The New York Times is running this series called The Rural Life in the op-ed pages. It's like the "new media monetization" discussions I attend to, in that I'm mostly in receiving mode. Rarely do I comment on it. Today, though...
Most of the time, nature is simply there — when I do chores, when I walk down to the mailbox, when I look up from writing. I don’t expect solace from it, nor do I theologize it with my own desires. It simply persists in sublime indifference. And yet from time to time I find myself surprised by it, and I know that what I am really noticing is the volatility of the human world.
I have been struck before by the gap between the new news of my city life and the old news of nature. I have that feeling now. Nothing in the natural world upbraids me. It offers no commentary. It has nothing to say about financial meltdowns and dirty politics or, for that matter, personal grief. But the other lives on this farm do remind me of how captive I have become, like all of us, to the tensions of this incredible human season.
That is the trick in nature. There is no escaping to it. It throws you back upon yourself again and again. The geese shriek when they see me coming and then drop into their bassoon tones. The chipmunks freeze on the stone wall, waiting to see what direction I will go. Remedy makes the sound that is usually called nickering but is really a slow, deep equine purring. I am carrying the grain bucket, which is why I also am lost in my thoughts. And when I slip out of them, walking beside the horses up the hill to their grain buckets, I can feel for a moment how insubstantial those thoughts really are, before they engulf me again.
...today Verlyn Klinkenborg touched the heart of the Tao, just a little.
I don't want you to think only farmers can see it, though. I get the sense Verlyn is speaking of nature as grass, trees, animals and everything but human-constructed environments. Truth, though, human constructed environments are as natural as ant hills and bee hives.
Yes, your computer is part of nature.
Nothing humans do...nothing humans can do...is outside of nature. We create human tools and assemble human structures to do the human things we must do. All the foresight you need is in understanding that fact. Nothing we've done has changed the way nature operates. If we destroy ourselves it will be the natural outcome of our collective actions.
Natural does not mean inevitable though. It doesn't even mean it makes sense. There's no sense in the passing of the seasons. There is order, though. The original order from which our nervous systems arose. Nature is the framework within which everything makes sense.
I want to write things like this sometimes...
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Since you mentioned the Tao,
Since you mentioned the Tao, I would nit, what humans have created is nature, but it's less Tao, since the Tao is non-doing, non-creating. :-)
If I were really to got
If I were really to go there, I might say...
Wu wei is not inactive or uncreative. It sails down the river instead of pushing it.
Wu wei is like the laws of physics...they do nothing, and there's nothing you can do without them.
...but this is just an open thread...
Country living is the place for me
There is a time for love and laughter
the days will pass like summer storms
the winter winds will follow after
but there is love and love is warm
There is a time for us to wander
when time is young and so are we
the woods are greener over yonder
the path is new the world is green
There is a time when leaves are falling
the woods are grey the paths are old
the snow will come when geese are calling
you need a fire against the cold
-the dillards
Good one, Ishmael.
Good one, Ishmael.
The Book of the Void...
(...Just because I really dig 'Book of Five Rings!')
What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing.
It is not included in man's knowledge.
Of course the void is nothingness.
By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.
That is the void.
People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void.
This is not the true void.
It is bewilderment.
In the Way of strategy, also, those who study as warriors think that whatever they cannot understand in their craft is the void.
This is not the true void.
To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior.
With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight.
When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void.
Until you realise the true Way, whether in Buddhism or in common sense, you may think that things are correct and in order.
However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way.
Know well this spirit, and with forthrightness as the foundation and the true spirit as the Way.
Enact strategy broadly, correctly and openly.
Then you will come to think of things in a wide sense and, taking the void as the Way, you will see the Way as void.
In the void is virtue, and no evil.
Wisdom has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence, spirit is nothingness.
I'm not sure I still have a
I'm not sure I still have a copy of The Book of Five Rings...most of my books are in storage. I think it was more Shinto than Tao.
Still, cool and interesting.