CenterTao.org – Page 13 – taoism, taoist thought, buddha, yoga, tai chi, shakuhachi

“… Strive On Diligently”

The BBC aired an excellent six part series on India. The other night we watched Part 2. (Google [BBC The story of India (Part 2)]. The first half hour retells the life of Buddha. Incorporating present day video footage of India with the story makes this telling especially effective. The end of the segment stood out […]

Is Pain the Constant?

(First Pass: “Chapter of the Week” 2011) Pleasure and pain (like life and death) are a fascinating duo. In this relationship, I imagine that pain is the head of the household. That’s not to say pain is ‘the constant‘; that would be going too far, of course. Nevertheless pain, like water, may come close to […]

Ants Are Us

Watching this video on ants (google [CBS News Small wonders: What ants can teach us]) left me feeling that we’re simply ants with big brains and hands with opposable thumbs. This definitely agrees with chapter 56’s This is known as mysterious sameness! Just imagine what ants could do if they had hands and big brains. […]

Feeling Animal-ness

We “know” humans are animals, biologically speaking. Yet do we really feel we are? In reality, there is a wide gap between our knowledge and our experience. Catching the flu for the “first” time in my life recently offers an example of how thought can distort and pigeonhole reality. Assuming that I caught the flu […]

Pleasure Isn’t Well Being

(First Pass: “Chapter of the Week” 2011) Both pleasure and pain can pull us off balance and dim our sense of well being. This parallels chapter 13’s Favor and disgrace are things that startle. Of course, it is easy to see how pain and disgrace do this, but favor and pleasure? That’s more subtle. The […]

Is Rock Conscious?

A while ago, I attempted to pin down a friend (1) of mine on the subject of consciousness. My view that a rock could be conscious didn’t go over too well. He said, “Words are sounds that gain meaning with use. Saying that a rock is conscious is like saying a rock is alive. That might work […]

See No Evil

While discussing life with a friend the other day the word evil came up. He sees America as an “evil empire” that commits acts of torture that surpass anything al-Qaeda has done. I think he was referring to all the bombs dropped over the last 100 years. In any case, this provided grist for my […]

Keep ’em guessing?

(First Pass: “Chapter of the Week” 2011) The Tao Te Ching is so often terse and vague—especially the original Chinese. I expect one reason is that it points to a reality so often at odds with the story we want to hear. Revealing this point of view less obscurely would feel unsettling, even subversive, to […]

Thou Shalt Not…

I doubt devout Christians are here to take offense, so I’ll propose an 11th Commandment… Thou shalt not take the path of least resistance. It has a nice ring to it, yet I’ll admit it sounds unnatural. Indeed, we evolved to take the path of least resistance. Then again, we didn’t evolve to eat grains, […]

You Are What You Own

The 1st and 2nd of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths (p.604) are spot on in regards to the nature and the cause of humanity’s existential difficulties. While these first Truths are a no-brainer, the remedy offered in his 3rd and 4th Noble Truths turn out to be more subtle. It is easier to identify problems or […]

Priorities

(First Pass: “Chapter of the Week” 2011) Prioritizing life is an important step in managing the demands of life, at least a civilized life. In the wild I suppose circumstance pretty much handle what and when animals do what they do. Having freed ourselves from the drudgery of hunting and gathering whenever we get hungry […]

We!

Knowing that we are all in this together evokes a sense of community and well-being. Not long ago humanity had a narrower view of what we are in all this together involved. Happily, science is showing us just how deep and vast the we of this actually reaches. The Science News article, Inside Job, covers […]