Hans-Wolfgang's blog

QotD: National Procrastination Week

It's National Procrastination Week. What have you been putting off that you'd like to get around to? What do you wish you could put off longer?

My work here is of creativity. I am not provoking me into any destruction; I am not telling me to blame others for my misery. I am telling me, I am responsible. But this is a real revolution. If I take the responsibility for my life I can start changing it.

it reflects the archetypical well

Lao Tzu’s little verses are contained in The Tao-Te Ching, which is the oldest scripture of Daoism.

A man imparts/gives his seed and the woman later, if that seed has been received, gives back a child. It is from those core essences that the rest flows, as such a core and central activity does not spring from nowhere. Perhaps for a machine it could spring from nowhere, but we are not machines. Such a core act is not merely physical but a key illustrator of our more archetypical realm.

And it’s just too profound and critical a thing to have sprung from nowhere really, and that’s why it reflects the archetypical well.

Ordinarily, reflection is understood as if it is just a synonym for thinking; it is not. A mirror reflects -- there is no thinking. It simply says whatsoever is; there is no interpretation. It does not colour, it does not add, it does not delete. It simply shows and says whatsoever is the case.

When you think, it is not reflection. You do many things. The fact becomes more fictitious. You shroud it, you colour it, you decorate it, you interpret it, you clothe it, and it is no more the same thing. It becomes something totally new -- it becomes an invention.

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Without training the intellect the children will remain like animals

Without training the intellect the children will remain like animals. It is not that they will become wise, not that they will become like Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna or Christ; they will remain like wild animals. Of course, they wouldn't have the obstacle, but they wouldn't have any means to climb up either. In itself, neither is the stone an obstacle, nor is the ladder a help. You maybe have heard about somnambulists who walk and do many other things in their sleep. Some of you probably walk in your sleep, because psychologists estimate that a minimum of five percent of adults are somnambulistic. They get up in the night, eyes open, while everything inside remains asleep. They leave their beds and walk around in the dark in a way that they might well be unable to do when awake. They wander through the house, picking their way around the furniture and finding many jobs to do. Look how our sensitivity becomes blunted towards those with whom we live. Because we see them every day, we find nothing worth seeing in them; knowing them day in, day out, there remains nothing worth searching for in them; acquainted with the whole of their personality, everything comes to feel stale. This is the way of all the senses. Eat a certain food, and today it tastes delicious. Eat it again tomorrow and it is a little less appetizing. By the third day we are bored with it, and if we are presented with it for the fourth day we will throw the dish out! Yes, it is just the same with our sense of taste: the food is wonderful the first day, and by the fourth day we are throwing it out. Seeing happens when there is no seer inside, because the seer is continuously distorting the vision. He has his biases, his theories, and his concepts and so on. He is constantly disturbing the seeing, saying: "Look in this way," "See this," or "What you are seeing cannot be." The seer inside does not allow you to see. But sometimes the seer moves aside. This happens unaware, without your knowing. If you knew, you would not let it move aside; you would go holding on to it. Sometimes you simply forget that you are. 

Lec 14 | MIT 8.02 Electricity and Magnetism, Spring 2002

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRgYRV5pIl8

Tao always takes care

Is existence far away? You don't see it because of your heavy ego. You don't see it because your eyes are filled with ego. Become capable of seeing it with your naked eye. Gradually courage will increase -- trust, self-confidence. You will surrender more and more. One day you will take the total leap. One day you will say "Enough!" Up until now you have wasted yourself in trying to save yourself. One day you will understand and let go, then you will let yourself drown and be saved. When one is tired of all questions and all answers, when one is fed up with all philosophy, only then one comes to a Master. When one has accumulated much information and still remains ignorant, and all that information does not create any light within his soul, then he comes to a Master, to sit by his side. There are no questions any more; he knows now one thing: that all questions are futile. He has tried and he has seen the whole futility of it. Now he sits in silence, open, available, receptive, like a womb. Buddha certainly has denied the self, the ego, the "I", but he has not denied the soul and the self and the soul are not synonymous. He denies the self because the self exists only in the unconscious man. The unconscious man needs a certain idea of "I"; otherwise he will be without a centre. He does not know his real centre. He has to invent a false centre so that he can at least function in the world; otherwise his functioning will become impossible. He needs a certain idea of "I".

Die Verfasserschaft Laozis

Vox9

Laozi hat nicht wie Konfuzius eine Schule gegründet. Ihm lag nichts daran, eine Lehre zu verbreiten. Er hat für sich selbst einen Blick getan in die großen Weltzusammenhänge und hat, was er geschaut, mühsam in Worte gebracht, es gleichgesinnten Geistern der späteren Zeit überlassend, seinen Andeutungen nachzugehen. Das Buch vom Sinn und Leben (auch „Das Buch vom Tao und seiner Kraft“), eine der ersten daoistischen Schriften, ist einer der Grundpfeiler des Daoismus und hat seine weitere Entwicklung tief greifend beeinflusst. Die Verfasserschaft Laozis ist als legendär zu betrachten, desgleichen die anrührende Art der der ersten Niederschrift des Textes, wie Bertolt Brecht sie in seiner berühmten Legende von der Entstehung des Buches Tao te King  auf dem Weg des Laotse in die Emigration (1938) erzählt hat. Heute geht man davon aus, dass es vor der ersten bekannten Aufzeichnung des Textes eine mündliche Überlieferung gegeben hat und dass es sich um eine Anthologie von Aussprüchen mehrerer Weiser handelt. Im Buch vom Sinn und Leben werden die Grundlagen der daoistischen Weltsicht und Lebensweise dargelegt. Erstmals erscheint der Begriff „dao“ (oder „tao“), wörtlich: der Weg, in der Bedeutung „das Absolute / höchste Wirklichkeit / Urgrund alles Irdischen“. Die Wirkkraft des „dao“, die sich in der Welt manifestiert, ist das „de“, vielfach mit „Tugend“ übersetzt. Weitere wichtige Begriffsinhalte sind die Leere, die Stille, die Spontaneität, das absichtslose Handeln und die Rückkehr zum Ursprung. Im Zentrum des Textes steht die Beschreibung einer Lebensweise, die im Einklang ist mit dem „dao“; Genügsamkeit, Gewaltlosigkeit und Nachsicht sind wesentliche Charakteristika dieser Lebens- und Denkweise. Darüber hinaus werden Ansätze einer Kosmologie vorgetragen und eine Regierungsweise im Einklang mit dem Dao empfohlen. Diese Abschnitte richten sich direkt an Machthaber. Sie legen dem Herrscher das absichtslose Handeln nahe, was bedeutet, nicht in den natürlichen Verlauf des Wandels in der Welt einzugreifen. Das Werk ist in zwei Teile gegliedert (Teil 1: Dao, Teil 2: De) und umfasst 81 kurze, teilweise gereimte Sinnsprüche. Die aufgrund der oft vieldeutigen Aussagen zum Teil weit vom Original abweichenden westlichen Übersetzungen beruhen auf einer Textversion aus dem 3. Jahrhundert n.Chr. Eine noch frühere Version wurde 1973 in einem Grab in Guodian gefunden. Diese geht auf das späte 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. zurück und weist zu dem bis dahin bekannten Text inhaltliche Unterschiede auf. In dieser Fassung stehen die beiden Teil in umgekehrter Reihenfolge. Hundert Jahre nach seiner Entstehung war „Das Buch vom Sinn und Leben“ in China bereits gut bekannt und wurde in vielen wichtigen Schriften zitiert. Die Konzentration auf den individuellen Weg und die Abkehr von der Gesellschaft erschien jedoch vielen als Anarchismus. Mit der Lehre wurden Volksaufstände begründet sowie die daoistische Volksreligion. Im Laufe der Geschichte entstand zu dem vieldeutigen Werk eine umfangreiche Kommentarliteratur. Zu seinem Verständnis, wie auch zum Verständnis des Dao, führt aber nicht akademisches Studium, sondern vielmehr Meditation, Einfühlung und spirituelle Schulung. Das Daodejing zählt zu den meistübersetzten Büchern der Welt und zu den bedeutendsten Zeugnissen der Literatur des Altertums.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2716808048221796227&ei=mVfNScjQLovW2wLh2ciNBQ&q=

the world would be ruined

tao

The ancients had their gods and goddesses to whom they sacrificed a share of their acquisitions, consisting either of the fruits of the soil, or the booties of war and plunder. The feudal system (the mission of which was to compel savage and wandering tribes to settle in fixed habitations and pursue peaceable occupations in trade and agriculture, or to protect those who were already settled against the plunderings and ravages of their barbaric neighbours) had ist „right divine“, and its universal catholic church commanding blind and unconditional belief and obedience. At all times when society has been revolutionized, the supporters of old systems, who had privileges and advantages over others, have prophesied that the world would be ruined if new systems were adopted. On the other side, those who happened to be the champions of progress, have imagined that their peculiar systems were the only true ones, that their principles were the only principles worth fighting for, that they were inherent in human nature, and if really established and administered would be an eternal source of happiness, making all future changes and revolutions unnecessary. The same thing has been and is still repeated, over and over again. The men of the middle age accused the ancients of idolatry, and blamed their system of slavery. They proclaimed the emancipation of the slaves of the Roman empire serfs and bond-men; forgetting at the same time that the ancient world had laboured for centuries to prepare the ground on which the feudal system could be erected. The modern bourgeoisie, the discoverers of the natural rights of men, have raved and are incessantly raving against feudalism, against serfdom, and bondage. They call it the age aof anarchy and oppression; yet they have commenced business with the stock which they have accumulated under the wings of feudalism; they have extended that knowledge und industry which they acquired under its protection; they have abolished serfdom and bondage for their own aggrandizement, and have created a numerous proletariat – modern slaves – who have to get a scanty subsistence by working for wages. They have been mistaken; what they considered the natural rights of man were only the rights of men living in that particular state of society. They have in their turn become as great tyrants as were the feudal Lords and Kings; and, like their precedessors, they have for their own security been compelled to create conditions under which not only a new progressive state of society is becoming possible, but compulsory. Thus the bourgeoisie has fulfilled its mission in history, and no more.

http://www.truveo.com/Stevie-Ray-Vaughan-Little-Wing-82083-rare/id/1694360962

nobody should ever turn it again

Nietzsche loved two books and borrowed from them immensely. The first was Manu's SAMHITA and the other was the MAHABHARATA. This book is perhaps the greatest as far as volume is concerned; it is huge! The BIBLE, the KORAN, DHAMMAPADA, TAO TE CHING cannot even compare with it as far as volume is concerned. You can only understand it if you put it by the side of ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA. Compared to the MAHABHARATA the ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA is just a small book. It is certainly a great work, but ugly. Scientists know perfectly well that there have been many very huge animals on the earth in the past, almost mountainous, but very ugly. MAHABHARATA belongs among those animals. Not that you cannot find anything beautiful in it; it is so big that if you dig deep you can certainly find a mouse here and there in the mountain. Those two books influenced Nietzsche immensely. Perhaps nothing was more responsible for Friedrich Nietzsche than those two books. One was by Manu, and MAHABHARATA was written by Vyasa. Both books have done a tremendous amount of work, dirty work! It would have been better if these two books had not been written at all. Friedrich Nietzsche remembers both books with such respect that you would be amazed. Amazed, because this was the man who called himself "anti-Christ." But don't be amazed, those two books are anti-Christ, in fact they are anti-anything that is beautiful: anti-truth, anti-love. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche fell in love with them. Although he never liked Lao Tzu or Buddha, he liked Manu and Krishna. Why? The question is very significant. He liked Manu because he loved the idea of hierarchy. He was against democracy, freedom, equality; in short he was against all true values. He also loved Vyasa's book MAHABHARATA because it contains the concept that only war is beautiful. He once wrote in a letter to his sister, "This very moment I am surrounded by immense beauty. I have never seen such beauty." One would think that he had entered the garden of Eden, but no, he was watching a military parade. The sun was shining on their naked swords, and the sound which he calls "the most beautiful sound I have ever heard..." was not Beethoven or Mozart, not even Wagner, but the sound of the boots of the marching German soldiers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDTxcnPn_KE&hl=de

you will have no contact

When you are around a real master you develop an intense restlessness, while near a pseudo-master you merely receive information. The pseudo-master will convert you into a scholar, you will start knowing many things without really knowing them. Scriptures will settle in your heart, but you will have no contact with the truth. Contact with truth happens only when the thirst crystallizes to such an extent that you become thirst itself. When the thirst crystallizes so much that you don't even feel that you are thirsty, rather you feel that you are a thirst, that every fiber of your being is on fire -- and the moment every fiber of your being becomes aflame, the showers come. And that is the moment of revolution, of transformation. In that very moment you are in contact with truth. Coming to a master you will receive pain -- pain because you are hungry, you are thirsty, you are unfulfilled, because you don't have that which you are yearning for. Near the master you will receive no consolation. In fact he will take away all your consolations. He will never tell you that everything is okay, that everything will be alright. The master is a revolution; he will disturb all your arrangements for sleep, and make you aware that nothing is alright, that everything is a mess, that whatever you have achieved so far is all rubbish, that you have not taken even the first step towards anything of value, that your hands are full of stones while you are clinging to the golden illusion that you are carrying diamonds. He will take away everything you have. He will strip you bare. He will reduce you to a complete nothingness. And it is from this nothingness that your spiritual thirst will awaken. He will take away everything from you so that all your assurances are lost, so that your sense of security, all your illusory dreams and plans are shattered. The master is an iconoclast. But it is not the idols in the temples that he destroys -- that is nothing but folly -- he shatters the image of yourself that is within you. You are not what you consider yourself to be. The serenity on your face is false. Your smile is nothing but a social behavior, an etiquette. When you say that everything is okay, it is a lie -- nothing is okay.

tao

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8452645051907439328&ei=oyFpSdH7MpuK2AKunvGADg&q=

something has happened to you

The idea of renunciation is one of the fundamentals of all pseudo-religions. Its phenomenology has to be understood very deeply. All the religions have been preaching a division between this world and that world which is beyond death -- between the soul and the body. The body belongs to this world, the soul belongs to that world; hence if you want to achieve the world beyond death, which is eternal.... and the happiness there is unending, the happiness here is not worth calling happiness; it is momentary, it is dream stuff. It comes, and even before you have been able to grasp it, it is gone. It is illusory, it is a kind of mirage in the desert. When you are far away you see a lake of water. You are thirsty and great hope arises in you. And the lake is absolutely real as far as you can see, because the only proof of its reality, that water is there, is that the trees are being reflected in the water. If there is a mountain by the side, the mountain is reflected in the lake, the sun is reflected in the lake. What more proof do you need? Without water these reflections cannot happen. You rush with great hope, but as you come nearer, you find the lake is receding; the distance between you and the lake remains the same. It was just an illusion created by sunrays reflected back from the hot desert sand. When sunrays are reflected back, they move like waves, and their movement from far away creates the illusion of water. And in their wave-like movement they attain the quality of reflecting things; they become just like a mirror. That is one half of the mirage. The other half is in your thirst. If you were not thirsty, perhaps you would have been able to detect, to find out that it was a mirage. You have seen mirages before; you know that mirages can appear almost as if they are real -- but your thirst is there. The physical phenomenon of the returning rays of the sun gives half the reality to the mirage. The other, and the far more important half, is contributed by you and your thirst. You want to believe that it is true. Even if somebody was there trying to prove that it was not real, you would feel angry with this man: you are thirsty and the water is there and he is trying to prove that the water is illusory. He does not know what thirst means! -- perhaps he is not thirsty. There is no way to convince a thirsty man that what he is seeing is not the real thing. All that you see is not necessarily real. Appearance does not mean reality. The religions have been saying for millions of years to people, that the happiness in this world is of the same nature as a mirage in the desert. That's why you are never capable of catching hold of it. You never get hold of happiness in your fist; it comes and goes. You can feel it like a breeze, but by the time you become aware that it is here, it is already gone. Perhaps it is more unreal than the mirage. A mirage at least has some reality -- the reflected sunrays contribute half, and your thirst, the other half. But in your so-called happiness of this world, you are contributing one hundred percent. There is nothing else there which contributes anything. And you know it. Today one woman is so beautiful to you that you can say Cleopatra was nothing before her. She seems to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Not only today -- you cannot conceive that there could have been any woman more beautiful ever, or could be in the future. You are projecting, because the same woman to others is nothing; and the same woman tomorrow will be nothing to you too. And then you will be surprised, shocked -- what happened? What happened to the woman? Nothing has happened to the woman -- she is the same person -- something has happened to you. Yesterday you were thirsty -- there was lust being projected. Today the lust is fulfilled; now there is no biological projection. The woman is an ordinary woman and the happiness that you got was just out of your projection -- you created the whole game. The woman at the most played the part of an inactive participant; she allowed you to project yourself upon her. Perhaps she was also projecting her mind upon you so it was a projection from both sides. Sooner or later it is going to disappear because projections cannot last, once their basic cause is missing. The basic cause is in your biology; and biology doesn't bother about love and poetry and romance, or anything -- biology means business! Biology is not interested in foreplay and afterplay; they are a sheer wastage. Biology is interested in reproduction. Once biology has done its work, it withdraws; the projection disappears. Then you are standing there, the same woman is standing there -- but nothing is anymore the same. Where has the happiness disappeared? You were feeling just as if you were on the top of Everest, and you have fallen to the depths of the Pacific. The woman deceived you and the woman thinks you deceived her; and you both try to dump on each other. Nobody has deceived, both have been deceived by biology. But biology is not somebody outside you, it is intrinsic to your body. You are a projection of two other biologies, those of your father, your mother; and they were a projection of two other biologies -- it is a continuum, a river-like flow. The religions tried to exploit this fundamental truth. It is true that romance and poetry... and the so-called love affair is just a shadow of biology. So it is not very difficult: a certain injection with certain hormones can create all the poetry right now, all the romance.... Another injection -- and you fall into the Pacific! Now we know a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man; just a little change of hormones, just a little change of chemistry. Religions exploited this simple truth. It is true, but rather than explaining it to you, they exploited it. They said, "This is the momentary happiness. Don't run after it; you are wasting your time. The real world is beyond death." Why beyond death? Because death will destroy all your biology, physiology, chemistry; everything that is material, death will take away. Only the spiritual will be left behind and the spiritual knows the eternal. The material, the physical knows only the momentary. It appeared very logical; the first part is true, but the second part is fictitious. Yes, it is true that moments of happiness in this life are very fleeting, but that does not mean that there is another life beyond death where these moments become eternal. There is no evidence for it. At least these moments are there, are experienced by everyone. Howsoever small and fleeting, they exist. Nobody can deny their existence. You can say they are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of -- but still they are there. Even dreams have a reality of their own. They are there, they affect you; and when something affects you it becomes real. For example, you are hungry. The whole day you have not been able to eat anything; you are tired, you fall asleep. Now, the body is hungry and wants food. The mind creates a beautiful dream that you are a guest in a great feast. The mind is serving you because if the mind is not going to create the dream, your sleep will be disturbed -- the hunger is there. Somehow you have to be convinced that you are eating, that you are not hungry. Your sleep remains undisturbed. The dream is doing something real. How can something unreal do something real? It is not possible -- but a dream has its own existence. Yes, it is different from a rock, but so is a rose flower different from a rock. The dream is even more different; but it affects you, it affects your life, it affects your lifestyle -- and those changes are real. So, one thing to be remembered: in this life there are momentary pleasures, fleeting experiences of happiness, sudden explosions of joy -- but you cannot catch hold of them. You cannot keep them in your safe deposit. You cannot make them permanent. Just because you cannot make them permanent, religions exploited you. It was a very cunning strategy. You want to make them permanent; your deepest desire is to remain happy for ever, not to know pain, sadness, anguish -- ever. Just always to be in paradise -- that is your desire. The religions exploited this. They said, "There is such a place, but you cannot get anything without paying for it." It looks perfectly mathematical, economical. The religions started teaching that you sacrifice this life if you want to attain the permanent world of paradise that is beyond death. And it is very cheap, because what you are sacrificing are just momentary fleeting experiences that happen once in a while. If you collect all your moments of happiness in your seventy years of life, perhaps you may not get even seven moments which you can be absolutely certain were of the nature of ecstasy. In seventy years of life, not even seven moments? Then what have you been doing here? -- torturing yourself and others? Yes, you cannot find even seven moments, because the nature of those moments is such that when they are there, they take you over totally, they possess you -- yes, that is the right word -- they possess you completely. But when they are gone, they dispossess you as completely as they had possessed you, so only a memory is left. And how long can you live on the memory which proved so deceptive? After a few days you start doubting whether it happened or were you just imagining? Because in your whole life's experience that moment is so contradictory: years pass, then one moment perhaps.... And that too is not in your hands; when and where it is going to happen, you cannot decide. So there are years of dragging, and a certain moment which has remained just a memory.... Slowly, slowly, even the smoke of memory starts disappearing. So even if you ask a man of seventy years old, he cannot say that there are even seven moments. And as you become older, there is less and less possibility of those moments. There is more and more disillusionment, more and more disappointment. In the future there is only death and darkness, and in the past nothing but deception. The religions had a beautiful space through which to exploit you -- and they did well all over the world. For thousands of years they have found the greatest business -- greater than anybody else's: they have been selling you paradise, and almost for nothing. All they ask is: "Renounce this momentary life and the eternal world of ecstasy is yours." Hence renunciation became a foundational belief: the more you renounce, the more you become worthy; and the more you can be certain that you are coming closer. So people have tried to renounce everything.

http://www.truveo.com/Three-eclipses-described-by-the-ancient-Thucydides/id/3227460694

the center of the volcano

volcano

You go on traveling from one corner of the world to the other. Why is there this madness to go from one town to another? What are you seeking? Whenever anybody can afford it he goes traveling. People work, then they save money just to go around the world -- why? What are you going to gain?
Once an American hunter was looking into a Greek volcano, right into the center of the volcano. Then he said to the guide, "Heavens! It looks like hell!" The guide said, "You Americans -- you have been everywhere! Once you can afford it you will even go to hell!"
But why does this uneasiness exist? Why is man a vagabond deep down? -- because your home is missing and you are in search of it. Your direction may be wrong, but your uneasiness is indicative. Wherever you are it is not your home, this is the problem. So you go on searching for it, you can even go to hell in search of it, but you are not going to find it anywhere because your home exists within you. And even a jackass knows when it is time to go back!
It is time, it is already time, you have waited enough. Don't search for it in things, don't search for it in others, don't search for it outside -- there you will meet the many, the multiple, what Hindus call maya. Maya means the many, the multiple; maya means the endless. You go on searching and searching and there is no end to it. It is a magical world -- maya means the magic of the many. The magic remains, you go on searching, but you never get anything because it is a magical world: whenever you come closer to it, it disappears like a rainbow. From a distance it is beautiful. It catches you, you become obsessed with it, it enters in your dreams, in your desires; you would like to have the rainbow in your fist. And then you go on and on, and the rainbow goes on receding. Whenever you arrive you find there is nothing. The rainbow was a dream, an illusory reality. Hindus have called this world of the many, maya -- a magical world, as if a magician has created it. Nothing exists really, everything exists through desire and dreaming. You create it through your desire; you are a creator through your desire -- you create the world of the many.

http://www.truveo.com/Beyond-the-Path-of-Chosen-Illusions/id/459508090