Closed

This blog is now closed. See me over at Tao Wow and Daily Cup of Tao.

too lazy to fight

Who is this argument or war against? It is so funny to see anger and fighting when you look from this perspective: Where you see how one believes so much in their fake self that they will pick a fight with another reflected fake self.

Ha, let 'em have it! Strike them! Go on fakie, you tell that other fakie who's boss! Killer funny.

In time it will be forgotten, it never used to matter and it never will, but right now this self is manifested as two sub-selves whom disagree - so much that they'd fight!

Any argument is the same, a show put on by these fake separate entities, sadness the same, argument, misunderstanding, upset...

Born again Christian?

It is nothing at all strange for a Buddhist to be born again. They do it over and over, life after life.

I shit you not my friend

We name the colours, we name the sounds, we have books on feelings and industries on taste - but we lable smells only good or bad or make comparison: the smell of a "".

There is no musical scale of smells, no spectrum, we can't explain a smell. On catching the slightest whiff though a past memory - "Oh that orchard near the river on the holiday with mum and dad when sister wore the funny hat and we were all so happy" - emerges. We can't take an instrument and play that smell back to another, we can't describe a smell so well as to evoke it unless we use the crude spectrum of shitty, fragrant, fruity or other.

This is perhaps why the smell is so able to recapture past memories but it does not explain why we have no language for smells, beyond the crude.

Red, yellow, pinky-blue, the shade of the autumnal hue, but if I had to tell you how it smelled, well, perhaps of poo?

Crescendos, melodies, A C D, flat sharp major, but you want to know how it smelled? Oh do us a favour!

I can't label this smell, I know it so well, this is the smell of peeled avocado mixed with a frshly washed china plate - you get me?

the study of metaphysics

i did metaphysics until I realized there was no me to do it.

Immunized

My wife is a little bored of trying to help her friend over a broken heart. The friend is unable to move on and keeps repeating the same sad old "why me?" tales.

My wife just gave me the analysis of the situation and she said: "Look, all things work out, from bad they always get better. I enjoy the bad, I laugh at it, ha! as it leaves me immunized and strong so it can never harm me again."

friends

One who tells you to do what they could do if they weren't busy on other stuff = boss.

One who tells you to do what they could not do = manager.

One who tells you as fact what they have no critical opinion of = teacher.

One who does things on your behalf that you would never do or even think needed doing = politician.

One who knows you are wrong and hates or pities you for it = religious person.

One who politely/aggressively forces you to do something quite pointless for reasons they do not understand = security guard.

One who is present for a slip up but not for a disaster = policeman.

One who accepts life as it is = friend.

Morning person

I use the excuse that I am not a morning person but afternoon ineptness is getting the better of me so I must now claim to operate in multiple time zones.

Pain is all in the mind

Today I trapped my finger under the hydraulic clamp of a guillotine. Now this should have removed my finger totally but I was operating the clamp with the foot pedal and not the hydraulics.

So what I really did was stamp hard on the foot pedal that brought down the heavy clamp onto my own finger - this is perhaps even more stupid than via hydraulics but fortunately, stupid as it was, I still have a finger.

I danced around the room until the pain subsided enough for me to scream and a friend fetched ice for me. One person asked if there should not be some kind of mechanism to prevent this happening and I said "there is a mechanism, it is called a brain, sadly I did not have it turned on". haha.

I said "pain is all in the mind, but unfortunately I keep my mind in my finger so it hurts like fuck".

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

-- J.R.R. Tolkien

Someone killed, something tragic, something wonderful and something magic..

have all happened a million times before over millennia.

Don't sweat the small stuff and also note that, given time, the big stuff is small stuff too.

expensive shit

My wife's boss was trying to show off at work today.

"Hey I'm off work soon, you will all have to work harder"

"Why? Where are you going?"

"My girlfriend and I have our 3 year anniversary, she booked a $600 meal for us."

"And afterwards you will do a poo" my wife replied uninterestedly.

up's and down's

Don't judge a whole year by just one day.

great day to be normal

Crazy day at work; starting one task, a list to do after, boss shouting new instructions for even more, machines misbehaving, raining outside, tired from the night before, walked upstairs, sat on the crapper, stared at the dirty wall and thought - "This, is incredible! My universe, magical - I was almost convinced for a moment there that it was real." Stared at the spiders web above as I dropped yesterdays food below, and was blown away by the magic.

Monday, the best day of the week

Monday is the best day of the week as it is as far from next Monday as can be.

Negative laziness

Detrimental laziness of the spiritual nature: I used to practice, to meditate and to constantly look from the undivided self into the world of thoughts. I was very happy this way but I slipped. I became lazy and I moved to being a person in the world, a world of others and this and that. In this world I became unhappy. In laziness I made a fall. So then I took back to the Tao path and got back in line with the way and life is again wonder and delight.

Seasquirt

All the fuss it takes to feed a human is quite laughable to the seasquirt. I read about the seasquirt in a book some time ago so can not remember the name to reference it properly.

The basic life of the seasquirt is to be born and then find a place to take root. This is the hardest job it does in its life, find a place to hang. Once the seasquirt has found a place then it takes a hold of the rock and sets about reducing its brain size. It really does this, it has done the hardest thing it will ever need to do so it casts off this unwelcome baggage of excess brain that after all will just consume power for nothing.

On reducing brain size the seaquirt takes to squirting. It is basically a tube shaped muscle that sucks in sea water and squirts it out again. In squirting, all of the nutrients it will ever need are pulled into its body and all of the unwanted waste is expelled. Its whole body is mouth, gut and, well, the mouth is also the anus.

Perfect.

posting on slacking

It should well be the case that this particular blog has infrequent posts. I do come up with ideas throughout my day for posts related to laid back views on life - but often I just don't get around to writing them or just forget entirely.

But, stuff will get posted here, on and off.

Musicians can't plan

Ask a good musician, DJ, Bongo player or composer how they have made a life of music and it will never be planned out affair. None of them tell you how they left school with a 5 year plan and an Excel spreadsheet, instead they felt it and let it flow.

If you sit with the plan to make a song it will be stale and lifeless. If you find yourself in a mood where the music, rhythm or melody simply emerge then you're on the right path.

Where a Sergeant Major and his strict plans leave a random path of bloodshed. A musician, from the heart, produces an free-flowing creative path that echoes goodness for the many.

3 in the morning

Do you know the Chuang Tzu story where the monkey keeper wins over the monkeys by changing the offer of 2 nuts in the morning and 3 at night (which they disagreed with) to 3 in the morning and 2 at night? He wins by adapting at no loss.

Two machines were out of order at work today. When the technician finally arrived, late, not rushing, not fussed by the boss shouting at him, he fixed one machine almost by slapping the side of it. He then said how he did not fix what was not broken and always did the least possible to make things work.

He then found a number of errors on the 2nd machine and when the young operator said in a worried voice "Is it user error?" the technician replied "No (smile) not user error, but certainly not user competence"

At these words the young operator was greatly relieved and walked away happy.

Non-Planning

I once sat in a bar and proclaimed

"The less you try the easier life is"

and I was met with a few "have you heard this guy" kind of comments. But for the one person who showed interest I continued on how the more things just happen on their own when you don't try to make them happen.

Some people are forever making plans and sometimes they come off, sometimes they don't but for me my plans never go wrong as I don't make them. I dislike being asked about plans, the future, how I will do something, and so on. When pushed for a plan I normally say "let's see" as more often than not new circumstances pop up and the plan makes itself.

This is the path of the slacker.

Making a Difference

All the problems in the world arise from someone attempting to fix something that was not in fact broken. Faulty perception leads to their desire to fix nature, which leads to imbalance.

Being anti-this is to be pro-that. Pro-this is anti that. Anti or pro something is the very nature of the war they wish to stop. Conflict comes as they set up their desire vs the supposed reality.

Only in embracing conflict as a whole and seeing what it is made of can you in fact quash it by the root.

Non-Doing, Meditation and Slacking

I slack, therefore I am.

Sit on your ass in the US, your arse in the UK, your whatever-you-want-to-call-it in wherever-you-are and you'll be a slacker.

Sit back on your haunches in China, Japan, India, South East Asia or many other places and you are held in high esteem.

If you run around doing lots of stuff in the UK, USA, or other such nations they'll congratulate you for it. The same activity in India and they'll wonder who put a chilly up your whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

Is it simply that it is much hotter in India and so sitting is more sensible, or is it because sitting is seen as achieving in one continent and lazy in another that this divide occurs? You could well argue that in a cold nation like England people were motivated by harsh conditions to build houses, develop, invent stuff, get drunk and pick fights (both in the pub and over the globe) and that in India people were more able to sit out under the warm starry night philosophising over just the right manner to sit still. But then what of China? There they have every weather condition from sun burn to snowstorm and sitting is a well held virtue.

How is this laziness justified? Well in a way it is not as why should you justify something you have no problem with? and in a way it is justified with such notions as Wu Wei and Zen.

Non-Doing

Wu Wei can be interpreted many ways even by the Chinese and so then we can interpret it in as many ways as we like. This is how such classic texts as the Taoist Tao Te Ching do so well in mass publication - they are open-ended and can be interpreted any-which-way by anyone open to read them. Wu Wei can be seen as pure slacking. It can also be philosopised over deeply to mean allowing the universe to do as it does and not interfering in that with your silly little head.

You're late for the bus, it pulls away - a straight runs after it, a slacker waits for the next one. Each person then claims their method brings about the intended future (getting to destination on time or meeting that stranger who later became your ex-wife) - both were in fact the only future there was ever going to be as - we don't do the universe. It does us. Which pats the slacker firmly on their back and justifies their late arrival to work that day.

Yes the slacker is right but by the same token, so is the straight. But it is the understanding of the vast infinity in flow, and being able to dance along with it that makes slacking the way and the objective.