This Science News piece, Many unhappy returns for wandering minds, packs a big punch for its small size. (It’s so short I’ll paste it below.) Science News and the Tao Te Ching are my two best resources for reducing the risk of ‘the blind spot’. Together, they offer point of view from opposite ends of the awareness spectrum. Each balances the other. Alone, either can mislead. Better yet, having an eye on both keeps my mind from wandering too far.
I have wondered at times why I’m such a stickler for what I call watchfulness (paying attention, mindfulness, seeing what I’ve not seen, being moment to moment, and so on). Frankly, all the common ‘spiritual’ reasons were too pie-in-the-sky for me. Continue reading ‘Wandering Mind Is Unhappy Mind’
Soon after we met, my future to be wife said, “I love you”. That moment had all the ideal romantic overtones one could ask for… us out in the forest, a moonlit summer’s night. Being the bubble busting bum of which I’m capable, I replied with something like, “What do you mean love? What’s love?” Frankly, the word had lost its “magic”, after being dumped by my ex-wife the year before (1).
This word has piqued my curiosity again, now that my sons are dating. The word love presents a good example of the iffy nature of words, names, and language over all. There are many words that are more or less synonymous with love. Continue reading ‘Love’
1961, In the barracks beginning yoga
I was recently reminded of the battle smokers go through to quit. My story may contains more twists and turns than most, however, and ends with an ironic finish. This post is a bit long, so skim some and then go down to “The End Of A Long Journey” for the Taoist meat.
It all began when I came down with strep throat while in the Air Force. The sergeant told me that smoking would help with the pain. It did. That I took him up on the offer was ironic for I was seriously into yoga(1) at the time: vegetarian, postures, and what seems to me now like goofy cleansing practices. Oh well, no one ever accused me of being consistent, especially in those teenage years. Continue reading ‘My Battle With Tobacco’
The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1563)
Keith posted a link to this article, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” in reply to my post Thinking Clouds Consciousness. Surely this is a no-brainer kind of question. Put simply, language and thinking are inextricably linked; it takes one to do the other. If you can, flip off the language switch in your mind. Well? When I do that, I’m unable to think.
Continue reading ‘What Shapes How You Think?’
A little one on one with my bird
I bought a caged finch in Japan years ago. I took it home and left the cage door open so it could fly around if it wished. It wouldn’t. It just stayed contentedly in its cage. Weeks or months (I forget which) passed before it ventured out. I left the window open too, and soon it would go out, fly about, and return home. The Bird stayed away longer and longer until one day it didn’t return.
I notice a parallel here between me and that bird. I spent years, more or less inside civilization’s paradigm, venturing out of society’s cultural cage from time to time. Continue reading ‘Where Is Freedom?’
I had a little bakery on the Thai Cambodian border in the early 60’s. It was little more than a shack, but enough for me and my Thai ‘wife’(1) (along with her mother, brother, sister). Most of the customers were Thai peasants who would stop by for some sponge cake on their return from the town market. Being partial to sponge cake, business never grew; I ate up most of the profits. After rising early to bake the days offerings, I’d sit at the front of the shop and swat at flies while awaiting customers. Continue reading ‘Poor Thais And Rich Swedes’
Our money is family money… really. It is one big pot from which each takes as needed. This is radically different from the independent model upon which my parents raised me. I did chores for which I got a salary. I suppose the idea here is to prepare the me (their child) for the employer – employee relationship that would lie ahead.
That was not to be my model for raising my kids. Here, everyone in the family did / does ‘chores’, but not as some ‘job’, but rather as part of what needs doing as part of practical daily living. A shared life involves shared responsibility (which makes life feel more shared). Here, each takes on what they are most naturally capable of doing. ‘It happened to us naturally.’ Continue reading ‘The Family Purse’
Bathtub Tai Chi
I have found that multitasking is generally inefficient. My desire to do more and more (rather than less and less) deceives me into thinking I can actually accomplish more and more doing various tasks simultaneously. This make is almost impossible to be as careful at the end as at the beginning, no matter what I am doing. Well, I finally have learned my lesson. I’m not sure it is learning that accounts for my increased wisdom in this matter. More likely it is because I’m older and have less energy to run around chasing after desires as in my youth. Continue reading ‘Bathtub Tai Chi’
My extended family
When is comes to human nutrition, it is a struggle separating the wheat from the chaff. Each era has its red hearing and blind alleys (or worse) of nutrition. What was once thought good for health may be found bad; what was once thought bad for health may be found good. In the 70’s I got ‘nutrition religion’ and wanted to find out the ‘truth’. I spent many hours at Stockholm’s main library searching for all information I could find on nutrition, great apes and tangential issues, e.g., biology, history.(1)
Continue reading ‘Omega-3 and Vitamin D’
Eligible bachelors
There is a curious thing I notice in the life of my two sons. They are not chasing girls like I was at their age. They aren’t gay either, so what gives? I look back on my youthful lust and see a disconnected lad looking for companionship that my ‘independent’ upbringing (plus innate nature, I suppose) never provided. All I ever really wanted was intimacy and acceptance. And the only path to that deeper sense of connection was through a boy-girl relationship. That was true of my wife and most everyone I know (especially in Western cultures). Ironically, our culture’s love of ‘independence and self reliance’ actually leave its people with just the opposite, deep down anyway. Continue reading ‘Significant Others’
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