Notes on Wu Wei
The Chinese expression Wu Wei means to do nothing. It is one of the key ideas in taoism.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Ahead
Crisis will always present us with new opportunities. When we encounter a crisis we are, in effect, coming upon a fork in the road. The path more worn is that which points us back to where we have been. But the second path invites us to discover something new. This is the path of real opportunity, because when we are in crisis, life informs us that the path we have been on no longer works. It is obsolete.
The teetering of late post-industrial capitalism tells us that a world based on the success of the few and impoverishment of the many does not work. We are now paying for our greed and our desire to profit by continuing to rape the planet and subscribe to a belief that growth, for its own self, is a virtue. In fact, it is a lethal vice.
If we are dedicated to going back to this world, then we only continue on the path that continues to erode the vitality of the planet, sustain the desperation of the many for the benefit of the few, and sustain a belief that we can never have enough.
Most will wish to go back, because this is the only world they know. Whether they know it conscious or not, they and their peers are identified with lack and insufficiency, so they will subscribe to growth scenarios.
The teetering of late post-industrial capitalism tells us that a world based on the success of the few and impoverishment of the many does not work. We are now paying for our greed and our desire to profit by continuing to rape the planet and subscribe to a belief that growth, for its own self, is a virtue. In fact, it is a lethal vice.
If we are dedicated to going back to this world, then we only continue on the path that continues to erode the vitality of the planet, sustain the desperation of the many for the benefit of the few, and sustain a belief that we can never have enough.
Most will wish to go back, because this is the only world they know. Whether they know it conscious or not, they and their peers are identified with lack and insufficiency, so they will subscribe to growth scenarios.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Love and enlightenment
Awakening is just that awakening. It doesn't mean that the awakened person is just like every other awakened being.
Each of us is unique. Awakening is coming in harmony with our intrinsic selves in each unfolding moment. It is a cliche that all awakened beings are those that radiate only love and acceptance. There are lovers in this world and there are fighters and there is every hue in between. Also, none of us are just "one" thing. How the universal energy stimulates us to be ourselves is part of the great intelligence that guides all things. This energy is never completely still.
Find your passion in each moment - not as a concept made up a collection of "shoulds" and "should nots" - but as you are truly guided in the moment. It is this universe of super-egoic shoulds and should nots that cuts us off from our souls and disempowers out being.
Observe the universe - it contains everything. Everything comes together in harmony and everything comes apart in death. There is peace and there is war - there is a time for both. Perhaps war is merely an intense gathering of the various energies that are more diffuse in peace. That could be. But beware of peace for the sake of peace. We can go to war for a greater good. In the 1940s that meant challenging the violence and hate that was Germany and Japan. Today, it could be the violence wrought against the planet by the excesses fed by greed, over-population, and unnecessary consumption.
To see the violence inside of us and how it effects the planet is love and it is wisdom. This is awakening in the moment.
When we fully resonate with this love and wisdom, we are then awake.
Each of us is unique. Awakening is coming in harmony with our intrinsic selves in each unfolding moment. It is a cliche that all awakened beings are those that radiate only love and acceptance. There are lovers in this world and there are fighters and there is every hue in between. Also, none of us are just "one" thing. How the universal energy stimulates us to be ourselves is part of the great intelligence that guides all things. This energy is never completely still.
Find your passion in each moment - not as a concept made up a collection of "shoulds" and "should nots" - but as you are truly guided in the moment. It is this universe of super-egoic shoulds and should nots that cuts us off from our souls and disempowers out being.
Observe the universe - it contains everything. Everything comes together in harmony and everything comes apart in death. There is peace and there is war - there is a time for both. Perhaps war is merely an intense gathering of the various energies that are more diffuse in peace. That could be. But beware of peace for the sake of peace. We can go to war for a greater good. In the 1940s that meant challenging the violence and hate that was Germany and Japan. Today, it could be the violence wrought against the planet by the excesses fed by greed, over-population, and unnecessary consumption.
To see the violence inside of us and how it effects the planet is love and it is wisdom. This is awakening in the moment.
When we fully resonate with this love and wisdom, we are then awake.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Seeking to Understand
Seeking to understand is a direct manifestation from our identity as inadequate and insufficient. All seeking to understand anything for the purpose of our need to feel "good" is a reification of our inadequacy. There are no exceptions.
All that we will ever need to know we either already possess or will come to us when its time is right.
Everything that we need to know is a consequence of direct observation. If we observe the same phenomenon many times, we can assume that it is a tentative truth.
Every thing we believe to be true needs to be questioned anytime the belief conflicts with apparent reality. Truth is fluid and ever changing. All truths are, ultimately, only true for a singular time and vantage point. They are, therefore, not absolutely true, but only true relative to something else.
The only thing that is absolutely true is the self. The self is the one and only thing that cannot be sought or understood or captured or possessed. It is only here and nowhere else. That is why all seeking for it is a movement away from the self.
Cease seeking anything for a psychological purpose. All such seeking is unhappiness in the guise of doing something. It is a form of avoidance little different from any other distraction.
Knowledge for its own sake is primarily for the swelling of the ego. It is, therefore, just one of the millions of ways we seek to hide our identification with inadequacy. See this in your own life.
All that we will ever need to know we either already possess or will come to us when its time is right.
Everything that we need to know is a consequence of direct observation. If we observe the same phenomenon many times, we can assume that it is a tentative truth.
Every thing we believe to be true needs to be questioned anytime the belief conflicts with apparent reality. Truth is fluid and ever changing. All truths are, ultimately, only true for a singular time and vantage point. They are, therefore, not absolutely true, but only true relative to something else.
The only thing that is absolutely true is the self. The self is the one and only thing that cannot be sought or understood or captured or possessed. It is only here and nowhere else. That is why all seeking for it is a movement away from the self.
Cease seeking anything for a psychological purpose. All such seeking is unhappiness in the guise of doing something. It is a form of avoidance little different from any other distraction.
Knowledge for its own sake is primarily for the swelling of the ego. It is, therefore, just one of the millions of ways we seek to hide our identification with inadequacy. See this in your own life.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Musings about the world
Yesterday, I heard two very familiar news stories. The first came from Gaza. I heard the anguish coming from the Palestinian people living there mourning over their recent dead; causalities of the latest Israeli incursion, itself a response from missiles fired into Israel from Gaza. A Palestinian father described how his little boy was killed in an Israeli attack. He spoke of his sadness and his rage. Then there were the Israeli's also speaking of their one dead, of the untrustworthiness of the Arabs. Then today I read about the slaughter of 8 Orthodox students in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gunman. I heard the awful cries from their funeral today. I heard the rage...in other words, I heard the endless repetition of a very old story.
I wondered how many people regret that the United Nations approved the location of the State of Israel in the heart of the Arab world. I often thought how much better it might have been were Israel placed somewhere in Germany. Maybe that would have been worse, but that's hard to imagine.
Also, I thought, as a person born and raised a Jew, how the media seems to favor the Palestinians and the Israelis were as much a victim in all of this. I thought about the endlessness of the violence, how it leads to only more violence, both peoples plunged into fear and sadness.
This is the way of the world. It is.
It is also the way of division, where people place their cultural identities before their shared humanity. This seems pretty to us, the safe bystanders in all of this. How much different would it be were your cultural, religious, national, other bullshit identity were savaged by the "other"? How different might that feel?
I wondered how many people regret that the United Nations approved the location of the State of Israel in the heart of the Arab world. I often thought how much better it might have been were Israel placed somewhere in Germany. Maybe that would have been worse, but that's hard to imagine.
Also, I thought, as a person born and raised a Jew, how the media seems to favor the Palestinians and the Israelis were as much a victim in all of this. I thought about the endlessness of the violence, how it leads to only more violence, both peoples plunged into fear and sadness.
This is the way of the world. It is.
It is also the way of division, where people place their cultural identities before their shared humanity. This seems pretty to us, the safe bystanders in all of this. How much different would it be were your cultural, religious, national, other bullshit identity were savaged by the "other"? How different might that feel?
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