I came alone,
I sit alone,
WIthout regrets that people know me not.
Only the ghost of that old tree,
To the south of the city,
Happens to know that I am an Immortal,
Passing through.
-Poem ascribed to Lu Tung-pin (呂洞賓), one of the 8 Taoist Immortals (八仙).
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Liken
Liken the scriptures.
Go and do, be like Nephi.
Consider yourself as Adam...
Shake the pillars of hell and be as Captain Moroni.
Take Moroni's challenge and find out for yourself.
My Mormon hero's don't follow; they study, lead, and help.
If we are to like ourselves to the prophets:
Then can we consider ourselves as Joseph Smith, being told all the religions have fallen astray? What would be do then?
Go and do, be like Nephi.
Consider yourself as Adam...
Shake the pillars of hell and be as Captain Moroni.
Take Moroni's challenge and find out for yourself.
My Mormon hero's don't follow; they study, lead, and help.
If we are to like ourselves to the prophets:
Then can we consider ourselves as Joseph Smith, being told all the religions have fallen astray? What would be do then?
invest in loss
MY HOPE by Professor Cheng Man Ching (鄭曼青).
"Taoists advocate wu wei (non-action or effortlessness), and the Buddhists venerate the doctrine of emptying.
He who is dedicated to non-action seeks to realize the great hope of immortality (he is referring to a spiritual state, not physical immortality as we understand it in the West.)
He who endeavors to empty the world of objectivity does so to cultivate his spirit, which is the only real self.
So as the Taoists and Buddhists have their goals, I would adopt as my watchword for Tai Chi Chuan the simple phrase, “investment in loss”. For a practitioner this means that they voluntarily and at their own initiative suffer “loss” and that the result will bring the benefit of success and health. To be explicit, he who invests in small losses makes small gains, he who invests in bigger losses makes bigger gains – what is worth having is worth paying for!
Both Buddhists and Taoists in their doctrines aim at salvation of people’s souls, but, first of all, they must save their own. To invest in loss is the same as what Confucius meant by “ke chi”, to subdue the self. Mencius says in his book, “When Heaven is about to confer great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil,…exposes his body to hunger,…and supplies his incompetencies.” This basic commandment of the Confucian doctrine is for one to subdue the self and to seek jen – ie. To develop in one the virtues of love, creativity, and harmony; and then to extend one’s self to others, ie. To enlarge one’s sphere of goodness by helping other people do good.
Although I have not risen to the height of Confucius’ teaching, I try to learn and to venerate its meaning and spirit."
Photograph by Kenneth Van Sickle.
"Taoists advocate wu wei (non-action or effortlessness), and the Buddhists venerate the doctrine of emptying.
He who is dedicated to non-action seeks to realize the great hope of immortality (he is referring to a spiritual state, not physical immortality as we understand it in the West.)
He who endeavors to empty the world of objectivity does so to cultivate his spirit, which is the only real self.
So as the Taoists and Buddhists have their goals, I would adopt as my watchword for Tai Chi Chuan the simple phrase, “investment in loss”. For a practitioner this means that they voluntarily and at their own initiative suffer “loss” and that the result will bring the benefit of success and health. To be explicit, he who invests in small losses makes small gains, he who invests in bigger losses makes bigger gains – what is worth having is worth paying for!
Both Buddhists and Taoists in their doctrines aim at salvation of people’s souls, but, first of all, they must save their own. To invest in loss is the same as what Confucius meant by “ke chi”, to subdue the self. Mencius says in his book, “When Heaven is about to confer great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil,…exposes his body to hunger,…and supplies his incompetencies.” This basic commandment of the Confucian doctrine is for one to subdue the self and to seek jen – ie. To develop in one the virtues of love, creativity, and harmony; and then to extend one’s self to others, ie. To enlarge one’s sphere of goodness by helping other people do good.
Although I have not risen to the height of Confucius’ teaching, I try to learn and to venerate its meaning and spirit."
Photograph by Kenneth Van Sickle.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
dangers of patriarchy
Find the person and what they want.
Don't fit a person to a system.
---
I was profoundly moved by the insights of this paper on Palestine and the dangers of patriarchy. I need to be more sensitive of its effect in my own life.
http://adalah.org/newsletter/eng/nov05/fet.pdf
Thursday, February 6, 2014
EQ's new teacher
Breathe the Dao.
If I can love Sinatra as a musician,
If I can hold dear Wagner's compositions,
If I can forgive as I a teach high schoolers,
If as a mormon, I can hope for change,
Perhaps I can teach Elder's quorum.
I was just called. I don't know who is in more trouble me or them....
If I can love Sinatra as a musician,
If I can hold dear Wagner's compositions,
If I can forgive as I a teach high schoolers,
If as a mormon, I can hope for change,
Perhaps I can teach Elder's quorum.
I was just called. I don't know who is in more trouble me or them....
Thursday, December 26, 2013
stories
After reading some doaist stories, I started to chuckle about the over-the-top fanstasical details and characters. I thought, "How can I take this serious!? What a bunch of supertition and hookem."
In my mormon upbringing, we take our stories very seriously. Not only do we hear the details and morals of the stories, we hear how the people really existed and it happened exactly it is printed. This has been difficult for me lately.
Then it hit me: what did I learn form the story. It doesn't the quirky characters, the writer's personal/cultural bias, the history, etc. are not the purpose of the story. Imagine if we couldn't discuss the parrable of the 3 vinigar tasters, because we couldn't agree on the historical facts. Crazy, right?
So I guess I'll need to read the Chronicle of the Tao and such again and ask search not for what happened but what is the writer trying to teach me and accept the power of just stories.
In my mormon upbringing, we take our stories very seriously. Not only do we hear the details and morals of the stories, we hear how the people really existed and it happened exactly it is printed. This has been difficult for me lately.
Then it hit me: what did I learn form the story. It doesn't the quirky characters, the writer's personal/cultural bias, the history, etc. are not the purpose of the story. Imagine if we couldn't discuss the parrable of the 3 vinigar tasters, because we couldn't agree on the historical facts. Crazy, right?
So I guess I'll need to read the Chronicle of the Tao and such again and ask search not for what happened but what is the writer trying to teach me and accept the power of just stories.
Friday, December 13, 2013
Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith
I have been really affected and grateful for these thoughts. My favorite:
“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”
~Pope Francis, taking aim at ideologically obsessed Christians, October 2013
This I can do! This i strive for. In this, I can have hope.
The whole list:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/11/pope-francis-quotes/
“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”
~Pope Francis, taking aim at ideologically obsessed Christians, October 2013
This I can do! This i strive for. In this, I can have hope.
The whole list:
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/12/11/pope-francis-quotes/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)