Quick Wisdom

You cannot be yourself until you learn what it is to be one with others...


My morning thought for those in teen age years seeking their own path today...


Namaste

Have Been Out for a few days

I am holding space for retreat and I have also been in the middle of some important national health care initiatives. I will be back later this weekend...

So swirls life... just have to tumble to what comes, even occasionally skipping poetry and musing.

Skipping is skipping, to always be enjoyed as such, even if it is a busy skipping.

:)

Namaste!

Site Updates

IE 8 is out and of course I have to fix some of the CSS on the main Personal Tao site.

Clean CSS in IE is an exercise of Zen patience... I think it's a computing crime to have to put conditional based CSS code in your browser... Chrome and Firefox are both awesome however.

If anyone finds anything not right or strange layout issues on my site please leave me some feedback so I can fix it. Also please look at the color layout and let me know if it looks acceptable. I redid the orange color to be a bit more mellow and played with the color scheme a tad. The problem is different monitors display colors with variations so I appreciate feedback. While it looks nice on my screens I know from experience colors don't always translate well.


Thanks!

Namaste

The Care Free Weight of Being.

In Taoism we teach not to limit oneself to measurement or definitions.... to live in potential.  

Some days that isn't easy, when waking up .. feeling your body ache, comparing yourself between the moment and yesterday. Soreness and memory showing us our change...A hangover not from alcohol but of relationship...

I woke up today sore, tired and a bit in a fog of funk. I know many ways to dispel such feelings. But this morning, I was in no rush to stoke my bodies energy with Qi-Gong, nor jump into the clear pools of the river or some other "cure" of being...

Some days I let the weight of "now" countless years pushing from the past. So much time has passed...so many connections of life swirl in memories of mind and aches of body.

IN Taoism we often live what others would consider a carefree lifestyle... but that is only how others see our lifestyle of release... It seems carefree. It isn't... It is of kindness and respect, since to truly release is also to acknowledge one's essence. To embrace those connections , greet the past and open the future... We might live now... but we are also human. Truly human


Which means at times, we pay homage to the aches of the soul. Later today I will be eternally young again only becuase I took the time to respect these connections. Later to release pains fluttering like prayer flags that acknowledge we are alive becuase we respect our connections to life itself.

Namaste

Student Questions: Reading About The Tao

Here is today's student conversation about learning Tao  

I did take out a copy of the Tao Te Ching from the library and I've been reading through it slowly. Actually, a question just came to me... I don't feel that reading and thinking about the Tao is really getting me any closer to where I want to be. I feel like I'm just adding more thoughts and words and labels when I should really be freeing myself from them.

Firstly: The Tao Te Ching is poetry. Not to be read as a book. But glanced at when whim strikes you.

If you would burn a holy book in front of most people of most religions: they would fight you .. to save the word...

If you would burn the Tao Te Ching in front of a senior Practitioner of Taoism they would just turn around and leave you to your actions... In fact they might at the right times help burn the book. Since life is werd... not the word being werd. But when you say word right, and you hear it and live it.. then you can capture werd.

That's Tao...

When the cultural revolution happened in China in the 1960's... and the red guard came to the Taoist monks demanding their "holy books" to get burned. The Taoists just gave the books and shrugged... since the lessons were not in the books, but in the heart.

It's how you live life that defines Tao, not all will make sense at once, nor will it all be seemingly relevant, but books such as the Tao Te Ching are there to help open up new angles to look at life. But they cannot truly define you and if you define yourself to the book, you then limit yourself..

We change, our life shifts and meaning traces with our life... The point being.. when you read something, trying to get at an absolute truth, to define something absolutely... well you end up trapping oneself in those walls of definition...

People get trapped in definitions, words, labels which is perfect since that is what you now ask about...Taoism is about the freedom to live as your heart beats...

Secondly and more importantly to this question.

We live in cycles

• At times we need to intake like a breath: ideas and concepts...
  
  These are the times you read such books like the Tao Te Ching

• At times we exhale, to live and act...
  
  These are the times to jump and live fully. To define the world not to definition but to your actions, trial and error, play and testing what the world is from your own hearts perspective

Your question tells me that you are currently exhaling into your life: so put the book down, jump into a smile and play.

Look at your life and look to see if you are inhaling of your nature or exhaling out your being...

Then dance accordingly.

Intaking and Releasing into one's life.

This is the Tide of the Tao

Namaste

Daily Surprise

I love being surprised with an sharp intake of breath by something unexpected.  

This morning I surfed into this spot.  



The Temppeliaukio Church is a neat work of engineering and spirit mixed together!

No need to say words, it just made me smile seeing something unexpected and yet so beautiful in my morning.



Namaste