compassion, collaboration & cooperation iN transistion
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
Move with the PRESENT
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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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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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