Tag: Zen

Daily Tao / 338 – Expression

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There’s nothing to paint anymore.
We’ve seen everything from the classical to the absurd.
There’s nothing to write anymore.
As many books are shredded as read.
There’s nothing to sing anymore.
The once avant-garde is now background music.

In a world where expression seems futile, it is hard to maintain creativity. But creativity is a primal impulse. Cave people painted on walls; everyone’s house has some image on display. Primitive scribes wrote records of their experiences; people still keep diaries. Early shamans sang; we still live with music. We cannot abandon creative expression in our daily lives, though it seems hard to come up with something new.

The only way to have fresh expression is to go deep within. In a sense, today’s extreme pluralism eliminates the obligation to do the same as others. At one time, artists, priests, writers, musicians, and craftsmen were obligated to their feudal lords. Today we are not constrained by hierarchical standards. We are free to commune directly with our inner callings.

By coincidence, this mirrors a more sophisticated understanding of the divine. We are no longer in a position of supplication with what is divine. Rather, divinity is a quality from within ourselves.

Daily Tao / 337 – Moderation

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moderation

Alternate between the solitary and the social.
Whether alone or with others, keep serenity.

Some people argue that Tao can be known only through bitter asceticism. Others prefer massive congregations. But those who follow Tao are neither too solitary nor too gregarious. They have regular times of privacy. And they equally enjoy being with others.

Privacy is good. But an overly monastic life can lead to unhappiness, delusion, and even insanity. In the same way, relationships are good. But too much social intercourse can lead to conformity, conflict, and stress. Therefore, the way of Tao aims to maximize the good and minimize the bad.

We should have regular times to be alone, meditate alone, even sleep alone. This gives us clarity. Then we can bring this understanding to our relationships. Friendships will be all the more wonderful. Once we understand moderation, we move between the solitary and the social without any mistake.

Daily Tao / 336 – Wisdom

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A white-haired couple sits on the park bench,
Reading the paper, discussing the day’s news.
He repeats a poem, learned in his youth;
She finishes the stanza as he nods in pleasure.
At twilight, the air seems clearer than noon.

In past times, educators emphasized memorization. You can still meet older people who can recite certain poems, passages from classics and religious texts, or mathematical formulae. In fact, some people assert that those who remember more are wiser.

Young people often have a mania for more and more information. But mere accumulation is not enough. The more you take in, the more that data needs to be managed. Without that, you have encyclopedic knowledge and minuscule wisdom. True wisdom is a qualitative value built on a quantitative foundation. The vital elderly did not become venerable through good memory alone. They also learned to manipulate those facts. They mixed their knowledge with a healthy dose of experience, experimentation, and contemplation. It takes time to intuit special connections between facts.

One might say that wisdom is not simply a mental process but the sum total of a human being.

Daily Tao / 335 – Prowess

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The wrestler was once more solid than a bull.
He loved to flex enormous, oiled forearms
Before he delightedly vanquished foes.
But now, brittle skin is taught over bone,
And his wheeze is a ghost of his manly bellow.

At any point in life, it is prudent to contemplate the nature of prowess. If you have it, glory in it, and use it wisely and compassionately. But you should not think that it is you yourself who are doing these things. You are borrowing this strength. It isn’t yours. It is a gift, something here for you for as long as you are lucky to have it. Once it passes, you will not have the victories, and you will be stuck with the same body and mind. When you have been humbled, what is gone? You are still here, here to feel the pain of not being able to do what you were once able to do — unless you learn how to exercise your prowess without identifying with it.

Those who fail to learn this become bitter old people. They curse life. They lose faith. That is because they placed all their self-worth in their abilities and not in who they were. That is why it is good to meditate, and to accumulate not victories but the experience of those victories. Savor them. No one can ever take that away from you.

It is the experiences that come out of prowess, not prowess itself, that are valuable.

Daily Tao / 334 – Dipper

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Bamboo dipper, granite basin.
Crust of ice over inky reservoir.
Moon shimmers in the dipper
Until fullness drains away.

Some people are like dippers. No matter what they try to gather up, it ends up flowing out again. For such people it is exceedingly difficult to accumulate anything in life.

If you are like the dipper, that is all the more reason to concentrate the resources that you have. Poverty of any kind need not be a deterrent if you know how to utilize the wealth you possess. You must embrace your fate, work with it, and take advantage of it.

Ultimately, we cannot truly grasp anything permanently in life. We are born naked, we die naked, and in point of fact we live naked. What we take to us — our clothes, our wealth, our relationships — are all external to us. They are easily taken away from us by bruising fate.

We try to internalize our experiences and our understanding. Even that can be taken away by stress, senility, poor memory, disorganized thinking, drugs, or shock. Truly, we are all dippers. The little that life offers us dribbles away.

Perhaps even the poorest of situations is rich, because all the futility of life leads us to embrace Tao. After all, it is bigger than all infinities and more subtle than the slightest wisp. To feel it requires great strength. To sense it requires a dragonfly’s delicacy. When you tire of trying to hold on to life, you will find the means to enter Tao.

Daily Tao / 333 – Donkey

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Dismount your donkey at the summit.

Some places in this world are very hard to climb, and people use animals. Each person can only ride one, and each animal might have a different name. The riders go up the trail in different orders, and they discuss their varying opinions about their experiences. They may even have conflicting opinions : One traveler may think the trip thrilling, another may find it terrifying, and a third may find it banal.

At the summit all the travelers stand in the same place. Each of them has the same chance to view the same vistas. The donkeys are put to rest and graze; they are not needed anymore.

We all travel the path of Tao. The donkeys are the various doctrines that each of us embraces. What does it matter which doctrine we embrace as long as it leads us to the summit? Your donkey might be a Zen donkey, mine might be a Tao donkey. There are Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and even Agnostic donkeys. All lead to the same place. Why poke fun at others over the name of their donkey? Aren’t you riding one yourself?

We should put aside both the donkeys and our interim experiences once we arrive at the summit. Whether we climbed in suffering or joy is immaterial; we are there. All religions have different names for the ways of getting to the holy summit. Once we reach the summit, we no longer need names, and we can experience all things directly.

Daily Tao / 332 – Dovetail

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“Measure twice, cut once,” said the old craftsman.
Only careful planning and patient skill make a dovetail.

Early cabinetmakers were faced with the problem of joining two pieces of wood together at a right angle so that they would bear the stress not only of use but of the weather as well. Especially in places where the summers are hot and humid and the winters are dry and cold, a plank of wood might change its dimensions by a quarter- to a half-inch. Quite enough to make joints fall apart and drawers stick!

The dovetail joint holds because the two interlocked pieces of wood expand and contract at the same rate. The direction of the pull is against the locking of the joint. The byproduct of all this fine craft is a joint so precisely fitted that it is a thing of beauty in and of itself.

Cutting a dovetail joint is a demanding skill. The lines must be laid out with great care, and the cutting must be carefully done using a thin saw. The waste must be slowly trimmed away with a sharp chisel until both sides mate tightly. The making of a dovetail joint requires planning, skill, and patience.

Nowadays, cheap synthetic materials do not breathe with the seasons. That might reduce inconvenience, but it has also reduced the chance for another relationship to Tao. For when the cabinetmakers sought to build furniture that was compatible with the wood, the seasons, and their own ingenuity, they were perfectly in tune with Tao.

Daily Tao / 331 – Sieve

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A coarse sieve catches little.
A fine mesh catches more.
If you want the subtle, be refined,
But prepare to deal with the coarse.

The irony of spiritual living is that you become more sensitive and more subtle. Therefore, you become intolerant of the coarse. There is not much choice in this. If you want to catch the subtle things in life, then you must become refined yourself. But the coarser things will then accumulate all the more quickly. A coarse sieve in a rushing stream will hold back only debris and large rocks. A fine mesh will catch smaller things, but it will also retain the large.

Some people attempt to cope with this by becoming multilayered. They set up a series of screens to their personalities, from the coarse to the subtle so that they can deal with all that life has to offer. This is quite laudable from an ordinary point of view, but from the point of view of Tao, it is a great deal of bother.

What do we do? If we remain coarse, then only the coarse comes to us. If we become subtle, then we gain the refined but are plagued with the coarse as well. If we become multilayered, then we create a complexity that isolates us from Tao.

The solution lies in floating on the current of Tao, uniting with it. That way we no longer seek to hold or to reject.

Daily Tao / 330 – Sense

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Don’t be destroyed by knowledge and power.
Use common sense to survive.

There were once four learned and accomplished men. One day they said to themselves, “Of what use is all our learning if we do not seek the employment of a great king?” Accordingly, they set out for the capital.

Now among these four, three were particularly brilliant. The fourth was far inferior to the others in intellect, but he was the one with the most sense.

On the road, they came upon the skeleton of a lion. “Let us bring this lion back to life,” proposed the first. “Yes, this will bring us great fame,” agreed the second and third. The fourth one said, “If you bring this lion back to life, he will attack and devour you.”

“Don’t interrupt!” cried the first, who already used his superior knowledge to put flesh on the bones. The second quickly introduced blood, and the third was about to breathe life into the lion.

“We should think of safety,” said the fourth.

“Quiet!” said the third from the depths of his labor.

“Well, then, I shall go sit in this tree,” said the fourth. “Just in case.”

The lion came back to life and killed the wise men. The only one who survived was the man with common sense.

Daily Tao / 329 – Umbilicus

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People consider the navel a vestigial nub
And think nourishment only comes through the mouth.
Not so. Tao is the great mother,
And vitality untold lies in the region of the umbilicus.

The old books call Tao the great mother. Tao provides for us as a mother would. It shelters us, nourishes us, makes our life possible. We are literally tied to the vitality of Tao.

Lying dormant inside us are point of concentration. Most people are unaware that concentration on these points will yield specific forces, cure ailments, alter consciousness, and still the mind. Like a treasure buried in the ruins of a sacred place, these spots only await discovery before they give their owner wondrous powers.

One such spot is in the area of the navel. When you concentrate there, you will find that great vitality comes your way. It will be as if you are still connected to your mother through the umbilicus, and power and tremendous physical well-being will come your way.