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.

So I have to ask myself, if I don’t know, why reveal my ignorance? On the other hand, if I do know, why am I speaking? To be fair, that pithy “He who knows…” statement is not the whole story. On the positive side, trying to write coherently is a fascinating challenge for me, and my observations do appear to benefit a few people. Simply put, I am composing and performing ‘music’, as seen from a mysterious sameness point of view anyway. Now certainly, my ’songs’ are music to nearly no ones ears, but that is just as it should be. Meaning, a Taoist ’song’ seeks to poke through the bio-hoodwink and sing it as ‘it’ is, not as we want ‘it’ to be. Popularity would just be symptomatic of singing it off-key, Taoist-wise.

Tao Te Ching, Word for Word

I just ordered a handful of my just completed translation (see below). We’ll use it here at our monthly meeting along side D.C. Lau’s translation. I think having the nearly literal version to refer to along side D.C. Lau’s version will be helpful. I notice that all translations bear an inherent problem due to relative word meaning. Meaning, when translating the Chinese to English, one must choose one word among several related meanings. Each of these can mean something different in the mind of the beholder – translator and reader alike. On top of this tenuous situation, rest an even fuzzier one for pseudo translations (like Steven Mitchel’s for example), which are actually interpretations of authentic translations. The benefit of correlations is that the process bears none of these problems. The whole responsibility of discerning meaning lies with the bewildered mind of ‘correlator’. Maybe that accounts for its great ‘popularity’.

Next step

I will continue to reevaluate my translation over time to make it more readable when possible, yet with any luck, also more accurate. Still, that may just amount to moving the furniture around the room. Now, with that disclaimer, anyone wishing a copy can buy direct from the printer Lulu. Lulu doesn’t ship abroad, so if anyone outside the USA wants a copy we can work something out. I’d really appreciate any comments, questions and criticisms with an eye to making it better. Great perfection here we come.

Is redundancy the name of the game?

I feel like I’ve said it all before, ad nausium. Still, a constant echo seems to be useful to counteract the bio-hoodwink. Reviewing the view I see in my most balanced moments helps anchor me in my less balanced ones. From what I can tell, that is a common human practice. Forgetting what we truly want of life is all-too-easy!

Adventures of aging

I never remember any old people telling me how fascinating aging was or would be, although if they had, it probably wouldn’t have registered, i.e. one can only understand what one already knows. I seem to be having increasing difficulty remembering things. My mind is becoming blanker. That has some interesting effects; insight seems to flow like water through the void my mind is becoming. This ties into the sleep on it and blind spot issue John Clease spoke about.

On the other hand, I could just be seeing myself more as I actually am rather than the ‘genius’ I once liked to think I was. Yes, that old ‘Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty‘ issue. That offers a twist on the idea of a ’self fulfilling prophecy’. What you think is so prevents you from seeing what is actually so, which make it more like a ’self fulfilling prophecy bubble‘.

Another possibility is that I could be experiencing the beginnings of Alzheimer’s and the hole it produces in memory lead to my final days of insight before the mind’s curtain falls. Speculating is such fun, especially given how life usually turns out differently from anything we think. It is an adventure, that’s for sure!

Recovering alcoholics continue to say, “I’m an alcoholic”, even as they stay on the straight and narrow moment-to-moment, day to day, year to year. Likewise, I would have to say I’m a thinker, recovering from certainty in thought moment-to-moment, day to day, year to year. (Really! I’ve sobered up a lot. You should have seen me before.)

Of course, just like alcohol, certainty is not bad by itself.  It is all about the circumstances and magnitude. Intuitive certainty that induces me to jump out of the way of an oncoming bus, or avoid food that smells ‘off’, benefits me without fail. Certainty’s affect on thought is where things go awry. Stillness and impartiality fly out the window once the emotion of certainty begins to back up thought. At that point, the blind-spot overtakes perception and difficulties multiply.

I am a little surprised that this process isn’t more widely recognized. Especially in that we have been aware of this for ages. The clearest example is probably represented by chapter 71, to know yet to think that one does not know is best; not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Buddha’s also speaks to this. Much of his Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path addresses the role the mind plays in our lives.

Of course, I should be more surprised by my own naiveté.  There is simply no way that we can impartially evaluate anything that offers us pleasure. Pleasure is the bait, as Buddha said, and it creates a blind-spot around the source of that pleasure.  Can merely understanding that we intoxicate ourselves with thought help anyone sober up? I would guess probably not.

Just like the other ways we have to drink ourselves silly—shopping, eating, drugs, and so on—understanding is seldom sufficient. We must viscerally know, and such depth of knowing only comes through personally reaching rock bottom. Isn’t this a process, like  chapter 36 points out, if you would have a thing laid aside, you must first set it up? Only when a thing is fully set up are we ready to lay it aside ⁽¹⁾. Why should an addiction to certainty-of-belief be any different?

Alas, our addiction to certainty-of-belief is somewhat different and more challenging. There are obvious physical consequences to all other addictions: a glutton’s obesity; a shopper’s debt, a smoker’s cough, a drunkard’s hangovers. Not so with thought, other than the neurotic impulses from which we suffer. And even if we recognized our addiction to certainty-of-belief, what are we to do? Other sources of additions are external and can at least be kept out of reach, if not eliminated. Thinking is internal. I suppose that explains the popularity of psycho-pharmacology. Well, at least that is an improvement over getting a lobotomy.

So, if you are fed up with certainty-of-belief, then try out correlations as a sort of do-it-yourself virtual lobotomy. They may help detoxify your mind from the weight of its preconceptions as they did for me. Also effective, needless to say, can be delving the depths of the Tao Te Ching and the age-old ‘yogic’ practices (I mean yoga in the broadest sense: meditation, pranayama, bhakti yoga, hatha yoga, Buddhism, and so on.)

⁽¹⁾ That’s not altogether true. The power of an addiction is symptomatic of the degree of disconnection we feel. The more secure our sense of social connection, the less sway an addiction has upon us. Thus, improvements in our sense of connection must take some of the steam out of the ‘set it up in order to lay it aside’ process.

As I see it, thought (language, words and names) has left us with a unique sense of disconnection compared to other animal. That is the price we pay for the powerful advantages that thinking (imagination) affords us. I find it ironic that we attempt to reconnect via thought (belief in particular promises to reconnection with the One). I never found that actually worked. It is like building a castle of belief on the shifting sands of the void.

On the other hand, maybe that’s just me. After all, belief is really a symptom of deeper realities, not a solution. A loosening of certainty in belief just reflects changing realities and a declining need to hold on to any particular belief. Goodness, I suppose my thoughts on belief are shifting. Shifting sands indeed!

"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,

The problem I’d have here is that some definitions specifically refer only to living organisms. That being the case, I’ll limit this inquiry to the living initially.  Limiting the view to organisms, we readily see how even a virus, bacteria or  amoeba are conscious (or ’subconscious’).  To perceive this, you’ll have to follow the trail of definitions below. For instance: … subconscious -> mental -> mind -> spirit -> breath -> the faculty of breathing (i.e., respiration).

The Trail of Definitions

Conscious (Date: 1592)
perceiving, apprehending, or noticing with a degree of controlled thought or observation <was conscious that someone was watching

Perceiving (Date: 14th century)
to attain awareness or understanding of

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French perceivre, from Latin percipere, from per- thoroughly + capere to take.

Awareness (Date: before 12th century)
a: watchful, wary b: having or showing realization, perception, or knowledge

Etymology: Middle English iwar, from Old English gewær, from ge- (associative prefix) + wær wary

Subconscious (Date: circa 1834)
the mental activities just below the threshold of consciousness

Mental (Date: 15th century)
the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism

Mind (Date: before 12th century)
a: the element or complex of elements in an individual that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons b: the conscious mental events and capabilities in an organism

Etymology: ME mynde < OE (ge)mynd, memory < IE base *men-, to think > Gr menos, spirit, force, L mens, mind

Spirit (Date: 13th century)
an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French or Latin; Anglo-French, espirit, spirit, from Latin spiritus, literally, breath, from spirare to blow, breathe

Breath (Date: before 12th century)
a: the faculty of breathing  b: an act of breathing

the faculty of breathing:
I’ll stop here for as usual, it is looking more like a vicious definition defining circle to me

Only when it is cut are there names.

Definitions aiming at the core of experience reflect much human-centric, culture-centric, self-definition bias. That children, women and Africans were long thought to be not fully capable of awareness, consciousness, mental ability, etc., exemplify such bias. Obviously, definition lines drawn in the sand are placed wherever they feel most comfortable for the person drawing them.

One striking problem with language is how it boxes perception into preconceptions learned from birth onward. Peeking outside this culturally induced ‘brain washing’ is not possible as long as one is a staunch supporter of any definitional status quo.

Finally, dictionaries are coming from an ‘inside the box’ point of view. Like all humans, I was raised inside this box, and understand the view from in here. Correlations, the process of Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions arose out of my need to ‘peek outside the box’ so I could reevaluate my from ‘inside the box’ view (i.e., the necessity of contrast; I need to find a ‘there’ in order to see a ‘here’).

So, is a rock conscious?

It all depends on what you mean by conscious. By my definition, rocks are conscious, although they don’t think (or breathe). Only we think (as far as I know) and so only we have contrived the word consciousness. If we limit the definition of consciousness to thinking, then only humans are conscious. And even then, only after the age of 12 months or so after we’ve learned enough language to begin thinking.

What is thinking? I define thinking as a brain function that requires symbolic language. Thus, according to this definition, without language, there is no thinking.  Think is also a synonym for believe.  To paraphrase chapter 71,  To know yet to believe that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to believe that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Clearly we are stuck with thinking. Symbolic language is burned into our awareness. What we think, however, is more fluid. Acknowledging that a rock may be conscious is more fluid, and conforms with, ‘to know yet to think that one does not know is best‘. Why? It leaves the door open for mysterious sameness to enter your consciousness. In this case, the essence of being is consciousness; it is shared by all existence.

⁽¹⁾ This is the same friend who instigated my last blog post, See No Evil. This post, Is a Rock Conscious? , and that last post are somewhat connected. Okay, yes, I suppose everything I write is kind of that way.

Yum yum

Eventually science will discover most everything that is discoverable⁽¹⁾. Recently research, reported in the Science News’ article, Cerebral Delights, flushed out some primary neurological links between fear and need.

I have felt for a few years now that fear stood at the head waters of all emotion, including those related to need. Additionally, what fear and need mean is not as straightforward as often thought, at least as I use those words. So before getting into the meat of this issue, I should clarify my sense of these words, especially need. For starters, you might review my caveats concerning need and fear.

Learning to speak Thai was the catalyst for firming up my understanding of ‘need’. I picked up Thai the easy way – living among non English speaking Thai folks. A particularly striking difference in thinking between my Western upbringing and Thai culture was in the use and meaning of the word want and need. I was used to thinking need, want and desire were different. For example, I may “want/desire” that yacht, but do I really need it? By contrast, the Thai’s, at least at the peasant level, don’t perceive a sharp distinction between need, want, or desire. The synonym-like nature of these words made sense to me, as did their Buddhist world view.

How does regarding need, want and desire as synonym-like apply to the research results here? These are deeply connected to one’s pursuit of pleasure, just as fear, worry, and insecurity are deeply connected to one’s avoidance of pain. Consider these examples: need vs. fear, pleasure vs. pain, attraction vs. repulsion. While we’re at it, why not throw in love vs. hate, beauty vs. ugly, and good vs. bad. Note how these words correlate?

Need = pleasure = want = attraction = love
——- ———– —— ————- —–
Fear = pain = reject = repulsion = hate

Now The Meat

I am pleased to see some objective evidence linking need and fear. My ‘research’ is quite literally just the opposite—totally subjective. That is a murky research environment to say the least. But in some ways the most valid, and certainly the most efficient for an individual. After all, one only lives a few decades before returning to the great Nothing, while science crawls along through many lifetimes. On the other hand, self deception is all too easy, so I welcome any confirmation, supporting evidence. Now I’ll paste the most pertinent passages below for those for whom the link above fails to work. The article begins with the subtitle:

The amygdala, a part of the brain known for its role in fear, also helps people spot rewards — and go after them.

For years the amygdala has been regarded primarily as the brain’s center for fear. Scores of studies have shown that it is essential both for perceiving fear and expressing it.

In recent years, though, a surge of new research has expanded scientists’ view of the amygdala’s importance. It turns out that the amygdala helps shape behavior in response to all sorts of stimuli, bad and good. It plays a role not only in aversion to fright, but also in pursuit of pleasure.

Studies of the brain’s anatomy reveal good reasons for the amygdala’s power: It is very well connected. In humans and other primates, the amygdala is linked through a complex network of cells to brain regions involved in all five senses. Signals about everything you encounter are passed from the brain’s sensory processing areas directly to the amygdala. And the amygdala shares elaborate communications channels with the prefrontal cortex — the brain’s control center for planning and decision making.

Its strategic location allows the amygdala to act as a spotlight, calling attention to sensory input that is new, exciting and important. In this way, it helps predict the timing and location of potential dangers, helping you dodge many of the things you dread. But those same connections also help you acquire the good things in life, by identifying and assessing rewards such as food, sex and other delights.

Though much more is known about its fear job, researchers are now vigorously gathering evidence about how the amygdala evaluates information and events for their reward potential. Recent studies offer clues to how the amygdala assigns value to rewards and adjusts that value as circumstances change. Other work provides insights into how the amygdala links actions and rewards, suggesting that the amygdala plays a role in goal-directed behavior. Still others are finding out how neural circuits in the highly connected human amygdala work with other brain structures to recognize good things and find ways to get them.

Toward the end of the article this nugget appears. It reminds us of how fuzzy the view can become the closer you get. The main point here is how important the amygdala is for assigning an emotional value, with the primary focus on pleasure and fear, or to put it more straightforward perhaps: need of pleasure; fear of pain.

Rudebeck and his group trained monkeys to play a computer game in which they assessed the value of different rewards. The animals were shown two different pictures and allowed to choose between them. One picture brought a large juice reward, and the other brought a much smaller amount of juice. The animals chose the picture associated with the larger reward more than 98 percent of the time.

After turning off the amygdala in some animals, the scientists used single-cell recordings to listen in on brain cell chatter in the orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. To the team’s surprise, the monkeys still chose the picture with the “best” outcome on pretty much every trial, just as they had done with a working amygdala.

Though the animals continued choosing in the same manner, the scientists found that fewer neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex changed their firing rate in response to an expected reward. When looking at the animals’ emotional responses — as measured by pupil diameter and heart rate — researchers found that monkeys without a working amygdala didn’t react to a reward in the typical way, Rudebeck says. “They seemed to have no idea of what reward was, despite the fact that they could still choose perfectly well.”

The findings, reported at the neuroscience meeting, suggest that the brain uses various mechanisms to calculate how much something is worth. While the amygdala may be important for assigning an emotional value, Rudebeck says, it may not be the “be-all and end-all” in valuing objects.

⁽¹⁾ Of course, the most important ‘thing’ from a Taoist point of view is beyond the grasp of science. Naturally! With Nothing, there nothing to grasp. Fear and Nothing are closely related, so anything science finds about the nature of fear may tell us something about Nothing, if we read between the lines anyway.

Mea Maxima Culpa

What exactly are biased views? Frankly, any view that points out differences should qualify. Oh shucks, that includes me right now. Paradoxically, I must resort to bias in my attempt to write about truth. I suppose this exemplifies— when cleverness emerges there is great hypocrisy—it’s downright ironic and humbling. Oh well.

No wonder we say, One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know… To use words but rarely is to be natural… Much speech leads inevitably to silence. Better to hold fast to the void… and such. Now, with this necessary mea maxima culpa out of the way, I can proceed with this ‘truthful story’.

Fearsome Truth

Tracing every experience back to its dimly lit origins can be a fascinating and useful journey. Doing this over decades has been like tracing the a huge river upstream in search of its source spring. Currently I find fear at the upper-most reaches of this river (see Fear Is The Bottom Line). Is it really the source spring? Time will tell (i.e., previously I felt need/desire was the source). Nevertheless, fear does play a major role in why the story trumps the truth nearly every time, as I hope a few correlations⁽¹⁾ helps point out, as truthfully as possible.

Need -> Effects
===== =====
Causes <- Fear

This correlation proportion can be read in a circular clockwise direction, like so: Need effects fear, fear causes need. This takes a little peripheral vision to understand (i.e., feel, know, sense, intuit). Step back, relax and let it sink in for a moment. Remember, this fear is not the run away scream-in-terror face of fear we see in the movies, but the void, empty, still, dark, silent side of the ‘circle’. This subtler side of fear is the underlying cause of need.

The interesting thing here is how truth correlates to fear, i.e., truth = void = stillness = dark = silence = nothing = fear, and so on. If you don’t see this association, try correlating truth with the opposites: truth = full = action = bright = sound = something = courage. Well? Which feels closer? If you feel the later correlations fit truth better, I imagine you have difficulty understanding the Tao Te Ching.

The sloppy logic of correlations⁽¹⁾ makes it “clear” then, that truth causes need. I suppose that makes no sense… at least at first. But hang on, there’s more.

The Story We Want To Hear

Illusion -> Effects
====== =====
Causes <- Truth

Reading this correlation set gives us: illusion effects truth, truth cause illusion. How can truth cause illusion, you may wonder? Consider this a parallel to the old saying, behind every myth is a grain of truth. And of course, illusion adversely effects truth, until there is no more than a grain left in the illusion.

We love the story over truth because the story provides just enough of grains of truth without the bewildering, fear inducing mystery of the whole truth. Each need, or fear, you feel mirrors a truth worthy of looking into. On the other hand, looking down into our truth-pit of fear and need is not all that pleasant. Doesn’t this parallel the practice of shooting the messenger, i.e., the act of lashing out at the (blameless) bearer of bad news. We don’t like listening to what we don’t want to hear. Truth, like heaven and earth, is ruthless, and treats the myriad creatures as straw dogs. The story we like, on the other hand, is the one saying what we want to hear. While slathered in the fluff we feel comfortable with, the story retains just enough truth to make it credible.

Obviously, I’m not much of a story teller (or listener). Correlations is the best tool I’ve found for pointing out the truth with a minimum of story bias.

⁽¹⁾ If you’re new to correlations these posts may help:

Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions

Tao As Emergent Property

Fear Is The Bottom Line,

Learning What You Know

What Is The Tao Actually

Think What You Believe? Believe What You Think?

Correlations Prime Directive

Grinding Out Correlations

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.

The most synonymous, in my view, are the simple words need and like. I can say I love, like or need ice cream, sunny days,  you, everyone, nothing, etc. The words like, need, and love work equally well. Not surprisingly, my thesaurus doesn’t see it that way. (Go ahead, take a look at yours.)

Generally, more passion (emotion) is associated with love than with like or need. This shows how loose if not outright contradicting language can be. It enables us to rationalize life anyway we wish. Seeing love and need as basically the same thing makes this more difficult to do. It bring the whole issue down to the need (and need’s source spring fear, the bed rock of emotion).

Love, I know, carries a special meaning of which we are all fond. In the “special meaning” we sow the seeds of hypocrisy, however well intentioned we may be.  To say love is simply the wolf of need in sheep’s clothing sounds very cynical at first glance. We want to convey a special magical-mystical-spiritual meaning: all the way from we love God and God loves us, down to love of  friends and family. And that is where the inconsistencies enter in. It is in a way, to paraphrase chapter one,  the love that can be spoken of is not the constant love. A ‘truer’ love must be non-directional, by definition. Thus, without a profound sense of  impartiality, love can only refer to some aspect of need.

Consider these correlation pairs⁽²⁾. The active, or yang, are on top; the passive, or yin, are on the bottom. The word love, as it is often used correlates more to the active side; ‘truer’ love would correlate more to the passive side. These can be read in a clockwise direction. For example,  the first set read thus: need rushes love; love waits need. The next set reads: life takes death; death gives life. To make sense of these connections, it will help to have your mind like that of a fool – how blank!… (and so on).

need->rushes
==== ====
waits<-love

life-> takes
==== ====
gives <- death

new-> stirs
==== ====
stills<-ancient

war-> biases
==== ====
neutralizes>-peace

something-> fills
==== ====
empties<-nothing

energy->burns
==== ====
quenches<-time

dream>excites
==== ====
bores<-reality

Now, ponder the qualities that the ‘active yang’ words share with each other. Next, compare all this with the qualities that the ‘passive yin’ words share with each other.

Need (active / yang) =rush=life=take=new=stirs=war =bias=something=fill=energy=burn=dream=excite.

Love (passive / yin) =waits=death=give=old=calm=peace =impartial=nothing=empty=time=quench=reality=bore.

⁽¹⁾ I was totally attached, or loyal depending on how you look at it. I doubt I’d have ever left her. Thankfully she had the good sense to know we were not the match made in heaven I’d talked myself into believing we were.

⁽²⁾ If you’re new to correlations these posts may help:

Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions

Tao As Emergent Property

Fear Is The Bottom Line,

Learning What You Know

What Is The Tao Actually

Think What You Believe? Believe What You Think?

Correlations Prime Directive

Grinding Out Correlations

As I see it, this is a reaction to feeling fear, not fear itself. The other most common reaction to feeling fear is the opposite of fleeing; it is attack and anger.

Here it helps to consider words that correlate to fear and reactions they can initiate. For example:  Fear = silence = death = loss = weakness = Nothing. And here are some reactions these initiate: Need, sound, life, gain, strength, Something.

You can  view this relationship as a proportion, i.e., fear is to silence as need is to sound. This can be displayed simply as:

Need  = sound
——–    ——-
Fear  = silence

We can show all the words this way:

Put another way: From fear, silence, death, loss, weakness, and Nothing, arise (in due course)  sound, life, gain, strength, Something.

Language has a way of distorting how we think, mainly by helping us mistake symptoms for causes. This cuts short consideration of the subtle underlying causes.  We end up amplifying differences and over-reacting instead of noticing similarities and being more circumspect in our reactions. The result: short term fixes that often create problematic unintended consequences.

Correlations helps untangle the knots and soften the glare of difference. This opens the door to mysterious sameness.  Consider these. They read in a clockwise direction. For example: Anger fights; fear flees. Need seeks, fear hides.

anger -> fights
FLEES <- FEAR

need -> seeks
HIDES <- FEAR

desire -> stirs
STILLS <- CONTENT

war -> attacks
SURRENDERS <- PEACE

Can you notice a subtle relationship between the words on the top line: anger, fights, need, seeks, desire, stirs, war, attacks? How about the bottom line: FLEES, FEAR, HIDES, FEAR, STILLS, CONTENT, SURRENDERS, PEACE?

For more on correlations see: Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions.

Looking Through The Yin Yang Lens

Yin Yang are thoughts last stop on the road to mysterious sameness. In other words, they are the simplest, most direct way to discern difference before ceasing to think. Being the simplest and most direct means of discernment limits your ability to dream up far flung rationalization, i.e., ’sophisticated’ thought enables clever people to rationalize their needs and fears, giving rise to great hypocrisy.

The process goes something like this: we feel strong primal emotion (e.g., need, fear, anger, envy, etc.). These feelings initiate thoughts which mirror the feelings. If you feel anger, you’re likely to think angry thoughts. If you feel a need for something, you’re likely to think up all the reasons why you ’should’ satisfy the need. These thoughts feed back into, and reinforce the initial emotions that got the thought-ball rolling. This makes it exceedingly difficult to be self honest and impartial in your thinking.

Pleasure’s the Bait…

The result is pain. It is one of nature’s finest hoodwinks. Pleasure attracts living things toward that which benefits survival.  On the other hand, seeing beneath the attractive surface often reveals the ‘hook’ you may want to avoid. This is also a survival advantage. (see How The Hoodwink Hooks)

Valuing life for the experience, with a bit less regard for the pleasure or pain of the experience gives one a survival advantage. Being wary of pleasure as the object of life’s actions, even as instincts clamor for immediate satisfaction, is one of life’s greatest difficulty. “A peace that is ever the same”, as the Bhagavad Gita puts it, is only possible by increasing impartiality in regards to pleasure and pain. With a greater ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, life is more even, You suffer when its time comes; enjoy when its time comes.

One of the most helpful life-rules-of-thumb I’ve ever realized is: Short term pleasure (leads to) long term pain. Short term pain (leads to) long term pleasure. Of course, each must verify within one’s personal experiences that this rule holds water, and to what extent. Obviously not all short term pleasure leads to long term pain, or visa versa. A good parallel is the handling of guns. If you assume the gun is always loaded you will be more careful and avoid shooting yourself in the foot. Likewise, if you assume short term pleasure easily leads to long term pain, you’ll be more careful and avoid being ‘hooked’.

Reviewing Causes Of Disconnection

The spiritual aim of all religion is to give the individual a sense of reconnection.  As we left our ancient hunter-gathering tribal life-style and became civilized, we lost that intimate sense of connection that so fosters a sense of well being. Religion merely rushed in to fill that void. That people are religious in name only says much about the tribal nature of our species. It is not surprising that we are often only able to feel a sense of reconnection through passionate partisan secular religion. It’s tribal; it’s biological. More curious is why that is not enough. Why do we seek deeper ways to reconnect? Probably because we began feeling our increasing sense of disconnection long before we became civilized. Language (words and names) began to dominate human awareness ten of thousands of years earlier. This is when we began disconnecting from the ‘original’ moment. Now, ironically, I am going to use language to religare science, religion and truth.

Entropy Is Spiritual Truth

I don’t suppose I gave entropy much thought other than as a cornerstone of classical physics, i.e., Second Law of Thermodynamics. While reading “A New View of Gravity” in a recent  Science News, it dawned on me the natural link between the common humble spiritual side of religion and the essence of science. The link between entropy and gravity made the case for me, though explaining why would give you and me a headache. (Let’s keep it simple, please!)

An example of increasing entropy would be burning coal. In burning it you are returning carbon to its simpler (mysterious sameness) state. To return it again to a lump of coal would require energy to do something to decrease entropy. The input of energy is what made the coal originally, i.e., CO2 + sunlight + plant life + tectonic forces (+ time) = coal.  When the Tao Te Ching talks of return to the use of the knotted rope, it is referring to increasing entropy in our approach to life. Simplify!

Language, and the information it contains, is a low entropy system. Increasing entropy would mean decreasing information. Chapter ten speaks to this: When your discernment penetrates the four quarters, are you capable of not knowing anything? Complete entropy results in complete loss of information. This amounts to what the Tao Te Ching refers to as, ‘mysterious sameness’, ‘nothing’, ’stillness’, ‘emptiness’, ‘the void’, ’silence’. It is odd using entropy to illustrate Taoist ‘information’. I love the irony. Does it make any sense? I expect the increasing information overload in the years ahead will make the Taoist model for returning to sanity ever more appealing.

A striking irony to me is how language, as a low entropy system, has the opposite effect on large groups of people.  Language increase entropy among strangers, albeit as long as they speak the same language. Indeed, language is essential to give common ground (high entropy) for organizing civilization. Language reduces spontaneity and individuality by pulling everyone into mutual high entropy ‘common sense’. At the same time, it has the opposite effect in the mind of the thinker!

Maximum entropy parallels the Nothing spoken of in the Tao Te Ching. The singularity of a black hole is loosely synonymous with this Nothing. The Tao Te Ching is a tool to escape the low entropy of language and its domination of the mind, allowing the mind to experience Nothing in its purest ‘dirty’ entropy state.  Correlations, by the way, is way of increasing entropy of language to the point of  ’cognitive singularity’ (a mental black hole).

Newton’s Law of Motion Is Spiritual Truth.

My first experience with connecting spiritual truth with core science was years ago while living in Japan. I’ve forgotten now how I came to be thinking about classical science in the first place. I think I was considering the action reaction of a rocket. Like so many things in life, I only really found the interest and learned them after finishing school. No wonder I have such a low opinion of school. I slept through much of it.

Anyway I recall being blown away when I realized how Newton’s laws of motion applies to life in general, most notability the third law, Action-reaction (I now see much more relevance to spiritual truth in the other two laws).  I don’t really recall exactly how I tied it in with life. However, my current view that all we see are symptoms of underlying forces parallels this. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” aligns even closer to my sense that how we are on the ‘outside’ is a counterbalance reaction to our ‘inside’ reality. This ‘action reaction’ law is profoundly universal, yet it is only appreciated as a mechanical law.  Clearly we have left most of science’s insights as an untapped source for spiritual understanding. That’s understandable for the spiritual side of science is far more subtle and non-provable in objectively testable ways.  And it doesn’t lend itself to the partisan purposes either – just the opposite.

A World Filtered Blue

I know, that sounds odd. I suppose it parallels that equally intriguing One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know. The problem with thought lies in the preconceptions necessary to think, and of course speak. This sets up a wall of ‘understanding’ which hinders us from seeing anything outside that wall of preconception (i.e., ‘understanding’ requires relying on the preconceptions – words and names – instilled into our awareness as infants).

Words and names act as filters. Just imagine if, in infancy, your parents attached a permanent blue color filter to your eyes. The world you would see throughout your life would have a blue tint. Although, because you had never experienced the world without the blue filter, you’d never know the range of other colors out there. In other words, you can only know you are seeing a color if you experience it contrasted with another color. Information is contrast.

Thus, you would ‘understand‘ the world was blue, even while unaware you were seeing the world through a blue colored filter. Only your parents would know everything you saw was tinted blue. In this same way, the framework of language is a real impediment to seeing the world as it actually is. We ’see’ it through our language filter, which basically chokes of information about anything ‘other’.

Of course there are drugs to jar that filter a bit, especially the hallucinogenic ones.  However, they are just substituting one filter for another – the ‘drug’ filter. On the plus side, such drugs can jar the preconception’s filter and open up other angles to awareness. On the down side it can unhinge any mind  really dependent on the ‘normal’ filter. It is no wonder that drugs pose such a threat to the cornerstones of civilization ‘normal’ people.

The promise of Taoist ‘teachings’ is that they simply weaken the ‘normal’ filter – words and names. But let’s keep that just between you and me. We don’t want the ‘normal’ people to find out, freak out, and ban the Tao Te Ching., and burn the Taoists at the stake. Although, I imagine there’s no risk there. A ‘normal’ person would not understand the Taoist point of view well enough to perceive a threat in the first place.

I can understand why civilized people would be so worried by anything threatening normalcy. Just think how untenable massive populations of people living together would be if there was no common ground of language (words and names). This allows civilization to filter out the other shades of reality and get everyone marching to beat of the same drum (high entropy state⁽¹⁾ of minimum information and maximum uniformity).

⁽¹⁾ Entropy is a useful and perhaps odd way of understanding this situation. Contrast between individual ‘bits’ is what makes information. Such a state of distinctness or individuality is a low entropy state. There is a universal ‘pull’ on lower entropy states to increase in entropy, become more homogeneous, uniform. As entropy increases the situation becomes more stable.

As I see it, a native language is way of increasing entropy and thus stability. Other ways cultures increase entropy is by eating the same foods, wearing the same clothing styles, and of course, practicing the same religion! All are ways that increase uniformity and stability and so effectively increasing entropy. I guess thermodynamics offers a more fundamental way of understanding and explains the vigor behind revolutionary movements and rebellious teenagers. But, enough already, it’s time for dinner. Oh, one final thought: what does Using Yin and Yang to Pop Preconceptions do as far as entropy is concerned, increase or decrease it?

Emergent Termite Cathedral

Biology (among other disciplines) makes use of the emergent property concept wherein simple structures, processes and order form a foundation upon which more complex properties (structures, processes, order) can emerge. Frankly, I notice this principle behind everything. I see each layer of existence as an emergent property modeled on something more primal. That’s not surprising really, for I’m always on the lookout for mysterious sameness.

It can be especially helpful to consider ideas (and ideals) as an emergent property, not only of biology (i.e., the brain, instinct) but also of something deeper as you follow ‘it’ down layer by primordial layer. The idea (and ideal) of balance is especially interesting. Balance is a virtuous ideal, not only in human affairs, but in nature as a whole. As far as I can tell, nature’s core ‘ideal’ is an ‘intention’ to maintain integrity of balance. It is the way of nature.

Emergent Snowflakes

Everywhere I look I see nature changing, ebbing and flowing, waxing and waning, around the ideal of balance. Each individual thing, be it an atom, a mountain, a cloud, a mouse or a person, strives to maintain, what is for each, an ideal balance (or counter balance) at the moment. That is so important I’ll repeat it: Each thing in existence does what it does to balance or counter balance where it is ‘at’ each moment.

Of course, Nature does not speak about this ideal, or any other for that matter. I know this is obvious, but it’s useful to point out. The words ‘ideal’ and ‘balance’ are themselves emergent properties symbolizing a silent primordial reality which we observe and label. In other words, nature’s unspoken ideal of balance unavoidably spawns in thinking animals (us) the words, “ideal” and “balance”.

Note: Correlations helps get to the bottom-most seeds of this emergent layered reality. The pyramidal graphic below is my clumsy attempt to illustrate this layering idea. As the words are hard to read I’ll insert them at the end⁽²⁾ .

Emergent Layers

Noteworthy also is the fact that nature’s ideal is neither ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’. The ideal is balance, and from that emerges ideals of ‘morality’, unspoken but common in most social animals. Morality, in its simplest unspoken form, is based on behaviors that facilitate balanced group interaction and survival. So, from an emergent property’s point of view, balance is the base from which emerges morality in social animals. Only humans (as far as I know) does this simple morality emerges as sets of culturally learned ethical ideals (see belief).

For example, the ideal of democratic rule is an governing ideal which suits this particular time and set of conditions. In other words, democratic rule is an emergent property of this era’s circumstances. The fluid nature of human culture has resulted in a great array of ethical ideals historically, from slavery to democracy. The deepest rooted and most enduring, though, have been the religious ideals each culture adopts to give its population an ideal ’spiritual path’ to balance and harmony.

Some, if not all, religious ideals seem inefficient and irrational, at least on the surface . Meaning they are ‘high maintenance’ and can consume much emotional energy. However, these drawbacks disappear when seen as simply symptomatic of a fundamental ‘high maintenance’ imbalance. An inner imbalance in need and fear⁽¹⁾ naturally results in an outer array of counter balancing religious ideals. Of course, this begs the question, what accounts for the acute imbalance of need and fear in the first place?

Imbalance of Need and Fear

Civilization’s primary objective is to optimize human comfort and security. Tools, from the stone axe onward have done this by giving us an edge over life in the wild. If you doubt this, consider for a moment, life without electricity; then life without iron; then life without stone tool. Without tools the wilderness would rush in. The unintended consequence of our unrelenting focus on comfort and security is that this disrupts natural balance. As with all animals, we are instinctively driven to seek comfort and security. In the wild, natural circumstances push back on this drive leaving the individual more or less balanced. We’ve taken ‘Mother Nature’s push back’ out of the balance equation, which leaves us perpetually unbalanced. This drives us to compensate in innumerable ways; music, diet, exercise, sports, warfare, and religion of course, come to mind.

However, the primary ‘tool’ that has enabled all the others is language. I reckon our difficulties (acute psyche imbalance in need and fear) arise first and foremost because we think we know; although it could be the other way around! Either way, language has sliced the uncarved block into a bewildering array of bits and pieces. The good news is that thinking enables us to figure things out, invent tools and survive beyond our ancestors’ wildest dreams. The bad news is, the more we define ‘it’, the more removed from the One we become. It’s a vicious circle in which innate fear drives us to define ‘it’, which then evokes an even deeper sense of disconnection. The irony lies in the illusion that definition increases our chances for solutions and connection. Greater definition of our ideals, moral and otherwise, does keep large populations connected, comfortable and secure, at least on the surface. At the individual, psychological level, however, definition leaves us feeling estranged, somehow forever outside nature’s ‘Eden’.

Returning to Balance

The remarkable characteristic of a Tao point of view is that it offers us a path away from greater definition, and counsels a returning to one’s roots – to Nature’s way, the unspoken ideal of balance. And so a Tao point of view may come closest to being a primary emergent property of Nature’s way. Recently, I set out to describe the why and what of Taoist point of view in as broad a context as possible. If you’ve not done so yet, take a look at… The Why and What of Taoist Thought. As always, I welcome feedback without reservation, and if you have a way to make it clearer or murkier as needed, I’m all ears.

Note: Excuse my attempt to be as brief as possible. Much more could be said, but each word added runs the risk of obfuscating the bigger picture. I feel it is better to have a murky understanding, than clear a misunderstanding.

⁽¹⁾ I use ‘need and fear’ as short-hand to describe an overarching issue. See, One who speaks does not know?

⁽²⁾ The words used in the layer illustration above. The layers can be read in a clockwise manner. View these as layers built one upon the other. Begin at the bottom, ‘energy –>appears… TIME –> VANISHES’, and work upward to the topmost, ‘ego–> rejects… ID –> ACCEPTS’. Needless to say, this must be done with your subtlest ‘taoist’ eye on the lookout for mysterious sameness and mystery.