Recently on Facebook I saw this quote from a book by Alan Watts, What is Tao? Makes a lot of sense to live life like a falling cat. Not too tense. Not too rigid. Just the right amount of relaxation.
The same attitude of relaxed gentleness [practiced in judo] is most beautifully seen when you watch cats climbing trees.
When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground.
But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly made up its mind that it didn't want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.
In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.
So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat. Don't resist it.
This fits with a Taoist story from Chuang Tzu that I shared in a 2004 blog post, "I become a Taoist."
Take the case of a drunken man falling from his carriage: though he may suffer injury he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other men, but the injury which he receives is different: his spirit is entire.
He knew nothing about getting into the carriage and nothing about falling from it. The thought of death or life, or of any alarm or affright, does not enter his breast. Therefore he encounters danger without shrinking from it. Completely under the influence of the liquor he had drunk, it is thus with him.
How much more would it be so if he were under the influence of his Heavenly constitution! The sagely man is kept hid in his Heavenly constitution and therefore nothing can injure him.
Well, I'm pretty damn sure that a sagely man can indeed be injured, but I'll give Chuang Tzu his poetic license.
His main point seems to be the same as what Alan Watts said above. Going through life in a relaxed fashion is better than being unduly tense.
As regards cats, I found a You Tube video that explains how they can fall from high places and come away in pretty good shape.
Great post. And great analogy, the cat thing. (And cool vid. Everyone knows cats can fall and walk away, but I had no idea they could manage so many floors!)
Haha, another cool analogy -- albeit maybe not intended as such -- is the drunk! No, really. Given what we know of the insubstantiality of both life and self, eat-drink-make-merry-tomorrow-you-die would appear to be one not unreasonable strategy to live off of, provide one has the temperament to carry it off fully and right through till the very end!
Posted by: Appreciative Reader | August 19, 2022 at 05:50 AM
[“In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.”]
The saying ‘going with the flow’ came to mind on reading this and I believe there is a lot of sense in a middle way between ‘Not too tense.’ Not too rigid.’ But then I thought how fortunate I am to have the kind of life situation where I am able to steer a course between such extremes.
I can imagine many an infant at the start of life and ‘free falling’ from their tree, suddenly being grabbed by other, equally falling individuals, who hi-jacks them into some belief system that hangs a heavy conceptual construct on how to think and how to live. I am thinking of children who are born into cultures which impose rigid belief systems onto them that they unwittingly accept and which govern the rest of their lives. They grow up clinging to these ideas and have little chance of throwing them off and living the relaxed life.
In fact, even those who have not been indoctrinated into a particular belief system, their early life situation can cause them to grab onto any number of things to protect (or even prevent) them in their falling – such as wealth, position, family, projects, organisations etc. All of which could obviate the ideal ‘middle way.’
It is apparent that life, being precarious, practically invites us to embrace extremes that prevents ‘free’ falling – with the illusion of either not falling or of landing safely. The question is, how is a mind shackled to extremes, able to see this and drop the baggage in order to ‘fall’ (and perhaps land) naturally?
Posted by: Ron E. | August 20, 2022 at 07:14 AM
Age is just the process of change happening.
You could live your entire life as the most honest, kindest and compassionate person on the entire planet and you will still experience the natural effects of the aging process.
How you come into relationship to those natural effects will define whether you grow old as the perpetual worrier or you adapt to the changes with an acceptance that allows the mind to be at peace.
The aging process is not a punishment imposed by a figment of the imagination.
The punishment is imposed by our own minds that cannot accept its actuality.
Of course, there are many things we can do throughout our lives to make the aging process perhaps more comfortable, but the likelihood is that we’ve been so busy doing other things that our minds forget the process exists and we only get reminded once a year when we attach ourselves to a new number.
Then it seems that all of a sudden, bits of us start slowing down, wearing out or falling off and we don’t like it.
We get a stark reminder of the inevitability of death and how time might be running out and we don’t like that either.
The root cause of the worrying mind will always be found in not wanting our current experience to be as it is.
Age is just a number we become attached to.
Like every other human experience, age is a state of mind.
The secret to a contented life is to embrace the change.
Therefore, grow old disgracefully ....................
Let grey be the new black.
You’ve earned the right to be old. Throw away the beige and grey clothes and get some color back into your life.
Posted by: Roger | August 20, 2022 at 09:42 AM