Wednesday morning is filled with light. Struggling with my laptop, seeming to have a mind of its own, (it doesn’t) multiple apps attempted to run, and the machine locked up. Shutting it down, sure enough, upon reboot the chaos of the prior session disappeared. Thus keyboard and screen behave in concert, and I view…
Desire. In a day or so I have an appointment to discuss “touch” with a group of friends. This is designated our “amateur philosopher group” because our objective is enjoyment of good company. What is more agreeable, — than to listen carefully to ourselves, and to others wrestle with words to communicate thoughts rising…
Perhaps writing nothing at all is best today. A chill invests the air, after a few days of nearly summer-like warmth. This is April’s reversal, the point of the line in Eliot’s poem The Wasteland. “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring…
Lao-tsu said, “He knows his masculine force but prevails in his feminine receptivity, becoming the channel into which all streams flow. He knows his purity but stays at the low level, becoming the valley of the world. Men all prefer to be first; he alone prefers to be last, saying that he will accept…
Therefore Shen Dao cast aside his learningand all concern for himself,Acting only when it was necessary,and strove to be disinterested and purein his relationship with others. He said that the best knowledge is to have no knowledgeand that a little knowledge could be dangerous. Regarding himself as unqualified,he took on no projects, and laughed…
What better overview, critique of the fragmentation, of the lassitude of America than Zhuangzi’s commentary upon ancient iron-age China, and a near identical insight from Friedrich Nietzsche? Disorder prevails in the world –the sages and worthy men no longer bring forth light. The tao and its virtue are no longer regarded as universal. People…
Mid April. At present it is seventy degrees out-of-doors. Much is green as rain has been ample. The morning held for me a session of shoveling mulch into the wheel barrow, to dispose each load in beds containing shrubs and emerging green plants. The task is not as simple as you’d believe. The mulch…
GOVERNMENT is founded on the formulations of laws which define various functions in society, specify social responsibility and ensure the fair investigations of all evidence before a decision is reached. The hundred offices are organized; commerce follows its regular course; the essential needs of clothing and food are prepared for; the cattle are fed…
Regarding BENEVOLENCE as the source of kindness, RIGHTEOUSNESS as the source of the distinction between right and wrong, PROPRIETY as the rule of conduct, MUSIC as the pattern of harmony, and merging SYMPATHY with FAIRNESS —these are the characteristics of the superior man/woman. Zhuangzi trans. by Hyun Höchsmann and Yang Guorong, Book 33 Under…
Not to be severedfrom his/her primal sourceis the characteristic of the heavenly man/woman;not to be severed from his/her true nature,that of the spirit-like man/woman;not to be severed from the truth,that of the perfect man/woman. To regard heaven as the primal source,virtue as the root and the taoas the gate,and recognizing the implications of changeand…
