Observations

Taoist Thought

Finally it’s done! Like the Tao Te Ching’s “A tree barely embraceable grows from a fine tip” [#64], this project began nearly 60 years ago. Now, perhaps it may serve as a “fine tip” to help you approach what chapter 16 and 52 describe as “Nearly rising beyond oneself”.

The Tradeoff

Jñāna yoga Many of us find life very troubling at times. Knowing how humanity got to where it is today and what to do about it can put to rest many puzzling and disturbing aspects of life. Jñāna yoga is a spiritual practice that pursues knowledge with questions such as “who am I, what am […]

Buddha’s Truths Pertain To All Life

Buddha’s Truths apply to all Earth’s creatures, although only humans need to have truth stipulated. For me, this suggests that our desire for truth is a symptom of something we feel missing. For that reason, considering the widest possible scope of these truths gives helpful context for their application – ‘profound sameness’, as chapter 56 […]

Trump and the Mandate of Heaven

To better comprehend the Trump phenomenon, I need to examine it from a symptoms point of view (1). After all, judging circumstances at face value leaves out all the underlying causative forces at play, and this just perpetuates my ignorance. First off, I see Donald Trump as symptomatic of the deterioration of the cooperative politics […]

Refreshing Redundancy

Research reported in Science News, That familiar feeling comes from deep in the brain, sheds light on a cognitive problem for anyone who wants to remember their life priorities. This quote sums it up, “The research suggests that novelty and familiarity are two sides of the same brain cells. Turn them down, and even the […]

We All Know We Don’t Know

I enjoy doing yoga on the beach because I can easily pause to look seaward and skyward to soak in eternity, or glance closer in to bond’ with my friends, the sand flies and the seagulls around me. Today I got to thinking how small and insignificant we are — they and me. Then I […]

Who are you? (Part V)

It’s about time I wrap up this “Who are you?” series. This time I’ll use a few observations from Lorna Marshall‘s research of hunter-gatherers to demonstrate what I’m really driving at. In my last post, Who are you? (Part IV), I pointed out how our ancestral old way just happens to mirror the core spiritual […]

Who are you? (Part IV)

The social qualities integral to our ancestral hunter-gatherer old way (1) just happen to mirror the core “spiritual” qualities that the world’s religions promote. That’s no coincidence. Indeed, those innate qualities of harmony we now seek are the very ones we lost when we left the old way for the alluring material benefits and security […]

Who are you? (Part III)

Recent posts, Who are you? and Who are you? (Part II), examine the losses of emotional security and comfort caused when our civilized way of life replaced our ancestral one. Common sense, personal experience, and timely mid 20th century ethnographic research reveals this. (See The Harmless People) This post and the next cover some thoughts […]

Who are you? (Part II)

I tried to point out in my initial Who are you? post how civilization plays a major role in ‘educating’ its citizens who they are and who they should be. This contrasts sharply with the natural intuitive way that our ancestors acquired a secure sense of self. Religious stories have been central to every civilization’s […]

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Observations