CenterTao.org – Page 9 – taoism, taoist thought, buddha, yoga, tai chi, shakuhachi

Can we pull the plug?

A short video essay on cell phones gave me food for thought. Of course, I need more of that like I need another hole in my head, but I can’t pull the plug on thinking. The essay is ostensibly about the wide use of cell phones. However, scratch the surface and it offers insight into […]

Yamaguchi San

I was going to name this post The Real Lesson, but somehow that felt a little off base, so I named it after my shakuhachi flute teacher, Yamaguchi Goro. This photo is of him and Aoki Reibo playing a beautiful suizen piece, Shika No Tohne (The Distant Cry of Deer). To see this performance, google […]

“Fixation on same same”

Recently my friend Andy teased me about my “fixation on same same”, as he put it. My habit of noticing similarities between apparent opposites bugs him a little. “Fixation on same same” was his response to my comment, “Folks on the left use folks on the right as scapegoats and vice versa”. The underlying needs […]

Beware: the Blind Spot

I occasionally refer to the blind spot as our main impediment to understanding. What is the blind spot? Put simply, the blind spot = emotion + thought. The loudest emotions are need and fear (1). When those roar, they are all we can hear. In How the Hoodwink Hooks, (p.100) I first explain how desire […]

And Then There Was Fire

I’ve always found pondering the how’s and why’s of life and the world to be irresistible. The mountain of historical and scientific information available certainly makes this challenging. Happily, a lifetime of inquiry may be paying off. I can see outlines of the big picture now. The constant difficulty lies in how mountains of detail […]

Tao and Democracy

Having a largely ignorant electorate is both an advantage and a disadvantage in a democracy. Being unaware of shortsighted political narratives makes it harder to dupe people. However, ignorance of historical and scientific fact can easily lead to disastrous political choices. The Science News’ report, Uncommitted newbies can foil forceful few, explains why both democracy […]

What’s Not the Elephant?

My favorite Buddhist parable is the Blind Men And The Elephant. Several blind men each touch a different part of an elephant and proceed to describe and debate what they think an elephant is. The lesson here is how untrustworthy perception actually is. With only five main senses, we are all blind in the final […]

Upping the Ante

Have you noticed the ever-present urge to continue to up the ante? Not only that, but isn’t the sky often the limit? We can’t help but aim for the next step up, and when we reach it, that level becomes our new bottom line. Most of us are content for a while, but then we […]

A Word to the Wise?

“A word to the wise” is a good maxim, but flawed I’m afraid to say. I’ve always liked how D.C. Lau phrased the last characters of the first line of chapter 51: Circumstances bring them to maturity. It’s true, albeit not what the characters literally say. What is it about circumstances that bring us to […]

A Bee with Personality

Science has driven another nail into the coffin of human uniqueness. (Google [Bee genes may drive them to adventure].) This is yet another example of chapter 56’s, This is called profound sameness. Soon—in a thousand years more or less—we’ll be forced to admit that, while we see ourselves as unique, we are actually profoundly similar […]

Necessity, the Mother

Free will is what presumably makes us different from other animals. We believe we have a unique ability to choose and act freely. (See Free Will: Fack or Wishful Thinking?, p.586) The well-known proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention”, points to the actual truth. Simply put, necessity is the mother of all choice and […]

Guilt, Shame and the Name Game

I touched on guilt and shame in the post, I am foolish of human mind also? (p.276). Nevertheless, I feel our practice of naming such emotional experiences deserves its own post, so here goes, beginning with a personal example… Up until thirty years ago, I had never experienced depression… or so I didn’t think. Following […]