Yoga

Hello All,

My apologies for neglecting my blogging duties. I guess I have been in a more contemplative mood lately and have not really felt the inspiration to consolidate my thoughts into solid verbiage. To update you on what I have been up to:

I am starting a yoga course today at Indigo Yoga on the drive. It is a series of 10 classes in Satyananda Yoga which is a form of yoga that incorporates pranayama (breath control) with postures and various meditation techniques. It is the form of yoga that is taught by the Bihar School of Yoga where I may study when I go to India. I will also be starting a course in Sanskrit, meditation and chanting in April. It is a series of 8 classes taught by Padma.
I am also continuing to practice at Bikrams where I do power yoga 3-4 times per week.

In truth, I am trying to practice yoga every minute of every day. I have noticed in watching my mental processes (thoughts and feelings) that probably about 99% of the things going on in my head are just useless noise and chatter. I am not in control of my own thoughts at all. They rise and fall and I seem to impulsively latch onto them, letting them pull me into chaos and confusion instead of just letting them go.

In his definitive treatise on yoga, the great sage Patanjali wrote quite simply: "The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga". I have come to realise that this control of the minds subtle processes is the key to the kingdom. Everything else is really of secondary importance. I realise that I am not interested in pursuing any of the standard life goals until I have learned to master my mind. I will leave you with an article that summarizes some of the things I have been thinking about lately. It was written by the Guru of the swami who developed Satyananda Yoga.

Namaste glorious ones

Life’s Glorious Objective

From the teachings of Swami Sivananda Saraswati

Have you ever understood the significance and the glory of human life? Have you ever realized what a precious gift and divine inheritance this human birth is? Do you not feel that life is meant for the fulfilment of a most sublime purpose? Truly, it is meant for the attainment of a lofty goal – divine perfection and perennial peace and happiness.

You all know quite well that life is not merely the process of breathing, eating, digesting, thinking, feeling, knowing, willing and so on. Life is not meant entirely for all these, only to die at the end without achieving anything really worthwhile.

You truly live your life well when you strive to attain balance of mind and the highest spiritual realization as well as serving a great cause for the welfare of humanity. Toast, butter and jam, fashionable clothing, a bungalow and a motor car, attending cocktail parties – all these do not really constitute life. These are not the end-all of the life of man who was supposed to have been made in the image of God.

Egoism, worldly desire and sensuality all spring from deep delusion. Can material comforts alone give you real happiness? Can creature comforts alone elevate the soul? Can gross physical welfare alone confer upon you solace, courage, peace and joy?

In the dizzy whirlpool of fleeting sensual pleasures and ceaselessly seething desires, do not forget the real goal of life. There is no greater blunder than to mistake the unreal for the real, the transitory for the permanent, and to forget the most important duty in life – Self-realization. What greater folly, what greater tragedy is there than when a person is satisfied by just functioning on the instinctive, emotionally unsettled and pseudo-intellectual level?

You were helpless when you were a baby. You are helpless when disease overtakes you and when you are seriously ill. You are helpless when powerful calamities like floods, earthquakes and cyclones strike you down. You are helpless and miserable when you become old and senile. Why then are you so proud and egotistical?

Rise above your delusions and attain the highest good through discrimination and dispassion, self-analysis and enquiry into your real spiritual nature. Only then will you transcend your body and mind and attain God. Only then will you be free and happy.

The way to peace and enlightenment is purity and goodness. Adhere to truth and swerve not from the basic principles of goodness. Cultivate the noble qualities of the heart with diligence and care. Be sincere. Without sincerity everything is tinsel. Actively practise all the positive qualities in earnest.

Live your life truthfully with courage, conviction and common sense. Shooting a tiger from the back of an elephant or bombing a city are not acts of real heroism and courage. Controlling the mind and senses, and overcoming anger, passion and egoism by attaining self-mastery constitute real heroism.

Assert your real divine nature to yourself. Do not identify with this perishable body. Do not cultivate the habit of clinging to the glittering names and forms. Do not think too much of your intelligence. Be not obsessed with the feeling: “I am an Englishman, I am an American, I am an Indian; I am black, I am white; I am superior; I am inferior; I know everything, he knows nothing; I have done this, I have done that; I am a Christian, I am a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan, I am a Jain, I am a Parsi.”

All such obsessions are the worst type of ignorance. Hear the great truths proclaimed by the sages of real wisdom. Your real nature is the ever free and ever blissful immortal spirit. Where then are your body-mind-bound ego, the little intellect, the little learning, the skin deep beauty?

Life is meant for the practice of yoga. Yoga is life divine. Purify your heart through selfless service and generosity. Feel God’s presence everywhere. See Him alone in all beings and things. Give up all distinctions and differences born of prejudice. Feel that you are one with all. Love all. Cooperate with all in a spirit of brotherhood and kindle the light of compassion in your heart. Be not exclusive and selfish. Cast aside all doubts, fears and misgivings. Do not hesitate.

Life is short. Time is fleeting. You have to be practical. Have absolute faith and trust in God. Never forget your true purpose in life. Realize your hidden real nature. Do not stop till the goal is reached. Do not stop till you attain the wisdom of the Self, and till it becomes a practical expression in every moment of your life.

Overcome the negative qualities and return to your sweet original home, the abode of eternal peace and bliss. Through diligent struggle with the lower nature, the lower self, and a life of practical goodness which is yoga, attain spiritual perfection in this very life. To whatever nation, race, class of society you belong, your great duty and the most important work is attainment of the highest spiritual perfection.

Links:

Bihar School of Yoga and related institutions http://yogavision.net/home.htm

Indigo Yoga and Holistic Healing (Vancouver) http://indigoyogahealing.com/

Divine Life Society (India) http://sivanandaonline.org/html/default.asp

Sing

Take this love, feel this touch.
Strong and deep, flowing with bliss.
Wild and free
Nothing left to do but sing.
Why should I worry - I can sing.
I can sing.
No pain or fear can stop me from singing.

Oh my friends, sing.
When it gets too damn hard, just sing.
Have no fear, don't give up. Sing!
When it gets too good - Sing.
When it falls apart - Sing.
When it comes together - Sing.
Cry and sing.
Sing and cry.
Living sing
Dying sing
Listening sing
Singing sing.

-Krishna Das

The Big Picture

"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it." -- David Orr
(Thanks to Christine for this quote)

The Beautiful and the Sublime in Michelangelo's "David"

“Whence this creation has arisen - perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not – the one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows – or perhaps he does not know.”
- Rg Veda

Why do certain works of art resonate with us and impact us so profoundly? How is it that a series of musical notes or shapes carved out of simple stone can inspire and lift us to a completely different state of being? The transcendental and transformational power of art is the basis for the idea of “artistic genius”. Plato asserted that great art was the product of divine inspiration, of a certain madness that took hold of the artist when the divine creative spirit entered his being, causing him to create in an exalted frenzy that could not be explained or understood rationally. This concept of artistic genius was revived during the Renaissance when artists began to be viewed as more than simply hired craftsmen.

The concept of the divinely inspired artistic genius found it’s archetype in the artist Michelangelo. Giorgio Vasari, in a biography written during Michelangelo’s lifetime, described him as the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance. Indeed, in his lifetime, Michelangelo was often called Il Divino (“the divine one”). His influence on the art of his time, as well as that on future generations, can hardly be overstated. His paintings include the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, considered by many art historians to be the high water mark of Renaissance painting. As an architect, he designed the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter and the Campidoglio, a public square atop the Capitoline hill in Rome. But for all his triumphs as a painter and architect, it was in sculpture that Michelangelo showed his true genius. This genius was never more evident than in his masterpiece, David. With David, Michelangelo demonstrated the rare ability to combine elements of both the beautiful and the sublime in such a way as to inspire and transport the viewer intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually to a higher plane of existence.

The 18^th century philosopher Edmund Burke proposed that great art relies on the beautiful and the sublime for its effect. The beautiful is that which is well-formed and pleasing to the senses. The sublime is the quality of transcendent greatness beyond the capacity of reason to understand, often inspiring terror and awe. Truly great art must contain both of these elements because if a piece is lacking in beauty it will not have the necessary aesthetic qualities to attract our interest. But if a piece is lacking in awesomeness, it will not inspire the powerful emotional response necessary for it to resonate with us. The sublime also serves the function of momentarily suspending the viewer’s rational thought, allowing one to truly “experience” the piece.

Michelangelo’s David, with its idealized yet strikingly realistic depiction of youth, strength, and masculinity, is beauty personified. David stands relaxed yet alert. He stares to his left at Goliath, his brow furrowed, his gaze resolute. Michelangelo has chosen to depict David at the moment between his conscious decision to fight Goliath and his conscious action. While David definitely exudes strength and masculinity, he is also languid and sensual. David is a man of action as evidenced by the sling and stone in his hands, yet he is also a man of thought and of sensuality. He is the ultimate man - a man who combines intelligence, strength, and sensuality with resolute and virtuous action. In a sense, David can be seen as a philosophical treatise on beauty and virtue. With David, Michelangelo is not saying “here is a virtuous and beautiful man”. He is saying, “This is virtue. This is beauty”. David is a humanist tour-de-force. It asserts that man is indeed, the measure of all things. Man is the supreme expression of beauty. He is the pinnacle of creation. To really get this message across, Michelangelo employs elements of the sublime.

Michelangelo relies on a number of devices to invoke the sublime in this sculpture. First, the monumental size of the statue, being over four meters high, amplifies the grandeur of the statue (could you imagine this statue being four feet high?!). Second is the exquisite realism that Michelangelo managed to coax out of the raw marble. The undercutting around the hair, the veins on the hands, the detailed musculature, and the sense of movement invoked by the form and stance, combine to create a statue that seems to have paused for only a second and may move again at any time. Third are the complex and multi-faceted intellectual elements suggested by the sculpture. The sculpture does not lead the viewer to any unified set of ideals or any specific message. It is both active and passive, stern and sensual, realistic yet idealized. Every viewing, it seems, reveals something different in the sculpture.

David exists just beyond the grasp of our conceptual mind. It is both stunningly beautiful and sublimely awesome. Michelangelo intended this because he wanted to assert that true beauty is a sublime thing that is impossible to really describe or depict. As the Rg Veda says: who knows from whence it came? Who knows its nature? Who knows its limits? Beauty is intellectual and it is physical, it is emotional and it is sensual. It is sometimes delightful and sometimes terrible. It has both an active and a passive nature. Beauty is a force that allows us to transcend our mundane reality. It is the supreme source of inspiration, of love, of passion, and of madness. It transcends conceptual thought so we will never be able to aptly describe it – we have to feel it to know it. Beauty has to be felt. Michelangelo understood this, so instead of simply conceptualizing beauty, he shows us beauty. It is this ability to transcend the realm of the mundane and inspire us to experience the higher reality of beauty that is the true genius of Michelangelo’s David.

Tao Te Ching: intro and verse one

The Tao Te Ching is the central text of the Taoist school of thought. It is a collection of 81 short verses that seeks to describe the nature of ultimate reality or "Tao". The title is roughly translated as "The Virtue (Te) and Power (Ching) of the Way (Tao). It's verses are enigmatic and mysterious, seeming to exist just beyond the level of our understanding. Reading the Tao Te Ching can be both maddeningly frustrating and absolutely sublime - often at the same time. It is relatively short: you could read it all in less than an hour. And yet it can never ultimately be read in it's entirety because every time you read it, it has something new to say.

The Tao Te Ching is not so much a philosophical treatise as it is an open invitation to experience life more deeply - to find Tao in ourselves, to realize that Tao is in everything and IS everything.

The Tao Te Ching was written by the Sage Lao Tsu (lit. "Old Master") in China around 2500 years ago . The philosopher Karl Jaspers dubbed this era in humsn history "the Axial Age" to denote the massive revolution in human consciousness that occured around this time everywhere on Earth. In China there was Lao Tsu and Confucius. in India the Buddha broke the cycle of life and death, gaining enlightenment while Hindu philosophers started talking about an ultimate reality called Brahma, developing an extensive array of esoteric practices known as yoga to unify the self with this ultimate reality. In Israel the prophets railed against the inequalities and debauchery of their kings and elders while in Greece, philosophical rationalism and humanism were born. While the approach was different in these various places, the underlying principle was the same: There is an ultimate reality that can be understood and experienced by all without the need for kings or priests to spoon feed it to us. I think we are experiencing in our own time a second and even more pivotal Axial Age, but that is a topic for another post.

The legend is that Lao Tsu was the keeper of the imperial archives at the ancient Chinese capital of Loyang. His great wisdom attracted many followers but Lao Tsu refused to set his teachings down in writing, fearing they would solidify into hollow dogma. In his life and teachings he stressed simplicity as the key to truth and freedom and believed that a person should be guided solely by intuition and conscience. Seeing the imminent decay of the society he lived in, he resolved to ride away alone into the desert. But at a mountain pass he was stopped by a gatekeeper named Yin Hsi, who knew of his reputation for wisdom and who begged him to set down in writing the essence of his teaching. Lao Tsu consented, writing the 81 verses out of a deep compassion for all humanity, before resuming his journey, disappearing forever into the desert. Thus the Tao Te Ching was born.

The Tao Te Ching never fails to resonate deeply in the core of my being. If I had to have one desert island book, this would be it. I thought it would be great to do regular postings on the Tao Te Ching, going through the verses and maybe writing a short commentary on them. If any of the verses resonates with you, please leave your comments as I always love to hear echos back - Hey I started this Blog to generate dialogue not just to have a soapbox to stand on so your comments are very much welcome

For the text I'll be using the excellent 1972 translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. In the future I may also use some of my own translations as I want to start learning the basic Chinese characters so I can make my own translations of the text.

Tao Te Ching

Verse One

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.*
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

* i.e. : the phenomenal world

Commentary: I love how Lao Tsu qualifies his teachings right away in the first verse: "I really can't tell you what it's all about because the Tao is ultimate and eternal, and words are finite, so this whole thing isn't "it" - it's just a sign post man. YOU have to figure it out, YOU need to encounter it by yourself in your own way because I can only lead you into the darkness, up to the gate man. And that's all I'm promising to do. Don't think that you can just flip through my book and have me figure it all out for you. It doesn't work that way. And anyone who promises to do that for you is bullshitting you man. Listen, if you want easy answers, go watch Dr. Phil because I'm telling you right now that I not giving you that. I'm inviting you down into the rabbit hole, into the darkness, up to the gate of all mystery dude. What you do from there is up to you. If you're cool with that then read on and let's see just how far down the rabbit hole goes".

Ah Lao Tsu, You magnificent bastard! Thanks for giving it to me straight at the beginning. I think I'm ready to fall into the abyss, to slip quietly through the gate to the other side. . .

Stay tuned for verse two

What It Is

"The Way that can be spoken of is not the Ultimate Way"
- Tao Te Ching

"It is like a finger pointing to the moon: if you concentrate on the finger, you'll miss all that heavenly glory"
- Bruce Lee (Enter the Dragon)

"WHAT IT IS, BROTHER! WHAT IT IS!!"
-Man on the street, New Westminster B.C., circa. 2006

Lately, I have been struck with the futility of trying to express in words the things that have been happening in my life. If I tried to explain these things It would probably end up sounding like gibberish and I would likely eventually be shunned by my peers or worse, locked up as a dangerous menace to sober society. And as a wiser man than me once said, "talk is cheap".So I have been content to keep my musings to myself or at the most, share them only with an inner circle of lovely freaks and weirdos (you know who you are). However, a series of unusual events occurred yesterday that I feel deserves to be thrown out there.

Yesterday I woke up early, intent on taking a walk along the Point Grey foreshore by UBC. This is my favorite walk in the city, encompassing a beautiful stroll/hike along the ocean between Spanish Banks and Wreck Beach an then back to Spanish Banks via the forested trails of Pacific Spirit Regional Park. On the way there however, the idea popped into my head to go instead, up to Squamish and climb the Chief. This sounded like a great idea so I proceeded across the Second Narrows bridge and up into the forested and fog shrouded mountains of the North Shore.

As I was driving on the upper levels highway around Cap road, I suddenly got a very strong feeling that said quietly yet very firmly, "SLOW DOWN". I looked at my speedometer and saw I was only going 90. "Slow down?", I thought. I began to feel more and more that, yes, I should slow down so I edged it down to about 80 and kept driving. I was a little bit confused about where this thought had come from. I wasn't speeding and the highway had only light traffic. A feeling began to rise up in me that said "you are in danger, be careful". It was a very sobering feeling. It was very strange because I drive a truck for work and am usually very comfortable on the road. One minute I was driving along, playing with the stereo and day dreaming and now I was fully alert, fully aware of everything around me. It was at this point that I stopped thinking and I didn't really start again until later that evening.

At around 9:30 I passed Horseshoe Bay and Started up the Sea to Sky highway. As I started rounding the corners and curves of the mountain highway, the sober, hyper-aware feeling steadily got stronger. About five or ten minutes past Horseshoe Bay I came around a corner and slammed on my brakes as I watched the last few rocks of a massive landslide fly across the highway. Ahead of me was a mass of steaming, dusty earth, trees, boulders and shattered rocks. The movement of this pile of debris, with parts of it still heaving and settling, indicated that it must have JUST happened. I sat there in my car and looked at it without thinking anything. A smell began creeping into my car, a strong, deep, and dark smell of ancient soil and pulverized rock. It seems to me that I had never really smelled the earth until that moment. looking at the landslide and seeing massive trees sticking out of the pile like incense sticks and the dump truck-sized boulder in the middle of the road, I decided that the road was most definitely closed so I pulled a u-turn and drove back towards Vancouver as the drivers of the other cars pulled over and got out to get a better look.

I drove back to Vancouver, deciding to do the original walk around Point Grey. On the way, my Dad phoned me and I related the story of the landslide and the intuition to slow down without really thinking about what had happened. I parked my car at Spanish Banks, suited up in my rain gear and started my walk. On the way I passed a film set with a huge mock-up of a plane crash with a real jetliner lying in shattered, burnt-out pieces on the beach. For some reason I found it deliciously amusing and I couldn't stop laughing to myself all the way down the beach. I passed many people along Spanish Banks variously sharing smiles and worried glances with them depending on their temperament.

Soon I reached the end of Spanish Banks where the road turns uphill and the trail ends leaving only a wild shoreline for me to walk. The day was overcast with a steady drizzle that turned occasionally into a proper rain then back to drizzle again. It seemed to me though to be exceptionally bright out. As I walked the lonely and deserted stretches of Acadia and Tower beaches I began to notice that it seemed to be getting brighter although the light seemed to be coming as much from the ground as from the sky. The last person I saw was at the beginning of Acadia beach and for the next hour or so I walked the shore alone. The glow from the ground now became perceptible as coming from the individual stones, from the grains of sand , from the driftwood and the trees. I stopped near the first WWII artillery tower at a place where the shore was built up with tons of smooth river rock. The rocks at my feet were shimmering and quivering with excitement. They were glowing, beckoning to me, asking me to listen to them. I knelt down and touched them, noticing as I did that my hand seemed to be glowing too. I stayed there for some time hearing the endless ocean and looking at the rocks. I wanted to stay there forever but since I didn't yet know how to listen to the rocks, I stood up and continued my walk.

Soon I came to Wreck Beach proper. In the summer, Wreck resembles a Grateful Dead or Phish concert with hippies, freaks, starving students, dropouts and assorted profiteers jostling for space amid the sounds of guitars, hand drums and the smell of some of the finest cannabis to be had anywhere on Earth. But today on a rainy February morning the only company I had was a leaderless and dispirited flock of seagulls and the only sounds were the wash of the ocean and the occasional rumble of a distant airplane. I walked along the beach slowly, engrossed in the elusive and constantly shifting division between the ocean and the land . When I reached the end of the beach where the jagged boulders of the breakwater jut out into the ocean I sat down to meditate.

I gazed in silent and thoughtless abandon at the soft, smooth sand, unencumbered by the memory of footprints. The ocean lapped up onto the sand in front of me and my mind stood still. At that moment I realized that the light that I saw radiating from everything was really coming from me but at the same time it was coming from everything else too. I am not separate from the world and from creation in the standard subject/object division - none of us are. The divisions between everything are illusions - there is no division - only unity. Unity is the supreme principle. I did not think any of this at the time, I simply sat and experienced something which I am now choosing to call "Cosmic Unity". After an indeterminable period of time, I got up and walked (floated?) up the Wreck Beach stairs and continued my Walk through the forest and back to Spanish Banks. I spent the rest of the afternoon fluttering around Banyen Books, talking to people, reading books and laughing at various things. The bliss of Unity faded as the afternoon wore on but I didn't really feel the need the cling to it or recreate it. Even now though, a day later, I still feel some of what I felt yesterday . . . .yesterday? Huh, that's funny. I just got the strangest feeling that it all happened a very long time ago . . . .strange. . . . .

I don't really know what it all means and I don't really care. When I first moved to New West last summer I encountered a local man walking down the street who was convulsing with excitement and yelling "WHAT IT IS BROTHER! WHAT IT IS!". It seemed that in his crack induced euphoria he had come into contact with the basic "is-ness" of the universe. You see, we can talk about things, tell stories about things, try to explain things but none of our analyzing or interpreting changes what "it" is. In essence: it is what it is and it can never be anything other.

Yesterday was what it was, it wasn't what I have written here and it isn't my interpretation of it now. I think too that yesterday was really nothing special or supernatural or fantastic. Rather it was just a brief glimpse into "What it is".

I feel that I am just at the beginning of a strange and wonderful journey. For all my life I seem to have been on a quest to acquire. Acquire knowledge, peace, material things. But my experience yesterday confirms an intuition that has been creeping up on me for awhile now: that my Way in life lies in renouncing, in shedding ideas, in abandoning beliefs, in discarding "things".

I'm sure by now you've saved this page in order to bolster my insanity plea at some inevitable future trial. . .ha ha. But seriously, I'm impressed that you made it this far. Like I said, I don't know what this all "means" but one thing that I am sure of is that it is a sweet and beautiful thing to be alive.


We are Stardust
We are Golden
We are Billion year old Carbon

And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the Garden

-Joni Mitchell (Woodstock)


And We all Shine on
Like the Moon and the Stars
And the Sun
Everyone

-John Lennon

Stillness

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal once said that the sole cause of human suffering is that we don't know how to sit quietly in our rooms. At first I thought that this quote was intended as a hyperbole but on further reflection, I have come to think that Pascal was bang on.

We humans seem to have a neurotic tendency to view our world from the paradigm of scarcity. We tend to focus on what we don't have, what we haven't achieved. Perhaps the millions of years of Darwinian struggle that resulted in the human domination of the planet has resulted in a super species that just doesn't know when enough is enough.

I have found it useful to practice stillness whenever I can. Being naturally expressive and hyperactive, I found this tremendously difficult at first. Recently, however, I have been practicing Buddhist Meditation and Hatha Yoga which have helped my mind to settle and be still more often. One of the greatest benefits of these meditative practices has been an increased awareness of my thoughts and for the motivations behind my actions.

Recently I had an epiphany where I realized that I already have everything that I will ever need. We are all perfect and complete and could never be anything but. This realization has caused me to shift from the paradigm of scarcity to one of abundance.

In life there is nothing to achieve that we have not already achieved.

Rather than doing more, achieving more, consuming more, we need to do less and enjoy more, love more, laugh more.

In this way, the true measure of success is the ability to quietly sit in a room (or on a beach or on a mountain) without having to busy ourselves with all that useless frenetic activity, confident in the quiet knowledge that we have everything that we could ever need and If we are missing anything, it will come soon enough as long as we don't chase it away by running after it. Of course, we won't be sitting in our rooms all the time or even most of the time. It is natural for us to be active but we need to have those moments of stillness to guide those moments of action. The proof of this is the absurd, headlong rush towards environmental and social collapse that humanity seems reluctant to disengage from. How could such an intelligent species such as our own engage in such futile and destructive pursuits?

We seem to have this strange notion that what we need is simply better technology, then we could solve the environmental and social disasters that are looming on the horizon. What bullshit! We already have a solution at our finger tips: stop trying so hard to fill a hole that's not there! We don't really need anymore gadgets or technologies or "time saving devices" What the hell are we saving all that time for!? How can you "save" time anyway? We gotta think about these things people. We all gotta slow the shit down man. It's not doing anybody any good the way it is now. The beauty is that it's so easy to do. We don't have to overthrow the government or force others to adopt our view point. all we need to do is walk away from the machines and sit down. Hey, tune in, turn on, and drop out is absolutely right on. Fuckin' A, man - the Silent Revolution is upon us - and, although it certainly won't be televised, it just might be blogged.

Peace


"Behold the birds of the air: for they sow not neither do they reap, nor gather food into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?"
- Jesus (Matt 6:26)



In the pursuit of learning, everyday something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, everyday something is dropped.

Less and less is done
Until non-action is achieved.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.

The world is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering
-Tao Te Ching (v. 48)