And Back Again

A while ago I posted a piece about walking meditation that included this "going without arriving" reflection from Thich Nhat Hanh:

"In our daily lives, we usually feel pressured to move ahead. We have to hurry. We seldom ask ourselves where it is that we must hurry to. When you practice walking meditation, you go for a stroll. You have no purpose or direction in space or time. The purpose of walking meditation is walking meditation itself. Going is important, not arriving. Walking meditation is not a means to an end; it is an end. Each step is life; each step is peace and joy. That is why we don’t have to hurry. That is why we slow down. We seem to move forward, but we don’t go anywhere; we are not drawn by a goal. Thus we smile while we are walking."

I was sitting with the idea of walking and how I used to walk and how somewhere along the way I no longer walk and I was thinking about how that happened and what it means for now. I stopped the habit of walking in September 2020, not because of the pandemic (I had kept my walk from March - September) when I moved from my lovely pandemic house in Durham, NC, to an apartment I didn't love and a town that felt hostile and uncaring. Shortly after that move, I had a full on existential crisis (along with a massive PTSD/ retraumatizing event), and I effectively shut down. It took several weeks to get my head on straight enough to even realize that I had fallen into a trauma-hole, and I set myself on a thousand-day journey to come back. Walking wasn't really part of that, and not-walking became the habit, even though I would have fits and starts of walknig-again.

Back in November, I crossed that imaginary thousand-day line, and set myself on a "And Back Again" thousand-day journey. I'd like to make "going without arriving" a meaningful piece of this journey even moreso than the walking.  Each step is life; each step is peace and joy.  This is the way back again. 

This is the Way.

37

37

Over all

The Way never does anything,
and everything gets done.
If those in power could hold to the Way,
the ten thousand things
would look after themselves.
If even so they tried to act, 
I’d quiet them with the nameless,
the natural.

In the unnamed, in the unshapen,
is not wanting.
In not wanting is stillness.
In stillness all under heaven rests.

Let love come to you

The buddhists tell us "attachment is the root of all suffering."

When I did research over the last few years, I found over and over again that suffering was a deficit of love.

How can these both be true? Are they as at odds as they seem?

In fact, when we step back a bit, we can see that the two are sides of a coin, united.

When we are experinecing suffering, we are indeed experiencing a love deficit. And our suffering may in large part be due to how attached we are to our love needs. 

Wait, that sounds weird, right?

It is kind of, yes.

When we are placing expectations on our love relationships, we are chaining them down, stuffing them in a small box, and making our relationships transactional by expecting them to deliver specific behaviors or things in specific ways. This is unfair, and it limits the amount of love we can receive. In effect, our expectations are creating the very love deficeit that is creating our suffering.

Lighten up.

Loosen up.

Let love come to you as it will.

This is the Way.

Drink your tea slowly

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole earth revolves.
-Thich Nhat Hanh
 

 

Book love

A special treat arrived from Amazon today, the magical faeries who are keeping hearts and minds connected across great distances.

Life is good.

Sit With That

The answer to everything is more meditation.

Disability Day

Today has been a Disability Day.

There were hints that it was coming, of course, but still.

The blanket of fatigue wrapped itself about me at 10 in the morning, and by noon I was fit only to nap. I woke up at four in the afternoon, took the dog out and switched the laundry. Thankfully, it's not a day of pain, as well.

I sit.

I breathe.

This is today, but it is not every day.

It is the right this very now.

Disability has made me a Taoist.

Bravery

The ultimate definition of bravery is not being afraid of who you are. ---- Chögyam Trungpa

Some things

Some things:
I believe that grace is in our daily lives and in our choices if we so choose.
There is grace in integrity, a grace of dignity if we choose to make commitments and live by them.
There is grace in simplicity, a grace of elegance in finding the least that we need and living in that arc between too much and too little, an elegance of enough.
There is a grace to ongoing revelation, a grace of intimacy that comes only when there is an abundance of mystery without secrecy
There is a grace to presence, a grace of identity that happens when we are still enough to witness without ego.
This is how a utilitarian Taoist cyberpunk monk ends up in the silent meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Tub Koan 2

Save the world.
You'll be glad you did.

Thought of the day

8

Easy by nature

True goodness
is like water.
Water's good
for everything,
It doesn't compete.

It goes right
to the low loathsome places,
and so finds the way.

For a house,
the good thing is level ground.
In thinking,
depth is good.
The good of giving is magnanimity;
of speaking, honesty;
of government, order.
The good of work is skill,
and of action, timing.

No competition,
so no blame

13

Shameless

To be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer.

What does that mean,
to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear?
Favor debases:
We fear to lose it,
fear to win it.
So to be in favor or disgrace
is to live in fear.

What does that mean,
To take the body seriously
is to admit one can suffer?
I suffer because I'm a body;
If I weren't a body,
how could I suffer?

So people who set their bodily good
before the public good
could be entrusted with the commonwealth,
and people who treated the body politic
as gently as their own body
would be worthy to govern the commonwealth.

48

Trust and power

The wise have no mind of their own,
finding it in the minds
of ordinary people.

They're good to good people
and they're good to bad people.
Power is goodness.
They trust people of good faith
and thy trust people of bad faith.
Power is trust.

They mingle their life with the world,
they mix their mind up with the world.
Ordinary people look after them.
Wise souls are children.

54

Some rules

Well planed is not uprooted,
well kept is not lost.
The offerings of the generations
to the ancestors will not cease.

To follow the Way yourself is real power.
To follow it in the family is abundant power.
To follow it in the community is steady power.
To follow it in the whole country is lasting power.
To follow it in the world is universal power.

So in myself I see what self is,
in my household I see what family is,
in my town I see what community is,
in my nation I see what a country is,
in the world I see what is under heaven.

How do I know the world is so?
By this.

69

Using mystery

The expert in warfare says:

Rather than dare make the attack

I’d take the attack;

rather than dare advance an inch

I’d retreat a foot.

It’s called marching without marching,

rolling up your sleeves without flexing  your muscles,

being armed without weapons,

giving the attacker no opponent.

Nothing’s worse than attacking what yields.

To attack what yields is to throw away the prize.

So, when matched armies meet,

the one who comes to grief
is the true victor.

---

A piece of sound tactical advice (practiced by the martial arts, such as Aikido, and by underground resistance and guerrilla forces), which leads to a profound moral warning. The prize thrown away by the aggressor is compassion. The yielder, the griever, the mourner, keeps that prize. The game is loser take all.

42

Children of the Way

The Way bears one.
The one bears two.
The two bear three.
The three bear the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things
carry the yin on their shoulders
and hold in their arms the yang,
whose interplay of energy
makes harmony.

People despise
orphans, widows, outcasts.
Yet that’s what kings and rulers call themselves.
Whatever you lose, you’ve won.
Whatever you win, you’ve lost.

What others teach, I say too:
violence and aggression
destroy themselves.
My teaching rests on that.

71

The Sick Mind

To know without knowing is best.

Not knowing without knowing it is sick.

To be sick of sickness

is the only cure.

The wise aren’t sick.

They’re sick of sickness,

so they’re well.

---

UKLG: What you know without knowing you know it is the right king of knowledge. Any other kind (conviction, theory, dogmatic belief, opinion) isn’t the right kind, and if you don’t know that, you’ll lose the Way. This chapter is an example of exactly what Lao Tzu was talking about in the last one -- obscure clarity, well-concealed jade.

6

What is complete

The valley spirit never dies.
Call it the mystery, the woman.

The mystery,
the Door of the Woman,
is the root
of earth and heaven.

Forever this endures, forever.
And all its uses are easy.

Wise Souls

So wise souls hold to the one,
and test all things against it.

Not showing themselves,
they shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
they're self-evident.
Not praising there,
they're accomplished.
Not competing,
they have in all world no competitor.