This brief retrospective came across my screen recently. It can be profoundly sobering to see how much life has changed over the past 100 years. Such rapid change is unprecedented in human history, or almost any history that comes to mind.
Continue reading…science
Who are you? (Part II)
I tried pointing out in Who are you? (p.504) how civilization plays a major role in educating its citizens as to 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, central to every civilization, are humanity’s attempt […]
Continue reading…What Climate Catastrophy?
In the mid 1980’s science was pointing to a looming climate catastrophe. I stressed over this for a few years, but finally felt “Que Sera, Sera”. Now, 30+ years later, it is happening just as the science predicted. The scientist’s main concern was for how the destabilizing effects of the ensuing climate extremes would influence […]
Continue reading…Science Proves Buddha Right!
Google [CBS News When low expectations achieve big results] for research that reveals how one’s expectations get in the way of happiness. This is not to say expectations aren’t useful or natural. Indeed, a kind of natural expectation, or sense of anticipation plays an integral role in survival. This impulse drives all living things to […]
Continue reading…Cultivating Character
I find some people in Taoist circles have passionate ideals about cultivating character. Seen from a symptoms point of view, passion arises from fear—the mother of need. The visceral fear arising from feeling one has little control over life drives a need to do something… like cultivate character. Chapter 54 has the only reference relating […]
Continue reading…Ancient Signs Of Modern Behavior
The gravest existential issue that ancient man’s thoughts confronted was death. Humanity lost “Eden” when symbolic thought supplanted the spontaneous conscious experience that other animals benefit from. Once we acquired an objective sense of past and future, we could worry about death and other possible misfortunes awaiting us in the near and distant future. Simply […]
Continue reading…Loving Your Eco-System
I assume most of us in moments of contemplation wonder who we are. Sure, we have our given name, gender, personal history, ideals, likes and dislikes to cleave onto, which create and maintain our “illusion of self”, as Buddha pointed out in his 2nd Noble Truth. How tenacious our innate insecurity impels us to hold […]
Continue reading…Where does the fault lie?
“The fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves”. That bit of Shakespeare speaks to our modern paradigm. By modern, I mean the epoch beginning with the Renaissance (14th century) that followed the fall of Rome, i.e., the so-called Dark Ages. Notice how these labels bias the view of cultural progress right away in […]
Continue reading…Laws as Symptoms, not Solutions
Google [TED Is The Law Making Us Less Free] for how law affects society. Briefly, the speaker, Philip Howard, says, “There’s this fetish with rules that has kind of replaced morality. And it works both in a gotcha sort of way, and it works in an avoidance of responsibility sort of way.” In reality, I […]
Continue reading…Mind Over Milkshake
I quit smoking a few decades ago and quickly gained 40 pounds. Not wishing to lug all that extra baggage around, I decided to eat less. Actually, I would have quit eating altogether if I could get away with it. The more I lost, the less I needed to eat to maintain whatever weight I […]
Continue reading…BRAIN
President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) seeks to decipher how the brain’s circuitry produces thought and behavior. The Science News Brain Shot reports on this initiative. This is an excerpt. Ambitious goals: While the BRAIN Initiative’s objectives are hard to express in concrete terms, the project is full of visionary promise. […]
Continue reading…Natural Happiness
‘To like what I do rather than do what I like’ is a straightforward path to happiness. This motto helps prevent my expectations from dictating my life’s direction. No doubt, scripture (Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Biblical, etc.) first got me considering life this way, and life experience has since verified its truth (1). The previous post, […]
Continue reading…The Pendulum Swings
The Syrian war illustrates our intrinsic tendency to swing from one extreme to the opposite. In wondering why, chapter 64 came to mind, Its peace easily manages… and so on. D.C. Lau translates this view more clearly, e.g., It is easy to maintain a situation while it is still secure. Interestingly, the adage, “a stitch […]
Continue reading…Just like Us, Just like Them
Have you noticed how much we compare ourselves to other animals to see what extent they are like us? That’s all quite normal, of course. All animals judge other animals to some extent, although I should say size up, gauge, or perceive, rather than judge. Passing judgment is closely tied to thinking and we’re the […]
Continue reading…Science’s Baby Steps
Every now and then, I’m struck by the “Well… duh” discoveries science finally arrives at. My “Well… duh” relationship with science began early. As a child who enjoyed playing with fire, I discovered that putting ice or cold water on a burn worked great. Even so, the standard first aid treatment at that time was […]
Continue reading…Hold the Knowable
In my previous, Good Enough Is (p.356), I suggested that we have an innate need to pursue an important goal… something to hold in mind, to hunger after, and fill our mind space. I also put forward the view that this was an emergent property (p.121) of the basic hunter-gather instinct that drives life to […]
Continue reading…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 […]
Continue reading…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 […]
Continue reading…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 […]
Continue reading…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 […]
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