Cleansing
Early autumn rain cleanses away smeared heat.
A grateful traveler takes in crystal skies and crisp air.
Distant mountains seem more vast and blue,
And the sound of the waterfall grows more loud.
Autumn is coming. The air becomes fresh and crisp. The fruits of
summer are being harvested; the heat of labor is beginning to cool.
There is a more relaxed feeling in the air : The fiery activity of
summer is replaced by the celebrations of autumn.
In spring, we all had to struggle to make the ascendancy of the year.
In summer, we reveled in the glory of fire and vigor. Now, we can begin
to let things relax. Just as the pumpkins are beginning to fill out,
the squash is hanging heavy and golden on the vines, and the leaves are
starting to hint of warm colors, so too can we look forward to
mellowness and quietness.
This is the time for harvest. But every planting and growing season
also leaves behind excess and inevitable waste. The dust of summer
still lingers. The stubble in the fields will have to be burned. We
must harvest fully and then clean up fully. Harvest is also the time of
cleansing and taking stock.
Personal Interpretation
Autumn is upon us. It is a time for harvest and relaxation, a time for reaping what we have sown and for reflecting on what is to come. We can quiet ourselves and take in the warm glow of a world asplash with color as we get our bearings. Excess has a way of accumulating, and this is the season for disposing of it, the time when we can at last conserve our energy. Let us adapt our way of being to the cycle of the seasons and rejoice in our proximity to nature and the wisdom it provides.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
September 14th
Breakthrough
In late summer, heaven's breath is damply hot.
It smothers the earth with dullness.
Suddenly, thick clouds gather :
A wave of polar air passes like a frigid rake.
Acorns fall like bullets,
And a new wind breaks through.
Personal Interpretation
The only constant is change. Stagnation can never last. We should take our cue from nature. The patterns of the seasons mirror what we will know in our own lives. If we can do something about our own life situations, we should. If we are powerless to change our circumstances, we must simply exercise patience and remain vigilant. An opportunity for change will present itself eventually. It is inevitable. To live in concert with Tao is to know when to act and when to wait for the right opportunity to act. Timing is everything.
In late summer, heaven's breath is damply hot.
It smothers the earth with dullness.
Suddenly, thick clouds gather :
A wave of polar air passes like a frigid rake.
Acorns fall like bullets,
And a new wind breaks through.
When the air is hot and humid, there is a feeling of dullness and stagnation. Everyone is oppressed by lassitude. As the seasons begin changing, fresh air comes from the arctic. Clouds that have been building up begin to dispense rain, and damp air is exchanged for fresh, cool breezes. At night, the heavens are changing so quickly that lightning flashes from colliding clouds, and thunder heralds the revolving of the skies. The same is true of human life. If the heavens cannot endure stagnation for long, how can stagnation last with us? If we find ourselves blocked and frustrated in life, we must look for the inevitable outlet. Nothing is permanent, so how can our obstacles last? We need to look for the first opportunity to set things moving again.
On the other hand, sometimes stagnation comes from our own laziness or incompetence. In this case, then it is we who must show initiative and stimulate a breakthrough in dull circumstances. As soon as we see a chance, we must act. Unless we engage ourselves and events fully, we cannot expect to act sufficiently.
Personal Interpretation
The only constant is change. Stagnation can never last. We should take our cue from nature. The patterns of the seasons mirror what we will know in our own lives. If we can do something about our own life situations, we should. If we are powerless to change our circumstances, we must simply exercise patience and remain vigilant. An opportunity for change will present itself eventually. It is inevitable. To live in concert with Tao is to know when to act and when to wait for the right opportunity to act. Timing is everything.
September 13th
Arbitrary
Meaning in life is arbitrary.
Why ruin the universe with rigidity?
Why do we make the choices we do? After all, we do not have unlimited freedom to do things. We find ourselves constrained by our gender, our race, our economic circumstances, our personalities that were shaped both by genetics and the random processes of life. Furthermore, we find that other people have their own ideas of what we should be doing, and they constrain us still further. A person born into one culture will have entirely different options that one born into another. They may both lead valuable lives, but they will most certainly differ in many respects. The meaning that they find will come from different palettes. We cannot say that one person's life is more valuable than another's.
Of all the people who have lived, have any of them been truly "better" than another? We see in their lives only the exercise of preferences, not differences of inherent meaning.
All meaning in life is arbitrary. It is not tied to god, family, or self unless we define it as such. Nothing in life gives us meaning in and of itself. It is we who assign meaning to objects and relationships. We all try to make the structure of our meaning pretty, but in the end, there is no escape from the feeling that it is all arbitrary.
It might be better not to ruin the universe with our own patterns.
Personal Interpretation
What is the meaning of life? We strive to find a satisfying answer to this question by turning to philosophy, religion, philanthropy, any any number of other things. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving of ourselves or affiliating ourselves with a particular religious denomination, or seeing the world through a particular philosophical framework, unless doing so prevents us from exploring, asking, probing into the unknown. Truly, we are the ones who give meaning to the things that come to mean something for us. Two people born into two different cultures will have different life experiences, and yet neither has had a more meaningful existence, for there is no objective way of determining what has value and what lacks it. We connect meaning to abstract concepts like god, religion, happiness. What are these things? When queried, many of us cannot answer. And yet, we a are a part of the fabric of existence. We affect our environments and our environments affect us. We will always attach meaning to particular things and people. The trick is to recognize that we are doing it.
Meaning in life is arbitrary.
Why ruin the universe with rigidity?
Why do we make the choices we do? After all, we do not have unlimited freedom to do things. We find ourselves constrained by our gender, our race, our economic circumstances, our personalities that were shaped both by genetics and the random processes of life. Furthermore, we find that other people have their own ideas of what we should be doing, and they constrain us still further. A person born into one culture will have entirely different options that one born into another. They may both lead valuable lives, but they will most certainly differ in many respects. The meaning that they find will come from different palettes. We cannot say that one person's life is more valuable than another's.
Of all the people who have lived, have any of them been truly "better" than another? We see in their lives only the exercise of preferences, not differences of inherent meaning.
All meaning in life is arbitrary. It is not tied to god, family, or self unless we define it as such. Nothing in life gives us meaning in and of itself. It is we who assign meaning to objects and relationships. We all try to make the structure of our meaning pretty, but in the end, there is no escape from the feeling that it is all arbitrary.
It might be better not to ruin the universe with our own patterns.
Personal Interpretation
What is the meaning of life? We strive to find a satisfying answer to this question by turning to philosophy, religion, philanthropy, any any number of other things. There is nothing inherently wrong with giving of ourselves or affiliating ourselves with a particular religious denomination, or seeing the world through a particular philosophical framework, unless doing so prevents us from exploring, asking, probing into the unknown. Truly, we are the ones who give meaning to the things that come to mean something for us. Two people born into two different cultures will have different life experiences, and yet neither has had a more meaningful existence, for there is no objective way of determining what has value and what lacks it. We connect meaning to abstract concepts like god, religion, happiness. What are these things? When queried, many of us cannot answer. And yet, we a are a part of the fabric of existence. We affect our environments and our environments affect us. We will always attach meaning to particular things and people. The trick is to recognize that we are doing it.
September 12th
Indefinite
Spring was a time of swaggering declarations.
Reaching autumn, one finds few absolutes.
Life is mystery and ambiguity,
Toward winter, that now seems agreeable and comfortable.
When young, one makes heroic attempts. The world will surely bend to our will, we think, and we will surely make grand contributions. Social injustice will be righted. The big questions will be answered. I once went to see a master writer. Long retired, white-haired and fragile, she nevertheless evinced a sharp and discerning mind. I was a novice writer. She had edited hundreds of great authors. I peppered her with all my anxieties and asked her all the questions that my teachers never answered. To most of my questions she would only answer, "Yes." She knew all the answers, and she knew all the exceptions, and she knew the best thing that an older person could tell a younger person was "Yes." Yes, the affirmative. Yes, as in keep exploring. Yes, as in there are no ultimate answers.
I used to push for an immediate resolution to daily problems. Now, I am not so anxious. Is science right about things, or is religion? Is there good and evil on a metaphysical level? Is there one god, or are there many gods, or no gods? A hundred answers exist for these questions. They are all known, but no one agrees. Today, I think it all very fine. Let there be a hundred answers with none of them entirely correct. The asking of the question is already enough.
Personal Interpretation
Exploration is an essential part of human nature, and the best thing we can do for someone with an inquisitive mind is to encourage the asking of questions. It is enough to ask. We need not know the answers. Some might argue that real knowledge is impossible. We must understand the truth of this assessment and yet proceed as if we could know everything. Behaving in this way paves the way for the richest possible experience of life.
Spring was a time of swaggering declarations.
Reaching autumn, one finds few absolutes.
Life is mystery and ambiguity,
Toward winter, that now seems agreeable and comfortable.
When young, one makes heroic attempts. The world will surely bend to our will, we think, and we will surely make grand contributions. Social injustice will be righted. The big questions will be answered. I once went to see a master writer. Long retired, white-haired and fragile, she nevertheless evinced a sharp and discerning mind. I was a novice writer. She had edited hundreds of great authors. I peppered her with all my anxieties and asked her all the questions that my teachers never answered. To most of my questions she would only answer, "Yes." She knew all the answers, and she knew all the exceptions, and she knew the best thing that an older person could tell a younger person was "Yes." Yes, the affirmative. Yes, as in keep exploring. Yes, as in there are no ultimate answers.
I used to push for an immediate resolution to daily problems. Now, I am not so anxious. Is science right about things, or is religion? Is there good and evil on a metaphysical level? Is there one god, or are there many gods, or no gods? A hundred answers exist for these questions. They are all known, but no one agrees. Today, I think it all very fine. Let there be a hundred answers with none of them entirely correct. The asking of the question is already enough.
Personal Interpretation
Exploration is an essential part of human nature, and the best thing we can do for someone with an inquisitive mind is to encourage the asking of questions. It is enough to ask. We need not know the answers. Some might argue that real knowledge is impossible. We must understand the truth of this assessment and yet proceed as if we could know everything. Behaving in this way paves the way for the richest possible experience of life.
Friday, September 11, 2015
September 11th
Conundrum
Which came first,
Experience or meaning?
When we were children, a favorite riddle used to be, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This conundrum was so sticky that it stayed with us even into adulthood and became a cliché indicating any difficult situation of logic. Maybe meaning in life is somewhat arbitrary. People go to work, and their work becomes part of the meaning to their lives. People marry and have a family and declare that these are the most important things to them. If they had taken different jobs, or if they had married a different person, or if they had renounced the world and had become nuns and monks, wouldn't their lives have had different meanings?
And then we have the people for whom life dictated so many of their meanings : A person with physical deformities will have a much different life than one born healthy. Someone born into a wealthy, aristocratic family will obviously have a much different outlook than a beggar's child. Someone born in Asia will look at life differently than someone born in Europe.
So which comes first, those who say that meaning comes from our definitions, or those who declare that our circumstances determine our meaning?
Personal Interpretation
To some extent, experience determines meaning and meaning determines experience. The two are interwoven in this tapestry we call life. We may accomplish certain goals and declare that they give our lives meaning because we have accomplished them, or we may seek a certain kind of meaning and find it in these things, allowing that quest to dictate the things that matter for us. Most of us engage in both behaviors at some time or other.
I would argue that meaning is something which we construct for ourselves. We simply are. What we do with our existence is up to us. We must be invested in life; it must come to mean something for us. Sometimes we can intuit what will motivate us to live the best possible lives before we experience much of the world, but that meaning morphs as we encounter the people, places, and ideas which will come to constitute our frames of reference. For many of us, it is difficult to know where to start constructing meaning. Sometimes we must simply start somewhere. The more experiences we have, the more we will come to understand who we are, what our place in the world is, and what matters most to us.
Which came first,
Experience or meaning?
When we were children, a favorite riddle used to be, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" This conundrum was so sticky that it stayed with us even into adulthood and became a cliché indicating any difficult situation of logic. Maybe meaning in life is somewhat arbitrary. People go to work, and their work becomes part of the meaning to their lives. People marry and have a family and declare that these are the most important things to them. If they had taken different jobs, or if they had married a different person, or if they had renounced the world and had become nuns and monks, wouldn't their lives have had different meanings?
And then we have the people for whom life dictated so many of their meanings : A person with physical deformities will have a much different life than one born healthy. Someone born into a wealthy, aristocratic family will obviously have a much different outlook than a beggar's child. Someone born in Asia will look at life differently than someone born in Europe.
So which comes first, those who say that meaning comes from our definitions, or those who declare that our circumstances determine our meaning?
Personal Interpretation
To some extent, experience determines meaning and meaning determines experience. The two are interwoven in this tapestry we call life. We may accomplish certain goals and declare that they give our lives meaning because we have accomplished them, or we may seek a certain kind of meaning and find it in these things, allowing that quest to dictate the things that matter for us. Most of us engage in both behaviors at some time or other.
I would argue that meaning is something which we construct for ourselves. We simply are. What we do with our existence is up to us. We must be invested in life; it must come to mean something for us. Sometimes we can intuit what will motivate us to live the best possible lives before we experience much of the world, but that meaning morphs as we encounter the people, places, and ideas which will come to constitute our frames of reference. For many of us, it is difficult to know where to start constructing meaning. Sometimes we must simply start somewhere. The more experiences we have, the more we will come to understand who we are, what our place in the world is, and what matters most to us.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Septermber 10th
Patience
This apple is like a jewel,
With every shade of red and green
And a perfect shape.
What a miraculous fruit.
The owner of an orchard came to visit me one day. He kindly remembers me every year with the best of his crop. As we shared a lunch, the talk turned to fishing. He told me that he had once had a great love of fishing, but that he now had little time for it. "I am an impatient man," he told me. I replied that I thought him very patient. After all, not everyone can plant trees and tend them until they bear good fruit. He insisted that there was something to do every moment and that his orchards needed constant attention. "This year's apples are a bit smaller," he apologized. "I could have made them bigger by thinning the trees. It takes a man an entire day to prune a tree properly, and with over 500 trees, you can imagine the difficulty and expense of the task. So I let the trees grow as they wanted, and was still able to send my crop to market." The apples were sweet, of course, and not nearly as small as he said they were.
Those who follow Tao say that all things happen in their own time. What is lazy and what is hard work? Those who follow Tao say to follow nature. That requires patience. By knowing when to let the trees grow as they wanted, the orchard owner still had a good crop.
Personal Interpretation
We should live in accordance with the rules of nature. It will give and it will take away. Sometimes it will provide us with a bountiful crop and sometimes we will struggle. This is the nature of things. We must work, but when we work with nature instead of against it, we will find that we accomplish what we need to accomplish. We should be happy with what we have, not always desiring more. Gratitude is the greatest harvest of all.
This apple is like a jewel,
With every shade of red and green
And a perfect shape.
What a miraculous fruit.
The owner of an orchard came to visit me one day. He kindly remembers me every year with the best of his crop. As we shared a lunch, the talk turned to fishing. He told me that he had once had a great love of fishing, but that he now had little time for it. "I am an impatient man," he told me. I replied that I thought him very patient. After all, not everyone can plant trees and tend them until they bear good fruit. He insisted that there was something to do every moment and that his orchards needed constant attention. "This year's apples are a bit smaller," he apologized. "I could have made them bigger by thinning the trees. It takes a man an entire day to prune a tree properly, and with over 500 trees, you can imagine the difficulty and expense of the task. So I let the trees grow as they wanted, and was still able to send my crop to market." The apples were sweet, of course, and not nearly as small as he said they were.
Those who follow Tao say that all things happen in their own time. What is lazy and what is hard work? Those who follow Tao say to follow nature. That requires patience. By knowing when to let the trees grow as they wanted, the orchard owner still had a good crop.
Personal Interpretation
We should live in accordance with the rules of nature. It will give and it will take away. Sometimes it will provide us with a bountiful crop and sometimes we will struggle. This is the nature of things. We must work, but when we work with nature instead of against it, we will find that we accomplish what we need to accomplish. We should be happy with what we have, not always desiring more. Gratitude is the greatest harvest of all.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
September 9th
Deserving
Prostrate before the altar.
Are you worthy of your deity?
Can you eliminate profanity,
And strive for constant adoration?
It is not easy to worship. Simply going to a temple once a week to have a priest intercede on your behalf is not enough. True worship is a daily act of humbling yourself before your deity and offering a pure heart and holy words. A great holy leader came to my city once. He initiated 5,000 people into a simple practice of chanting. Since that time, it has been a struggle to keep up 108 chants a night. There is no prospect of stopping, no chance of "finishing."
In the same way, all scriptures must be recited. That means daily devotion. Once you begin, you cannot stop for the rest of your life. There is no room for laziness. Your body and mouth must be clean, you must be in a good frame of mind, and you cannot have uttered or done profane things. We must be worthy of our deities.
It doesn't matter if we are "getting anything out of it." Whether there is a response is secondary. The mere act of devotion is its own reward. It brings transformation.
Personal Interpretation
Daily devotion brings transformation. Without it we stagnate. It is not enough to have someone intercede on our behalf or focus on what we stand to gain from our prayers. The act itself is what is important. It is not always a simple matter to find the time for prayer, the energy for meditation, the drive for repentance. We must constantly work to purify ourselves, must seek to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. We must look beyond our own selves as we engage in these practices. We are part of a great network of energy. Our own interests are secondary to the betterment of the world into which we had the good fortune to be born.
Prostrate before the altar.
Are you worthy of your deity?
Can you eliminate profanity,
And strive for constant adoration?
It is not easy to worship. Simply going to a temple once a week to have a priest intercede on your behalf is not enough. True worship is a daily act of humbling yourself before your deity and offering a pure heart and holy words. A great holy leader came to my city once. He initiated 5,000 people into a simple practice of chanting. Since that time, it has been a struggle to keep up 108 chants a night. There is no prospect of stopping, no chance of "finishing."
In the same way, all scriptures must be recited. That means daily devotion. Once you begin, you cannot stop for the rest of your life. There is no room for laziness. Your body and mouth must be clean, you must be in a good frame of mind, and you cannot have uttered or done profane things. We must be worthy of our deities.
It doesn't matter if we are "getting anything out of it." Whether there is a response is secondary. The mere act of devotion is its own reward. It brings transformation.
Personal Interpretation
Daily devotion brings transformation. Without it we stagnate. It is not enough to have someone intercede on our behalf or focus on what we stand to gain from our prayers. The act itself is what is important. It is not always a simple matter to find the time for prayer, the energy for meditation, the drive for repentance. We must constantly work to purify ourselves, must seek to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. We must look beyond our own selves as we engage in these practices. We are part of a great network of energy. Our own interests are secondary to the betterment of the world into which we had the good fortune to be born.
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