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.

Yep, “Out of the mouths of babes” is no empty saying! It almost seems like we get more stupid in some ways as we age. I guess that has a lot to do with our ability as adults to willfully innovate while ignorant of the constant. Alas too, any adults that  finally understand soon die, so there are few around to redirect younger fools from their ignorant ‘free will’ willful innovations. (Although thankfully, that is changing as the mean age of the population keeps rising.)

Change causes change, ripples through time.

A recent Science News article, Lopped Off, highlights just how profoundly we, as a species, generally have no clue what we are dong. Although, I guess young children and old people may have always had their intuitive doubts. Now, science is forcing more and more of us middle-age know-it-alls to worry.

Chapter 16 of the Tao Te Ching is very prescient on the unintended consequences of our clever and willful behavior. It was writing long before our innovative abilities threatened the entire planet (~500bc). Is it ironic that science both leads to technological innovations that cause the destruction, and now impels us to realize the full range of consequences of our actions. We can only hope the lag time between innovation and realization is timely enough.

Speaking of innovation,
Isn’t our species also a daring evolutionary innovation on the part of Nature? Of course, I assume it’s not a “willful innovation while ignorant of the constant” kind of thing. So, is it just Nature rolling the dice? These are very interesting times; as that old Chinese (?) curse says, “May you live in interesting times“.

All this says to me how blind we become by what we think we know. Knowledge is a two edged sword; it empowers us to overcome many obstacles, yet the arrogance of knowledge simultaneously blind-sides us. Overcoming petty obstacles creates what often turn out to be greater obstacles. Knowledge gives us a false sense of security. Despite being extremely limited, it gives the beholder the illusion that he or she truly knows. This begs the question, “How do we know what we know is truly so?” That is why, 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.

We seem to assume we can find solutions that will finally result in a ‘happiness ever after’ land of milk and honey. That fantasy is certainly a hallmark in Western religion. Such wishful thinking doesn’t conform to nature’s reality; it is instead what nature intends for us to perceive (i.e., an emergent property of a bio-hoodwink). Our species can’t afford to indulge in this species-centric fantasy much longer. No worries though… “groan”… circumstance bring us to maturity!

Here now is a pithy excerpt from that article.

“We’re eliminating large predators very quickly around the world,” says wildlife biologist Michael Soulé of the Wildlands Network, who works out of Paonia, Colo. “It’s estimated that 90 percent are already gone.”

These end-of-the-line carnivores, known as “apex consumers,” can influence the lower rungs of their ecological ladders. By keeping the critters they dine on in check, the apex species affect the next rungs down, and so on. The system remains balanced as populations fluctuate in sync.

But sharks aren’t the only predators under siege. A host of carnivores perched atop food webs are being eliminated by humans, the real killing machines. Although marine species such as sharks are primarily caught for food, large terrestrial hunters (think lions, wolves and grizzlies) are often targeted for removal because they threaten humans moving into previously wild spaces.

Chapter 16 with its admonition about willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant fits this sorry situation so perfectly that submitting a comment (below) to Letters at Science News was irresistible. Low and behold, they printed it.  At last, science and religion find common ground. 

Predators inspire poetry and fear
Regarding “Lopped off” (SN: 11/5/11, p. 26): One of the Tao Te Ching’s chapters (excerpt below) is very prescient on the unintended consequences of human behavior. It was written around 500 B.C., long before our innovative abilities threatened the entire planet. It is ironic that science both leads to innovations that cause the destruction, and now allows us to realize the full range of consequences.

Woe to him who willfully innovates
While ignorant of the constant,
But should one act from knowledge of the constant
One’s action will lead to impartiality,
Impartiality to kingliness,
Kingliness to heaven,
Heaven to the way,
The way to perpetuity,
And to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.
Carl Abbott, Santa Cruz, Calif.

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!

This short CBS news piece, The science behind pleasure-seeking (after a short ad), adds some interesting color to the process. The curious thing is, however, not all rich people do this. Warren Buffet’s life style is a good example. This report sheds light on that too, in a round about way. This report, although slanted towards the benefits of pleasure, does offer food-for-thought on why some folks pursue pleasure more than others do.

Not surprisingly, the report makes no mention of Buddha’s Second Noble Truth. What a total bummer the truth would be! Naturally, I won’t overlook this most important aspect; especially noteworthy is how the Second Truth ends: Pleasures are the bait and the result is pain. Keep Buddha’s Truths in mind as you listen to (or read the transcript below) this report. You can see, for example, how thinking plays such a large role in life for humans, and why Taoism speaks to its downside. As my favorite passage puts it, thinking that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Frankly, well-being is not connected to pleasure, per se. Although, you could say pleasure does promise us well-being. No wonder Buddha called it “bait”. So why is Warren Buffet an apparent exception to the path of ostentatious wealth that many rich people take? Wealthy people who live simple lives don’t take the bait. By the way, from a symptoms point of view, the fact that wealthy people often continue to up-the-anti, pleasure-wise proves the old cliché ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’. They are the wealthy poor! Shall we pray for them?  ;-)

Transcript

It can be as simple as a sunset, as decadent as a dessert, or as extravagant as a weekend in Paris. But we all have our own little pleasures …

“Chocolate and peanuts! … mmmmm …”
“I’m a Barbie collector. I have, like, over 100 Barbies.”
“I love Mexican food!”
“The rush of cliff jumping, when you’re up in the air, and you’re hoping the water is deep enough, and your heart is beating a thousand miles an hour, and you SPLASH!”

Professor Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, notes that some pleasures are no less than a matter of survival.

“Pleasure is an instantaneous feeling of something good,” Dr. Berns said. “When you teach a bunch of undergraduates and teenagers like I do and I ask them to list the things that give them pleasure, sleep is always at the top of the list.

“You have kind of the basic needs, right? So you have food, sleep, and sex. Pretty much boils down to that, if you’re talking about actual pleasure,” Berns laughed.

But pleasure goes well beyond basic needs. Yale psychologist Paul Bloom says WHY we enjoy what we enjoy is very complicated.

“It seems like we just taste food, and taste wine, we respond to our visceral sensations. But actually it is surprisingly deep,” Bloom said.

So deep, in fact, that Bloom was pleased to write a book on pleasure, which he says is as much about our brains as about our experiences.

“Our pleasure is a response not just to the physical makeup of something, what it looks like or tastes like, or smells like, or feels like, but rather to our beliefs of what it really IS, what its real essence is,” Bloom said.

And boy, can we be fooled!

Bloom recalls one famous experiment with wine drinkers done by scientists at Stanford and Cal Tech …

“Half the people are told they’re drinking cheap plunk, the other half are told they’re drinking something out of $100-$150 bottle,” Bloom said. “It tastes better to them, if they THINK they’re drinking from an expensive bottle. And it turns out that if they think they’re drinking expensive wine, parts of the brain that are associated with pleasure and reward light up like a Christmas tree.”

“So if I have people over for dinner, I should add a little ‘1″ in front of the price tag, and put it on the table?” Spencer asked.

“That is the ultimate trick to making wine taste better,” Bloom said.

And it’s the sort of trick that works only on human beings.

“Both my dog and me enjoy drinking water when we’re thirsty, but I’m the one who cares about where the water came from – whether it’s bottled water, or from the tap,” Bloom said. “My dog doesn’t care.”

“You’re the one that, if we put a higher price tag on that bottle of water, you’ll enjoy it more?” suggested Spencer.

“That’s right! I might give my dog premium dog food, but the dog doesn’t care that I spent a lot of money for it.”

People, on the other hand, seem to get ENORMOUS pleasure out of spending ENORMOUS sums on some very curious things.

Was Michael Jackson’s jacket really worth $1.8 million?

Or how about President Kennedy’s tape measure, which went for almost $50,000 at auction?

Or Eric Clapton’s guitar, snapped up for just under a million bucks?

Given all that, Paul Bloom wondered what people might pay for the pleasure of owning, say, George Clooney’s sweater?

“And the answer is, a fair amount,” said Bloom. “Much more than they’d pay for MY sweater, or for a brand new sweater.”

But why? For bragging rights? Or to re-sell on eBay? Apparently not …

Bloom conducted an experiment where people were not allowed to tell people or boast about buying Clooney’s sweater, or even re-sell it, and the perceived value was reduced. “But here’s what makes the value really drop: We told another group of subjects that we thoroughly washed it before it got to them. Now the value plummets.”

“It’s not still ‘George Clooney’s sweater’?” asked Spencer.

“As my wife put it, you washed away the Clooney cooties!” Bloom laughed. “You’ve washed away the sort of essence of the person.”

“That gives them more pleasure in owning it?”

“Human beings are strange,” laughed Spencer.

“Human beings are extraordinary,” he replied.

Some pleasures are universal, like eating the mouth-watering butter-and-sugar concoctions at Magnolia Bakery in New York City – it really is pure pleasure on a plate.

But not all of life’s pleasures are so straight-forward. In fact, if you think about it, some of them are downright weird.

Take cheese.

“Cheese is spoiled milk, it smells bad,” said psychologist Paul Rozin. “But the point is that we get great pleasure out of it. And some people love the stinky cheeses. And part of the pleasure of eating them is that they really smell bad, but they’re good!”

Rozin’s studies go well beyond the pleasures of the disgusting, to the joy of the downright painful. Take hot chili peppers …

“Well, hot chili peppers are eaten by over two billion people in the world,” Rozin said. “And yet, this is an innately negative experience. Little babies don’t like it. So, the question to me was, why would anybody put in their mouth something that produces a pain signal from the mouth to the brain?”

His answer? What he calls “benign masochism” – the same human quirk that explains why we enjoy horror movies that terrify us … why we like sad songs that make us cry.

“It’s a sense of your mind over your body,” Rozin said. “Your body is saying, ‘Bad news, get out of here!’ Your mind knows, ‘I’m actually not in danger. I’m mastering this negative experience, and my mastery of it gives me pleasure.’”

But there are limits. Just ask those chili pepper people…

“What happens is the one that people like best tends to be the one that’s just below the level they can’t bear,” Rozin laughed. “In other words, they’re pushing the limit of how hot they can stand it. Similarly with roller coasters. People who love roller coasters will like the steepest and scariest one they can stand.”

Push your pleasure to that limit and – odd as it seems – odds are you’ll want more. So what’s the best strategy to maximize life’s pleasures?

Emory Professor Gregory Berns did an experiment that offers a clue: When he gave subjects alternating drops of water and juice, their brain activity showed they preferred the juice. No surprise. But when the juice came at unexpected intervals and was a surprise, they liked it even more.

His advice: Plan surprises.

“You have to take risks, I think, to really experience pleasure,” Dr. Berns said. “And there’s, you know, there’s a reason why people say the first time is always the best. The first time you experience something, whether it’s your first kiss, your first bite of sushi, whatever you like, it’s always the best, it’s always the most memorable.”

So whether it’s Clooney’s sweater … roller coasters … chili peppers … or something else entirely (”Chocolate” … “good friend, good beer” …), treasure those pleasures.

But remember: There’s always room for something new – and people keep pushing the envelope, like bungee jumping.

“Yeah, why not?” said Dr. Berns.

For more info:

“How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like” by Paul Bloom (W.W. Norton)

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!

• (A) The focus is on discerning differences. This tends to shore up one’s biases, which augments feeling tribal connection. This thought style also stimulates the social fairness instincts. This can leave one feeling either pleased or annoyed (by the ‘injustice’ of it all) depending on the circumstances.

• (B) The focus is on discerning similarities ⁽¹⁾. This tends to neutralize one’s biases, which augments feeling the shape that has no shape. This thought style also pours cold water on social fairness instincts. This can leave one feeling more serene (by the ‘natural justice’ of it all) regardless of circumstances.

Talking about shoring up or neutralizing one’s biases may be misleading. Perhaps a better word would be for biases would be ‘knowledge’. After all, at some level knowledge and bias share common ground. So, let’s peel another layer off the onion by clarifying the knowledge issue…

Not being omniscient, we can’t know anything absolutely, only partially. This means all knowledge is relative and essentially rests on shaky ground. We compensate for this by pumping up faith in our beliefs, and thinking style (A) helps accomplish this with its focus is on discerning differences.

Discernment of differences, differentiating ‘this’ from ‘that’, is the foundation upon which knowledge rests. Reducing the discernment of differences is one way to soften the glare and alleviate knowledge’s impact on perception. Thinking style (B) helps achieve this by looking for as much similarity between apparent differences as possible. Then when asked, “When your discernment penetrates the four quarters are you capable of not knowing anything?” You can answer, “Yep! All I see is mysterious sameness”

It all comes down to a choice between taking a point of view that magnifies differences, or one that shrinks differences. In light matters, thinking style (A) works well. It is fun and parallels allow yourself to have desires to observe its manifestation. However, in serious matters, I prefer style (B) which fosters greater serenity ⁽²⁾. It parallels rid yourself of desire in order to observe its secrets.

What choice do we have in using one style or the other? Probably none, although, understanding the consequences of each can perhaps help one at least strive on diligently toward it every day, in every way. In the end, isn’t that what really matters. It is not that one succeeds; after all, in the end, we all fail (die). All that matters: he who perseveres is a man of purpose. This is what makes life meaningful, and this is where styles (A) and (B) join forces. Both drive us to strive on in one way or another. In other words, we all strive on diligently, naturally. We just think we ’should’ try harder! No wonder we have difficulty. As one of my favorite chapters puts it:

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.

It is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.
The sage meets with no difficulty.
It is because he is alive to it that he meets with no difficulty.

(1) Style B is related to the correlations process, a non-’normal’ way of thought. Using correlations to ponder requires discerning similarities to the point of no return or as close to that as one can get.

⁽²⁾ Of Course, everything has a price, even serenity. Style (B) diminishes the sense of tribal solidarity. There is no ‘us’ against ‘them’. Social connection becomes much more indistinct and shadowy. Your tribe is the universe. Chapter 20 speaks to this…

Between yea and nay
How much difference is there?
Between good and evil
How great is the distance?

What others fear
One must also fear.
And wax without having reached the limit.

The multitude are joyous
As if partaking of the ‘Tai Lao’ offering
Or going up to a terrace in spring.
I alone am inactive and reveal no signs,

Like a baby that has not yet learned to smile,
Listless as though with no home to go back to.
The multitude all have more than enough.
I alone seem to be in want.
My mind is that of a fool – how blank!
Vulgar people are clear.
I alone am drowsy.
Vulgar people are alert.
I alone am muddled.
Calm like the sea;
Like a high wind that never ceases.
The multitude all have a purpose.

I alone am foolish and uncouth.
I alone am different from others
And value being fed by the mother.

Chapter 39 also touches on this…

Hence the superior must have the inferior as root; the high must have the low as a base. Thus, lords and princes refer to themselves as ’solitary’, ‘desolate’, and ‘hapless’. This is taking the inferior as root, is it not?

"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.

Which path leads where?

A few months ago a new member Dan asked me, “So, I’d like to ask, do you have any life advice for a man approaching 30″?

One problem with that question was too many things came to mind. So I turned the question over to my subconscious. Oddly, I find not thinking about tricky issues is the best way to resolve them. Of course “not thinking about” doesn’t mean disregarding. I suppose the ‘not thinking about’ phase helps the mind get through its blind spot.

Finally, up bubbled something worthy of the question. Overall, nothing feels more important to me than understanding. While stressing the importance of understanding seems obvious, it may not be as simple as it sounds.

As I’ve said before, true understanding may only be possible for that which you already know intuitively. Knowing comes with maturity (time and circumstances) and not from any external particulars, per se. Knowing moves from inside out, not from the outside in. If I’m correct, how can we ever teach or learn from each other? Naturally, there’s more to this.

Just consider how methodically we are culturally and linguistically ‘brain washed’ (albeit in the nicest possible way) from birth onward. As a result, much of what we think and ‘know’, is derived from preconceptions that we’ve been trained to believe to be true and real. Now, if what we teach and learn are along the lines of our ‘brain washing’, things usually go smoothly enough. On the other hand, understanding anything outside our cultural and linguistic ‘box’ is another matter. That can be a fearsome experience which is why few people peer into the darkness willingly.

Actually, we all know anyway!

Even so, we can’t help but sense that darkness. ‘To know yet to think that one does not know‘ actually speaks to this silent, universal knowing. While all life feels the mystery, only we have names and words for which to think about it. We can’t help but try to cognitively shine light on (explain, describe, interpret) the mysterious mirror feeling—including right now as I write and you read this. Truth to tell, all our thinking never unravels the mystery. Instead, we end up cultivating a sense of self and pseudo security as we follow the paths for which we feel an innate affinity (e.g., religion, art, sports, business, science, etc.).

Our difficulties begin when we get overly certain in what we think (i.e., to think that one knows will lead to difficulty). I regard certainty as merely a symptom of a desperate need for the security believable answers promise us. Honestly, this is the dynamic that drives me to ponder life (and death) and write about it. Still, using cognitive certainty to shore up my innate insecurity doesn’t overly impair me, as long as I know and understand what is driving my certainty in the first place. In other words, it is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.

If we’re not alive to this difficulty, we end up putting all our eggs in one cognitive basket and hang on for dear life. The resulting blind spot puts what we might otherwise ‘know’ just beyond our mind’s eye. Put another way, thinking enables us to focus on the trees; this blinds us to the forest. This is not to say thinking is bad; it is just more dangerous than we imagine. It is like a loaded gun with no safety in the hands of monkeys. Much of our problem stems from not realizing that we, like all animals, are supposed to feel somewhat insecure. Being on fear’s razor edge aids survival. Dulling this by relentlessly thinking that we know is no different than refining foods to enhance our eating pleasure at the expense of nutritional value. Both quickly become cases of willfully innovating while ignorant of the constant, and it comes back to bite us.

We’re too clever for our britches

Finding enough humility to acknowledge that thinking that that one knows will lead to difficulty can help avoid ‘thinking ourselves into a corner’. This is an important step in understanding what is beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world. This is difficult because our self identity is created and maintained by the beliefs and paths to which we cling and follow. As Buddha put it, “The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things”. “Things” is often considered to be material objects. I find that our mental “things” play at least as large a role in this illusion.

Buddha had it right in his Eight Fold Path. While each ‘fold’ affect the other, notice which fold comes first—understanding! As understanding deepens and broadens over time, our actions follow naturally. I can’t really see what else can be ‘done’. The doing arises out of the knowing. Willfully doing anything would be like putting the cart before the horse. This may partly explain the Taoist frequent call to ‘action-less action’. Chapter 43 sums it up well:

That is why I know the benefit of resorting to no action. The teaching that uses no words, the benefit of resorting to no action, these are beyond the understanding of all but a very few in the world.

There’s a silver lining though

Our thoughts and actions are driven by the needs or fears we feel right now, without much sense of the long term, big picture, balanced understanding. So what hope is there? I’ve found being hesitant and tentative in what I think helps me keep balance. Mind you, it’s okay to lose balance. That’s only human. However, it is invaluable to recognize when I do. Here are some ‘tells’ I use to warn me when I’m losing balance:

• Any strong sense of attraction or aversion, likes or dislikes, needs or fears (emotion) tells me that whatever I think I am seeing is actually simply a reflection of that emotion. It’s not that; it’s this.

• Any perception that make differences appear significant (makes mountains out of presumable mole hills). Remaining alive to the relative nature of judgment helps avoid taking a cognitive ‘wrong turn’ and ending up in the ditch.

• Impatient are we? Feeling the impulse to resolve it now, get it done, fix it ‘yesterday’ are excellent indications of imbalance. Going with my impetuous flow is usually looming disaster. Count to ten, take a deep breath, go take a nap, sleep on it.

In summary: which path shall it be?

They both look the same, but...

The ultimate value of understanding lies in how it helps us with a central choice we are faced with each day, even each moment, throughout life. “Do I want to feel happy or to feel a sense of well being?” I expect many folks regard these synonymous. Not necessarily, at least as I define those words. Happiness is more up beat, stimulating, fun, pleasurable, ‘high’ on life. Somewhat conversely, well-being is even, cool and calm, down-to-earth, impartial, balanced. Simply put: We chase after happiness; we return to well-being.

Buddha’s prescription of life comes down to this choice, happiness or well-being. Recognizing the difference requires Right Understanding, as Buddha calls it. All in all, Buddha’s Four Noble Truths is the best road map I’ve come across for choosing the path of well-being over happiness. Use it from the bottom of your heart is my advice.

This exemplifies the shaky foundation of the Christian world view. How does a believer reconcile the deep disconnect between a God that favors us (Adam and Eve, Noah,  Jesus dying for our sins, etc.) and the ruthless reality of nature. Not surprisingly, Christians can’t bridge this gap, and must always fall back on ‘faith’. I imagine some of the evangelic fever seen in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic path is symptomatic of this underlying reality (i.e., Subconsciously, they doth protest too much, methinks).

Coming from a Taoist world view I would simply tell the young girl that this is simply nature’s way. There is no reward or punishment, no evil or good, no sin or salvation in nature. Those are human myths. If she were familiar with biology, I’d also add that we have a ‘fairness’ social instinct from which these myths arise in the first place⁽¹⁾.

If an animal is at the ‘wrong place and the wrong time’ it gets struck by lightening. Similarly, the folks who lived by the sea were at the wrong place at the wrong time and got struck by the Tsunami. I’d also offer her Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to finish on a positive note. Every since my kids were toddlers I’ve stressed those truths, and they’ve never had any difficulty understanding them. These truths (or at least the first two) are easily verified through experience by even the youngest child.

Again, the wisdom of chapter 71 rises to the occasion:

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.

It is by being alive to difficulty that one can avoid it.
The sage meets with no difficulty.
It is because he is alive to it that he meets with no difficulty.

⁽¹⁾ In the end, all our stories are emergent properties arising out of instinct… including this one I just wrote, I’m sure. The remarkable invincibility of the ‘taoist story’ lie in the fact that it is based on Nothing, whatever that is

Japan's earthquake and tsunami 2011

The recently series of disasters in Japan triggered serious fear in some folks in America. This is curious considering how far removed we are from the actual experience. This, I reckon, is key to what sets us apart from other animals. Thinking enables us to make matters worse than they would otherwise be (of course the opposite is also true). The fluctuating stock market is a perfect example of both cases. On the other hand nightly newscasts focus on the negative; bad news sells.

Worry makes it worse
It’s a little different for people actually experiencing disaster. Theirs is a visceral sense: feeling shock, loss, discomfort, and fears directly resulting from a physical experience. Any animal, including us, would feel this way faced with similar circumstances. Where we part company with the animals is in imagined fear of loss and discomfort which cause worry and stress.

Checking for radiation

I was dumbfounded today to hear about a friend of a friend, arriving from Japan, who had her sandwich confiscated by US customs. Such irrational, not scientifically supportable fear of radiation also resulted in panic purchasing of potassium iodide by some Californians recently. This feels understandable. However, to see this at the official level feels much less so. Once I would have just seen this as “Them… those idiots”. Now I know it is “us… we idiots”, and this is truly humbling. I’m afraid our self-image is quite out-of-sync with who we truly are, animal-wise.

Grandma and child

Curiously, whenever we feel doubt, the mind invariably imagines the worst case to be the more probably one. Ironically, the worst case is usually not the case! My mother’s state of mind whenever her cat failed to return home at night exemplifies this. She would fret and worry that he’d been run over or what not. Every time he’d return home the next morning. Yet, every next time he’d stay out, she would always imagine the worst. I’d remind her of how he’d always return, and how he was undoubtedly “out on the town”. Nevertheless, evidence and reason were impotent; emotion ruled the day.

Don’t worry, plan wisely
On the other hand, it is equally striking how consistently we ignore real worst case probabilities that lie just beyond the horizon. An obvious example is the overly optimistic way we approach life. Decrepit years lie ahead, yet many fail to take heed and prepare in body or soul. The same lack of preparation occurs in countless other ways where there is no ‘news breaking’ stimuli rattling our cage. The current debt crisis is a most striking example. We need a shocking event to trigger serious concern, and when it happens, we invariably panic and over react. We think we are rational, we talk as though we are rational, yet we behave irrationally.

'Fear' pulls most of the strings

Fear is the master puppeteer
I’ve long underestimated the deep impact emotion, especially fear, has upon our lives. Not anymore. Fear is the master puppeteer. I’ve always remembered the way the Bhagavad Gita speaks to fear.

Prepare for war with peace in thy soul. Be in peace in pleasure and pain, in gain and in loss, in victory or in the loss of a battle. In this peace there is no sin.

This is the wisdom of Sankhya ‑ the vision of the Eternal. Hear now the wisdom of Yoga, path of the Eternal and freedom from bondage.

No step is lost on this path, and no dangers are found. And even a little progress is freedom from fear.

Yes, this is a bit idealistic, but it has the priorities right. I find a more practical and realistic”progress” in simply understanding that emotion (esp. need and fear) drives thinking which creates counter-productive worry (and desire of course).

First watch this 60 Minute segment on the Corporate Tax Rate dealing with one aspect of this issue ⁽¹⁾. It hints at why the old paradigm doesn’t work well in a global market place.

Alas, our politicians still operate from a point of view that is not only fanciful, but now dangerously obsolete. One reason is that America people and politicians have long seen this country as the “leader of the free world” and “the best country the earth have ever seen”. Such a self-centric view, shared by both left and right, only exasperates the blind spot problem.

I find that framing this issue in another context helps. The body is confronted with a analogous ‘debt problem’. Indeed, the fundamentals are the same. Note, I’m relying on old memory which I’m too lazy at the moment to brush up on, so forgive any minor technical lapses.

With Debt, Lactic Acid Builds Up

When the body works vigorously beyond a certain point, it builds up an oxygen deficit. Like the government and money, there’s not enough oxygen to run a balanced metabolic budget. Metabolism shift to anaerobic processes to keep muscle working as long as it can. Government pulls off a similar thing by printing more money, borrowing on itself, and so on. The metabolic debt produces toxins which you feel the next day as aching muscles. Likewise with any national debt, the pain comes in various ways: inflation, war, revolution, poverty, collapsing economy. In short: There are no free lunches in nature.

Clearly, if you want to get more work out of your body, you must exercise regularly to build the fine blood vessels that can then deliver enough oxygen during those times of increasing demand. Similarly if the people want government to do more, they’d be wise to first build up the necessary resources. Our current folly lies in the widespread unwillingness to adequately prepare, and yet we still expect widespread benefits to continue. Clearly the population/politicians as a whole are unwilling to bite the bullet and prepare (like adopt a rational tax code as the rest of the world has). With head placed firmly in sand, the populace/politicians say “don’t touch my Medicare or Social Security”.

Solving the Debt Problem Naturally

In the body’s case, the wise thing to do is give enough time and effort to build the physical resources necessary to meet the demands. To always demand extra from your body, and later pay with pain, or worse, heart attack and death, is utterly shortsighted and childish. First ask, is the stress you expect your body to labor under truly ‘righteous and just’? If so, then it is better to stop in time and prepare it adequately before demanding more from it: Rather than fill it to the brim by keeping it upright, better to have stopped in time.

The most practical, natural approach to our budgetary problems is to stop sucking up all the oxygen. Like they say, “When you realize you’re in a hole, stop digging”. Likewise, the wiser way to get out of debt is to first stop spending.  Then, build up the resources needed for desired expenditures. This is how it is done throughout nature in a strictly pay-as-you-go kind of way. Modern economics has found clever short-sighted ways to get away without paying up front. Sure, having those in authority eating up too much in taxes is disastrous.  However, spending more than you have is perhaps even worse. Simply put, nothing could be more out of natural balance than spending more than you earn.

Need + Thinking = Desires and Blind Spots

I see both parties to this debate are driven by emotion to do the ‘right thing’. The conservative side, at least theoretically, is more in line with nature: earn before you spend, they preach (alas, words are cheap). The liberal side is so bent upon doing the ‘right thing’ for the poor, the kids, the elderly, that it fails to see the core necessity of ceasing to spend first. They are bent on solving the problem by raising taxes in a country where the majority of the population is against raising taxes (yet ironically expecting more benefits). Like the tax code and numerous other inconsistencies we see in culture generally, this is completely irrational. But there are no short cuts in nature. Spending what the majority are not willing to pay for up-front is doomed in the long run (i.e., short term pleasure leads to long term pain).

Yet, all this is natural. After all, we only think we are a rational and  ’sapient’ species. Our behavior shows we are plainly animals that may have merely evolved too much for our own good (not on purpose of course!). First Mother Nature tried out the big body-small brain model with the dinosaurs. Now she’s trying out the big brain-small body model in our species… and the blind spot is an unintended consequence. Of course, with evolution every consequence is unintended, isn’t it? That’s what makes life so fascinating. Only time will tell how it all turns out.

⁽¹⁾ Fareed Zakaria’s GPS (Global Public Square) presents superb in-depth coverage of the most important of current affairs. His interview with James Baker on Americas Budget and Foreign Policy sheds more light on this whole ‘mess’.