“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” - Lao Tzu
Showing posts with label taoism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taoism. Show all posts
Monday, July 4, 2016
The Taoist Way - Alan Watts
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” - Lao Tzu
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Alan Watts Introduces America to Meditation & Eastern Philosophy: Watch the 1960 TV Show, Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life
Alan Watts moved from his native London to New York in 1938, then eventually headed west, to San Francisco in the early 1950s. On the left coast, he started teaching at the Academy of Asian Studies, wrote his bestseller Way of Zen, and began delivering a long-running series of talks about eastern philosophy on KPFA radio in Berkeley. During these years, Watts became one of the foremost popularizers of Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoisim, which made him something of a celebrity, especially when the 60s counterculture movement kicked into gear.
Now, 40 years and change after his death, you can find no shortage of vintage Watts’ media online (including this archive of streaming lectures). And today we’re featuring an episode from a TV series called Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life, which aired in San Francisco circa 1960. “The Silent Mind” runs 28 minutes, and it offered American viewers an introduction to the philosophy and practice of meditation, something still considered exotic at the time. History in the making. You’re watching it happen right here. Find more meditation and Alan Watts resources below.
Related Content:
The Wisdom of Alan Watts in Four Thought-Provoking Animations
The Zen Teachings of Alan Watts: A Free Audio Archive of His Enlightening Lectures
Free Guided Meditations From UCLA: Boost Your Awareness & Ease Your Stress
Meditation 101: A Short, Animated Beginner’s Guide
via OpenCulture
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
The art of Wu Wei
By Gary McGee
“The Sage is occupied with the unspoken and acts without effort. Teaching without verbosity, producing without possessing, creating without regard to result, claiming nothing, the Sage has nothing to lose.” – Lao Tzu, Tao Tê Ching
How do we become a person, let alone a sage, who has nothing to lose? How do we achieve such a state of liberation that all things just seem to happen with effortless ease? The irony is that we are more likely to achieve something if we let go of our need to achieve it. But how do we make ourselves not want something that we actually want? How do we let go of wanting to win gold at the Olympics but still remain focused on winning gold at the Olympics? Quite the conundrum, indeed. But there may be an answer, albeit an elusive one, in the concept of Wu wei and the power of Spontaneity.
Wu wei is one of Taoism’s most important concepts. It is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” But a better way to think of it is the “Action of non-action.” Wu wei is a cultivated state of being effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the cosmos. It is a kind of “going with the flow” that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which – without even trying – we’re able to adapt to any situation that might arise.
Infinity says we’re everything, finitude says we’re nothing. Between the two, we flow. It’s in this in-between where the power of spontaneity can be utilized, where we are both the seer and the seen, the Universe becoming aware of itself. The spontaneity of Wu wei is a different sort of energy than we may be accustomed to conceiving. It is not an energy that can be forced by the will. It is the noumenal experience of being in flow with the cosmos.
It is effortless and frictionless, despite needing a little effort and friction. And it is actually a letting go of our attachment to our goals so that we are in a better place to achieve our goals. It must be a free flowing process of intertwining synchronicities. But we must not be overly serious with our goals and aspirations, instead we must be sincere. We must trump our insecure seriousness with sincere humor. To be authentic we must be sincere, rather than overly serious or insecure about achieving a particular goal. One can be sincere without being serious. This is the wisdom of Wu wei.
It’s analogous to growing a flower. All we can do, as good gardeners, is prepare the soil (the mind, the body, and/or the soul) and provide the proper conditions, and then let nature take its course. If you force a flower to open prematurely, you destroy it. Similarly, if you prevent it from opening, you destroy it. It must be allowed to grow with its own intelligence, in its own self-organized direction. This is the essence of Wu wei.
Our best effort is to become attentive gardeners, to become aware of a process that we may never understand, but to allow understanding to come as a natural progression of open-minded awareness and to give into the Flow state, as a creative microcosm gives in to a greater creative macrocosm. Like Shunryu Suzuki said, “We must have beginner’s mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows that everything is in flowing change.”
Wu wei is spiritual blood. It spills from the heart like a razor just sliced open the wrist of the soul. Wu wei is the search for lost time, but it is also lost time. When we are in the flow state of Wu wei, we are caretaker & destroyer, teacher & student, hungry ghost & slithering wraith. Like Alan Watts said, “Change is not merely a force of destruction. Every form is really a pattern of movement, and every living thing is like the river, which, if it did not flow out, would never have been able to flow in. Life and death are not two opposed forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for the movement of change is as much the builder as the destroyer.”
But even words are merely trickster symbols that do no justice to the concept. Their only purpose is to trick us into higher imagination. The imagery is the thing, rising up from the words that just as surely kill it. Even this article kills it, and doesn’t quite grasp the elusive and poetic balance of the Wu wei experience. This article is admittedly a vain attempt, at best, to explain an elusive and sacred concept.
Louis G Herman wrote about a similar concept in his book, Future Primal: “Thuru: the process by which things become “what they are not” and, in so doing, paradoxically, become more themselves… this is something similar to the dynamic interplay of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy or the unification of opposites in the flow of the Tao.
Western philosophy has a related concept in the dialectical exploration of the in-between – the flow of awareness from thesis to antithesis into the larger truth of synthesis, which in turn provokes a new antithesis. And so the beat of Thuru goes on, embodied in the shape-shifting trickster of mythology.” Wu wei comes from spontaneity. Spontaneity comes from Wu wei. It was not fire that Prometheus stole from the gods, it was Wu wei: the language of the gods. And the fire rages mightily on.
When we are caught in the ephemeral flow of Wu wei, we are caught in sheep-clothes with a wolf-heart, right-brain firing its tender nurturing toward imaginary ends while the left-brain stamps its iron bars of open-close linearity. Somehow a balance is maintained, despite the lock-down of rules, goals, and vicissitudes.
A frivolity of life subsumes the condition, and a new world rises up from the traditional; an army of imagery dances across our imagination, across the observer’s imagination, tying knots into each others thought-stream using love-strings and slipknots, loopholes and bon mots; until there is a web of life living, ever-so-shortly, in the span of a few seconds of give and take, inhale and exhale, sleep and awake, life and death. It’s the magic of the flow state. It’s the all-cylinders-firing of “being in the zone.” Like the great Jazz musician Charlie Parker advised to aspiring musicians, “Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.”
“The Sage is occupied with the unspoken and acts without effort. Teaching without verbosity, producing without possessing, creating without regard to result, claiming nothing, the Sage has nothing to lose.” – Lao Tzu, Tao Tê Ching
How do we become a person, let alone a sage, who has nothing to lose? How do we achieve such a state of liberation that all things just seem to happen with effortless ease? The irony is that we are more likely to achieve something if we let go of our need to achieve it. But how do we make ourselves not want something that we actually want? How do we let go of wanting to win gold at the Olympics but still remain focused on winning gold at the Olympics? Quite the conundrum, indeed. But there may be an answer, albeit an elusive one, in the concept of Wu wei and the power of Spontaneity.
Wu wei is one of Taoism’s most important concepts. It is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” But a better way to think of it is the “Action of non-action.” Wu wei is a cultivated state of being effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the cosmos. It is a kind of “going with the flow” that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which – without even trying – we’re able to adapt to any situation that might arise.
Infinity says we’re everything, finitude says we’re nothing. Between the two, we flow. It’s in this in-between where the power of spontaneity can be utilized, where we are both the seer and the seen, the Universe becoming aware of itself. The spontaneity of Wu wei is a different sort of energy than we may be accustomed to conceiving. It is not an energy that can be forced by the will. It is the noumenal experience of being in flow with the cosmos.
It is effortless and frictionless, despite needing a little effort and friction. And it is actually a letting go of our attachment to our goals so that we are in a better place to achieve our goals. It must be a free flowing process of intertwining synchronicities. But we must not be overly serious with our goals and aspirations, instead we must be sincere. We must trump our insecure seriousness with sincere humor. To be authentic we must be sincere, rather than overly serious or insecure about achieving a particular goal. One can be sincere without being serious. This is the wisdom of Wu wei.
It’s analogous to growing a flower. All we can do, as good gardeners, is prepare the soil (the mind, the body, and/or the soul) and provide the proper conditions, and then let nature take its course. If you force a flower to open prematurely, you destroy it. Similarly, if you prevent it from opening, you destroy it. It must be allowed to grow with its own intelligence, in its own self-organized direction. This is the essence of Wu wei.
Our best effort is to become attentive gardeners, to become aware of a process that we may never understand, but to allow understanding to come as a natural progression of open-minded awareness and to give into the Flow state, as a creative microcosm gives in to a greater creative macrocosm. Like Shunryu Suzuki said, “We must have beginner’s mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows that everything is in flowing change.”
Wu wei is spiritual blood. It spills from the heart like a razor just sliced open the wrist of the soul. Wu wei is the search for lost time, but it is also lost time. When we are in the flow state of Wu wei, we are caretaker & destroyer, teacher & student, hungry ghost & slithering wraith. Like Alan Watts said, “Change is not merely a force of destruction. Every form is really a pattern of movement, and every living thing is like the river, which, if it did not flow out, would never have been able to flow in. Life and death are not two opposed forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for the movement of change is as much the builder as the destroyer.”
But even words are merely trickster symbols that do no justice to the concept. Their only purpose is to trick us into higher imagination. The imagery is the thing, rising up from the words that just as surely kill it. Even this article kills it, and doesn’t quite grasp the elusive and poetic balance of the Wu wei experience. This article is admittedly a vain attempt, at best, to explain an elusive and sacred concept.
Louis G Herman wrote about a similar concept in his book, Future Primal: “Thuru: the process by which things become “what they are not” and, in so doing, paradoxically, become more themselves… this is something similar to the dynamic interplay of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy or the unification of opposites in the flow of the Tao.
Western philosophy has a related concept in the dialectical exploration of the in-between – the flow of awareness from thesis to antithesis into the larger truth of synthesis, which in turn provokes a new antithesis. And so the beat of Thuru goes on, embodied in the shape-shifting trickster of mythology.” Wu wei comes from spontaneity. Spontaneity comes from Wu wei. It was not fire that Prometheus stole from the gods, it was Wu wei: the language of the gods. And the fire rages mightily on.
When we are caught in the ephemeral flow of Wu wei, we are caught in sheep-clothes with a wolf-heart, right-brain firing its tender nurturing toward imaginary ends while the left-brain stamps its iron bars of open-close linearity. Somehow a balance is maintained, despite the lock-down of rules, goals, and vicissitudes.
A frivolity of life subsumes the condition, and a new world rises up from the traditional; an army of imagery dances across our imagination, across the observer’s imagination, tying knots into each others thought-stream using love-strings and slipknots, loopholes and bon mots; until there is a web of life living, ever-so-shortly, in the span of a few seconds of give and take, inhale and exhale, sleep and awake, life and death. It’s the magic of the flow state. It’s the all-cylinders-firing of “being in the zone.” Like the great Jazz musician Charlie Parker advised to aspiring musicians, “Don’t play the saxophone. Let it play you.”
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Tao Te Ching Online
From Wikipedia:
The Tao Te Ching,[1] Daodejing, or Dao De Jing (simplified Chinese: 道德经; traditional Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng), also simply referred to as the Laozi (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ),[2][3] is a Chinese classic text. According to tradition, it was written around 6th century BC by the sage Laozi (or Lao Tzu, Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ, literally meaning "Old Master"), a record-keeper at the Zhou dynasty court, by whose name the text is known in China. The text's true authorship and date of composition or compilation are still debated,[4] although the oldest excavated text dates back to the late 4th century BC.[2]
The text, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism, and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, which when first introduced into China was largely interpreted through the use of Daoist words and concepts. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners, have used the Daodejing as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, and is amongst the most translated works in world literature.[2]
Read the Tao Te Ching online at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/216?msg=welcome_stranger
The Tao Te Ching,[1] Daodejing, or Dao De Jing (simplified Chinese: 道德经; traditional Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodéjīng), also simply referred to as the Laozi (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ),[2][3] is a Chinese classic text. According to tradition, it was written around 6th century BC by the sage Laozi (or Lao Tzu, Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ, literally meaning "Old Master"), a record-keeper at the Zhou dynasty court, by whose name the text is known in China. The text's true authorship and date of composition or compilation are still debated,[4] although the oldest excavated text dates back to the late 4th century BC.[2]
The text, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism, and strongly influenced other schools, such as Legalism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism, which when first introduced into China was largely interpreted through the use of Daoist words and concepts. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and even gardeners, have used the Daodejing as a source of inspiration. Its influence has also spread widely outside East Asia, and is amongst the most translated works in world literature.[2]
Read the Tao Te Ching online at Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/216?msg=welcome_stranger
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