CenterTao.org – Page 8 – taoism, taoist thought, buddha, yoga, tai chi, shakuhachi

Will-to-Live, Free or Otherwise

The drive to survive is shared by all living things from viruses on up. In some, if not all, forms of life, this plays out as a fear vs. need mediated survival instinct. Certainly, the survival instinct is a fundamental emotional drive in any animal I think of as having emotion. Naturally, there are those […]

Begin New Years with a smile

For once, a post you don’t need to read!

The Why Of It

Probing into the why of it feels like jumping into a bottomless well of mystery. This is certainly the epitome of quixotic quests. However, there is the survival reward of seeing life as close to its actuality as humanly possible. Exploring the why of it promises a glimpse into nature’s secrets. This is one of […]

The Truth vs. The Middle

The Chinese language uses dual characters (1) as shown here (right). While searching for background on this, I stumbled onto this article… google [Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction (1999)]. This Abstract of the article succinctly portrays a noticeable difference in the way East and West view reality. Culture, dialectics, and reasoning about contradiction by […]

Dumbfounding

The Science News Science Stats left me dumbfounded, so I read it again… I’m still dumbfounded. Does it really say, “… calorie intake may be the bigger contributor to Western obesity”? What are they thinking? What else causes obesity? I have noticed over the years, a growing effort to find genetic causes for why some […]

A Taoist Creed

If Taoism had a creed(1), what would the specific cornerstone of such a creed be? For example, the Christians have “to love” as a cornerstone of their creed: to love thy God, to love thy neighbor, to love thy enemy, and so on. Before you read on, come up with a few of your own […]

Of Free Will, I Am

Free will and I have had a life-long journey together. For the first forty years, I “knew” I had free will. I could do anything I set my mind to. Such certainty is particularly strong in youth, and naturally so! Around age forty, I began to look for biological evidence of free will. Any clear […]

Discomfort and Pain

The Science News’ article Hurt Blocker got me thinking about pain and the ways we deal with it. While this research is really about physical pain, the principle applies to all pain. How we deal with discomfort and pain results in many unintended consequences. We could avoid these consequences if we knew at what point […]

Undecided? You bet!

Up until today, I have remained undecided whom to vote for President. Searching for a photo to accompany this post, I came across this one. It highlights the chorus of ridicule I’ve heard aimed lately at the undecided ‘wishywashers’ among us. Slinging ridicule back is tempting; however examining this from a symptomatic point of view […]

Siren’s Song of Politics

The noblest purpose of politics is the pursuit of the “perfect” compromise which bitterly opposing factions can live with, if not heartily support. This is true for keeping the peace in any civilization. Put simply, the intimate social connection and mutual understanding common among our hunter-gather ancestors is not possible given civilizations’ hierarchical social system. […]

“It’s the Economy Stupid”

Do you remember that pithy campaign comment from James Carville, “It’s the economy stupid”? I wonder if he knew how deeply universal economics is. Indeed, why don’t educators put this at the top of their list of the necessary education every child should receive? Could it be they don’t know? Economics is survival for all […]

Networks of Networks of….

The Science News report, When Networks Network, is striking in its implications so you may want to read it first. Go to, Networks-of-Network.pdf. This research hints at humanity’s gradual cognitive evolution toward what I would call a small ‘t’ Taoist (p.154) point of view. Research like this, along with quantum theory, nudges secular common sense […]