways and is bound by none and, likewise, uses any techniques or means which serve its ends.

More excellent Taoist advice. Lee makes the same point that I've been arguing in the above-mentioned comment conversations:

Philosophical Taoism's embrace of every way, depending on the circumstances, doesn't make this philosophy a defined belief system. Rather, it is the antithesis of religious, moralistic, or ethical dogmatism.

Bolellis says that Lee gave full power back to the individual through this set of "using no way as the way" aphorisms:

1. Research your own experience.
2. Absorb what is useful.
3. Reject what is useless.
4. Add what is specifically your own.

Sure sounds good for a churchless philosophy of life.

Epistemological anarchism, in fact, does not attempt to substitute one method for another. Rather, it frees individuals to find their own methods, and invites them to change them at will if, after some time, their discovery stops producing the desired results.

(For more about Bruce Lee's philosophy, check out my "Kung Fu meditating" post.)

Tai Chi doesn't have much to do with "Qi"

George asked some good questions in a comment on this recent post. I responded briefly to the Tai Chi section of his query in a comment of my own, but wanted to reply more fully to these thoughts:

Why do even the most churchless on here appear to follow a spiritual practice of some kind? If truly churchless, why not be wholly secular and skeptical, devoid of any and all spiritual belief.

If on the other hand such spirituality is indeed practiced and tolerated, why not the same extended to other mystic traditions or religions? Christianity and RS [Radha Soami] have been slammed on here.

Brian appears to be an adherent of Tai Chi and sympathetic to Taoism. Fundamental to both is ‘chi’ or ‘qi’, which suggests an energy flow principle to all living things. There is also Yin Yang that presupposes an inherent dualistic nature to the universe. And of course there are masters who teach this discipline to disciples.

There is no evidence for ‘qi’ or a stream of energy flowing within us. Instead, we have blood that flows within our veins and arteries. Human anatomy does not consist of energy or life-energy pathways.

First, I think there may be some misunderstanding of Chinese terminology going on here. The "Chi" in Tai Chi doesn't have anything to do with "Qi."

Tai Chi Chuan, which is what I have been learning for about five years, often is translated as "Grand Fist Ultimate" (chuan meaning "fist," the martial aspect of Tai Chi). I'm no expert on Chinese, for sure, but I'm pretty sure Qi and Ch'i are synonymous, but certainly not Qi and Chi (without an apostrophe).

So when George said that Qi, or Ch'i, is fundamental to Tai Chi, this really isn't true. You can practice Tai Chi assiduously, and even become expert in it, without believing in the subtle energy known as Qi.

Some long-standing practitioners in my Tai Chi class are big on Qi and Qigong. Others aren't. As I mentioned to George in a comment, I've settled on viewing Qi as whatever energy I'm feeling in my body at any given moment.

This isn't a "spiritual" belief, in any way similar to the dogmas of Christianity or Radha Soami/Sant Mat. It is simple awareness of internal bodily sensations that usually people pass over or ignore, being focused on external objects and movements.

Further, a lot of research has been done on the health benefits of Tai Chi. My wife subscribes to the Harvard Women's Health Watch newsletter. The May 2009 issue had an article that described some of the medical evidence. (This is a 1 MB PDF file.)
Download Health benefits of Tai Chi

Tai chi is often described as "meditation in motion," but it might well be called "medication in motion." There is growing evidence that this mind-body practice, which originated in China as a martial art, has value in treating or preventing many health problems.

Scientific research demonstrates the benefits of Tai Chi, which I've experienced personally. However, it's true, as George said, that I'm also attracted to the philosophical side of Tai Chi, Taoism.

Churchlessness is a continuum, not a sharp divide between believing and not believing. Even so, George asked why not be "devoid of any and all spiritual belief?" Well, I'd say that I am.

I find nothing "spiritual" in Taoism. This is a wonderfully natural philosophy. Mind and body are integrated, not split into concepts of spirit and matter -- which most religions consider to be at odds with each other.

What I don't want to do is shut myself off to new knowledge, understandings, truths, insights into reality. But I also don't want to embrace weird beliefs that have no connection with what I know now.

Like everyone else, I'm a bodily being. Probably that's all I am, no soul or spirit included.

However, there are a lot of mysteries left to unravel about the human condition. Now I find that physical pursuits -- martial arts, dancing, horse riding, scootering/motorcycling -- are a valuable means of learning who I am and how I function best (plus being plain fun).

I used to be much more other-worldly, philosophically. Thus Tai Chi and Taoism are where I've ended up at the moment in my descent from abstract conceptual metaphysics to directly experienced here-and-now awareness.

In physicality, where Tai Chi and Taoism are rooted, there are no places to hide behind metaphysical mumbo-jumbo.

You either can balance on one leg in a Tai Chi form and perform a sole (not soul) kick, or you can't.

You either can gracefully move with your partner in a Tango overhead turn, or you can't.

You either can control your horse as it canters around barrels in an arena, or you can't.

You either can smoothly guide your scooter/motorcycle through a series of tight curves in the road, or you can't.

Each of these activities -- which I've done recently -- requires my mind and body to act together harmoniously. Tension, fear, anxiety, unsureness, or lack of confidence produce shaky results.

Learning about life in this fashion seems much more real to me than the "spiritual" practices I used to engage in. So, George, I hope this helps answer your questions. In the latter part of your comment, you addressed some queries to tAo about Dzogchen. He has responded in another comment, echoing some points I've just made.

Basically, to understand how someone looks upon a practice like Tai Chi or Dzogchen, it's necessary to dig into their individual approach to it. I can understand how you could look upon Tai Chi as a spiritual belief system, but in my experience it isn't anything like that.

Tai Chi vs. Shabd Yoga -- I name a winner

I love questions. Especially those I can answer. Here's one that Todd Chambers asked me a few days ago via a comment on a post about giving up Buddhism and Zen.

So Brian, on the subject of Tai Chi, I wanted to ask you if you could say which practice has seemed more rewarding for you: Shabda Yoga or Tai Chi? Or do you have a preference?

Interesting question.

I diligently practiced the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of Surat Shabd Yoga (a.k.a. Sant Mat) for over thirty years, including a whole lot of daily meditation. And for about five years I've been studying Tai Chi fairly intensely, usually attending classes for five hours a week and doing the forms on my own at other times.

Now, comparing Tai Chi and Shabd Yoga might seem like an "apples and oranges" sort of thing, because they are so different.

But Todd asked which has been more rewarding for me, which doesn't require a point by point comparison. Plus, most people would say they are both "spiritual practices" -- though I really don't understand what spiritual means and wish we could do away with the notion of spirituality.

I've gained a lot from both Tai Chi and Shabd Yoga. However, here's why I consider Tai Chi and Taoism (Tai Chi is an expression of Taoism) to be much better suited for me now.

I love the naturalness of Tai Chi.

There is nothing, or at least very little, forced about it. You don't try to be anything other than what you are, doing what you can do. Performing a form (a set of movements) is called "playing."

My instructor, Warren, likes to tell a story about a bunch of senior (meaning, old) Chinese Tai Chi adepts who got together and said, "Let's each play a form." They did. And every playing looked way different from the others.

Each practitioner had his own style, his own way of melding Tai Chi with himself -- his personality, energy, physical body, attitude, and such. When they all had shown their stuff, laughter erupted with hearty expressions of "Everyone looked so good."

And so different.

In Shabd Yoga, or Sant Mat, the goal is sameness. Every disciple of a Shabd Yoga guru tries to emulate the master, aiming to merge his or her self with the oft-heard "will of the Satguru." The result is a straining to act just right. Shabd Yoga disciples are perpetually worried about doing something wrong.

In Radha Soami Satsang Beas this could be eating a speck of meat, sipping some wine, consuming pastries with egg in them, having sex outside of marriage, or not meditating for several hours a day.

In Tai Chi and Taoism, the variety I've been exposed to, there are no rigid rules. Laughter and a smile is the response to a seeming stumble, whether of the physical or psychological variety. I like that. It feels so right to not worry about being wrong.

We are human beings living in the physical world. That's where Tai Chi and Taoism start. And, in a sense, end.

Meaning, there isn't the other-worldly emphasis that dominates Shabd Yoga and Sant Mat -- which are aimed at releasing the soul from the confines of mind and body. In Tai Chi mind and body smoothly combine in flowing movement, as well as stillness.

The frequently-stated Tai Chi goal is to listen.

To yourself. To an opponent. To the cosmos. You aren't trying to dominate, control, force, overturn, fix. You listen, and from the listening comes appropriate action.

Which will be different for every time, for every person, for every situation. My instructor is fond of relating how a Tai Chi master was asked what the application, or martial purpose, was for a particular Tai Chi movement.

The master laughed and said, "Who can say? Whatever is happening determines what needs to be done." In other words, if you are attacked or find yourself in a confrontation, there are no rules except listen and respond appropriately.

This makes Tai Chi and Taoism wonderfully flexible and non-dogmatic.

So I've found that by no longer trying to be spiritual, I'm closer to being whatever the hell that word means, or doesn't mean.

Example: when I practiced Shabd Yoga/Sant Mat, I worked hard at being humble. Every serious disciple I know did also. If someone thanked you for your volunteer work, you were expected to say something like, "Oh, it is all the grace of the guru. I'm nothing, just a tool in His hands."

Then you'd feel ever so special for being so marvelously humble. After a while (several decades, because I can be a slow learner), it dawned on me that feeling special isn't an especially laudatory quality.

It certainly was at odds with the egolessness that Shabd Yoga held up as the goal of spiritual practice.

I came to realize that the Sant Mat dogma of initiates being especially chosen by God and the Guru to return to "heaven" (Sach Khand), while other poor souls (like my wife) were doomed to endless reincarnations on this crappy physical Earth, wasn't helping me on the humility or ego-loss front.

Now, I love not feeling special. I'm just a run of the mill Tai Chi student, and run of the mill human being, who is doing his best to live life halfway wisely, responsibly, and enjoyably.

I no longer feel that I'm part of a chosen group who are privy to knowing, or on their way to knowing, secrets of the cosmos that are hidden from others by a divine design. I used to talk a lot about being one with my fellow human beings and the universe at large.

Now, I don't talk much about that stuff. But I feel the oneness much more than in my Shabd Yoga days, because I've stopped setting myself apart as a member of a special group.

Hope this answers your question, Todd. Halfway, at least. That's good enough for me these days.

(Here's ten reasons for guys to like Tai Chi, using "guys" in the inclusive modern sense.)

Buddhism and Taoism deconstruct religion

Even when I was young, a pre-teen, I was attracted to Taoist and Buddhist imagery. During my first visit to San Francisco's Chinatown at about the age of twelve, I bought a bunch of scrolls and artwork showing sages wandering on misty mountain paths.

Where the heck did that immediate attraction for a philosophy I knew nothing about come from? I have no idea. But it was a premonition of things to come.

Because now my churchlessness has evolved to the point where Taoist and Buddhist writings are just about the only kind of spiritual literature that my psyche can stomach. And even with these genres, occasionally I get turned off by excessive dogmatism.

On the whole, though, philosophical Buddhism and Taoism are pleasantly compatible with a churchless frame of mind.

The book I've been blogging about recently (see here and here) helps explain why.

Jim Powell's "Deconstruction for Beginners" contains a nice description of how Taoism and Buddhism undermined the traditional religiosity of Hinduism and other logocentric faiths.

I like Powell's way of saying things so well, I'll let quotes from his book speak for his point of view and not try to paraphrase him. Here he talks about the first Hindu skeptics who appeared in what is now India.

They began to question everything Hindu. In fact, sometimes they would eat the flesh of dead men or would meditate atop a corpse. And instead of chanting Om, and instead of seeking for Brahman -- the essence of everything -- they began to question if anything has an essence -- if Brahman even exists. They questioned everything -- using riddles.

And from among this group of skeptics emerged a young prince, Siddartha Gotama, who was to become known as the Buddha. The Hindus had believed that the soul or Atma was identical with Brahman or God, and that it was eternal. But Buddha taught that all things are impermanent, and that there is no soul.

...Buddha paved the way for Asia's greatest Indian philosopher, who was to be called "The Second Buddha." His name was Nagarjuna, and many modern scholars have found that his philosophy has much in common with Derrida's "deconstruction."

Powell then discusses this familiar optical illusion. Is it a white cup? Or two black faces?

The important point is that we cannot see both the cup and the faces simultaneously. Each image appears to possess svabhava or self-essence. Each image appears to be a self-sufficent, self-existent, discrete image. But they don't possess self-essence!

There is an intimate, subtle relationship between the faces and the cup. One cannot exist without the other. They depend on each other. According to Nagarjuna, we tend to think in terms of such dichotomies (or binary opposites).

For instance, the Hindus thought the Universe is made of up of this pair: (1) An eternal spiritual Self (Atman or Brahman) and (2) a Non-Self, made up of Matter. This fundamental dichotomy lies at the basis of all Hindu experience. But the Buddhist will say that neither the Self nor the Non-Self is substantial.

A fundamentalist Christian or Muslim will also think in terms of such dichotomies. He will claim that only his religion is true, and that every other religion is myth or of the devil. As Derrida and Nagarjuna have shown, we tend to form these dichotomies (binary opposites) and to favor one member of the pair. Either Christian or Muslim.

But the cup and the faces are not separate. Each image is in a subtle and intimate relationship with its hidden partner. Though they cannot be seen at the same time, neither of them exists alone. Neither of them possesses svabhava or self-existence.

In fact you could say that they are Empty of Self-existence. This does not mean that they don't exist, or that they don't appear. Emptiness just means that the illusion of their separateness is a mirage.

...Ordinary people are like the magician's audience. They assume that everything has self-existence. They become emotionally and intellectually attached to the "things" they perceive. Thus, most people see only the ordinary level of truth (samvritisatya).

Those who see the Emptiness of things are like the magician -- he sees the same things, but from a different point of view. He knows that things are empty of a fixed, self-existent nature. He simply perceives things accurately. Thus he sees the Ultimate level of truth (para-marthasatya).

And even the concept of these two levels of truth is empty of self-existence! For if you cling to the concept of an Ultimate Truth, then IT becomes the lower, Conventional Truth!

Then Powell talks about someone -- Coyote, say -- gazing into a pool of water and seeing his own image, but thinking that it is the real unreflected Coyote.

But then you suddenly realize that the reflection is not what it appears to be. This does not mean the reflection does not exist. The reflection now seems to be an illusion only because you had believed it was the real you.

But now you know that the reflection in the pool does not have self-existence. After all, the reflection depends upon the pool, the eyes, mind and presence of the real Coyote. But this doesn't mean that you abandon the reflection. It is still useful to you for admiring yourself, etc.

The reflection is like the Lower Conventional Truth. And realizing it is only a reflection, devoid of self-existence, is like the Higher Truth. According to Nagarjuna, everything in the world is like the reflection of the mirror.

Taoism gets less attention than Buddhism in Powell's book. The deconstructive power of Taoist teachings is just as great, however, because Taoist sages similarly clear away dualistic oppositions that clog up human minds.

There isn't any room for conventional religious dichotomies -- body/soul, God/man, heaven/earth, virtue/sin -- in Chuang Tzu.

Nothing exists which is not "that," nothing exists which is not "this." I cannot look at something through someone else's eyes. I can only truly know something which I know. Therefore "that" comes out of "this" and "this" arises from "that." That is why we say that "that" and "this" are born from each other, most definitely.

Compare birth with death, compare death with life; compare what is possible with what is not possible and compare what is not possible with what is possible; because there is, there is not, and because there is not, there is.

...When "this" and "that" do not stand against each other, this is called the pivot of the Tao. This pivot provides the center of the circle, which is without end, for it can react equally to that which is and to that which is not.

...To use a finger to show that a finger is not a finger, is not really as good as using something that is not a finger to show that a finger is not a finger; to use a horse to show a horse is not a horse is not as good as using something other than a horse to show that a horse is not a horse.

Heaven and Earth are as one as finger is, and all of creation is as one as a horse is.

Zen minus Buddhism equals Taoism

Becoming “churchless” doesn’t mean that someone has given up the search for meaning in life. Quite the opposite.

Speaking personally -- as if I had a choice -- I don’t feel that the intensity of my quest for ultimate answers concerning the nature of the cosmos has lessened a bit since I turned away from organized religion and spirituality. 

All that has changed is the style of my search. I’m more open now to wandering in the open fields of mysticism and philosophy, being less concerned about staying on a well-defined path.

Still, I enjoy learning about how other pathless (or semi-pathless) wanderers look upon reality from their vantage point. I don’t want to follow in someone else’s footsteps, but it’s nice to meet up with like-minded travelers for a friendly get-together around a literary campfire.

These days, when I walk into a bookstore or browse through my own library I usually head for the Taoism and Buddhism sections. This is where my churchless soul finds the most Yes, Yes, Yes resonance.

So Ray Grigg’s “The Tao of Zen” is right up my reading alley, since it features a discussion of both philosophical systems.

I’ve read the book several times. Each re-reading offers up new insights, with some thoughts popping out of a page with much greater vigor than before.

Browsing through “The Tao of Zen” the past few days, I’ve been struck by the distinction Griggs makes between (1) Zen, and (2) Zen Buddhism. I’ve tended to see these terms as being virtually synonymous. But there’s good reason to argue that genuine Zen has little if anything to do with Buddhism.

And a lot to do with Taoism.

Makes sense to me. I’m a big fan of philosophical, as opposed to religious, Taoism. I also enjoy Zen literature, unless it is heavily tainted with the religious side of Buddhism.

Grigg’s notion is that Zen minus Buddhism equals Taoism. Or at least is virtually identical.

Ch’an [Zen] then, when understood without the overlay of Buddhism -- when its Indian element is removed -- is almost indistinguishable from Taoism. In personality, philosophy, and intellectual character,  Ch’an without Buddhism is almost identical to Taoism.

As much as I’m attracted to Buddhism, the most churchless world religion, it’s other-worldly aspect often leaves me with a Huh?

I mean, Buddhist meditation practice emphasizes mindfulness in the here and now. Yet much of Buddhist philosophy stresses the goal of detaching from this illusory world of maya, getting off the wheel of rebirth, and experiencing some sort of transcendent reality.

This reading time around, some previously non-highlighted passages in “The Tao of Zen” got a heavy dose of yellow.

For Taoists such release from ego is a means of reconnecting to wisdom and body of Earth, to the Great Mother; for Buddhists it is a way of disconnecting from the burden of samsara, the “Wheel of Life.”

...For Buddhism, however, enlightenment creates a metaphysical disconnectedness; for Taoists it creates an earthy reconnectedness. At a superficial level the two forms of awakening seem similar. Both cultivate an attitude of separation, of detachment, but at a deeper level they are quite different.

For Buddhism the separation is an objective; for Taoism it is a means. Buddhism separates from the world to transcend it; Taoism dissolves back into the world to become one with it. Later, in Japanese Zen Buddhism, this difference is clearly expressed in the distinction between Buddhist and Zen attitudes.

I’ve always liked the Buddhist adage, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” So nicely non-fundamentalist. You won’t find many Christians advising, “If you meet Jesus, kill him.” They’re eager to have Jesus return, not to get rid of him.

Griggs, though, writes:

Killing the Buddha comes from the Zen in Buddhism, not from the Buddhism in Zen Buddhism. The aphorism illustrates the polarity of difference between Zen and Mahayana Buddhism.

Why is it important for Buddhists to kill the Buddha? Or for Christians to kill Jesus, for Muslims to kill Muhammad, for Jews to kill Moses, for Taoists to kill Lao Tzu, for Sikhs to kill Guru Nanak, or for adherents of any other religion to kill the founder or current  leader? (metaphorically, of course -- this is a killing of outwardly directed devotion and intellectuality, not of a body)

Because natural reality doesn’t have well-defined boundaries, whereas human belief systems do. So if we want to know what’s real, we have to kill the artificial concepts and forms that obscure our universal vision.

Both Taoism and Buddhism experience from within systems of understanding that must finally negate and abandon themselves; both practices can only happen when they are free of the constraints of themselves.

Much of Taoist literature is an admonishment against becoming caught in any system, whether moral, political, philosophical, linguistic, or religious. With such freedom, belief is replaced by experience. A traditional Buddhist dialogue reflects the same principle:

The Buddha was asked, “Are you God?”
“No,” he said.
“Well, then, what are you?”
“Awake,” said the Buddha.

To become a pure Buddhist, a Buddhist must ultimately renounce Buddhism just as the Buddha renounced self and all attachment. This principle pervades Taoism as well. Taoists cannot live Taoism if they hold to the system called Taoism.

Individuals who practice either Taoism or Buddhism are inevitably inclined toward inconspicuousness and, finally, invisibility as the system that contains them dissolves itself.

Nice.

Churchlessness isn’t viewed as a movement away from “divinity” in Zen and Taoism. Rather, it is a necessary step toward it. Which in the end is realized as being exactly where each of us is now.

But wandering can teach us a lot. Mainly, I’ve found, that no matter how many different places I go to, I always find the same person there.

Roll with life like a ball, not a brittle teacup

I love Tai Chi. So far as I know, it's the only philosophy of life that you can express in movement. (Unless expressive movement -- such as dancing -- is philosophy also, a non-verbal variety.)

One of the first things a Tai Chi student learns is circularity. Also, one of the last things. Letting go of rigidity is a never-ending process, like life itself.

There are no straight lines in the yin-yang symbol. Most of the physical movements in Tai Chi have the same curving feel. Ditto with the philosophical precepts. Taoist sages don't point directly at truth.

The intimate blend of physicality and philosophy in Tai Chi appeals to me. I used to be much more of a dualist, believing that matter and spirit are worlds apart.

Until I'd done enough looking around, both inside and outside of me, and realized that this world is all there is. And that's true for everybody else also.

As I've said before, and am about to say again, not one single person in all of human history has ever had a spiritual experience -- if "spirit" is taken to mean non-physical.

When you're not physical, you're dead. Maybe dead people have experiences, but nobody alive has direct knowledge of that. (Q. "Why?" A. "Because they're alive.")

So spirituality is materiality is living is being a human is meditating is dancing is Tai Chi is having sex is drinking wine is chanting sutras is studying science... and is everything else also.

What works for you, works. What doesn't, doesn't.

In Tai Chi, I've found that flowing relaxed circularity works. Better, in my opinion (based on fourteen years of previous traditional and semi-traditional karate training) than rigid tense linearity.

An oft-heard adage in spiritual circles is to make the mind like an empty teacup. Only then can it be filled with wisdom -- not when it's already full to the brim with existing notions.

OK. Sort of makes sense. 

But what happens when the tea cup has been filled after being emptied? Isn't it time to empty it again? How are we supposed to know when the perfect cup of wisdom has been poured? And is there any end to the pouring? Does life ever stop teaching us new lessons?

I smile when people email me, or leave a comment on this blog, saying "Brian, how could you forsake what you used to believe in?"

They should know the answer: life is nothing but change. Each of us is changing continually. Our bodies change. Our beliefs change. Our experiences change. It's crazy to think that we can stop change in its tracks.

Or that we should. Dead people don't change. Living people do. Why would we want to be dead when we're still alive? There will be plenty of time to be dead later.

In the Spring 2009 issue of Tai Chi magazine there's a nice article about "The Intrinsic Qualities of Taijiquan." Even if you don't know much about Tai Chi, including what root means, the authors' message should come through.

The moment you struggle to stay firm, you will stiffen up, and then your weakness (your root) is exposed. In fact, the stronger your root, the more you are giving your opponent a target and a leverage to attack.

..."No root" in Taijiquan is really about having a moving root, not a fixed root. This is like an object floating on water or a ball rolling on the ground.

Compare a tea cup with a ball. You might say the cup has "root" because it is stationary while the ball has "no root" because it rolls around.

However, the tea cup is stable only within a limited range, beyond which it will topple and break. On the other hand, a ball always has a point touching the ground, which is its root. When it starts rolling, that point changes with its movement.

If the function of a root is to stablilize an object, then a ball rolling around in all directions "without falling over" is like having root and not having root at the same time.

You say it has root, yet it rolls around; you say it has no root, yet it never topples. The root of a ball is everywhere, but is also nowhere.

Back in my youth Bob Dylan asked a question. Taoists would answer, "just fine."

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Turn around, if you feel like it

Yesterday I related the following story to my Tai Chi class. Our instructor had been talking about the importance of staying empty, keeping one foot unweighted so you can easily move it in a desired direction.

Being double-weighted is a no-no. That's when you're firmly planted on both feet, committed to where you are, which prevents you from fluidly being somewhere else if the situation demands it.

I came across this tale in "A Short History of Chinese Philosophy."

Wang Hui-Chih was living at Shan-Yin. One night he was awakened by a heavy snowfall. Opening the window he saw a gleaming whiteness all about him ... Suddenly he thought of his friend Tai K'uei. Immediately he took a boat and went to see Tai.

It required the whole night for him to reach Tai's house, but when he was just about to knock at the door, he stopped and returned home. When asked the reason for the act, he replied: "I came on the impulse of my pleasure, and now it is ended, so I go back. Why should I see Tai?"

Yes, why?

We talked about this in class. I mentioned that standing firm, remaining true to a plan, honoring a commitment -- this is seen by most people as a good thing.

Shifting gears, changing direction, charting a new course -- this also is viewed as having its pluses, but there seems to be more wariness associated with a zig-zagger in contrast to a straight-liner. Can he be trusted?

But one isn't less dependable than the other. They just have different commitments.

Wang was committed to honoring his sense of what felt right. When he was drawn to visit his friend, he did. When he wasn't, he didn't, even though he was about to knock on the door. Wang wasn't bound by the rigid "should's" that most of us carry around in our mind, placed there by learned social conventions.

Such as, If you've journeyed all night to see someone, you should take the final step and cross the threshold.

Well, again the question arises: Why? Who is a better judge of what's the right thing to do than you? If you feel an urge to turn around at the last moment (or any other time), follow your instinct -- whether you're on a religious or any other sort of path.

After all, U-turns often lead to a better direction. So turn back, if you're on the wrong road.

Taoism’s cosmic melody

Music. Sound. Vibrations. Dance. These aren't just worldly night club notions. They're also at the root of some of the world's most profound mystical and spiritual traditions.

Like, Taoism.

Yesterday I left a comment on a post, responding to some thoughts from Adam . I said:

Adam, I don't think it's accurate to say that the form of meditation practice you described differentiates RSSB/Sant Mat from all other faiths.

Sant Mat likes to claim that the "sound current" is at the foundation of every deep mystical practice. This is an exaggeration, but I have quite a collection of books that describe meditation practices involving hearing a subtle spiritual sound.

For example, Taoism, the mystical side of it, speaks of an audible energy that permeates all of the cosmos. However, Taoism obviously doesn't believe in the need for a "perfect master" to connect the meditator with this power, because the Tao is considered to be omnipresent -- the root of all things.

So meditation on an inner sound isn't unique to Sant Mat.

Adam replied with, "Brian, How does taoism recommend one be able to hear this audible energy?" Here's an answer.

This morning I reviewed some passages I'd highlighted in Livia Kohn's "Taoist Mystical Philosophy." She describes the teachings of the Xisheng jing ("Scripture of Western Ascension"), a text that dates to about the fifth century.

Here's a central goal of Taoism, understanding that wu wei, effortless effort, isn't aimed at forceful striving but at gently relaxing into what we already are.

To attain oneness with the Tao, one has to abandon all ego personality, blot out the intention and silence the will, go back to the center of the mind, isolate the spirit and make it stable and infused with Tao…Unity in thinking and feeling is attained, the inner spark of the mind joins with the pure cosmic energy of the Tao. Human beings not only intuit the divine reality within and without, but join it with all their being.

…Human beings are within the Tao because the Tao is the enveloping order of the whole universe. But the Tao is also within every human being inasmuch as he or she needs it to be alive, to be himself or herself.

How does a person become one with the Tao? Simple, but maybe not easy. Stop being so separate.

One first examines the structure of one's mind and finds the root of all problems in the development of an ego-identity, which must be abolished and eradicated completely. The process by which this is achieved is called "forgetting": first one forgets to make any distinctions between the various living beings without, then one forgets the value judgments attached to mental classifications within.

Increasingly one merges one's mind with the Tao, the underlying flow of existence as such. In the end there is no more knowing, no more clinging, no more definite identity. When there are no more categories of perception, life and death subjectively cease to exist.

Fully at one with the flow of existence, the mystic is then able to enjoy everything as it is, without ever wishing to change it, without the least desire or regret for anything.

Now we come to a seeming contradiction. I say seeming, because dualistic logic takes a hike in Taoism (as it does in quantum theory). Either-or is supplanted by both-and, or none of the above. On the one hand…

According to these descriptions, the Tao is a force that cannot be grasped, it is invisible, inaudible, and subtle…The realization of the Tao is a state of dissolution, of union where all sensual perception is replaced by the non-seeing and non-hearing qualities of the Tao itself.

On the other hand…

In the cosmology of Taoist mystical philosophy, one may imagine the Tao as a tone of a certain wavelength that pervades and encompasses all there is. Or, as the Taoists themselves have it, a certain quality of qi that underlies and furnishes all existence.

…In terms of Taoist mystical philosophy, this means that the more out of tune any individual is, the more "evil" he is from the point of view of the Tao, the more unhappy he feels, the less fortunate he appears. Such "evil" is not fundamental; it is not rooted in the cosmos. It is merely a deviation, a change in pattern, a different wavelength, an unmatched pitch.

Beings have the potential to be either in tune or out of tune with the true pitch of the Tao. It was the Tao itself that equipped them with the individual power of producing their own tones. The power and beauty of the Taoist universe lies exactly in this freedom that is yet a form of bondage.

The bond of the Tao is an inner tendency, a feeling of belonging, a natural affinity for the right sound, a deep longing for peace and harmony. Never fully free from the all-encompassing flow of nature, all beings feel the need to return to the perfect harmony that they had before they were born. Like fish out of water, they feel estranged away from the Tao.

…The sage, then, is one who has found perfect pitch in all his thoughts and actions. He happily goes along with the piping of the Tao and never adds even a trace of disharmony to the cosmic concert.

Sweet! Tell me more about how to dance with the universal music.

Overall, the more positive and relaxed qualities of human life and mind are therefore associated with the Tao. All violent emotions and tensions of humanity are linked to the conscious mind...Taoist mystical practice, then, reduces and controls the conscious mind in favor of the eternal Tao.

…Yearning and worry are forms of passions and desires; they always go together with fear and joy, anxiety and hope. The activity of the mystic consequently consists of reducing and eventually abandoning this misdirected power of thought, to keep all thinking in the present and on the Tao in a state of meditation.

…Thinking no longer with the mind, the accomplished mystic now lives by the spirit alone…Ordinary knowledge is nothing but a form of ignorance, a foolhardy way of taking outer manifestations of things for real while in truth they are only rippling waves on the surface of the deep and eternal Tao.

Then…

The Tao, itself invisible, inaudible, and subtle, is realized fully when all ordinary sensual seeing, hearing, and knowing is completely given up. When the intention dies and becomes a pure stream of consciousness, sensual input is turned into a series of floating images and sounds…Taoist mystics increasingly see themselves confronted with the central issue of epistemology: anything heard or described in human language or common metaphors is not ultimately identical with reality or truth as such.

Now we come to the music of the Tao, which may or may not be metaphor (no one can say, since the Tao can't be spoken).

To prepare one's ears for the Tao, the Xisheng jing continues, one first of all has to abstain from listening to ordinary talk. Very gradually one's senses become softer and finer, more attuned to the subtle movements of the Tao in the world.

The Tao is barely perceptible and its sounds are faint, like the gentle tones of the flute. As one becomes increasingly able to perceive the Tao, whatever it is that one perceives lends itself less and less to considering and naming.

…The tender cosmic melody of the Tao is the purest manifestation of the musical harmony of the universe, but all existence is sound or at least like sound.

I spend about thirty years as a Sant Mat true believer. Now Taoism is my favored philosophy, in part because I absorb it naturally through the Tai Chi that I've been practicing for four years.

The way I see it – and I understand that everyone has a unique vision of how things are – the Taoist notion of a divine melody pervading the universe is a more genuine reflection of Sant Mat's shabd, dhun, or "sound current."

That is, by and large Taoism lacks the religious dogma and metaphysical baggage that organized spiritual faiths carry along.

Taoism and Sant Mat both teach that mental conceptions obscure a wordless primal reality. However, Taoism (like Buddhism) espouses no-mind, not-knowing. Sant Mat, however, is based on an involved belief system. Once someone has bought into the beliefs, further questioning and conceptualizing is supposed to stop.

So while Taoism has no-mind, Sant Mat has locked-in-place mind. The aspiring Taoist mystic seeks to embrace mystery directly; the aspiring Sant Mat mystic considers that cosmic mysteries will be revealed after travelling a well-defined path.

A final Kohn quotation:

The underlying ground is deep within; it is shrouded in darkness. One approaches it by deepening, darkening, closing in…The ideal state of mind is not so much one of joy and freedom, rather it is characterized by innocence and utter simplicity.

Life in the Tao here is a state of purity in the sense of originality. It is unsophisticated, neither brilliant nor radiant. Comparable not a glittering gem, it is more like an uncut block of wood.

Great news! Being a blockhead is just fine for a Taoist.

“From Taoist to Infidel” – sounds like me

It's too damn hot here in Oregon today (100 degrees!) to slave over a hot laptop trying to cook up a blog post.

So, thanks to Marcel Cairo, my favorite after life medium (also, the only one I know), I've got a readymade Church of the Churchless sharing for this over-heated Saturday.

Marcel emailed me a link to Richard Carrier's "From Taoist to Infidel," titling his message It could be you.

Yes, indeed. I saw a lot of myself in this essay. And I'll bet a lot of visitors to this blog will see themselves similarly reflected in Richard's journey from Christianity to Taoism to whatever he calls his philosophical leaning now.

His essay was written in 2001. Amazon has a 2005 book by Carrier, "Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism." Naturally, I just ordered it.

In his piece Richard says:

I still cherish the memory of seeing a picture of three holy men travelling a road together, all laughing with each other. One was a Buddhist, another a Taoist, and the third a Confucian. This image is in fact a regular motif in China. There, the three religions, despite being so doctrinally and intellectually at odds, get along peacefully, even happily, a friendship that is celebrated in such artwork everywhere.

A few years ago I also wrote about the "Three laughers at the tiger ravine." Great way to live – with laughter.

(Reading note: I don't like excessively wide web pages filled with text. Really tough to read. The human eye scans narrow columns much more easily, something newspapers know. So make your browser window smaller or narrower, and you'll be able to read Richard Carrier's essay quite a bit more easily.)

Lowering our spiritual center of gravity

I was walking along the Metolius river in central Oregon, semi-lost in thought. Which isn't unusual for me. Like most people, I spend a lot of my day focused on what's going on inside my head.

That's as far from earth level as my six foot bodily consciousness can rise.

Since I've been reading "Tajiquan Theory" in the morning before I meditate, some Taoist lessons came to mind.

Breathe. Focus on your abdominal center, the lower dan tian. Simply be aware. Without thought.

I've heard this in each of the Tai Chi classes that I've been taking for three and a half years. "Rise from above. Sink from below."

Where does that leave you? Centered. Often we carry a lot of tension in our upper arms and shoulders. Letting it go, relaxing the elbows, softening the knees, we settle into a comfortable wu chi stance, rooted.

As in the Tai Chi dojo, so on the riverside trail.

Attention to a few breaths, feeling my abdomen expand on the inhale, contract on the exhale, and my psyche was several feet lower, seemingly. I wasn't teetering along inside wobbly mental confines any longer. Nature and me were much more intimately connected.

That's how I've been feeling ever since I entered my churchless phase: more attuned to the world that exists outside of conceptual thought.

Or at least, on the far edges of it – since I'm not sure that it's possible to completely separate sensation from cognition. The human brain isn't wired in such a dualistic fashion.

It's strange that I hear so frequently, "Brian, you think too much." This advice (or criticism) usually comes from true believers who question my leaving a religious fold. They view themselves as having gone beyond thought into pure spiritual experience.

Yeah, right. I don't see it this way at all. And I feel like I know whereof I speak, because I've been there and done that – the true believing thing.

Belief involves thought. So does faith. Each adds on something to direct experience that isn't naturally there. A complex conceptual superstructure is constructed on top of simple sensation, leaving the psyche top-weighted.

Christians believe in the presence of Jesus. But there's no Jesus actually there in prayer or a church service. Without all the dogma and theology of Christianity, Jesus wouldn't exist. He's only evident when the thought of a believer is active.

Same with guru worship in Eastern faiths, something I know a lot about. The elevation devotees feel in the presence of the guru comes from believing in his (or, rarely, her) divinity. No belief, no elevation.

It's all in the head, another example of top-weighted experiencing. This was the point of my "Did I see God in first class?" post. The ahhhhh from being a few feet away from a purported God-man erupted only from those who believed in him.

By contrast, when I walk along the Metolius there's no believing involved in recognizing the river's beauty. My thoughts keep me from fully experiencing what's really there, rather than being essential ingredients of the experience – as is the case with Jesus or guru worship.

There's nothing wrong with thinking. But when it's the foundation of religious or spiritual faith, we're out of balance, way up there in our own head, not grounded in natural reality.

I'll end with some Alan Watts.

The first element of Chinese Taoist yoga is to stop talking to yourself. Don't explain the world…So one has to get to the nameless state, the nonthinking state, which is called in Chinese wu nien. Wu means "not" and nien means "the heart-mind."

…Now, you will find, if you try, that it is a very difficult thing indeed to stop thinking. "Stopping thinking" doesn't mean to stop using your eyes and your ears and your hands and all your senses. It means that when you see a dog, you don't say "dog" to yourself; you just see what is there. The Buddhists call this the state of suchness.

…When in ancient texts of mysticism you read that it is necessary to go beyond the senses, that necessity can very easily be misunderstood. The texts are not saying that it is the senses – the eyes, the ears, and so on – that falsify.

It is our conceptions of what the eyes and the ears bring to us that cause the falsification…The splendor of a river is that it is the meaning and has none, and there is about it a quality of meaninglessness, of having no meaning and yet being meaning to all nature.

Feeling the spirit…via body or soul?

Here I am, someone who's pursued spiritual practices for almost forty years, and I can't tell you what "spirit" is. Go figure.

But seemingly such figuring is impossible, because whatever spirit is (assuming that word means anything at all), there's general consensus among mystics, meditators, and metaphysicians that it's something beyond the bounds of rationality, explanation, experimentation.

Just like life, consciousness, and existence – which to me are pretty much synonymous with spirit. Meaning, the foundational aspect of the cosmos, that which there is no deeper which'er. Or, that'er.

For those inclined to going off the deep end, a club I'm proud to belong to, a central question is: Where's the diving board?

The two basic answers are: body and soul.

Some believe that spirit is realized only by going beyond physicality into a more ethereal realm of reality. Meditative exercises are aimed at drawing one's consciousness away from material sensations so that the soul can escape from the cage of the body.

Bad body! Bad body! That's the essential attitude of the soul'arians, though usually the big problem is considered to be one's attachment to the physical frame, not the flesh and bones themselves.

Regardless, spirituality is viewed as an ascent from the crudity of matter into airy skies where the soul can soar freely, unencumbered by bodily ties.

I used to march to the beat of this philosophical drummer. Big time. That was how the Sant Mat cosmology of Radha Soami Satsang Beas viewed reality. And it also was the Neoplatonic teaching of Plotinus, about whom I wrote a book.

Now, though, I lean toward beginning (and maybe ending) with the body. From my social work graduate school days, I remember a central adage: "Start where the client is at."

Well, where I'm at right now is being a body.

Yes, maybe I'm something else also. Soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it. But what I'm aware of currently is physicality (along with recollections of it, which form my dreaming and imaginative realities).

This helps explain why I'm so attracted to Taoism and Tai Chi, which I've been practicing regularly for almost four years. Tai Chi is the bodily expression of some ethereal Taoist philosophy.

But Taoism doesn't find any conflict between spirituality and physicality, since they blend seamlessly into each other. That's the goal of Tai Chi, as described in Yang Jwing-Ming's "Taijiquan Theory."

Taijiqiuan [or Tai Chi Chuan] was created in Daoist monasteries and is a Qigong practice for enlightenment. The only difference is that this Qigong practice can also be applied in martial arts.

The author translates a Tai Chi song or poem:

The purpose of learning Taijiquan is to aim for the comprehension of Taiji and Yin-Yang so (we) are able to reach the Dao [Tao], therefore (allow us) to protect (our body), strengthen (our body), and enjoy longevity. Furthermore, by nourishing and cultivating (our) human nature, (we are) able to reach the final goal of unification of heaven and human spirit.

If spirit is the essence of life (again, assuming "spirit" is something more than a human concept), it makes sense to get in touch with it through the life we're living now.

Thus Tai Chi finds a resonance between heaven and earth, spirit and body, mind and matter, subtle and gross energy. I don't know to what extent this is true, but the notion that reality has gradations rather than sharp distinctions strikes me as pleasingly scientific.

Most religions would have us believe that spirituality is other-worldly, a state to be achieved by denying physical desires, ignoring physical sensations, eschewing physical wisdom.

Well, like I frequently say, maybe. It's just not the way I choose to pursue now.

[Here's the first thirteen pages of "Taijiquan Theory," courtesy of the YMAA website. It's a fine summary of Taoist philosophy, including how Wu Chi, Tai Chi, and Yin-Yang relate.]

A wee bit of guidance on the Way

Over on my other blog, HinesSight, Joshua left a Taoism related comment on a DSL-themed post. Go figure, especially since some of the sentiments I expressed in the post were just a tad on the egocentric side.

Many of my neighbors are deeply grateful that I've brought the potential of DSL to some 240 homes in our area. Quite a few are trying to run businesses out of their homes. That's tough to do with a dial-up connection, and satellite is expensive.

I've been thinking that a bronze statue of me, commemorating my DSL triumph, would be a nice addition to one of our local streets. Which could be renamed after me also.

Regardless, in his comment Joshua asked for a wee bit of guidance about following the Way of Tao.

When I was younger I was incarcerated. The crimes although petty and debateable are of no matter here. But, one day I came across a pocket sized version of the Tao Te Ching. Even at my fairly young age I was intrigued. I loved how overwhelming the message was.

Ever since, although inconsistently, I have pursued these teachings. I carry the Tao te Ching with me practically every where I go. I have also started reading the Basic Writings of Chuang Tzu and have tried unsuccesfully many times to utilize that oracle of fortune we call the Book of Change(I ching).

I really feel as though I will never turn back and totally abandon the Way but I have a lot to "unlearn". Maybe you could refer me to some sources or give me a wee bit of guidance, because it feels as though I'm lost.

Figured that I might as well reply to Joshua in a Church of the Churchless blog post.

And a "wee bit" of guidance it will be, since I'm a lot better at coaxing Qwest to install DSL in our neighborhood than cajoling Taoist wisdom to reveal itself in my consciousness.

But for what it's worth, Joshua, here's a story and a suggestion.

My wife left for a trip to Florida today. Last night Laurel was having a tender moment with someone she's going to miss terribly. Our dog. (Not that she won't miss me also, but I'm not nearly as cute as Serena).

Serena and Laurel were having a cuddle-fest on the living room floor in front of some bookcases. I joined them. In the course of scratching a furry ear (not Laurel's, I hasten to add), something drew me to look at a bottom shelf that held a row of books on tape belonging to Laurel.

One item looked like it didn't belong. Which, it didn't. Because it was a real book. And not a book of Laurel's, but one of mine.

A book that I'd been trying to find for quite a while. A book that I'd remembered enjoying a lot, yet couldn't put my hands on, because it was somewhere I'd never thought of looking.

In short, a book that I'd lost. Much as you feel that you've lost the Way, Joshua. Except a book isn't the Way, one of the basic precepts of Taoism.

Nothing is. The Way is just the Way. And that happens to be a central theme of the book that I found last night, "Buddhism Without Beliefs" by Stephen Bachelor.

It's a terrific book, one of my all-time spiritual favorites. I suggest you read it, Joshua, if you haven't already. Heck, even if you have, read it again.

That's what I did this morning. Skimmed it at least, focusing on the passages that I'd highlighted in the slim book's 115 pages.

Bachelor says that Buddhism isn't a belief, but action. It's being fully alive and aware, right here, right now. His chapter on awareness starts with a quote.

And further, a monk knows when he is going, "I am going." He knows when he is standing, "I am standing." He knows when he is sitting. "I am sitting." He knows when he is lying down. "I am lying down."
-- The Buddha

The Buddha and Bachelor know a lot more about the Way than I do, Joshua. But what little I know, or rather, suspect, is in line with that starkly simple premise: the path is here and now, not there and then.

This is disconcerting, because we're used to orienting ourselves by structuring the real present within an imaginary past and future.

That locks us into a conceptual framework – yesterday was such and such; tomorrow will be such and such – which seemingly offers stability. But actually it constricts reality unnaturally, leaving us wanting more: the real thing.

And that lacks the boundaries we're accustomed to. Hence, we can feel lost just when we've found the Way.

To know emptiness is not just to understand the concept. It is more like stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where suddenly you can move freely and see clearly. To experience emptiness is to experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of who you are and the kind of reality you inhabit.

It may last only a moment before the habits of a lifetime reassert themselves and close in once more. But for that moment, we witness ourselves and the world as open and vulnerable.

…As mindful awareness become stiller and clearer, experience becomes not only more vivid but simultaneously more baffling. The more deeply we know something in this way, the more deeply we don't know it.

Joshua, I'm not saying that your feeling of being lost is what you're looking for. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.

But it sure seems to me that it's better for someone to feel genuinely spiritually lost than to imagine that they've found their self, when they really haven't.

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me.

…This perplexed questioning is the central path itself.

…Like life itself, it just keeps going, free from the need to hold to any fixed positions – including those of Buddhism.

…Questioning is the track on which the centered person moves.

There's your Way, Joshua. Perplexed questioning.

Relax. You're on it.

I’m a Bright, see me shine

I'd heard of brights before, but didn't know that it was possible to become a Bright (with a capital "B") until Tao, a frequent Church of the Churchless visitor, mentioned the brights web site in a recent comment.

This evening I learned enough about bright-ness to conclude that I could sign up as an official Bright.

You can be a lower case "bright" just by considering yourself to be such. But registering on the brights web site turns you into a honest to God nature "Bright."

Slipped up just now. Hope my reference to a supernatural entity doesn't void my registration. Because the essence of being a bright is a naturalistic worldview.

That fits me, since my sensibilities are becoming more and more Taoist. The way I see it, everything real is natural. Otherwise, it'd be unreal – fantasy, imagination, belief.

More accurately, those products of the human mind are real, but only in an extremely limited sense. They aren't lasting aspects of the natural world like trees, water, stars, frogs, and jellyfish are.

Or as gravity, electromagnetism, quarks, electrons, and black holes are.

I had to ponder what I mean by "natural" before I took the plunge and became a Bright (which took less than a minute and should only entail getting a newsletter emailed to me every month or so).

I'm entirely open to the possibility that realms of reality exist beyond the physical. Heck, so are physicists and cosmologists, since higher dimensions are a hot scientific topic these days, especially in string theory.

So would the existence of a higher dimension beyond the three of space and one of time that we're familiar with be natural, or supernatural?

Me, I'd call it a part of nature. A hitherto unconfirmed part that now has joined our understanding of what reality is all about.

Magnetism once was thought to point to a soul or god, a supernatural entity. Now we know better. Electrical and magnetic phenomena are governed by natural laws.

We haven't come to the end of our knowledge of those laws, for sure. So brights need to be open to an ever-expanding view of what is "natural."

Quantum entanglement, where particles separated by millions of miles (or even light years) change instantly in concert with each other, once was felt to be too strange to be real. But it is.

I agree with what J.B.S. Haldane said:

I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

Taoism and the Trinity

Ron Gardner, compiler of an excellent spiritual reading list, just gave me some feedback about four Taoism books that I recommended to him.

I found his email so interesting, I wanted to share it. By "interesting," I don't mean that I understand it completely. But I get where he's coming from, to use a wonderfully imprecise '60s term.

It just isn't where I come from. Which is absolutely, completely, marvelously fine.

I can't tell you how many times I've said or written something that seemed to be so compelling, so inspiring, so truthful, so eloquent, that after my saying or writing had been communicated I sat back and waited for the applause to reverberate through my not-so-humble mind.

And I waited. And I waited some more.

Until I realized that my "Oh my god, this is so right!" was so wrong to my audience that they couldn't wait to get off this boring, confusing, inexplicable subject and start talking/reading about something a whole lot more interesting.

So I'm not surprised that the books I told Ron about elicited the reaction they did from him. I'm grateful, though, for his thoughtful response – which I've shared below.

I need to ponder my response to his response, which it's too late to do tonight. I will say, however, that I just opened up an issue of TIME magazine that came in the mail today.

A Toyota ad grabbed my attention. It shows a dirt road stretching into the distance between two fields. The headline says: "Can you have an impact by making none at all? Why not?"

They're talking about zero emissions from a car and zero waste from a manufacturing plant. But this also is a thoroughly Taoist spiritual sentiment.

Nothing, none, is one. Three…that's two more. Nothing wrong with a trinity, though. It' s just not one.

Here's Ron's message:

Hi Brian,

I checked out the four Taoism books you recommended, and none of them particularly impressed me. Just as I'm not a big fan of Zen, I'm also critical of Taoism. Why? Truth is a circuit--not unlike an electrical circuit.

An electrical circuit  functions according to Ohm's law. That means  it involves voltage (electro-magnetic force), amperage (current flow), and ohms (resistance), which, spiritually speaking, equates to conscious force, presence or pressure; reception or conductivity of the descending flow (Holy Spirit or shaktipat), and utter surrender or emptying, or non-resistance.

Taoism is all about non-resistance, or letting go--and if that is all you do spiritually, you'll lack the force, grounding and integration that holistic Enlightenment necessitates.

 IMO, and based on my experience, real spiritual life is about the Trinity--Sat-Chit-Ananda (or Siva-Shakti-Narada) in Hinduism; the Trikaya (Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, and Nirmanakaya) in Vajrayana Buddhism, and the Father-Son-Holy Ghost in Christianity.

Consequently, I really vibe with Kashmir Shaivism, Dzogchen, Mystical Christianity, and Daism. In Christian terms,  real meditation is Holy Communion (or Awareness + Oneness, or Plugged-in Presence), reception of the Holy Spirtit (or Ghost) and poverty (or utter emptying, or unconditional surrender).

From a Hindu tantra perspective, the pressure of the presence (Siva) generates a downpouring spiritual power (or Shakti). When Siva (or Consciousness) and Shakti (or the Energy) unite into a permanent, single adamantine Intensity that always already outshines the meditator, that is spiritual Enlightenment.

Best Regards,
Ron

Beyond religion’s No to Yes, Yes, Yes

One of my enduring memories of the marvelously '60's ish Oregon Country Fair outside of Eugene is a banner strung high between two trees that simply said, "Yes…Yes…Yes." (though the fair does have some dos and don'ts)

When I saw it, I thought…Yes.

There's so much in that one word. Everything, really. What more could we want if we have Yes? It's the negative side of life that is so disenchanting.

Nobody likes to be told "No!" Not children, not anybody. We're Yes seeking creatures who long for affirmation, positivity, acceptance.

This is a big part of the reason why Taoism holds so much appeal for me, now that I've left behind most of the no-no-no's that divided life into distinct Good's and Bad's during my religious Radha Soami Satsang Beas phase.

Now I resonate with the Taoist approach to ethics described in Hans-Georg Moeller's "Daoism Explained."

Daoists try to prevent the necessity of morality in the first place. If people learn to follow the Way (dao) and the "own course" (ziran), then morality will not be required because everything will be just naturally fine. From a Daoist point of view, morality is the virtue of latecomers.

As discussed in my previous post, Taoism unites rather than divides. It embraces the entire wheel of creation: the empty hub is inseparable from the radiating spokes.

Religions, however, seek a transcendent ideal that always seems to be just around the corner, never here and now.

Salvation, enlightenment, redemption, forgiveness – you've got to believe that they're coming. Just have faith, obey the dictates, and stifle your natural impulses. You're fallen, a sinner, a sheep following the Shepherd. Don't turn to the right or left. Keep to the straight and narrow.

Which means a lot of no's. Every religion has them. And they're supposed to apply to everybody. Sheep don't get to choose their own path.

By contrast, Moeller says about Daoists:

They were not so much concerned with profound thoughts and deep meanings – they were rather experts in how to avoid these philosophical pitfalls. And they did not aim at transcending the limits of time and space or of language and thought, but were much more willing to cultivate an attitude that allowed for a perfect affirmation and appreciation of all that lives and dies, of all that is said and thought.

I'd have my convertible Mini Cooper S by now if I had gotten a dollar every time a fellow devotee said to me during my Radha Soami Satsang Beas days, "Brian, you think too much."

I'd generally think (hey, what else could I do?) "And you give advice too much." But instead I'd reply, "Yes, you're probably right."

From your point of view. From your perspective as one spoke on the wheel of life, which is going to be different from that of every other spokesperson. Including me.

I could say "Yes" to that bit of advice. I could also say "Yes" to my love of thinking.

Yes…Yes…Yes.

Daoist philosophy, as I hoped to show, generally affirms the world of "presence" (you), that is, all the "ten thousand things<' life and death, even action and speech. The nonpresence (wu) in the midst of presence – the emptiness that is neither dead nor alive and neither acts nor speaks – does not expose any "relativity" of the present.

Daoist emptiness and nonpresence do not diminish but rather confirm the authenticity of the present…A core element of Daoist philosophy is the affirmation of the full authenticity of all there is.

Yes.

Taoism’s empty hub vs. religion’s transcendent seal

Ever ready to reduce the complexity of reality to a simple dichotomy, here I go again:

Virtually all of the debate over spirituality comes down to choosing between an empty hub or a transcendent seal.

By "seal" I don't mean an animal. Rather, my much beloved "Daoism Explained," by Hans-Georg Moeller, talks about the difference between (1) Taoism's here-and-now view of reality and (2) the Truth is there-and-then perspective of most religions (likely every religion).

Moeller says these outlooks are encapsulated by two images. One is of a wheel consisting of spokes connected to an empty hub. The Daodejing says:

Thirty spokes are united in one hub.
It is in its [space of] emptiness,
Where the usefulness of the cart is.

Moeller comments:

At the center of the wheel there is the hub, just as at the center of any efficient scenario there has to be an empty middle. This element of the scenario has four main characteristics: it is positioned at the center, it is empty, it does not move and thus it is still, and, fourth and finally, being a center it is single.

The Tao is the whole shebang, spokes and hub. You can't have a wheel without both. Yet as the wheel turns, the spokes move around and around, while the hub remains stationary. So the Tao (or Dao) is both movement and stillness, fullness and emptiness, spokes and hub.

Since the Dao is like a wheel, it is – for instance, unlike a rock (which is, as it is generally known, a quite important image in Christianity) – less a foundation or a principle for things than a structure or a pattern of happenings.

The image of the wheel demonstrates that the Dao is not to be understood as a divine source or a higher "form" in the Platonic sense. It is neither an ultimate origin or creator, nor a fundamental law of logic or nature.

However a seal, as in what a king signs proclamations with, is. The impression left by a seal is a copy of the seal itself. Less permanent, less real. But only a favored person, close to the king, is able to see the seal.

We peons only perceive the impressions. Which are the laws of nature, the physical creation – everything down here in materiality that supposedly emanates from a transcendent divine realm.

Following Moeller's philosophical language, the signifier (creation) is separate and distinct from the signified (God). This is like the difference between a copy and the original, such as a painting of a mountain and the mountain itself.

The pattern of representation is based on the gap between the full reality of the signified and the deceptive reality of the signifier. Within this pattern the two constituting elements (signifier and signified) are not equally real. One is more than the other.

This representational structure creates an "ontological" hierarchy between the signifier and the signified. The "ontological difference" entailed in this pattern is quite alien to the ancient Daoist philosophy of presence.

…There is an "ontological" hierarchy included in the relation between the seal and its impressions: by representing the seal, the impressions are of less "being" or reality – they are always secondary.

Between the hub and the spokes there is not such a hierarchy. The spokes in no way "represent" it – and they do not lack any authenticity of being in comparison with the hub.

…Unlike the relation between the seal and its impressions, the relation between the hub and its spokes is not one of presence and representation, but rather a relation between nonpresence and presence. The empty hub is nonpresent, but it nevertheless balances and unites the spokes that present the wheel.

I love it. To me this isn't dry and dusty philosophical language (though it is that also), but a deliciously moist description of two alternative approaches to living life.

I also love the ardent debates that go on in this blog between me and me, and also between various commenters to my posts – who often use a new post (entirely appropriately) as a means of carrying on a Hub vs. Seal debate.

At least, that's how I see it: Hub vs. Seal. Nonpresence vs. presence. Immanence vs. transcendence. Reality here and now vs. reality there and then. It's all good vs. there's good, better, and the best.

I used to be a committed Seal'er. My book about the Greek philosopher Plotinus looks favorably on the Plotinian notion that Platonic forms (better) mediate between this world (good) and the transcendent One/God (best). Each level of reality has a different level of being.

As Moeller said, in that view some things are more than others. Now, I'm much more in the hub camp. Yet I still have some lingering seal tendencies, for sure.

Anyway, all this is food for thought and self-examination. Empty hub or transcendent seal? Which spiritual image are you most attracted to? Or is there another image that seems more true to you?

Taoism wants us to be holey, not holy

I've been attracted to Taoism for a long time. Even before I knew anything about it. Early in my teen years (maybe a bit before) I visited San Francisco's Chinatown.

I came back with a bunch of cheap art, bought from my allowance. I was enthralled with the images of misty mountains drawn with a few brushstrokes, usually including a tiny solitary figure walking along a path.

Who knows where that early instinctive attraction to Taoism came from? I sure don't. My mother had no inclination toward Eastern philosophy or art. I wasn't exposed to such in any other fashion, so far as I can remember. But I had those scrolls and prints up in my bedroom for quite a few years.

They seemed entirely natural to me. As does Taoist philosophy now, along with Tai Chi, the current stage of my martial arts evolution.

I've been reading and hugely enjoying a new book in my Taoism collection. "Daoism Explained" by Hans-Georg Moeller is brilliant. It looks at Taoism/Daoism in a fresh light. Familiar Taoist stories and images are becoming new for me again, thanks to Moeller's insightful take on classic writings.

He translates the eleventh chapter of the Daodejing (or Tao Te Ching).

Thirty spokes are united in one hub.
It is in its [space of] emptiness,
Where the usefulness of the cart is.

The hub, says Moeller, is at the center; it is empty; it is still; and it is single, being a center. This is the Tao. Yet it isn't only the empty hub. The Tao is the spokes also. It is the process (not a substance) that makes the world go 'round.

So Taoists try to reflect the emptiness of the hub. They seek to be holey, rather than holy. An artificial morality is anathema to them. In ancient China it was the moralistic Confucians who came in for Taoist scorn. Today fundamentalists of other persuasions make the same mistake:

Failing to see that prevention is better than cure, that emptying oneself of notions about right and wrong produces a natural ethical sense. Moeller:

If people learn to follow the Way (dao) and the "own course" (ziran), then morality will not be required because everything will be just naturally fine. From a Daoist point of view, morality is the virtue of latecomers…Instead of focusing on the Dao and trying to naturally follow it in the first place, the Confucians seem to attempt to "help" the Dao once they have already failed to correspond to it.

It's easy to miss the Tao. That's why Taoism is so simple to follow. You want to miss the Tao. The entire difficulty comes from making the Tao into something that can be spotted, understood, perceived, sensed, worshipped, contemplated, meditated upon.

In Chinese Tao is wu (emptiness, non-presence) rather than you (fullness, presence). If you believe you've got it, you don't.

If something "is there" or if somebody "has something," there is fullness; and if nothing is there or if somebody "has nothing," then there is emptiness. In this sense you designates a place or spot where there is something while wu designates a place or spot where there is nothing. In the image of the wheel, the spokes are obviously in the place of you – in the space where there is something (the turning spokes cover all the space around the hub), whereas the hub is in the space of wu.

Religions adore presence. They make God or ultimate reality into something transcendent that exists Out There, a Platonic form of divineness that we fallen humans must struggle to reach.

Religious humility, egolessness, surrender – this is a means to attain a glorious end. True believers see themselves as being on a spiritual roller-coaster. "If I can just go down far enough, I'll then be able to rise up."

Back in the days when I looked at the mystic-religious path of Sant Mat (Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch) through uncritical devotional eyes, I failed to recognize this. I didn't see that my efforts to prostrate myself before the guru, and thence before God, sprang from a elevational goal.

Even when my eyes were downcast, focusing on the humble descent of the spiritual roller coaster, I was keeping a look out for the anticipated swoop upwards. Wheeeeee! Sach Khand! God-realization! Paradise!

Now, I don't know where I'm heading. Up. Down. Sideways. Nowhere. Somewhere. I'm clueless.

Which, more and more, feels natural to me. Because after some forty-five years of investigating the meaning of life (including my teenage Taoist phase, which was followed by a lot of listening to Bob Dylan, so that period should count) here's a big part of what I've learned:

The sum total of agreed-upon human knowledge about what lies beyond the physical is precisely zero.

There's a virtually endless supply of religious dogma, countless volumes of philosophical speculation, large crowds of supposed spiritual gurus, endless stories of the miraculous. But when you add them all together and discard the unproven, unlikely, and unbelievable, what's left is a big pile of nothing.

And that exactly equals what Taoism says should be found by anyone seeking the hub of the cosmos, the pivot point around which everything in existence swirls.

Everything that exists, in its entirety, exists by itself, and at the center of this entirety of presence is "nothing" – or more precisely, nonpresence (wu). This is the "Dao of heaven" (tian dao).

Beautiful. Taoism finds emptiness at the core of reality. This empty Tao is holey, not holy. It can't be worshipped, revered, prayed to, or otherwise made an object of veneration, because it isn't separate from the potential venerator.

When I try to lay hold of my own innermost essence, I can't do that either. The core of my being is as squirmy, slippery, and shadowy as the Tao is. And as the God that religions and mystic faiths claim to know, but can never provide proof of.

There's a story in the Zhuangzi about fish drifting along free and easy. A couple of sages discuss this seeming happiness of fish, wondering whether it is possible to know what makes a fish happy if you're not one yourself. I liked Moeller's commentary.

If one "rambles" free and easy, one has no friction whatsoever with one's surroundings and so is part of a seamless, easygoing process…When Zhuangzi claimed to know about the happiness of fish, he did not claim to be able to feel the exact same feeling. He was just saying: I feel perfect by rambling around, and the fish feel perfect by rambling around.

At the center, wu. Nothing.

Rambling around wu. Perfect.

Taoism’s “Mysterious Pass.” You’re in it, now!

Taoism is my favorite non-religious religion. I like it for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that it's the only philosophy I know of that comes with a built-in self defense and health promoting exercise system: Tai Chi.

When a philosophy can be expressed physically, that shows a pleasing rootedness in reality. I adore abstractions also, but like they say (or at least, I do) "Three bucks and a whole bunch of metaphysical concepts gets you a grande latte at Starbucks."

This morning I was reading Thomas Cleary's translation of "The Book of Balance and Harmony: A Taoist Handbook." It's about the Complete Reality School of Taoism, a great name.

Complete Reality. Bring it on! So long as it's nice to me, naturally. And includes my favorite TV shows, like Reno 911, Survivor, and The Colbert Report.

I came across mention of "The Opening of the Mysterious Pass." Also a way cool term. Images of Taoist sages treading solitarily through misty mountains seeking the Way ran through my head.

Actually, I was doing the treading at that very moment. As are you, right now.

"The opening of the mysterious pass is the most abstruse and most essential mechanism. It is not, as various practitioners of yoga say, in the forehead, or the navel, or the bladder, or the genitals, or between the kidneys and navel, or between the kidneys and genitals.

From head to heels, any spot on the body you may focus on is not it. Yet it is not to be sought externally, apart from the body.

Therefore sages just used the word "center" to point out the opening of the mysterious pass. This "center" is it. Let me give you a convenient simile.

When a puppet moves its hands and feet and gesticulates in a hundred ways, it is not that the puppet can move—it is moved by pulling strings. And though it is a strong device, it is the person controlling the puppet who pulls the strings.

Do you know this person who controls the puppet? The puppet is like the body, the strings are like the mysterious pass; the person controlling the puppet is like the innermost self. The movements of the body are not done by the body; it is the mysterious pass that makes it move.

But though it is the action of the mysterious pass, still it is the innermost self that activates the mysterious pass. If you can recognize this activating mechanism, without a doubt you can become a wizard."

I seek and find a "mysterious pass" image through Google. Who did that? How did the Who accomplish it? Where did the intention behind the Who's How come from?

Researchers stick subjects in brain scanning machines. They ask them to think of "running dog." Part of the brain lights up. A scientific paper about the neurological correlate of that sort of thought is written.

I wonder, But what other part of the brain told that part of the brain to activate itself? When I think to myself, "think about a running dog," what or who is doing the thinking about my thinking? Me? But then, what or who is behind all that? How many levels do I have? Where do I begin and end?

Science hasn't reached the other side of the Mysterious Pass. Neither have I, that's for sure.

During my morning meditation I've pretty much given up on trying to fathom the mysteries of the cosmos. I'd just like to understand where one thought of mine comes from.

Like, "Wu." A single syllable. It could be any other word, of any length, with any meaning or non-meaning.

Say it to yourself in your head. Your mind. Your mysterious pass. Whatever you want to call the place where we listen to ourselves speaking to ourselves.

Where does the silent sound come from? Where does it go to?

We can see the puppet moving. We can catch a glimpse of the strings being pulled. But the puppet master is hidden. Science is clueless. So is religion, notwithstanding empty claims to the contrary. So am I.

The Complete Reality School says that the mystery occurs at the meeting place of yin and yang, where stillness stirs into action. I'd say, "See you there." But we're already there.

Lao-tzu says, "Effecting utter emptiness, keeping complete silence, as myriad things act in concert, I thereby watch the return."

The I Ching says, "Return means seeing the heart of heaven and earth." The I Ching hexagram RETURN consists of one yang arising under five yins: yin is quietude, yang is movement; when quietude reaches its consummation, it gives rise to movement. It is this point of movement that is the mysterious pass.

Just apply your attention to the point where you rouse the mind and activate thought, concentrating on this constantly – then the mysterious pass will spontaneously appear.

It takes two to Tao (and Tango)

One nice thing about Taoism is that it's pretty damn simple. The yin-yang symbol, or Taijitu, says just about all that can be said about my favorite philosophy.

Which ideally would be nothing, as the first four lines of the Tao Te Ching tell us.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

But last Thursday night I was expected to say something about Taoism to a Comparative Religion class for about an hour. And I was caffeine-fueled with a large vanilla latte. So I expended quite a few words during my expounding about the wordless.

The talk went well. This was the third year I've been invited to the class. Previously I made the mistake of over-preparing. This time I threw a bunch of Taoist books into a paper bag after festooning the pages with post-it notes that marked some favorite passages.

When I felt the spirit, I picked up a book and pulled out a quote. Like this beauty from the Tao of Pooh:

In order to take control of our lives and accomplish something of lasting value, sooner or later we need to learn to Believe. We don't need to shift our responsibilities onto the shoulders of some deified Spiritual Superman, or sit around and wait for Fate to come knocking at the door.

We simply need to believe in the power that's within us, and use it. When we do that, and stop imitating others and competing against them, things begin to work for us.

In the yin-yang symbol, the super-duper ultimate power is represented by the circle. That's wu chi, empty fullness, the state of the Tao prior to creation. Wu chi is the balanced stance of readiness that Tai Chi forms begin and end with.

I mentioned that Tai Chi is a physical embodiment of Taoism. That's a big part of why philosophically-inclined me likes Tai Chi so much. When you practice a philosophy through movement, abstract concepts count for precisely zero. You may think you're got your balanced act together, but an awkward stumble after someone disrupts your root speaks for itself.

A wall that separates two rooms of the martial arts studio where I learn Tai Chi is formed into the yin-yang symbol. My instructor gestures toward it frequently, because every move in Tai Chi flows from the interplay of yin and yang, softness and hardness, insubstantial and substantial, unweighted and weighted.

Just as in life. Except we usually don't pay attention to how opposites do more than attract—they're absolutely dependent on each other. How could you have "male" without "female," or "good" without "evil"?

I told the class that the Taijitu has a bit of black within the white, and a bit of white within the black, to show that yin is yang is yin is yang. When yin (traditionally, the black) is at its maximum, that's when yang (traditionally, the white) begins to blossom.

A basic Tai Chi move is rollback, redirect, and press. Someone pushes hard on you. You roll with their energy, unresisting. There'll come a point where the push runs out of steam. That's a turning point. Redirection now is easy. Your yin acceptance turns into a yang press (or push), almost precisely mirroring the sinuous path of the boundary between black and white in the yin-yang symbol.

Go with the flow. That's Taoism 101. Plus the advanced course. Nothing is unchanging but the supremely supreme ultimate non-being, wu chi. "Tai Chi" means the supreme ultimate, but since it is being, Tai Chi (or creation) continually is becoming through the interplay of yin and yang.

Accept it. Embrace it. There's no way around it, because nothing is outside of it except nothingness. Clinging is futile. The only way to be secure is to have full faith in the Way.

Like the Tao of Pooh says, quoting Chuang-tse, that doesn't mean we're powerless. It simply means that our power isn't ours.

At the Gorge of Lü, the great waterfall plunges for thousands of feet, its spray visible for miles. In the churning waters below, no living creature can be seen.

One day, K'ung Fu-tse was standing at a distance from the pool's edge, when he saw an old man being tossed about in the turbulent water. He called to his disciples, and together they ran to rescue the victim. But by the time they reached the water, the old man had climbed onto the bank and was walking along, singing to himself.

K'ung Fu-tse hurried up to him. "You would have to be a ghost to survive that," he said, "but you seem to be a man, instead. What secret power do you have?"

"Nothing special," the old man replied. "I began to learn while very young, and grew up practicing it. Now I am certain of success. I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don't struggle against the water's superior power. That's all."

Well, that's a lot. Indeed, everything.

I talked some about my struggles to learn Tango. As noted in "I get a glimpse of Tango Zen," an effort to learn a new move often goes like this.

I began by knowing that I didn't know. Did fine. I progressed to knowing that I knew. Fell apart. I ended up not-knowing that I knew. Best of all.

That's a valuable lesson for me, the supposed leader, to learn. I say "supposed," because dancing is most enjoyable for me when the source of the leading isn't me. At least, not the usual me. When the leading happens by itself, that's the Tao taking over.

I just got an American Tango instructional DVD to supplement our classes. Watching the first part of it today, I was told that the woman's movement should be a fraction of a second behind the man's. He leads, and she follows. When she moves before the lead happens, that's not good.

One leader at a time, please. And on the Tango dance floor, that's the man (at home, it's different).

The question for all of us is: who leads the leader? From what source does every motion, mental or physical, spring? Can we attune ourselves more closely to the Dancer behind every dance, so we don't stumble around the ballroom of life?

Pooh tries to point the way.

To know the Way,
We go the Way;
We do the Way
The way we do
The things we do.
It's all there in front of you,
But if you try too hard to see it,
You'll only become Confused.

I am me,
And you are you,
As you can see;
But when you do
The things that you can do,
You will find the Way,
And the Way will follow you.

(If Pooh isn't enough for you, here's a bonus Secrets of the Yin Yang Symbol video.)

Secrets Of The Yin Yang Symbol - The most popular videos are here

Wine, women, and enlightenment

Got to get fired up, or cooled down, for the Taoism talk I'm going to give to a Comparative Religion class tonight. I won't prepare a whole lot. Want to let it flow.

I'm planning to carry along the Lieh-tzu, though. That's the third leg of the traditional Taoist canon, along with the Tao-te Ching and the Chuang-tzu.

Translator Eva Wong says:

The Lao-tzu describes a state of reality that a sage experiences; the Chuang-tzu describes a state of mind that the sage is in; but the Lieh-tzu describes how the enlightened person lives.

…If the Lao-tzu is poetry and the Chuang-tzu is prose, then the Lieh-tzu is a series of comic strips. By exaggerating the ridiculous aspects of human actions, it portrays the human condition as humorous and pokes fun at social taboos.

I love how Taoist sages so often take a contrarian view of morality. You won't find a story like "What damages health more—unrestricted pleasure or obsessive hard work?" in a traditional religious scripture. Here's an abbreviated version of Lieh-tzu's tale.

-----------------------------

Tzu-ch'an, the chief minister of the kingdom of Cheng, had two brothers. While he spent his energy on strengthening the country and putting down crime and disorder, his two brothers indulged in everything that satisfied their senses.

One of the brothers had a brewery and a large warehouse in the back of his mansion where he stored thousands of jars of wine. He drank heavily, and, when drunk, he was oblivious to everything around him. He couldn't recognize friends or relatives, and he lost all concern for life or death.

The other brother had a dozen rooms in the house where he kept a group of beautiful young women. When he was aroused sexually, he would spend months with the women, never even bothering to come out to meet friends and relatives or take care of the family business.

Tzu-ch'an was very concerned about his brothers' lifestyles. So he went to talk to Teng-hsi, a fellow statesman who, although sarcastic and snide at times, was known for his keen observations and problem-solving ability.

Tzu-ch'an said, "Can you suggest anything that would get my two irresponsible brothers to behave more properly?"

Teng-hsi replied, "Tell them what they're doing is damaging their health. Maybe this will convince them to change their lifestyles."

One day Tzu-ch'an found his brothers together. He took this opportunity to talk to them about their lives.

"Heaven made us a cut above animals in dignity and intelligence. Therefore, it is your duty to live up to these expectations and behave in a manner befitting our position in society. If you only live to satisfy your senses, you are no more than animals. Stop harming yourselves, become responsible citizens, and I shall give you a position in the government."

Tzu-ch'an's brothers said:

"We know that wine and sex damage health. But we also know that life is short, and we want to enjoy whatever we can now. You, on the other hand, suppress what you want to do in order to maintain your rank and power.

"You are proud of your achievements and you want us to conform to your beliefs. You want to entice us with titles and political power, but we know that such things only bring burden and trouble.

"You may be the chief minister, and the country may look like it's in order. But look at yourself closely. You are tired and haggard. You have damaged your body and mind because you are anxious about keeping the country in order. In order to maintain your reputation, you have damaged your heart by suppressing your natural inclinations.

"We, on the other hand, may be wild and unruly, but we are true to ourselves. We have never put up a front to gain respect. We have never been involved in dirty politics or harmed other people with treachery and intrigue.

"Can you say this about yourself? If you can't, then it's not we who should take your advice, but you who should take ours."

Tzu-ch'an did not know what to say. Later he saw Teng-hsi and related the whole incident to him. Teng-hsi said, "You have been living with enlightened men and didn't even know it."

Seven secret sayings of God

Just as I was sitting down to dash out a Church of the Churchless post before leaving for an Academy Awards potluck, where I will selflessly share one of the last Now & Zen Unturkey's left on earth, I got an email from a friend, Joelle.

I liked it so much, I'll share her words today instead of mine. Which leaves me free to see more of the Red Carpet arrivals. From Joelle to me to you, Alan Watts' "Seven Secret Sayings of God." I like them.

---------------------------------------------------
From Joelle Martin Leath:

You know when a verse or lyric or book pops into and stays in your consciousness that you haven't thought of in years and you know it's time to pay attention? 

 I was led yesterday to remember Alan Watt's witty 'creation theory' brief and wondered where had I put the torn page? out of - which of his books was it?

 I wondered if I had included it in one of the many journals or binders on spirit-wisdom compiled through the years, or if it ended up as a bookmark in one of many hundreds of metaphysical books I have sitting on shelves, tabletops, in crates, boxes, baskets . . .

 I set the intention, tuned in and started looking through some of my binders, when I turned towards a basket of books and was led to "Spiritual Awakening" by Sant Darshan Singh, and Voila! there was Alan's page in a plastic sheath along with a photo of my late mother modeling when she was about 12 years old and a postcard of the Court of Two Sisters courtyard-restaurant in the French Quarter of New Orleans (where my sisters and I were born).....of course, all very symbolic to me.

 I had torn the sheet out of the same book, "Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown" in 1973, that I had taken from a bookshelf just the other day, for bedtime reading.

 As it called to me, I thought you might enjoy it as well; Watts was brilliant at injecting wit and humor into deeper thought:  Alan Watts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 My boyfriend in Los Gatos at the time Watts wrote "Cloud Hidden" (1972-73) was his (Watts') apprentice  - - - one of our "Lights along the Way" during those years - -  in company with Yogananda, Terry Cole Whittaker, Swami SatChitAnanda, Krishnamurti, and so many masterful teachers whom we love and revere.

SEARCHING FOR THE HERMIT IN VAIN

I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, "The master's gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.
Chai Tao (777-841)
Trans. Lin Yutang

The Seven Secret Sayings of God
From "Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown" by Alan Watts (1972)

1. Before the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, God said I AM THAT. And it is so.
   
2. Also, being in eternity which is neither linear nor sequential, where all is nowever, God said, YOU MUST DRAW THE LINE SOMEWHERE. And it was drawn.
   
3. But, it was no dreary straight line or flat wall, for God then said, HAVE A BALL. And there was a ball, in the image whereof all stars and planets came to be formed.
   
4. Thereupon, God said, THERE ARE TWO SIDES TO EVERYTHING. And there are: the inside and the outside, the dense and the spacious, the right and the wrong, the left and the taken, for, as it is written, "One shall be taken, and the other left."
   
5. And God said, IT MUST BE IN TIME. And thereafter it was, is, and will be, for as it is written again, "As it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, through all ages of ages. Amen."
   
6. And forthwith, God said, SPACE IT OUT. Whereupon it came to pass that, beside this and that and now and then, there is also here and there.
   
7. And God beheld how firm a foundation this was and said unto himself, GET LOST. And there you are.

When pushing hands, or minds, relax the tension

There's a lot of pushing on this blog, as elsewhere on the Internet. People read something they don't like. They push back. The pushed take affront and return the favor.

And so it goes. That's life. It's natural to resist having our psychological space invaded. Nestled comfortably in the four walls of my beliefs, someone bursts in and starts sledge hammering.

Hey! Stop, you stupid fuckhead! Got to defend the territory.

Some recent Church of the Churchless comments have been directed at seemingly overly aggressive language by a blog visitor who would go unnamed if I didn't mention that his moniker is "Tao."

It's true that Tao isn't shy about blasting away with word-weapons. But here's a suggestion about how to handle pushiness, whether in cyberspace or physical space: relax. Accept the incoming with little tension, then redirect it without losing your own center.

This is Tai Chi 101. Also, I'd say, Handling Life's Irritants 101. When we tense up and try to muscle our way through a confrontation, whether mental or physical, we'll likely find ourselves being thrown off balance. I know this even though I'm just a couple of years into my Tai Chi practice, after a much longer stint with hard style martial arts.

"Push hands" is done with a partner, as contrasted with Tai Chi forms, which are played individually (Tai Chi practitioners typically say "play" instead of "perform," a reflection of the relaxed Taoist sensibility that pervades this art).

One of the first things I learned when pushing hands is that tensing up offers the other person a marvelous means of manipulating me. If I extend an arm and it's grabbed by my partner, he can use it to throw me every which way if I keep it rigidly connected to my body.

But if I relax and empty the muscular tension, there's little left that's substantial to grab onto any more. A skilled Tai Chi master seems to "disappear" when force is used against him. He knows how to blend with someone else's energy, using the principle of flexible power to dissipate a threat.

Until we're challenged by another person, it's difficult to know where our tension—physical or psychological—is being held. This is why pushing hands with a partner is an important Tai Chi practice. Playing a form on my own, it's easy for me to believe that I'm centered, balanced, grounded.

When I'm stumbling backward after a push hands drill has revealed the flaws in my Tai Chi ability, self-deception has no place to hide.

Likewise, engaging in vigorous philosophical or religious debate helps us better understand the strengths and weaknesses of our position. Teeth-gritting tension usually means that we're trying to hold on to a belief that isn't truly a part of us (if it was, we wouldn't be worried that someone else could take it away).

After Laurel and I were married sixteen years ago, we spent many hours discussing our spiritual beliefs. Laurel wasn't reluctant to challenge the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) party line that I parroted back then.

I found that I could comfortably handle her skepticism about many RSSB articles of faith. But some of her questions struck a nerve. The ouch! I felt when she challenged certain tenets was, looking back from my current perspective, a symptom of my nascent churchlessness.

That is, my metaphysical tender spots were pointers to the beliefs that I had the least confidence in. Yet I defended them with remarkable vigor. I must have sensed that these were the weak spots in my fundamentalist armor.

You want to know why I believe that my guru is God in human form? You want evidence? Well, this isn't something that can be demonstrated rationally. It's a mystical thing. You understand it from within…Have I gotten such an understanding? No, I haven't. But other people have. How do I know that? Um, I just believe that they have, because I trust them…So you're saying that my RSSB faith is just like that of a Christian or Muslim, since I'm claiming that such and such is true without any evidence. Well, you're wrong! It's not….Stop asking me why. It just isn't! Let's stop talking and watch TV.

Thankfully, I'm not that rigid anymore. If anything, Laurel thinks that I've gone overboard in the other direction. I'm so flexible in my beliefs (or lack of them), I won't fight in the argument ring for hardly any spiritual position now. "Maybe," I'll say. "Or maybe not. Who knows? Certainly not me."

I'm pleased that much of the tension I used to feel is no longer there. But who knows? Maybe it was necessary for me to have my vulnerable belief areas exposed and become aware of how strongly I felt the need to defend them. This helped me realize that little was supporting the beliefs other than my hope that they were true.

So tension isn't always bad, if it leads to a letting go when the strain of maintaining an untenable position becomes too much to bear.

But usually it's better to relax when pushing hands, or minds. The Tao Te Ching shows the Way:

Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new:
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore wise men embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel.
So no one quarrels with them.
Therefore the ancients say, "Yield and overcome."
Is that an empty saying?
Be really whole,
And all things will come to you.

Beneath buckets of thought, a formless thinking pool

Taoism shuns thoughts, while adoring thinking. Flowing along further with Thomas Cleary’s Taoist Meditation, a focus of my previous post, here’s some additional Taoist sentiments.

Thinking about the Way is correct; thinking about things is error. The Way is inherent in us; when you think about the Way inherent within us, thinking itself is the Way…Thinking is a door of entry into the Way, whereas thoughts are roots of obstruction of the Way.

“I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. As noted before, Descartes had this much right. If he’d stopped with his Meditations at this point in his philosophizing, who could argue with him?

Thinking, in the Taoist (and Cartesian) sense of consciousness without thoughts, is the root of who we are. Prior to a thought is…something. Undefined, murky, elusive, yet marvelously aware.

The Great Way is formless; the Universe is the Way with form…There is nothing in the world but one mind. Stirring thoughts create all objects. If thoughts are not produced, objects are spontaneously gone. When you thoroughly examine stirring thoughts, thoughts too are empty and silent. So we know there is nothing lost when deluded and nothing gained when enlightened, because the true mind not dwelling on anything neither increases nor decreases.

I spend some meditation time every day looking into a well. A deep well. Could even be a bottomless well. Not only that, very possibly it has no sides either. Can’t be sure. Haven’t plumbed its depths yet, nor its circumference.

Closing my eyes, darkness. Stopping thoughts (even for a moment), emptiness. And yet, there’s a thinking-rope that connects it all: the depths, the thoughts, the awareness.

Out of the dark pool of consciousness comes a thought. It jumps into a bucket of cognition and is raised to the surface, where I peruse it. Bucket after bucket, thought after thought, attention stays concentrated on what emerges from the mysterious dark pool.

Our real nature is spiritual and most subtle; when thoughts stir it flies off, invisible. If you want to stabilize it, you must look into the source…Just let there be uncovered openness above the stabilized mind and groundless vastness below the stabilized mind. Old habits dissolve, new habits are not created; not bound or obstructed by anything, you get out of the net of the world.

Not so easy to do as to say, though. That uncovered openness and groundless vastness is so damn unsettling. I’m used to occupying myself with a discrete job: hauling up the buckets, then lowering them again to pick up another interesting thought.

When I try to slippery slide my way straight down the thinking rope, I get close to the formless pool. Dipping my toe in feels good. Further submerged, even better. But sinking totally below the surface…difficult to do. Some part of me keeps getting caught on a rising thought bucket. Up I go again.

Better remind myself of the Taoist diving instructions.

As soon as you notice a thought arise, immediately extinguish it; arrest thoughts as they arise, in order to make your mind peaceful and quiet.

Next, even though you may not obviously have any obsessions, still floating, wandering, random thoughts are also to be extinguished.

Work diligently day and night, never giving up for a moment; but only extinguish the stirring mind, do not extinguish the shining mind.

Disappear into the empty mind; do not disappear into the possessive mind.

Do not dwell on any thing and the mind will be stable.

This method is mysterious, with benefits that are very profound. Unless you already have affinity for the Way and have undivided faith in it, you cannot really appreciate it.

Religion asks us to have faith in something. Taoist faith, mystical faith, spiritual faith—this is faith in nothing. Which could turn out to be everything. But until all the somethings go, the nothing that could be everything hides around the thing-corner.

Views of person and self are certainly thoughts, but so are views of attachment to religion, and these must be eliminated too.

…Noncontrivance means not musing or mulling. Though you may act in the midst of love, desire, anger, accumulation, gain, and loss, be always uncontrived.

Even when involved in things, be always unconcerned.

If you concentrate totally, moreover, clarify your mind and purify your will, nourish your energy and make your spirit complete, you will drift into the land of freedom and enter the village of nothing-whatsoever.

…It is all a matter of making space the place you store your mind, using abstruse silence as the place you rest your spirit.

There’s plenty of room in the cosmos’ maxi-storage center. They say it’s easy to find. Just scoot straight down the thinking rope. When you reach the end, let go. And do what comes naturally.

In quiet sitting, whether or not there is a specific process, you should not cling to form…This is called drawing a snake with legs on it; you will bring trouble on yourself.

When we look into the source of this problem, we find it can be attributed to one’s own fixation, inflexibility, and habituation to biased views.

…Practicing the Way is cultivating and nurturing the Way of nature, the natural course.

Sounds easy. Just erase those legs on the snake.

Comic strip and a Chinese sage both say: “Do it!”

When in doubt, don’t doubt. Unless you’re sure you want to doubt. Then doubt ferociously.

Life is meant to be lived full throttle. Which can mean being absolutely still. Or, rocketing across the salt flats.

Turning to one of my favorite sources of inspiration, Funny Times, I came across this “Maxine” comic in the February 2007 issue. My heart said, yes.
(click on the image to enlarge)

Confusion, indecision, uncertainty: that’s part of life. But we magnify that part when we fail to recognize what we already know. In the sphere of spirituality, that counts for a lot.

Indeed, it could be argued: for everything. There are no recognized experts when it comes to God, the hereafter, what may exist apart from matter. If you believe someone knows more than you in this regard, you may be right. But you’ll never know it.

So, trust yourself. You’ll never find a more reliable companion on the spiritual path. As Maxine’s creator, Marian Henley, tells us, the center of our self—heart—is screaming to be heard.

Marian wears the yin-yang symbol in her web site photos. Indeed, there’s a Taoist sensibility in her comics, such as this one.

As there is, not surprisingly, in Thomas Cleary’s Taoist Meditation. The unknown Chinese author of “The Cultivation of Realization” also tells us to do it. Now.

People all say that after sixty you age year by year; after seventy, you age month by month; after eighty, you age day by day. I am more than eighty years old—now what? From now on, each day I live is a day lent by Heaven for the Way—how dare I waste it? Even if I attain the Way right now, it is already late—how could it be admissible to delay any further?

A long time ago three elders were talking about impermanence. One elder said, “Of those who attend this year’s party, who knows who will be missing next year.” Another elder said, “What you’re talking about is far away. When we take off our shoes and socks tonight, we don’t know whether we will put them on again tomorrow.”The third elder said, “What you’re talking about is still remote. When we exhale this breath, we don’t know if we will breathe in again.”

The wise do not lose time, the brave do not think twice. If you get to know the Way today, you should set to work this very day; when you know, that is when to start. If you say you do not have the leisure today and will wait for another day, I’m afraid that when you want to do it you won’t be able to anymore.

Being a blockhead has its pluses

I’ve been thinking about becoming more of a blockhead. Now, the fact that I’m doing this, thinking, shows that I have a ways to go before achieving Blockhead Extraordinaire status.

That honor, of course, belongs to Charlie Brown. Thanks to Lucy he’s been a blockhead ever since June 1958. I was nine at the time. I probably was a blockhead in training even back then, but I didn’t have a Lucy to tell me so.

Forty-nine years later I’ve learned that life is my Lucy. It’s pulled the football away from me enough times to make me realize that whatever else I may be, “blockhead” is an apt personal description.

And this isn’t at all a bad thing, even though being a blockhead is a negative to most people.

Thumbing through one of my favorite spiritual books yesterday, I read a quotation from Tai-hui in The Zen Koan as a Means of Attaining Enlightenment:

"The main thing is to shut off all your sense organs and make your consciousness like a block of wood. When this block of wood suddenly starts up and makes a noise, that is the moment you feel like a lion roaming about freely with nobody disturbing him, or like an elephant that crosses a stream not minding its swift current."

Encouraging. According to Zen, it seems that my problem isn’t that I’m too much of a blockhead, but that I’m too little of one. I’d like to be that lion or elephant. But first, it seems, I’ve got to be a block of wood.

Easier said than done. My many years of daily meditation testify to that. The urge is strong to do something else, anything, rather than that one thing.

I’m coming to look upon my mantra and my meditation as casket-building. A rehearsal of sorts for death. Mystics are always saying, “Die to live.” I don’t really know what that means, but it has a ring of truth.

Nail down the wooden lid. Lie still in the darkness. Not much room to move. Claustrophobic. Creepy. Yet also: exhilarating. Now we’re down to where the religious rubber hits the road. Becoming a genuine blockhead. Dead to the known; not yet alive to the unknown.

What stirs? Can the block of wood really start up and make a noise? Or does it just remain a useless clump of cellulose?

Not that uselessness is a bad thing either. In “The Tao of Paris Hilton” I mused about the virtues of not being a good for nothing. Chuang Tzu speaks of a long-lived, greatly-venerated tree that appears to Master Shih in a dream and explains why it has never been cut down like other trees:

"Because they are useful, they suffer, and they are unable to live out the years Heaven has given them. They have only their usefulness to blame for this destruction wrought by the people. It is the same with all things. I have spent a long time studying to be useless, though on a couple of occasions I was nearly destroyed. However, now I have perfected the art of uselessness, and this is very useful, to me! If I had been of use, could I have grown so vast?"

Charlie Brown, you are a Taoist sage.

When the gods stopped speaking to us

About three thousand years ago the divine voices shut up.

Until then, says Julian Jaynes, humans habitually heard messages from the gods. However, those communications merely were being transmitted from one side of the brain to the other and were mistakenly construed as coming from an outside source.

Religion as we know it arose as a reaction to the silence. After the breakdown of the bicameral mind, people became consciously aware of the interior mental space that previously was the province of the gods. A replacement was needed. Jaynes says:

This breakdown resulted in many practices we would now call religious which were efforts to return to the lost voices of the gods, e.g., prayer, religious worship, and particularly the many types of divination I have described, which are new ways of making decisions by supposedly returning to the directions of gods by simple analogy.

Jaynes’ book, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,” isn’t the easiest reading—as you can surmise from the wonderfully elusive title. My dentist is a big fan of the book. He talked me into buying it during a one-sided dental chair conversation in which my end of the dialogue was necessarily guttural.

I’d started reading Origin but had given it up as being too mystifying for even my mystiferious mind until my previous post about our inner ventriloquists impelled me to pull it from the bookshelf again.

Now I was more motivated to dig into it, as I thought it might shed some light on the voices that I hear in my own head. Which, I know, come from me. But it didn’t seem to be much of a stretch to imagine what it would be like to sense that the thoughts that I speak to myself were coming from an external source.

This, Jaynes argues semi-convincingly, still occurs with schizophrenics. And also with normal people from time to time. I remember being awakened from a nap by a “Brian!” that sure sounded like it came from someone standing by the bed. Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist who died in 1997, gives many other examples of what he calls vestiges of the bicameral mind in the modern world.

Could be. His theory is controversial. It continues to be promulgated through the Julian Jaynes Society. They have links to many articles related to the theory by Jaynes and others (which only are available to society members, however).

What I like most about the book is how it reminds us that what we’re aware of is a small fraction of our mental landscape. (When Jaynes speaks of “consciousness” he usually seems to be referring to what I’d call “self-awareness.”)

Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it.

The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.

Absolutely. My afternoon started with two frustrating phone calls to IBM/Lenovo tech support. The new ThinkPad that I’d gotten to replace my wife’s out-of-date Emachines laptop wouldn’t display the correct resolution (1280 X 800) no matter what I did.

During my first all-too-conscious call I was instructed step by step in how to download and install proper video card and BIOS software that, for some inexplicable reason, was missing from the ThinkPad. Holding the phone in one hand, typing with one finger of the other, doing my best to not screw up the computer more than it was already—I was uncomfortably self-aware.

After engaging in additional recommended unsuccessful efforts to get the screen to look like it should, via a follow-up call I succeeded in getting IBM to send a technician out tomorrow morning to either fix the damn computer or give me a new one (my purchase of an extended service contract now looks like a wise decision).

I then was eager to embrace an alternative aspect of reality.

Cleaning the gutters. We’ve had a dry Oregon fall but several inches of rain are forecast over the coming week. I strapped on my Stihl backpack blower, clambered up a ladder, and proceeded to blow out half a year’s worth of oak leaves, pine needles, and other debris.

This involved getting as close as I could to the edge of the roof and directing the tip of the blower tube along the open gutter. It was fun. A lot more fun, at least, than talking to tech support. Even when I got to the two-story parts of our house.

Charlie, the voice that ventriloquismistically speaks inside my head much of the time, was pleasingly silent. My attention was focused on not falling off the roof and getting the gutters squeaky clean. Charlie was nowhere to be found. Nor, in a sense, was I.

I was simply doing what I was doing, not thinking “this is what I need to do” while I was doing it. That would have been duplicative. And distracting. Occasionally I caught myself ruminating about something or other. Like, how later I might write on this blog about not ruminating while cleaning the gutters.

Oops! That’s what I was just doing, I’d say to myself. Charlie was down, but not out.

Jaynes reminds us that those voices we hear inside our heads—who are us—aren’t necessary much (or most) of the time. They’re doppelgangers, extraneous hangers on. Just as the religious voices outside of our heads are. Which, if Jaynes’ theory holds water, are the same as the inner voices.

Here’s how Jaynes describes the condition of the ancients prior to the breakdown of the bicameral mind:

In driving a car, I am not sitting like a back-seat driver directing myself, but rather find myself committed and engaged with little consciousness. In fact my consciousness will usually be involved in something else, in a conversation with you if you happen to be my passenger, or in thinking about the origin of consciousness perhaps.

My hand, foot, and head behavior, however, are almost in a different world. In touching something, I am touched; in turning my head, the world turns to me; in seeing, I am related to a world I immediately obey in the sense of driving on the road and not on the sidewalk.

And I am not conscious of any of this. And certainly not logical about it. I am caught up, unconsciously enthralled, if you will, in a total interacting reciprocity of stimulation that may be constantly threatening or comforting, appealing or repelling, responding to the changes in traffic and particular aspects of it with trepidation or confidence, trust or distrust, while my consciousness is still off on other topics.

Now simply subtract that consciousness and you have what a bicameral man would be like. The world would happen to him and his action would be an inextricable part of that happening with no consciousness whatever.

And now let some brand-new situation occur, an accident up ahead, a blocked road, a flat tire, a stalled engine, and behold, our bicameral man would not do what you or I would do, that is, quickly and efficiently swivel our consciousness over to the matter and narratize out what to do.

He would have to wait for his bicameral voice which with the stored-up admonitory wisdom of his life would tell him nonconsciously what to do.

Interesting. The bicameral man sounds a lot like Lao Tzu’s Taoist sage.

A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.

A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.

Taoism's Secret of the Golden Flower

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if what we were looking for in life is what we are? After we strip away what we are not, that is. This is the central message of “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” a delightfully simple book that could take a lifetime to grasp.

Thomas Cleary translated this classic Taoist guide to meditation. In his introduction he says:

The golden flower symbolizes the quintessence of the paths of Buddhism and Taoism. Gold stands for light, the light of the mind itself; the flower represents the blossoming, or opening up, of the light of the mind.

…This manual contains a number of helpful meditation techniques, but its central method is deeper than a form of meditation. Using neither idea nor image, it is a process of getting right to the root source of awareness itself. The aim of this exercise is to free the mind from arbitrary and unnecessary limitations imposed upon it by habitual fixation on its own contents.

…The essential practice of the golden flower requires no apparatus, no philosophical or religious dogma, no special paraphernalia or ritual. It is practiced in the course of daily life. It is near at hand, being in the mind itself, yet it involves no imagery or thought. It is remote only in the sense that it is a use of attention generally unfamiliar to the mind habituated by imagination and thinking.

Every religion is based on conjectures about the nature of God, soul, morality, salvation, heaven, and such. Yet the nature of the mind that is conjecturing about all this stuff rarely is given much thought.

Not that it is possible to understand that nature by thinking about thoughts. But at least this leads to the humble realization that we don’t really know where the contents of the mind come from, nor how much faith should be placed in them—especially when it comes to abstractions that have no evident connection to material reality.

The Secret of the Golden Flower suggests that before we start making bold pronouncements about God, we should give some attention to the mind that is prone to making bold pronouncements about things it doesn’t have a clue about.

Here are some passages from the book:

Naturalness is called the Way. The Way has no name or form; it is just the essence, just the primal spirit.

Turning the light around is not turning around the light of one body, but turning around the very energy of Creation.

If you can look back again and again into the source of mind, whatever you are doing, not sticking to any image of person or self at all, then this is “turning the light around wherever you are.” This is the finest practice.

Deliberate meditation is the light of consciousness; let go, and it is then the light of essence. A hairsbreadth’s difference is as that of a thousand miles, so discernment is necessary.

The Way is present before our eyes, yet what is before our eyes is hard to understand. People like the unusual and enjoy the new; they miss what is right in front of their eyes and do not know where the Way is. The Way is the immediate presence.

If you read “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” be sure not to skip Cleary’s extensive notes on virtually every passage. His deep knowledge of Zen and Taoism clarifies what would be murky to an average reader like me.

Cleary also offers an Afterword where he speaks about how he has applied golden flower principles in his own spiritual practice and further explicates the meaning of this profound churchless text.

This teaching calls itself a “special transmission outside of doctrine,” free from attachment to dogma and form, based on direct perception of the essence of mind and recovery of its inherent potential.

…For practical purposes, a distinction is made in the golden flower teaching between the “original spirit” and the “conscious spirit.” The original spirit is the formless essence of awareness; it is unconditioned and transcends culture and history. The conscious spirit is the mind-set of feelings, thoughts, and attitudes, conditioned by personal and cultural history, bound by habit to specific forms.

…Intuition belongs to the original spirit; intellect belongs to the conscious spirit. The essence of Taoism is to refine the conscious spirit to reunite it with the original spirit.

In doing so, you’ll be saying goodbye to religion, which can’t exist without dogma, theology, concepts, emotions, commandments, and other artificial creations of the human mind.

Trust your intuition. When the original spirit calls, put down your holy book and attend to its wordless message. You’ll never be able to tell anyone else what you heard. But the smile on your face will speak volumes.

Musings on the Metolius

It’s easy to get into an meditative mood while walking along the banks of the Metolius River. It becomes an instant river about a mile upstream of our central Oregon cabin, gushing out of springs that carry water from distant sources.

Since the upper reaches are mostly spring fed, the Metolius’ water level doesn’t change much throughout the year. Vegetation is able to grow on logs and rocks that, with the passage of time, become islands of life.

This evening, on my ritual dog walk, thunder clouds were starting to form. Per usual, Serena, the dog, and Brian, the human, didn’t encounter any other people. It was just us and nature.

Beautiful.

No matter what has been worrying me before I set out on a walk, the Metolius magically leads it to fade away. I suspect that the magic is always there. Inside me, inside all of us. Nature just opens the door to what we normally shut ourselves away from.

Peace. Acceptance. Contentment. A sense that whatever is happening with the world, or with us, it's all right. Things are flowing along as they should. The river of life knows what it is doing.

I used to say, “Ah, just like a Japanese Zen garden.” Then I realized how foolish I was. Zen gardens are like nature, not the other way around. Nature is the original, humankind the copier.

In our garden I’ve tried to position rocks so that they don’t look like I tried to position the rocks. It’s damn hard. The Metolius does it effortlessly.

A thought: Is this the way It really is? Perhaps the big It, that which we’re wondering “What is It all about?” truly is this simple, this no worries, mate. Religion urges us to solve the problem of human existence. Maybe there is no problem to solve.

Walking along the Metolius, it certainly seems so. Until the thunder starts.

More accurately, until Serena notices the thunder. I’d been hearing it for several minutes before she did. However, Serena had been on some super-intense chipmunk chases (she never catches them, and mostly never sees them; it’s the smells that entice her).

Dashing through the Ponderosas, fully immersed in the joy of the hunt, thunder wasn’t on her mind. Juicy chipmunks were. But then she stopped running and tuned in to the distant rumbling. Whereupon she started to go into her thunder-phobia.

Serena wasn’t in any danger. She thought she was, though. Suddenly she couldn’t enjoy what was giving her so much pleasure before. Her sole goal was to find a place to hide. Fortunately, I had a leash. She tried to dig herself a hidey hole under a fallen tree. I had to drag her out.

A thought: Is this the way I am too? Are most of my fears and anxieties as nonsensically founded as my dog’s aversion to loud noises? (Once a loud nearby thunder clap startled her; ever since then, Serena freaks out at gunshots, firecrackers, and, of course, thunder).

Religion offers us a place to hide. From fear of death, pain, suffering, misfortune, non-existence, meaninglessness, isolation—lots of things. But do we need to put our head in the sand (or under a tree stump)?

An alternative is to embrace the flow of life. No matter what it brings.

During a happier moment today, Serena demonstrated a jump-right-in attitude that makes a lot of sense. Especially on a hot day (the Metolius is 48 degrees—just right for her, hypothermia for me).

Taoism—a philosophy for fools

I’ve philosophized my way through the world’s major religions and quite a few of the minor ones. I’ve lost my faith, found my faith, and lost it again. Several times. I expected that I’d get wiser as I got older, but the opposite has occurred.

At fifty-seven I know less about God than I did at twenty-one. Back in 1969 I was teaching yoga and meditation. I could hold forth on the meaning of Indian phrases such as “Tat Tvam Asi,” thou art that. The “that” is ultimate reality. I actually believed it.

Now, as I wrote about a few days ago, I feel like I’m becoming more of a spiritual fool with every not-knowing moment. I appreciated the comments on that post, especially grayfields’ thoughts. When I hear, “you’ve given voice to my own thoughts,” I feel warm in my foolish soul.

We’re all in this together. Not that I have any idea what “this” is. Or what “together” means. Regardless, the thought rings true. Everyone is speaking someone else’s words along with his or her own.

After all my reading of mystical, religious, and philosophical literature, I’m convinced that there’s nothing new to be said. The goal isn’t fresh saying, but fresh understanding. So I gravitate toward words that stimulate an Oh, yeah! in me, a recognition that here is the way to…I don’t know what, but I sure want to be there.

That place is for me. Not anyone else. Spiritual fools tend to be communally attracted to magnets of not-knowing, though, such as Taoism. The crazy smile of the Taoist philosophy has room for many individual foolish grins. So let’s lift a cup of churchless intoxication and fail to grasp some of the wisest lines that can’t be understood.

These quotations are from “The New Lao Tzu,” Ray Grigg’s enjoyable fresh interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
-----------------------------------
Those who know of the Tao
recognize it as great.
Why is it great?
Because it is different.
Why is it different?
Because it cannot be understood.
If it could be understood,
it would not have lasted
from the beginning of the beginning.

The wise know
they do not know;
The fools do not know
they do not know.

The Tao that can be named
is not the nameless Tao.
The Tao that can be known
is not the unknowable Tao.

Look but it cannot be seen,
so it has no form.
Listen but it cannot be heard,
so it makes no sound.
Think but it cannot be thought,
so it defies understanding

Because it cannot be discerned,
it cannot be discovered.
Because it cannot be thought,
it cannot be known.
Still it seems to be something,
a something that is everywhere
but nowhere.

How can anyone who just drifts and wonders,
who can’t even be sure of themselves,
Take seriously all these rituals,
all this herding?
It seems better just to be alone and quiet,
not belonging anywhere.
Everyone else seems eager and dutiful,
but the deeper way seems lonely and confusing.
Everyone else seems clear and definite,
but the deeper way seems dark and uncertain.

What is a person to do when being adrift at sea,
when being blown aimlessly anywhere,
seems to be a more profound calling?
When everyone else seems busy and purposeful,
what is to be done with an urge
that is confusing and lonely,
and different?

When everyone else
is guided by the affairs of people,
What is this urge
that comes from the Great Mother?

Believing in problems may be our only problem

I’m addicting to solving problems. Or at least, trying to solve them. The Mega Problem that has occupied my attention for most of my life is “What’s life all about?” I’ve always assumed that there is an answer to this question.

Religion, philosophy, science, psychotherapy, self-improvement systems. These all spring from the assumption that there are problems to be solved and the purpose of life is to find the answers.

But what if this assumption is ill-founded? What if the cosmos actually is absolutely fine just as it is, us included? Could it be true that erroneously believing in the existence of problems is our only problem?

This notion has begun to peck away inside my head more and more insistently. It feels like a baby chick of a realization that isn’t developed enough yet to be born, yet has the potential to become a beautiful reality.

However, given my habitual inclinations naturally I’ve been viewing this budding idea as a problem to be solved. Is it true or false? Should I trust the intuition? What is the evidence for and against it?

Intellectually I know that these questions are just Monkey Mind doing its thing. I don’t see how there could be a rational answer to the question, “Is the search for answers to ultimate questions a fruitful or fruitless pursuit?” That query is part of the problem that either does or doesn’t exist. To ask the question is to foreclose the answer.

Still, if there truly are no problems—just our illusory belief that they exist—then the cosmos’ response to my cogitating can only be: No problems, mate. This includes your thinking that there are.

I’ve only come across one philosophy (if you can call it that, “Way” sounds better) that enshrines No problems, mate at the core of its belief system: Taoism.

Virtually without exception, other religions, philosophies, and spiritual paths either consider that life is meaningless and nihilistic—not particularly appealing—or that life is a problem needing solution.

The solution goes by various terms. Salvation. Enlightenment. Satori. Realization. Understanding. But whatever it is, it’s damn hard to come by. Usually you need help. A savior, master, guru, teacher, grace, God, Buddha, angel—someone or something special has to intervene before you can solve the problem of life.

Not with Taoism. That’s because there’s no problem needing to be solved. Again, the only problem is believing in problems. We overlay the natural order of things, Tao, with our own conceptions about how things should be. This creates a gap between what is and what should be, at which point our contentment is screwed.

Then we feel that we need help. Desperately. So we seek out a religion or spiritual system that promises a solution to the problem that we’ve created ourselves. Only problem is, there’s no problem. It’s akin to calling a locksmith to get the front door open when all we need to do is turn the knob.

Taoists say that we make life a lot more complicated than it really is. Everything is happening as it should. In fact, there’s no way that anything untoward could happen. There only is the Way, Tao, operating at all levels, in every circumstance, from our first to our last breath.

I hope Taoism is true. To me it has the ring of reality. I resonate to notions of the One much more than the Many. The idea that the cosmos is divided into discordant pieces—hell and heaven, devil and God, evil and good, damnation and salvation—strikes me as horribly unscientific. And unlikely.

Nature is just so, well, natural. Everything is beautifully interconnected. Causes and effects flow seamlessly into each other. Nothing stands on its own, disconnected from the larger whole.

I bet there are no problems. Just an inability to recognize and go with the flow of Tao. Here are a couple of stories from “The Book of Chuang Tzu.”

Confucius was sightseeing in Lu Liang, where the waterfall is thirty fathoms high and the river races along for forty miles, so fast that neither fish nor any other creature can swim in it.

He saw one person dive in and he assumed that this person wanted to embrace death, perhaps because of some anxiety, so he placed his followers along the bank and they prepared to pull him out.

However, the swimmer, having gone a hundred yards, came out, and walked nonchalantly along the bank, singing a song with water dripping off him.

Confucius pursued him and said, “I thought you were a ghost, but now I see, Sir, that you are a man. I wish to enquire, do you have a Tao for swimming under the water?”

He said, “No, I have no Tao. I started with what I knew, matured my innate nature and allow destiny to do the rest. I go in with the currents and come out with the flow, just going with the Tao of the water and never being concerned. That is how I survive.”

Confucius said, “What do you mean when you say you started with what you knew, matured your innate nature and allow destiny to do the rest?”

He said, “I was born on dry land and feel content on the land, where I know what I know. I was nurtured by the water, and felt safe there: that reflects my inner nature. I am not sure why I do this, but I am certain that this is destiny.”
--------------------------
Master Tung Kuo asked Chuang Tzu, “That which is called the Tao, where is it?”
Chuang Tzu replied, “There is nowhere it is not.”
“But give me a specific example.”
“In this ant,” said Chuang Tzu.
“Is that its lowest point?”
“In this panic grass,” said Chuang Tzu.
“Can you give me a lower example?”
“In this common earthenware tile,” said Chuang Tzu.
“This must be its lowest point!”
“It’s in shit and piss too,” said Chuang Tzu.

(More elaborate discussion of these Taoist truths can be found here and here.)

Three laughers at the tiger ravine

Today I came across a scroll, painted by Bangaku, of “Three Laughers at the Tiger Ravine.” This anecdote explains their laughter.

"This is an allegory in which three literati realize by accident that spiritual purity cannot be measured by artificial boundaries. One day the poet Tao Yuanming and the Taoist Lu Xiujing traveled to the Donglin temple on Mt. Lu to visit the Buddhist theologian Huiyuan who lived there as a recluse, vowing never to cross the stone bridge over the Tiger Ravine that marked the boundary of the sanctuary.

After an evening together, Huiyuan accompanied his friends as they left the temple. Deeply absorbed in conversation, Huiyuan inadvertently walked with them across the Tiger Ravine bridge. When the men realized what had happened they broke out in spontaneous laughter-- hence the title of the anecdote 'The Three Laughers of the Tiger Ravine.'"

Ray Grigg, in his “The Tao of Zen,” tells the story somewhat differently in a chapter on “Playfulness.” And he’s describing a drawing of the scene by Bunsei. But the meaning is the same.

[The drawing] shows a Taoist, a Confucian, and a Buddhist circled together in uproarious laughter. Apparently the Buddhist had taken a vow never to leave the monastery but, in the enthusiasm of visiting with his two friends, he inadvertently wanders over the bridge of the ravine that defines the monastery’s grounds.

The distant roar of a tiger breaks the spell of their visit and they realize the vow of confinement has been broken. They clasp each other’s hands and laugh. This is the playful spirit that supersedes vows and teachings and ideologies.

I like how Bangaku depicts the faces of the men. The image brings a smile to my own heretical face. Freedom! Release! Tiger roar!

These guys aren’t out to cause trouble. The Buddhist’s friends didn’t visit him with the intention of making him break his vow. They just ended up walking over the bridge naturally. And when the vow was broken, they laughed about it. Naturally.

In 1971, when I was initiated into the mystico-spiritual Radha Soami Satsang Beas path, I made some supposedly lifetime vows myself. I’ve broken a few of them. Not inadvertently, but naturally. And while I’m not laughing (at the moment), I’m certainly not crying either.

What is there to cry about? I vowed not to have sex outside of marriage. Well, after I got divorced and met the woman who would become my second wife, that vow bit the dust. With pleasure. In a few weeks we’ll have been married sixteen years. I don’t think I could be called a womanizer.

I also vowed not to use alcohol or illicit drugs. Now, most nights I drink a single glass of red wine. It’s supposed to be good for your heart. I once believed that it was bad for your soul, but I haven’t detected any spiritual harm yet from my imbibing. If I end up in hell for this at least I’ll have the company of Jesus and countless Catholics.

And lastly I vowed to meditate two and a half hours a day, every day. I actually did this for several decades. Most RSSB initiates don’t. Now I meditate about an hour. My meditation currently is just as shitty or as wonderful (I really can’t tell the difference any more) as it was in my lengthy meditation days.

Here’s the thing about lifetime vows: the intention behind them is great. Like “for better or for worse, till death do us part.” I truly wanted my first marriage to be a lifetime commitment. Life happened otherwise, and both my wife and I were fine with that.

The general notion that we are in charge of our lives, rather than the Way—the Tao, strikes me as the height of egotism. So also is the related notion that we could, or should, keep up a vow to do X for a lifetime. Who are we say what life has in store in us, what twists and turns we are to follow that aren’t visible from our current vantage point?

I admire people who keep promises. And I also admire other people who don’t keep promises. Just as I don’t admire still other people in either camp: promise keepers and promise breakers. It all depends on the situation.

Staying the course is admirable when the course demands to be stayed. It is deplorable when a change of direction is called for. Ray Grigg tells this Zen/Ch’an story:

“What is the solution that accounts for every situation?” asked the Ch’an abbot.

When no one could answer the question, he replied, “As the situation arises.”

The joy of uncertainty

Admittedly, uncertainty is in a different league than sex. Yet it is as valid to praise the joy of uncertainty as the joy of sex. They both promise prodigious pleasure to those willing to take some risks and leave the familiar boundaries of the known.

When I speak of uncertainty I’m mainly referring to the spiritual variety: the embrace of mystery and not-knowing, opening yourself to higher truths in any sort of form they may present themselves, casting aside rigid programmed beliefs in favor of surprise me!

But you can’t confine uncertainty. It’s everywhere. It’s part and parcel of life itself. It’s what adds the spice to what otherwise would be bland routinized existence.

Which connects uncertainty with sex. The thrill of the unknown. Someone new. Green pastures. A hint of danger. Losing control. A generous dose of uncertainty is part of the formula for satisfying sex.

The same goes for satisfying spirituality. A few days ago I ran into an old meditation buddy who I hadn’t seen for at least ten years. He asked how I was doing, spiritually speaking.

“I’ve become a heretic,” I said. “I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure of anything. I’ve lost faith in everything except my own experience. It feels good. I’m a lot more relaxed now. The pressure’s off.”

Uncertainty is something you can count on. Indeed, you can be certain of it. Plus, uncertainty is real, honest, natural, humble, energizing, and scientific. I love it. I’d give it a big hug if I could pin it down. But it always pops up when you least expect it, and then dashes off again unexpectedly.

That’s the nature of uncertainty. Can’t change it. Wouldn’t want to. It’s a wild, unpredictable spiritual catalyst that brings passion into a person’s relationship with the cosmos.

Absent uncertainty, life is boringly mechanical and dryly logical. With uncertainty, life crooks its alluring finger and whispers “Step around the corner, honey, and see what surprise I’ve got for you.”

Uncertainty is the death of religion. It’s the lifeblood of mysticism and genuine spirituality. That’s how you can tell when you’re in the presence of deadening fundamentalism: you won’t hear “I don’t know,” “It’s a mystery,” or “Who can say?”

You have to dig deep to reach the uncertain mystical core of most religions. It’s there, but buried under dogma, scripture, theology, organized principles of metaphysics. Only a few spiritual traditions elevate uncertainty to the pinnacle that it deserves. Taoism. Buddhism.

Here’s an excerpt from Ray Grigg’s great book, “The Tao of Zen.” As you can tell from the title, he links authentic Taoism and Buddhism, revealing the common essence of both.

The wisdom, the peace, the grace of Taoism and Zen come from a special uncertainty. The result is a condition of perpetual preparedness, an easy readiness that takes an appropriate shape for every particular circumstance. Every answer becomes “as the situation arises.” Each individual person becomes the balanced and shapeless center of the universe, dancing alone with the unpredictable order that swirls everywhere.

…In a world full of people who are strewn between total confusion and absolute certainty, the Taoist and Zen challenge is the nearly impossible simplicity of reaching a deep insight that is wholly inclusive yet devoid of answers.

And here’s a link to an interesting piece, “Surprised by Joy: Experiments with Uncertainty,” from a fellow uncertainty embracer, Mel Crossley.

I have to add: this post turned out quite different from what I envisioned when I began writing. As it should have, given my subject. Now, it’s time to open the refrigerator and see what there is to eat for dinner. I'm ready to be surprised.

The journey between two steps

My Tai Chi class is a wonderful mix of Taoist movement and philosophy. I loved this phrase as soon as it left a fellow student’s lips: “the journey between two steps.” Thank you, Josette.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around what it means, but intuitively it strikes me as being the key to almost everything.

We’re always on the way to somewhere, taking the next step on our life’s path. Even before we’ve fully settled into the place we’ve just reached, our intention is making plans for moving to another location—whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual.

Goals, dreams, to-do lists, routines, habits. Whether they be big (“enlightenment”) or small (“eat a snack”) intentions we’re almost always engaged in getting from here to there. Our focus is on a starting and endpoint. The journey between these two steps doesn’t get nearly as much attention.

Yet it should. In fact, Tai Chi teaches that it deserves almost all of our attention. For Tai Chi becomes an empty practice when the student lurches clumsily from one posture to another, losing along the way a rooted sense of centeredness and connection.

I had asked the instructor, Warren, about how to move between two postures in the 24 Form: from single whip to high pat on horse. He teaches this as a transition from a back stance (where most of the weight is on the rear foot) to a more balanced stance facing about ninety degrees to the left, necessitating a step forward with the right leg while turning.

It’s tough. Warren said that it was one of the more difficult moves in Tai Chi. He demonstrated how he does it. I still didn’t understand what he was doing differently than me, though I could see how much better his movements looked than mine.

“I call it bridging,” Warren explained. “That’s not good. It’s when you move from one posture to another as if you were crossing high above two banks of a river. Bridging prevents a smooth, rooted, continuous transition between the postures.” At that point Josette said, “Yes, the journey between two steps.”

If you’re not into Tai Chi this may not make much sense to you. I am into Tai Chi, albeit on a quasi-beginner level, and this barely makes any sense to me. But it’s simple to experience, really.

Take a step. Most of us fall into the stepping leg. Our intention says “step,” our leg moves forward, and we lurch into the new position. Now, focus on the journey between two steps. Sink into the leg that won’t be stepping. Put all your weight on that foot. Then, ever so slowly pick up the stepping leg and move your foot outward just above the ground, putting it down ever so gently, heel first.

That’s a Tai Chi step. Ideally, you feel balanced and connected all along the way. At any point during the transition from one step to another you could change direction, move the stepping foot somewhere else, place it back where it started from, stop and enjoy the scenery from wherever you find yourself.

It’s a whole different thing from lurching—zeroing in on the next place you intend to be and losing touch with the journey that is necessary to get from here to there. In Tai Chi you learn that the never-ending journey is the important thing, not the episodic steps that mark a few points along the way.

The way isn’t the steps. The way is the way. When you take out the journeying from the path, nothing substantial is left. Yet almost all of us get fixated on beginnings and endings, starting points and goals, desires and fulfillments. This moment becomes a chimera, whereas in actuality it is the only thing that is real.

Religions are big into bridging. They put before us distant goals: heaven, enlightenment, salvation, nirvana, paradise, God-realization. The religious focus is a step ahead of where we are now. This is why it’s natural to be attracted to churchlessness after you’ve taken lots of steps within the confines of a church and never enjoyed the promise that always remains out of reach.

Tai Chi is helping me to realize that it’s the journey between two steps which makes life fulfilling. If you’re always focused on where you’re heading, you’re never fully enjoying where you are. Plus, you need to be able to change your mind, to head in a different direction.

Why? Because you want to. Conditions demand it. Just for the heck of it. To do something different. The Tao guides you. No reason not to. To see what it's like to jump off the bridge and flow with the water.

Any reason at all.

Kung fu meditating

Bruce Lee was a master of kung fu (or gung fu). I just finished reading a collection of his writings that were edited into a book, “The Tao of Gung Fu.”

I’ve studied martial arts for thirteen years and meditation for thirty-six years. More and more I’m coming to glimpse Lee’s basic point: they aren’t two things; there’s just one thing. He says:

Gung fu is more than just an excellent physical exercise or a highly scientific method of self-defense. To the Chinese, gung fu is a Way of training the mind as well as a Way of life. The spiritual side of gung fu cannot be learned by fact-finding or instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from desires and emotions. The core of this principle of gung fu is Tao—the spontaneity of the universe.

Spontaneity. That’s what it’s all about. Without spontaneity everything—the martial arts, meditation, life itself—is just a mechanical caricature of the vital living, breathing cosmos.

I can’t improve upon Bruce Lee’s words, which can be contemplated here. So I’ll simply try to say what they mean to me. That’s the spirit Lee wanted us to take his teachings: adapting them to our own unique personality and essential nature.

He says there are three stages in the cultivation of gung fu: (1) Primitive Stage, (2) the Stage of Art, and (3) the Stage of Artlessness. Again, he’s not just talking about martial arts here. He’s speaking about the whole of life.

Learning starts with ignorance. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re supposed to do. Then, you learn some technique. You begin to think, “Hey, I’ve got this down.” But you really haven’t. The techniques aren’t genuinely part of you; they have to be consciously controlled.

So the goal is to move from art to artlessness. This, Lee says, “is the stage of cultivated ignorance.” This is different from the uncultivated ignorance with which you began. Back then, you didn’t know anything. Now you do.

However, on the mental level you’ve forgotten what you know. This allows you to act spontaneously, intuitively, harmoniously, fluidly, not needing to stop and ponder what technique needs to be used in a given situation.

I used to love Jim Carrey’s karate instructor routine on the TV show “In Living Color” (this was before he became hugely famous). “I’ll show you how to defend against a knife attack,” he’d say to the audience. Then he’d turn to his training partner, who was standing a few feet away with a rubber knife in his hand: “OK, go ahead.”

The guy would lunge forward and you’d hear an “Aaaaaarrrgh!” from Carrey as he clutched his stomach. “No!” he’d yell. “Don’t attack with your left hand, use your right! And don’t lunge. Step with your rear leg. Now, let’s try it again.”

And so it would go, his training partner never quite doing just what Carrey wanted as he tried to demonstrate how to defend against a knife attack that, on the street, would come unexpectedly out of anywhere.

This is the pitfall of relying on the mechanical practice of techniques, whether they be martial arts moves or meditation practices. The proof of the pudding isn’t in the practice; it’s in the real world application.

If your spirituality isn’t making you a better person, what good is it? Not a better person in your place of worship or meditation chamber—that’s an artificial controlled environment.

You need to be a better person in the everyday activities of life, because life isn’t divisible. Our “worldly” life isn’t something separate from our “spiritual” life. There’s just one life.

Some people have left comments on my posts saying that my criticisms of the spiritual organization that I belong to, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) aren’t justified because this group’s teachings have to be separated from how well members of RSSB apply those teachings. I don’t understand this way of thinking.

If you spent time observing a gung fu school where no student was able to defend himself, would you be justified in concluding, “This school has a good approach; it’s just that nobody can apply the techniques”? A school where learning isn’t happening isn’t a good school.

Again, the proof lies in reality, not words. Bruce Lee’s wisdom is as applicable to spiritual practice as to martial arts practice:

To me, styles that cling to one partial aspect of combat are actually in bondage. You see, a choice method, however exacting, fixes its practitioners in an enclosed pattern…In reality, the way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, and one will soon find that his choice routines lack pliability and are incapable of adapting to the ever-changing swift movement of combat.

All of a sudden his opponent is alive and no longer a cooperative robot. On other words, once conditioned in a partialized style, its practitioner faces his opponent through a screen of resistance. In reality, he is merely performing his stylized blocks and listening to his own screams.

In the course of interacting with high-ranking people in the RSSB organization during the writing of my book, “Return to the One,” I observed that they were just as prone to human frailties such as egotism, rigidity, and a desire to dominate as I was. We were all in the same boat, even though I had thought that, because of the positions they held, they were closer to the Spiritual Shore than I was.

This made me think. It’s as if I was observing a karate school where the people wearing black belts had pretty much the same skills as the white belts. Shouldn’t more learning be going on among the long-time students?

I thought some more. I was one of those long-time students. What had I learned? Was it just technique? Could I really apply my lessons in the real world? Had I become a slave of methods that weren’t applicable in everyday life? In short, was I the spiritual equivalent of a Jim Carrey/Fire Marshall Bill martial arts poseur?

I’m no Bruce Lee, nowhere close. But I resonate with his advice about how to be a “gung fu man.”

So in order to realize his true self, a gung fu man lives without being dependent upon the opinion of others…As months and years go by, as his training acquires fuller maturity, his bodily attitude and his way of managing the technique move toward no-mindedness which resembles the state of mind he had at the very beginning of training when he knew nothing, when he was altogether ignorant of the art.

…When the highest stage is reached in the study of Taoist teaching, a gung fu man turns into a kind of simpleton who knows nothing of Tao, nothing of its teachings, and is devoid of all learning…One should be in harmony with, not rebellion against, the fundamental laws of the universe. This means that we should do nothing that is not natural or spontaneous. The important thing is not to strain in any way.

Kung fu fighting. Kung fu meditating. All the same. Like the song says…

Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh
Keep on....keep on....keep on
Oh-oh-oh-oh....Yeah, yeah
Oh-oh-oh-oh...

We all believe in jihad

It isn’t just Muslim extremists who believe in jihad. Almost without exception, every person does. Rooting out jihadists, or mujahideen, is impossible. There’d be nobody left on earth if this were to happen.

For the root meaning of jihad is “to strive” or “to make an effort.” In the Islamic world this striving takes on certain characteristics, while elsewhere the striving manifests differently. Always jihad flows from the same psychological condition, though: a belief that individual effort can make the world a better place.

Before I get inundated with angry emails and comments calling me a moral relativist offering up excuses for Al Qaeda terrorism, I need to stress the obvious: people act on this ubiquitous propensity to jihad in many ways. Some are violent, some are peaceful. Some are destructive, some are productive.

Morality is all about channeling human striving in desired directions. A moral person is someone who desires to desire in “good” ways. Defining what good means is the big controversial question. But I think there’s general agreement that whatever “good” is, it’s something that has to be striven for. In other words, jihad is necessary to be good.

Jihad can be directed either inwardly or outwardly, though, as the Sufi mystic Rumi taught. The inward jihadist tries to change his or her own self; the outward jihadist tries to change the world.

A few days ago I was driving along in our Toyota Prius and pulled up behind a convertible Mini Cooper at a stop light. I’d never seen a convertible Mini before. Its top was down on a sunny day. Instantly a jihadist impulse washed over me: “I need that car. If I had a convertible Mini Cooper my life would be complete. The only thing standing between me and heaven on earth is not owing a convertible Mini.”

Now, I’m not willing to die for a car. That wouldn’t make any sense even if I could somehow get a Mini by dying. What good would it do me to have the car after I’m dead? Yet all the time we hear people saying things like “I’d die for a piece of chocolate right now.”

Many Muslim jihadists do just that: die for something they consider is worth striving for. That something isn’t just an otherworldly belief, individual salvation in paradise, but also a this-worldly belief: that martyrdom will help to spread Islam in accord with the will of Allah. So they are just taking to extremes the normal human propensity to strive for what isn’t yet in our possession, whether this be a piece of chocolate, a new car, or god’s kingdom on earth.

This morning I was reading an interesting essay by Daniel Araya, “Integral Religion: Uniting Eros and Logos,” that kicked off these thoughts about jihad. Following Ken Wilber’s basic distinction between Ascent (Many to the One) and Descent (One to the Many), Araya says that “Eastern religion, following the course of Ascent, seeks to unite humanity’s consciousness with God; while Western religion, following the course of Descent, serves God’s manifest unfolding.”

Philosophically, I’m an Ascender. Yet there’s a considerable gap between the ideal philosophy that I espouse and the real life that I’m living. So in a lot of ways I’m a Descender. Ascent is the path of inward jihad; Descent is the path of outward jihad.

If you believe that it’s your responsibility to help the world evolve or unfold so that it better reflects God’s will, then you’re a religious outward jihadist. If you believe that it’s your responsibility to help the world evolve or unfold so that it better reflects your will, then you’re a secular outward jihadist. Either way, you’re expecting that something outside of you needs to change, not what is inside of you. Or more accurately, what is you.

By contrast, Ascenders believe that the timeless, formless, limitless One (God) is right here, right now. Nothing separates us from what we’re lacking. The ultimate fulfillment of enlightenment, satori, nirvana, samadhi—whatever you want to call it—is a state of inward consciousness, not a state of outward manifestation.

Further, there really isn’t any striving, jihad, needed to return to the One. It’s a matter of letting go, of relaxing, of surrendering, of embracing the wu-wei of non-action rather than the tight-lipped, fists-clenched, gotta-try-harder attitude that makes the world go ‘round. And ‘round, and ‘round, and ‘round. Where it stops or if it stops nobody knows, but for most people hope springs eternal that the ceaseless motion of earthly events will eventually lead to the steady state of a Promised Land.

As Daniel Araya writes, “God reveals Himself to the Jews (and later to the Christians and Muslims) through His actions in the course of history.” Thus Judaism looks forward to the establishment of God’s kingdom on earth, Christianity seeks to prepare the way for the second coming, and Islam is engaged in its own jihad of a “divine campaign for justice in the world of creation.”

For the Western religions, the kingdom of God is coming, not already here. For the Eastern religions, the kingdom of God is eternally present as the essence of our very being. By and large, for the Eastern mystics the focus of jihad, striving, is inward. There isn’t any need to struggle to change the world. What needs to change is the belief that struggle is how spiritual change occurs. So far as I know, there isn’t anything comparable to “Onward, Christian Soldiers” in Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism. But with a little bit of editing, that song would fit right in with Jewish and Muslim beliefs.

Jihad is a universal state of mind. If we think that there are “evil-doers” in Al Qaeda who are completely different from you and me, we’re mistaken. An issue of New Scientist (which is published in England) arrived in my mailbox today after I had started writing this post. A teaser on the front cover caught my eye, “What makes a suicide bomber”

Turning to the article, “The ordinary bombers,” I read:

“Most suicide bombers anywhere in the world appear to be normal. Study after study has shown that suicide terrorists are better off than average for their community and better educated. They are also rarely suicidal in the pathological sense…They don’t have to be Islamic extremists either, or even radicalized by faith.

...The immediate reaction to suicide bombers is to label them as animals, or inherently evil. But this will not do. Blowing themselves up in a crowd is often the first evil thing these people have done. And they are not animals. The most difficult thing of all is to recognise that suicide bombers are, alas, all too human.”

What happens is that Islamic jihadists who blow themselves up have made a commitment to a group that exploits their sympathy for the group’s cause. The article notes that normal, rational people can be persuaded to do horrible things if the right conditioning is applied. This is one reason why I say that it is so important to be loyal to yourself, not a group.

Virtually all of us are prone to jihad, because we believe that changing the world outside of us is more important than changing the world inside of us. It’s just a matter of degree where we fall on the Jihad Continuum. Suicide bombers are on the far end of the jihad bell curve; a sadhu living sequestered in a cave is on the far opposite end.

Here I’m not considering the means being used in an attempt to change the outer world, just the intensity of the striving. Means are vitally important, obviously—changing minds with books is hugely preferred to bombs—but desire is what starts off a jihad of any sort, as the Buddha taught.

There’s only one way to jump off the jihad train: do what has to be done spontaneously, naturally, effortlessly. It’s much easier said than done. Yet saying to oneself that it’s essential to strive not to strive is a first step toward not taking any more jihadist steps.

The gift of a classmate’s death

Death has a way of grabbing my attention. I can be drifting through life, mindlessly engaged in the mostly meaningless activities of my daily existence, and then…the clear and present reality of the big D—death—jerks me back to where I should always be: living. Real living, not just pretend living.

A few days ago I got a phone call from an elementary and high school classmate, Pam. I’ve talked with Pam just a few times since we graduated from good old Woodlake Union High School, class of 1966.

But as soon as I heard her voice I felt like we were best friends. Like we always had been. Like we always would be. People who are intensely and authentically engaged with life, as Pam is, can make you feel that way.

She started off by telling me about plans that she had heard about for a high school class reunion. I told her that I was interested in the news, yet was more interested in what she was doing now.

“Where do you live?” I asked. “I don’t have a home,” she said. “I’m a contemporary sadhu. For five and a half years I’ve been traveling around the world, Mexico, Central American, India.”

Pam said that her husband died, then their home was destroyed by a hurricane. “I got the message: let go of possessions. I’m into a new phase now. I know that I absolutely know nothing.”

Music to my ears. So refreshing. It was wonderful to be talking to someone who didn’t have life all figured out, who was searching for meaning in the most open fashion, unencumbered either by material things or mental beliefs.

Recently her wanderings returned her to central California, near where she and I spent our youth (Three Rivers). A friend who lives in Visalia had asked her to house sit for two weeks while the family went on vacation in Hawaii. It turned out that the house was right across the street from the home of Brian, a namesake of mine who also was a classmate of ours.

Brian’s wife came over to talk with Pam. She said that Brian was coming home that day from the hospital. He had been treated for a brain tumor. Previously Brian reportedly had been in great health. Happy, productive, a family man.

And then, while backing a horse trailer out of their driveway, he hit a tree. Brian’s wife asked, “What happened?” He said, “I don’t know. Something blanked out in my mind.”

Just a few months later Brian was spending his last day on Earth at home, talking to Pam. He died the day he got out of the hospital. Pam told me, “Everything is a gift.” Amen to that. Her being there in Visalia at that moment was an amazing coincidence.

That word, “coincidence,” doesn’t do justice to this story. As I was listening to Pam talk about Brian’s final hours, I had the strongest feeling that life offers us up these glimpses of what I can only call something more not for a reason, but simply as a gift. Briefly a crack appears in the cosmic egg and we get a peek into what lies beneath the shell of appearances.

I don’t know what it is. Neither does Pam. Maybe Brian does now. I hope so.

All I know is that life is meant to be lived. I’ve always known that, but I often forget it. I forget that each of us—me, you, Pam, Brian—lives on the edge of Mystery. That edge is encountered in many fashions, many ways, many guises.

Death is Mystery’s most dramatic appearance. Death scares us. Death fascinates us. Death attracts us. Death repels us. The faces of death are as various as our understandings of life. For me, death is a mystery, just as life is a mystery.

The day I talked with Pam I worked in our yard, mowing, fertilizing, edging. Usually I do all this robotically, looking forward to being done with these unwelcome chores so I can move on to doing something else, at which point I’ll be thinking about how nice it will be to… And so on.

Pam’s story about Brian had an effect on me. Maybe this was because he shared my name; he was the same age as me; he was healthy before the brain tumor made its appearance, just as I am. I don’t know the reason why I worked differently that afternoon. I’ll just accept it as a gift.

I realized that the moments of the mowing, the fertilizing, the edging—they were never going to come again. Who knows, maybe no earthly moment was going to come again. I could fall dead from a heart attack, or whatever, in an instant.

There are no guarantees that come attached to this garment of life that I’m temporarily wearing. My body can fall apart at any moment and I’ve got no recourse. Complaints to the warranty department will go unheard: “I thought this vehicle of the spirit was good to go for at least eighty years! What gives?!”

Well, what gives is my conceptions about life. What stays is reality, plain and simple. And that’s the place I should be staying in all the time: reality, here and now.

That place is where I am and who I am. Yet much of the time—no, most of the time—I allow myself to be dragged away into a facsimile of reality, an imitation of life that is fabricated from images: thoughts, imaginings, conceptions, anticipations, desires, what-ifs.

Too often I borrow my life from others because I’m too lazy or too fearful to live a life that is truly my own. Just before Pam called I had been reading a book about the Taoist sage, Lieh-Tzu. It advises, “In our short time here, we should listen to our own voices and follow our own hearts. Why not be free and live your own life?”

I’ll share the entire short chapter from which that excerpt was taken as a continuation to this post. It’s a gift: from Lieh-Tzu, from the book’s author (Eva Wong), from me, from the cosmos.

Pam is right. Everything is a gift. Life doesn’t need to be unwrapped, figured out, deciphered, analyzed to death. The gifts are right at hand. We just need to recognize them for what they are.

Wu chi, empty fullness

I’ve become a big fan of wu chi, a Taoist term for the emptiness from which fullness flows. It is the source of all that exists. Not being anything particular, wu chi is able to become everything. We could call it the One, but it is better not to name it at all.

Dualities—white, black; yin, yang; heaven, hell, true, false—can be given names for they are things. Wu chi isn’t a thing. It isn’t part of being. Wu chi can be considered the state of the Tao prior to creation. As Ellen Chen’s translation of the Tao Te Ching says (ch. 28), it is the unlimited aspect of the cosmos:

“To know (chih) the white (pe),
But to abide (shou) by the black (heh),
Is to be the model (shih) of the world.
Being the model of the world,
And deviating (t’eh) not from the everlasting power,
One again returns to the unlimited (wu-chi).

Chen comments: “Chi in the last line means the extreme boundary, limit, or perfection. Wu-chi as the negation of all boundaries or limits means the unbounded, unlimited or infinite. If t’ai-chi (Supreme Ultimate) in the I-Ching is the ultimate reality of the via affirmativa, wu-chi as ultimate non-being is the ultimate reality of the via negativa…When we transcend the extreme boundary of being, we arrive at nothingness (wu) or emptiness (hsü).”

I first heard the term, wu chi, used by my martial arts instructor. Warren said that he had told his own Tai Chi teacher that, after several decades of training, he had finally realized that there is only one move in Tai Chi. “Oh, very interesting,” the teacher said. “What is it?” “Whatever flows from wu chi [the empty state of rest in Tai Chi].” “Ah, I think you’re on to something,” said Warren’s teacher.

There’s nothing quite like wu chi in Western philosophy or religion. By and large we in the West adore positivity. We want to be filled, not emptied. We want to acquire, not divest. We want to become more, not less. We want to be raised up, not driven down.

Even when we claim to aspire to a state of lowly humility and egolessness, the envisioned end result is to be elevated: saved, enlightened, God-realized. I’m not saying that people of the East are less prone to ego, but at least philosophies such as Taoism and Zen—when unencumbered by religious trappings—present to spiritual aspirants a goal of inner emptiness.

Looking within my self during my period of morning meditation, I can imagine that wu chi is close at hand. That’s what I experience, inner darkness, which looks very much like the black circle that symbolizes wu chi on this website.

The problem, though, is that I look upon the darkness as separate from myself. That “emptiness” inside my head isn’t really empty if it is inhabited by a self that gazes upon an inner inkiness and thinks, “Here I am, looking upon nothing.” When there is still a here, an I, a looking, and a nothing, that’s pretty conclusive proof that wu chi is some distance away.

How far? I don’t know. Whether it is a hair’s breadth or a billion light years of consciousness transformation, it’s all the same to me. I’m here and wu chi is somewhere else, though wu is ever-present at the extreme boundary of being. So if I could subtract my being from me, the result of this existential equation would be, paradoxically, infinity.

When confronted with something “far-out” people often say in a derogatory way, “That sounds like something really woo-woo to me. I don’t want to have anything to do with it.” Well, they may be right. However, Taoism suggests that embracing wu-wu is exactly what a spiritual seeker should do.

Wu grammatically is a negative in Chinese, yet experientially it is a positive. It is said, Wu and Tao are equally the mother of all things.” Wu wei in Taoism literally means “not doing.” But wu wei is how nature does everything: effortlessly and harmoniously. Nature isn’t filled with a sense itself; it is itself. One, not two.

I need more wu-wu. A lot more. Until I’m empty of it.