Monday, 22. October 2007, 17:54:50
One day, while walking through the wilderness, a man encountered a vicious tiger. He ran for his life, and the tiger gave chase.
The man came to the edge of a cliff, and the tiger was almost upon him. Having no choice, he held on to a vine with both hands and climbed down.
Halfway down the cliff, the man looked up and saw the tiger at the top, baring its fangs. He looked down and saw another tiger at the bottom, waiting for his arrival and roaring at him. He was caught between the two.
Two rats, one white and one black, showed up on the vine above him. As if he didn't have enough to worry about, they started gnawing on the vine.
He knew that as the rats kept gnawing, they would reach a point when the vine would no longer be able to support his weight. It would break and he would fall. He tried to shoo the rats away, but they kept coming back.
At that moment, he noticed a strawberry growing on the face of the cliff, not far away from him. It looked plump and ripe. Holding onto the vine with one hand and reaching out with the other, he plucked it.
With a tiger above, another below, and two rats continuing to gnaw on his vine, the man tasted the strawberry and found it absolutely delicious.Living in the Moment ~ story translation and article by Derek LinTo me this story is all about the state of harmonious balance and all that brings. Or rather the discovery of said state.
If we take for example Dao De Jing chapter 71 ...Chapter 71
To know that you do not know is highest
To not know but think you know is flawed
Only when one recognizes the fault as a fault
can one be without fault
The sages are without fault
Because they recognize the fault as a fault
That is why they are without fault Sages are without fault not because they never make mistakes but because they recognise faults for faults. So we take this and can say we can live without attachments by seeing attachments as attachments, without suffering by seeing suffering for suffering, pleasure for pleasure. The key being not holding on to any of them, just as we can not catch the wind ....
This seems to me to be an illustration of the yin-yang, not yin and yang or yin or yang but yin-yang as a fluid ever changing process of harmonic/dynamic balance.
peace to you
beccaxx
Saturday, 6. October 2007, 11:38:50
Hello my friends, my apologies for neglecting you and this blog for a while, life has been on the hectic side now things have calmed down i will be back to posting with some degree of regularity.
peace to you
beccaxx
Chapter 5
Heaven and Earth are impartial
And regard myriad things as straw dogs
The sages are impartial
And regard people as straw dogs
The space between Heaven and Earth
Is it not like a bellows?
Empty, and yet never exhausted
It moves, and produces more
Too many words hasten failure
Cannot compare to keeping quiet
Recently I have been contemplating this chapter and its deeper meanings to life and how to apply it.
I have seen this chapter taken to mean do not speak of issues or leave an argument alone etc. And there is some validity to that. But then I thought but we can not always control what situations we are in, it may sometimes be necessary for us to speak and offer advice or counsel even if just to (to use a figure of speech) ‘move it off the street’ so then I thought maybe I need to contemplate this chapter deeply and see if it is possible to look at it as practically as Lau Tzu, Confucius or other sages would have done, or at least similarly not being a sage and all.
Well the first part to me seems to be saying all things are equal in Dao, so a Dao cultivator would cultivate harmonious equality in dealings with all life.
We are physical bodies and spirit in harmony and if we can move with that harmony we can move in harmony with Dao.
“Too many words hasten failure” hmmm to me this can be taken both on the surface meaning that there are times when speaking further is just not going to help and everyone could probably use a break to clear heads etc and look on things with fresh eyes/ears. However I’m also sure that in a practical sense there is more to it as well….. could be that “Too many words” is too many rules and regulations so everything is stifled and forced, things are prevented from harmonising and flowing by a cluster of rules and red tape.
So instead of too many rules which make life complex and clustered we look to the simplicity of Dao to less cluttered rules enough to do the job but not too many so there is no room for breathing.
1
Even when the last star
has imploded
and only blackness remains,
the Tao will be Tao:
emptiness in emptiness,
silence in silence,
nowhere,
yet everywhere;
beyond existence,
yet the essence of life.Jos Slabbert ~ Tao is TaoPerhaps we can look to the processes of Dao and witness the harmonic/dynamic balance and find some inspiration to apply to our lives in all situations we find ourselves in? On that note i'd like to pass on my continued thoughts and meditations to those in Burma and those seriously effected by the typhoon hitting parts of Asia currently, Vietnam i know was hit badly last night UK time.
WIDGETIZE