I am always reassured when I see a strong correlation between ostensibly lowly, mundane life forms and myself. For one thing, it shows Nature is no fool; she simplifies her work by using time tested tools at every level of life—and ‘non life’ as well. Those tools are the so-called instincts. I suppose the reassurance I feel arise from seeing examples of my being truly connected to all life being.
Indeed, it is somewhat puzzling why humanity has gone to such lengths to see itself otherwise, like being created in God’s image. Perhaps having no way to notice the subtle (yet profound) similarities between ‘them’ and us, we turned to myth and imagination, with our species centric ego giving our myths direction. Continue reading ‘I, Amoeba’
King Sahura c.2487-2475 B.C.E.
This morning lightning struck. I got a great ideal for a book. Even so, it is a book I’ll never write. Still, I have a provocative working title, Why Man Is King, or perhaps, Why Man is King, is God. I’m not even keen on writing a post addressing this, or at least addressing all of ‘this’. As it turns out, the end of the book would dovetail right into a recent post Ant Are Us, so I just have to say something, otherwise this will haunt me for the rest of the day.
Up until now, civilization has done everything possible to put Man at the top, and Woman at the bottom of culture’s hierarchical structure. I always attributed this to simple social zoology where the ‘alpha male’ heads the group. That may still be a major reason for the main origins of human cultural biases. However, I realized another source as I was pondering the dynamics of male-female relationships… what keeps them either working or leads to their demise. Continue reading ‘Why Man is King’
Shishi odoshi ("deer scarer")
Yes, it is true. The reason it may sound ridiculous is that we are biologically set up to respond positively to gain and negatively to loss. A useful trick I’ve found in life is convincing my hoodwinking emotions of the actual benefit of loss and the hidden downside of gain.
Years of evidence, hard-won through personal experience, helps keep me constantly convinced now. The Tao Te Ching echos this view in chapter 58, It is on disaster that good fortune perches; It is beneath good fortune that disaster crouches. The proverb “be careful what you wish for, it may come true” points in the same direction. Continue reading ‘Loss is Gain; Gain is Loss’
The BBC aired an excellent six part series on India recently. The other night we watched part two, The story of India (part 2). The first half hour retells the life of Buddha. Incorporating present day video footage of India with the story makes this telling especially good. The end of the segment stood out to me. To quote:
Buddha (around the age of 80, 486bc) felt his time nearing the end, traveled North towards the land of his childhood. The Buddha reached a little town on the edge of the Ganges plane where he fell ill. Continue reading ‘“… Strive On Diligently”’
Gathering around the water cooler
When I saw this story, What ants can teach us, I was left with the gut feeling that we’re simply ants with big brains and hands with opposable thumbs.
Talk about mysterious sameness! Just imagine what ants could do if they had those two assets at their disposal. I suppose they would ruin the earth even faster than we appear to be doing. Continue reading ‘Ants Are Us’
We now know we are animals biologically speaking. However, do we really feel we are, or do we understand this as mostly an abstract factoid. Catching the flue for the ‘first time’ in my life may (or may not?) offer an example of the how thought can separate us from feeling our animal-ness fully.
Claiming that I caught the flue for the first time must surely be untrue, but up until now I never ‘knew’ the difference between a cold and the flue. I’ve heard of flue shots and the danger of catching flues, like the bird flue of a few years ago. However, whenever I came down with fluey symptoms I ‘knew’ I just had a cold. Do you see where I’m heading with this? Continue reading ‘Feeling Animal-ness’
"To use words but rarely is to be natural."
Awhile ago a friend said to me (1), “Words are sounds that gain meaning with use. Saying a rock is conscious is like saying a rock is alive. Might work in a poem but not for logical communication. Look in dictionaries for guides to usage (of course, they’re fallible) rather than rely on my memory”
So I looked up conscious and then the tracked down some of the words used to define that word. As usual, it turns out to feel like a vicious circle. Clearly, word definition is a messy affair when you scratch the surface (which few ever do in my experience). Nevertheless, I can articulate why a rock, or even an atom for that matter, qualifies as being conscious using this trail of definitions, Continue reading ‘Is Rock Conscious?’
While discussing life with a friend the other day the word evil came. He sees America as an “evil empire” that commits acts of torture that surpass anything al-Qaeda has done. I think he was referring to all the bombs dropped over the last 100 years. In any case, this provided grist for my mind’s mill. For starters, the idea of evil immediately brings to mind the Tao Te Ching chapter two: “The whole world recognizes the good as the good, yet this is only the bad”. ( Ha! No wonder Taoist thought has never caught on.)
When I look around me, I see no evil or ugliness in nature. Nature is just self right as the Chinese ziran (自然) puts it. Continue reading ‘See No Evil’
Keep ‘em guessing?
The Tao Te Ching is often terse and vague—especially in the original Chinese. I expect one reason is that it offers a word view often at odds with the story we want to hear. Revealing this point of view less obscurely would feel unsettling, even subversive, for many… Continue reading ‘Chapter of the Week: #74′
#11: Thou shalt not take the path of least resistance
As I doubt any ‘by the book’ Christians are here to take offense, I’ll propose an 11th commandment: Thou shalt not take the path of least resistance. It has a nice ring to it, yet I’ll admit it sounds a little unnatural. After all, are we not set up biologically to ‘take the path of least resistance’? Yes, but neither are we set up biologically to eat grains, drive cars, or the countless other things we do to make life more convenient, comfortable and secure. In the wild, taking the path of least resistance is naturally healthful. In civilized settings life often turns out otherwise.
Continue reading ‘Thou Shalt Not…’
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