As a child, I recall marveling at how everything seemed to work so well. The logistics blew my mind—even though I didn’t know that was the word for it. I also worried how the powers-that-be dealt with all the sewage and garbage my hometown produced.
I am still awed that ‘it’ works, although I now know that Nature’s ‘logistics’ is in command. Even so, it also turns out to be a worrisome problem for civilizations’ powers-that-be… that would be all of us, really. Continue reading ‘Really, Have We No Clue?’
Me, age 3, actually fishing... sort of.
The fish are biting and I’m reeling ‘em in, I’m just not posting ‘em. Posting requires so much clean up to make ‘em fit for reading.
Finishing the last chapter of the Tao Te Ching was the catalyst I guess I needed to reevaluate things. I’ve wondered for a while now why I post in the first place.
I mean, the Taoist point of view has to be among the oddest and most ironic subjects to speak on. After all, he who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know. Continue reading ‘Gone Fishin’, Back Soon’
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about what is natural or unnatural in regards to human behavior. I suppose it all depends on which part of the elephant one currently perceives. Beyond that though, I see this like layers of an onion—an emergent property situation. I’ll take a stab at sorting this out…
Humans are naturally (and usually) inclined to take the easy way, go for pleasure and avoid pain. In the wild this bio-hoodwink usually works out well. Human culture has been driven by this primary instinctive drive shared by all animals, from ants to duck to dogs to people. Consider the human highway on the left and the ant highway on the right (photo left). Both species are just trying to make life easier and more efficient. As I pointed out in Ants are Us, the similarities are striking. Continue reading ‘Naturally Unnatural, Naturally!’
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’
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’
Inside
Knowing that ‘we are all in this together’ evokes a sense of community and well being. Just a few centuries ago species’ centric myths almost exclusively defined what we and all this meant. Boy is that changing! Science is showing just how deep and vast the ‘we’ really is, as the Science News’ Inside Job reports.
Continue reading ‘We!’
'He who conquers self...'
The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I found most useful. Why useful? Mostly because it was the most sensible and succinct I’d seen.
Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, and long ago changed a word or two. Rereading my original source makes me want to revisit this and ponder why I revised in the first place. Here is the sequence of events:
The original says: “He who conquers self will be free from lust. He no longer craves and the flames of desire find no material to feed upon, thus they are extinguished.” Continue reading ‘He Who Conquers Self’
I notice two side of enlightenment. One is a sudden flash of knowing, the Zen Satori, as the Japanese call it. I imagine everyone experiences this to one degree or another, at various time throughout life. I’d say it is almost guaranteed; one’s awareness has to fall from their fortress of belief every once in a while.
The other side of enlightenment, as I see it, is sustained knowing. Here impartiality is essential. It might even be the key to sustain knowing in the first place. In any case, without sufficient impartiality, see the “whole” would drive one insane I expect. Impartiality opens the window of awareness wider; the wider the widow the more awe full the view; the more essential impartiality becomes to maintaining sanity. Continue reading ‘So, You Want Enlightenment, Eh?’
The November issue of Science News, Beyond Spooky, was dedicated to “quantum weirdness”, as they put it. I have long had deep affection for this side of physics. Frankly though, the weirder thing for me is how, despite nature’s hoodwink, it is possible to see more than just the tip-of-the-iceberg of reality. Biology requires living things to perceive reality in such a way that promotes survival and evolution. I can’t imagine any biological reason why any living thing would be able to perceive more than that, but living things can and do as humans have demonstrated (and I suspect, all living things at some level). Continue reading ‘Beyond Spooky’
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