TAO

[Michael Grove]

  YESTERDAY is history - TOMORROW is a mystery -

  TODAY is a gift - that's why they call IT the PRESENT 

 

  "Stand before IT and there IS NO BEGINNING

  Follow IT and there IS NO END

  Stay with the ancient TAO

  Move with the PRESENT

 

  Knowing ignorance is strength

  Ignoring knowledge is sickness"

                                                        Lao Tse

 

 

TAO - meaning "The Way" - refers to a power

that envelops, surrounds and flows through all

things, both living and sentient.

 

It regulates natural processes and nourishes

balance in the Universe. But, in the words of

the Sage - it's "Name is Formless".

 

This means that any exploration of it starts

from a position of ignorance, and any journey

we undertake to reach an understanding of it

is of necessity entirely personal.

 

NO two paths will be identical.

 

 

 

ZEN is TAO and NOT ZEN without TAO

ZEN is BUDDHA and NOT ZEN without BUDDHA

TAO & BUDDHA are independent & of ZEN 

ZEN is dependent on TAO & BUDDHA as ONE

 

"Just as it is impossible to grasp the TAO intellectually or through some logical

procedure, the principles of Taijiquan can only ultimately be experienced intuitively.

There is a kind of "a-ha" experience when the body responds to the eternal flow.

However much one practices, without that inner knowing there is no awareness of the

symbolic meaning of the movements. This shift in consciousness allows most of the

blocks to the awareness of more esoteric matters to be removed. As a result, we become

reconnected to and original insight, the Tao, which allows us to gain access to, and IS

the working and the wonder of, the cosmos." - Pamela Ball "The Essence of Tao"

First posted by Michael Grove @zaadz on September 23, 2006 at 12:00

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[Michael Grove]

No leaps, no high kicks, no running. The feet always firmly on the ground ... movements intrinsically beautiful and at the same time charged with symbolic meaning. Thought taking shape in ritual and stylised gesture. The body transformed into a hieroglyph, a succession of hieroglyphs, of attitudes modulating from significance to significance, like a poem or a piece of music. Movements of the muscles representing movements of the consciousness ... It's meditation in action; the metaphysics of the Mahayana expressed not in words, but through symbolic movements and gestures

                                                                                                        - Aldous Huxley "Island"

 

[Michael Grove]

It's difficult to see a hand unless there is a background. Where there is no background to the

hand the hand itself would vanish. NOTHING is more fertile than EMPTINESS. You always have

to have a background to see a figure you just can't do without it. We always know what we mean

by contrast, we know what we mean by white in comparison with black. They must come into

being together and because of  the inseparability of these opposites they always go

together - this as it were hints to some kind of UNITY which underlies them. You don't have

first something then nothing or first nothing then something. THIS UNITY is called TAO. SPACE

and FORM in that sense go together as the fundamental things we are dealing with in this

universe - that which is VOID is precisely FORM and that which is FORM is precisely VOID.

Alan Watts on NOTHINGNESS

[Michael Grove]

One of the deepest mysteries of the world  IS the interconnected nature [Earth from Space]

of Materiality and Potentiality. Rain falls in the desert (around Phoenix where we live) and

overnight the ground changes from brown to green. Pretty soon wild-flowers are everywhere.

Again, no rain for a few months, and all the vegetation withers away, but we know that the

seeds are still there – waiting for the next cycle to start up. 

The potential of the ‘seed’, is given prominence as the eye of the Tao. Yet, for humans

and for most animals, the seed that represents our next generation are but cells in our

body that are invisible to the naked eye. Hence, as we diagram the Tao in this dual oscillation

model, the eye can be thought of as vanishingly small, and invisible on the surface. 
                                                                                                

                                                                                                           Debashis Chowdhury

[Michael Grove]

 

SCIENTIFIC METHOD - The TAOIST IDEA of KNOWLEDGE - IDEAS that changed the WORLD

For science to thrive, a method was necessary for observing nature systematically, ordering the

information, and testing the resulting hypotheses. Habits of observation and experiment probably

developed from magical and divinatory practices of early Taoism. The only Taoist word ever used

for a temple means "watch-tower" - a platform from which to observe the natural world and

launch naturalistic explanations of its phenomena.

Taoism has, in Confucian eyes, a reputation for magical mumbo-jumbo, but Taoists can transcend

magic by means of their doctrine of NATURE - to the one who would control her - is like any other

beast to be tamed or foe to be dominated - she must be known first. Tao has a mystical image in the West, but is rooted in commonplace observations - water, for instance, reflects the world, permeates every substance, yields, embraces, changes shape at a touch, and yet erodes the hardest rock. Thus it becomes the symbol of an all-shaping , all-encompassing, all-pervading Tao. In the Taoist yin-yang image of a circle halved by a serpentine line, the cosmos is depicted as two waves mingling. 

Part of the result is that Taoism encourages the rudiments of scientific practice: observation, description, classification, and experiment. The k’ao-cheng tradition, the scientific imperative that arose from some fundamental ethical and religious assumptions, is implicit in some early Taoist writings. Grand theory is discouraged as an intrusion of reason into the workings of wisdom, which can be attained ONLY through the accumulation of knowledge. Chinese science has always been weak on theory, strong on technology. It is probably no coincidence that the modern tradition of experimental science in the West began in the 13th century at a time of greatly multiplied contacts across Eurasia, when numerous Chinese IDEAS and INVENTIONS were reaching Europe across the steppeland and silk routes, via the Muslim world.

 

                                                                                            Felipe Fernandez-Armesto