Is Pain the Constant?
Pleasure and pain (like life and death) are a fascinating duo. In this relationship, I imagine that pain is the head of the household. That’s not to say pain is ‘the constant‘; that would be going too far, of course. Nevertheless pain, like water, may come close to describing the way. That puts pain at the same primeval level as fear. They are the leaders in the evolution of life, with supporting roles in life’s drama going to pleasure and need (and in us humans, desire). Continue reading ‘Chapter of the Week: #76′
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’
Pleasure Isn’t Well Being
Both pleasure and pain can pull us off balance and dim our sense of well being. This parallels chapter 13’s Favor and disgrace are things that startle. Of course, it is easy to see how pain and disgrace do this, but favor and pleasure? That’s more subtle… Continue reading ‘Chapter of the Week: #75′
"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…’
Science News’ Kids own up to ownership, shows that science has come another step closer to proving a key part of Buddha’s Second Noble Truth, “… the illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things“.
The 1st and 2nd of Buddha Four Noble Truths are spot on in regards to the nature and the cause of our unique human problem. I easily began seeing this was so many decades ago. It was simply a no-brainer! On the other hand, his 3rd and 4th Noble Truths’ solution for our problem turn out to be far more subtle and evolve over time. Continue reading ‘You Are What You Own’
Priorities
Prioritizing needs (and fears too) is an important step in managing the demands of living, at least a civilized life. In the wild I suppose circumstance pretty much handle what and when animals do what they do. Freeing ourselves from the drudgery of hunting and gathering whenever we got hungry has left us with abundant free time to ‘choose’ what to do and not do… Continue reading ‘Chapter of the Week: #73′
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