Twilight wisdom

Words of wisdom

nah

Instead just on my porch watching:
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Looking about now.
The sun is setting:
setting white light ablaze to fire.
On the porch, the roses curling in bloom
A half dozen different bird calls
Criss crossing dusky tones
Scents, so many scents... mixing together:
an outburst of crazy spring blooming,
wild even now as sky tones down to night.
The world never sleeps
It just shifts around.

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Anyways:

It's a crazy beautiful night right now
In the sky is this weaving long cirrus cloud
looking like a snake skeleton swimming in the twilight sky
crazy crazy beautiful. time to go walk in this twilight cross world.

no thoughts: just living now...

how are those for words of wisdom?

Dancing Under the Dark Light

A few days ago was a dark day within my personal cycle.

It's such a dance to be alive is it not? And knowing that, I use it to my advantage and I just love spinning the energy of depression back into light and poetry. I have developed a form of emotional kung-fu using emotions rather than my body as the medium of flowing motion.

I will never bury myself but rather teach myself to fly. Every day i still try :)

However, the poetry from yesterday really really sucked after I looked at it again this morning. But it did its job, it was a good workout session and it spun me back into a sunny day.

Good part is, I am able to salvage one line from the poem which is a pretty damn good thought:
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Being alive is the very definition of having possibility.


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And this one line is the secret to how my Taoist beliefs always helps me ride thru the darkest times of my depression cycles.

Peace

pinprick memories

Its been years now, in a moment to become a lifetime ago...

Your smile, that quirky cheerleader smile is still fresh in my thoughts.

Kicking around butts leading into buts leading to dusty memories

Strange as the secret spell you weaved was stronger than you guessed
How long does magic last?
Did you ever properly put your heart in the counter charm?

Why publish obscure pin prick memories now?
not as if you will ever see this

but I will

When is enough ever enough?... I guess never
but... yes... but we have to move on...
even when it does go beyond never.

We are the accumulation of every smile, every frown we have loved.
Finishing my own counter charm..
years in the weaving with smile upon smile
Until reaching the sun

Peace

Surprise is never what you expect

So the other day I asked for comments on what to scrawl on a fresh blank page.

:) and to my surprise, a few days later I find the following mystery text hidden and scrawled within the post:

Taoist
toast
Taoists
tacit
Maoist
Edit...
Revert to "taoist"

I first assumed someone with a sense of humor hacked and placed this code in the post as Taoist graffiti. After all I was asking for something to be scrawled on my page. Looking closer I noticed it used CSS tags in such a way to be invisible in Firefox so I couldn't see it. But I looked closer and realize: ah yes I used the Google bar spell checker and that its AJAX code slipped this in and didn't clean up properly after being done.

Just goes to show things are never what you think it might be on first sight, and that technology to be seemless isnt always so invisible.

Politics

Politics is billiards played with people as the balls...


I should apply Taoist thoughts to the above statement but nah, best left alone for now. If you are up to it, then please continue with your ideas on the matter.

Sayings

I have a fresh empty space to scribble in on the main site. What saying, Taoist poem, etc calls out to be scrawled here?

Spring Rain

Some have said:

The unexamined life is not worth living

Taoist teachings often say:

The act of examining life interferes with living

Neither view is an absolute: Or an example why:

If you have a splinter in your foot:

Well then you have to examine it to remove it.

If you have no splinter:

Then why bother spending time examining your foot?

It's often a human state of mind being in angst and while a Buddhist approach to detach oneself is an effective method to deal with this problem I also don't think it's an absolute answer. Part of our very humanity is driven by thinking, pondering and driving yourself crazy in circles over all the possible maybes of being alive.

I am pondering this as I just got back from a long complicated road trip, which gave me so much to think about. Now I am at work again navigating a pretty silly day job.

And in this:
I find myself thinking, well actually not thinking about it all and saying: "Wotever". Going back to what matters to me:
Supporting my family, exploring my art / writing and most importantly just standing outside and feeling the damp afternoon, feeling spring touch my skin, enjoying just being me despite the occasional splinters of Angst I step into here and there.

Realizing that the splinters of angst are only momentary bug bites best ignored and not scratched.

I feel the detachment process is not about absolute detachment, but a process of ignoring bites of angst merged with a Taoist enjoyment of experiencing fully the moment of living.

Right now I am smiling:
The rain feels so good when its slightly warm and the day is slightly cool.

I grow within a now burning expression of a smile. No matter where I go, I am home within this path of experiencing living for bad and for good.

I wonder... and that is enough for me to support my life.

As I go back to an embrace of afternoon rains touching again as the scent of moist earth. Even though it was yesterday in the experience... yet lasting in me. We live within our own eternal heaven, if we decide it is to be so.

peace

SunFlowers

Added some more artwork from Mr Christian Ethan Mosconi. :)

and melded it into the Personal Tao's Zen Garden

Tags: Zen | SunFlowers | Zen Garden | Taoism

Meandering

Just finished traveling 1600 miles into my past
To arrive in the present.

Now traveling 1150 miles to close off the present.

Only to finish the trip in a handful of days
a final 950 miles back to the starting point.

Circles, we spin in circles, moving in what we think is a straight line
from past to now to future.

(time is not a straight line, merely the way most people experience it)

We are always -> now <- here and present.
Be real... To be alive is to always be yourself.
No amount of traveling ever changes this.

The journey of a thousand miles may start with a single step...

Bah!

Going one step or a hundred light years doesn't change our nature.
The journey into ourselves starts just by opening our eyes.

peace to all fellow travelers.

Taoism 101

I have been asked several times how to find a Temple, Master or how best to learn Taoism. Here is a brief Taoism 101 course outline on how to discover Taoism

Step One:

Don't concentrate on the definition of the Tao (this will come later naturally)

Step Two:

Understand what Taoism really is. Taoism is more than just a "philosophy" or a "religion". Taoism should be understood as being:

A system of belief, attitudes and practices set towards the service and living to a person's own nature.

Step Three:

The path of understanding is simply accepting yourself.

Live life and discover who you are. Your nature is ever changes and is always the same. Don't try to resolve this contradiction instead learn acceptance of your nature.

Step Four:

Having a set of basic guidelines can be helpful. However realistically, guidelines don't determine how to live; Instead by living you will express your nature.

My guidelines are the following:

a) With care, I aid those who are extended expressions of my nature.

b) Be true to myself

c) Connect to the world as I want to be treated.

d) Connect to those outside my nature with decisive action.

e) To those unwilling to accept me for my true nature, no action is required:

Just silently let them be themselves as I remain myself.

f) I own nothing; I am merely a passing custodian of items outside of my nature.

Step Five

Discover a set of practices to aid keeping the mind, body and spirit engaged and strong.

Remember practices should support your essence with the activities fitting the needs of the moment. Which means this is a shifting balance of activities relative to your needs.

For example I practice martial arts to keep my body strong, yoga to make my body subtle, meditation to clear my mind, bike around simply to fly and lift my spirit. Poetry as lenes of examination. All these and more are my shifting practices to support my essence and in doing each, each helps me learn more about myself and the world.

Step Six

If you need a guide first start with these three books:

Tao Te Ching

The Chuang-tzu

A Personal Tao

I recommend starting with A Personal Tao, as it's specifically written with a modern perspective to help people discover their nature. Due to the nature of Taoist writings you can easily read all three at the same time and intermix the ideas.

Step Seven

Take time, relax and just explore and poke around. No plans, follow your gut feelings and trust your instincts.

Step Eight

If you really desire a person as a guide, you can find a Taoist temple, Zen Dojo or local sage to simply chat with occasionally. Taoism's deepest truths must come from the inside, but at times it’s helpful to get an outside perspective to see your own nature.

If you cannot find any of the above, then start keeping a journal and over time review it. Since we all change over time, we can with the help of a journal teach ourselves.

Step Nine

At times the process of learning is also a process of healing. Take time to heal (don’t rush and hurt yourself more in the rushing)

Step 10

There are 6.5 billon people in the world , and so 6.5 billion pathes to Taoism, every person can teach us something.

Step 11

Sometimes you need quietness; it’s ok to take a retreat to only hear yourself and not the noise of civilization at times.

Step 12

Lather, Rinse and Repeat , and then toss the instructions away to do what is right for yourself...

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I will edit and clean this list up over the next few weeks and write up a nicer one later. Comments and feedback are appreciated.

PS: only a month away from releasing a revised version (5th edition) of a personal tao... big yay.

Meandering

Next two weeks, putting some serious miles on my shoes. The best news is my electronic transfusings will be minimal, so my blog will be home to more crickets than poems for a few weeks....

but crickets are lucky so my blog will be an extra lucky songful spot then also :)

Chirp..

Today, Tommorow, Wotever

Watching the streets

Snippets of passing:
"But she only took 25 years to... listen..."

Angles of Gait:
Leg bones working as crooked stilts,
jammed cross wise, in her square framed hips.

Then he floats by...
Items glued about on a body
in a carnival recycling a thousand colors
of plastic homelessness.
Clear fan blade on the back of his bicycle,
...spinning, so slowly...
pushing downhill on down the road

Glances of strangers
never to know
where they will go.

Life is its own mirror.


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Today's journal entry.
In Vermont, eating at a street cafe, watching life pass by
Wot am i doing?

flying back to Oly tomorrow and then meandering elsewhere
yah I know... wotever...

Lions in the Sun, Breeze in the flowers

I just love dandelions. Brew them into tea, watch the bees play in the yellow pollen, blowing the seeds to float upon the wind. I am so glad that Brisa also enjoys them so!

As a child I used to mow lawns for cash. One customer just told me to cut the lawn when I felt it needed to be cut. I watched that lawn grow into this vast field of dandelions, it was a sea of yellow gold. Every day I was true to my customers request and would inspect and look carefully at the lawn to see if it needed to be mowed. Everyday, the lawn just got more beautiful, becoming a sea of danelions, complete with waves of yellow flowers in the wind. It didn't need mowing, it was a miracle of nature. Which was too bad cause I could use the cash. Yet it just got more beautiful: one day it became a sea of dandelion seed clouds. The sea was a stormy expanse now of literally thousands of white globes releasing to the current of floating futures (it was a big lawn, over an acre). The next day the customer had some other kid cut the lawn. For one month that lawn was supremely beautiful. Then one afternoon about a month and half after I took on the job: it became this vast boring, unused, one inch high wasteland of grass.

In retrospect I am surprise they waited for me for over a month to mow that lawn. But at the same time, they did say, to only cut it when I felt it was needed. And they never did come to me asking me to do it... so I assume they agreed with my assessment. It surprised me when they did get someone else to cut it, but I shrugged and smiled since for a month it was the perfect sea of dandelions to swim within.

Even as a child being a Taoist was interesting :)

I wouldn't float thru life any other way.