Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Tao

  • Barbarians at the Gate

    Barbarians at the Gate

    And they have always been there. The question is what, if anything, to do about it.

    “The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to the ten thousand things.”

    So the ten thousand things are the whole almighty infinity we see around us, the whole complex web of everything from the micro to the macroscopic. 

    Taoist practice involves looking past the distractions and divisions of the Ten Thousand Things to return to a state of stillness and unity with the Tao. From which the ten thousand things arose.

    It is within this context that we should view the swaggering pigmy in the ginger wig and his like. The petty sabre rattlers and swindlers, the power brokers and the power hungry, those who think they move and shake the earth, and make the rain.

    Like goldfish in their bowls they are unable to see the greater reality around them and hence rattle around in their earthly cave, convinced that what they do and think have some importance.

    And indeed such people hold the power of life and death over the “lesser” beings who are unable or disinclined to play such silly games.

    Are you prepared to break out of the goldfish bowl. Are you prepared to dismantle the prison in which you have entombed yourself. Are you willing to remove the bars on the window of your psyche and let the sun shine in.

    If you want to, you can. Break out. And once you have done so the world never looks the same again.

    You don’t hate the swaggering pygmy or plot his downfall. You don’t plot anybody’s downfall, you simply retire, withdraw, refuse to be involved. See it all for the silly game it is and concentrate on the bigger picture – the unified whole not the ever confusing and unimportant detail.

    So ignore the swaggering ginger pigmy and all the other swaggering pigmies.

    It is easier said than done if you are pinned to the ground with the pigmy’s boot in your face. With the ICE Blackshirts hunting you down. Or the KGB. Or the petty officials leading you to the death camps.

    It has all happened before, it is happening now and it will happen again. Endlessly, while our species lasts.

    Your only defence is equanimity and acceptance. Not of brutality and death but of its existence.

    Hide the Jew in your attic if you have the courage. Shelter the black man whose face will otherwise be shattered by the stormtroopers. But don’t believe you will ever stop it or your hopes will destroy you.

    If you can escape do so.  Join the Ship of Fools if you must, but be prepared to face rejection at the gates of the promised land, like the Jews on the MS St. Louis.

    Leave Russia and run to Israel. Leave Germany and cross the Chanel to England. Run, rabbit, run run run.

    Perhaps you will be lucky and avoid the jackboot. Or perhaps you will end in Treblinka or the Gulag. Who knows, who can tell.

    You have little say in the “great” events of history and must simply hope to be lucky enough not to get picked on. Caught in the terrible mangle of war, terror, famine or disease. Poverty or displacement, homelessness or worse.

    And if you do get caught and cannot face it, then who would blame you for pulling the plug on existence. Taking the ultimate way out. Pulling the trigger, arranging your own “final solution”.

    Not I, for sure.

    So help where you can. Help yourself by all means, and others too. But ultimately, you must resign from the world one way or another. Hopefully equanimity will be all that is necessary, hopefully equanimity will enable you to ride the storm. Roll with the punches.

    In any event it’s your best option.

    If everyone broke out of the goldfish bowl and saw the futility of human ambition we might rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the ruins we have created.

    But even a single seeker of the truth is better than nothing. Even a single escape from the madness all around us is to be celebrated.

  • Being

    Being

    Sitting in the garden listening to the rain.

    There may be no more to be said than that. Call it a koan if you will, or a haiku perhaps. But do not be entangled by words or definitions.

    If you must subscribe to any line of thinking, let it be Eastern. I am Zen. Doing nothing.

    I am the Tao. I am the Hsin Hsin Ming.

    And so are we all, did we but know it.

    In the quiet, I have seen my origins. I have witnessed my past and my future. In me as in all of us, there are a million, million years of history.

    In meditation, it is not too fanciful to speak to your long deceased father. Or mother. Or any of the millions of things you have been in the past, or will become in the future.

    I sense a life in the woods, way back in time. I witnessed my consciousness emerge from all those eons of experienced time. And somewhere a monastery, in more modern times. Always a monastery.

    And I saw the way it must end. Or rather, not end. Continue.

    As I sense my father in me, my son, if he cared to think about it, would sense me in him. And his mother.

    A seeker eventually finds. I have found. The truth, the way, reality – call it what you will.

    It is devastatingly simple and of incredible complexity.

    The simple part is to be. To feel the waters and flow of time around you and to go, to drift with the gentle current.

    There is no more to it than that. If you seek contentment and meaning, then accept the river, the flow and do not try to go against the stream.

    If you seek complexity, you will certainly find it, but it will avail you little.

    Complexity is to be found in your body and the millions of working parts which make you what you are.

    Complexity is to be found in the society and economy we have created.

    Let it all pass. It will do so of its own accord in time. All is change, there are no constants.

    Being, that is all there is to it. Sitting in the garden and listening to the rain.

  • Right Thinking

    Right Thinking

    The Eight-fold Path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi (‘meditative absorption or union’). Wikipedia.

    I had a delightful morning over a cup of coffee with some acquaintances I had been meaning to get to know better.  These people are “Right Thinkers”.

    It is just the sort of experience I need. A world away from bankers (isn’t that spelled with a “w”?), salesmen and the modern world. A return to ancient values and cultures; people who recognize the validity of different modes of thought. People who know that the Tao is a philosophy rather than a washing powder.

    Much to my amazement, there appear to be like minded cranks in this world who think as I do.  The rejection of materialism (so far as is possible), the disgust with business aims and methods, a distaste for the capitalist economic model, a yearning for transcendence and for an opening of the doors of perception.

    I recognize now that I have always thought this way and that I caused myself much distress and angst by attempting to fit into a mould for which I was never designed.

    Interestingly they came up with a political system called “communalism” which I had not come across before. I am not a true socialist and certainly not a communist. I loathe politics since I suspect “some” will always be “more equal than others”. But I guess we need some sort of society to prevent us slipping back into bestiality.

    Perhaps this is it. Yet my preference would still be to inherit a vast estate on some far flung habitable planet (or preferably the whole planet) and keep everyone else out.

    Not to be mean or elitist – just to ensure silence and privacy.  And given the infinitude that is out there, hey! Everyone can have their own Goldilocks planet.

    We had very interesting discussions on consciousness and the nature of reality and I was fascinated to hear my new friends’ views on psychedelics.

    How nice to meet open, un-stuffy people with new views and a healthy distaste for dull convention.