stan herman

A new low-calorie beer?

+Think compassion-- pity, sympathy, empathy, fellow feeling, care, concern, solicitude, sensitivity, warmth, tenderness, mercy, leniency, tolerance, kindness, humanity, charity, mercy. Are they all love? Are you part of them? Think enlightenment--bliss, insight, understanding, awareness, wisdom, education, learning, knowledge; illumination, awakening, realization, advancement, development, open-mindedness, refinement, cultivation, civilization. Are they all love? Are you part of them? Love once had a meaning--If one loved, he or she loved someone or some thing. It was a feeling of intense affection for a particular. Now, at least for some, it has become little more than a group slogan. What is the word "LOVE" pointing to?

That's the way all philosophical discussions must end

M. I'd be interested in your comments re my interpretation of 32. Not from a translation standpoint, but rather the message. It seems to me so different from what's been said so far. 32. What is in the world has always been in the world. Nothing new is made, only names are changed and viewpoints from which they are seen. Worldly people discriminate endlessly. They judge what is better or worse, invent titles, rank and status, and struggle (or complain) to obtain what they think they do not have. All of this activity is part of the way the world works. Some people mistake their discriminations to be the substance of their lives. To get what they do not think they have, they push against stone walls, exhausting their energy and capacity. Thus, they fail to notice the possibilities that lie beyond their current discriminations. When leaders remember the way of the world they bring wisdom to their leadership. Recognizing the familiar courses and turnings of people's discriminations they compare the present to the past, anticipate points of discord and help people to discover unnoticed harmony.

To me "Love" is no more than a word--a grossly overused word that seems to serve as a patch-work cover for almost any sort of pleasurable feeling experienced by or aspired to by the user. My personal feeling is, that's too bad.

Ahhh, I see now. Well, bet you a dollar you can't free-will yourself into accepting pain and suffering

Hi Marblehead, when you say you don't agree with 'no free will', I assume (from other things you've written), that your belief in it is desire-based belief, rather than a reasoned one. Am I reading right?

Sure, when it's true love and compassion, not when it's being nice and helpful because that's what you're supposed to do.

Well now, I can't rightly agree with the conclusion here. If one accepts the notion of cause and effect, the choice each person makes (to surrender or fight) is determined by all that has influenced him--genetically and experientially--before his tie of decision. For me it's more of a matrix matter.

Coming into this late. Twinner I admire your effort to 'deal' with "love". I'm put in mind of the old saying, "Whatever the question, love is the answer". At the same time I find the whole string of responses you got to be perceptive and daunting to the claim of its natural unique importance. Recognizing you're already aware of the domains of both the numinous and the mundane, I won't belabor the point of love as only one of many feelings/emotions that disguise reality for us. So just speaking in the mundane aspect, I'd say if I had to pick an element of worldly relevance, I'd say truth is the more important. Love (or well intended compassion) can and does often smother the quest for truth, as it becomes for many/most more appropriate to 'be nice and comforting' than to tell it like it is.

31. When conflict is required do not stir emotions against the opponent or glorify your superior technology. When these are done followers, like stampeding cattle, will run amok and bitterness and turmoil will be the yield. Quiet concentration on limited objectives, free from the confusions of passion, will more likely bring success and durable reconciliation. Graciousness in victory is better than the domination of antagonists. The leader who turns swiftly as he can from the needs of conflict to the opportunities of reconciliation is useful for the longer term. The vital person can exercise superior energy without making or damaging opponents. The one with a drive to obliterate enemies is dangerous and unloved even by her allies. They will cast her out as soon as they are able.

BEEJAY'S ELEPHANT Our group went out to dinner one night. It was a long evening and the longer it went the more relaxed it got. Toward the late hours, like kids telling ghost stories, we began talking about weird things that had happened around the plant. Jennifer said there was this one piece of new computerized equipment they had in, and no matter how many times they calibrated it, it always slid back to the same mistake. They called in the service people who even changed some parts, but the same thing happened. Other people told some other stories about things like undiscoverable software glitches, and a few about particular people they knew who always seemed to be at the right place at the right time and you wondered how anybody could be that lucky. Each story seemed to be getting a bit richer than the one before, until the flavor of exaggeration was fairly dripping. Then Bill said, "Now, there was this one time, when a kind of peculiar thing happened in the marketing department. You know, those marketing people sometimes have pretty rich imaginations, but anyway. There was a customer relations manager named Beejay, and she had an elephant that sat on her desk and talked to her. At first, nobody in the office gave it more than passing notice. They couldn't hear it talk. From time-to-time I would pass by her desk and notice the intense look on Beejay's face and how she seemed to be leaning toward the elephant, and sometimes that she seemed to move her lips a little. Well, we all put it down to an idiosyncrasy and since most of us had one or two of our own, and since Beejay seemed so normal in most other ways no one paid much attention. One day though, after I got to know Beejay pretty well, we were sitting at lunch, after everybody else had left, and I asked her about the elephant statue. She said that it was a real elephant and told me that it talked to her sometimes. I said that it didn't look real, and she said that was because it was good at disguising itself. She said that it didn't like to draw much notice and so it had made itself into a 5 inch high ivory model of an elephant. She said it could have made itself into something entirely different if it wanted to. Well, from time to time Beejay and I talked about the elephant and Beejay told me more about it. She said the nice thing about her elephant was that when she asked for advice her elephant would usually give it to her and it was almost always good advice. For instance, once she had been unsure about whether or not she was qualified for a new supervisor job that had been posted. She wondered if it would be a good or bad idea to let her boss and the Human Resource department know that she wanted to be considered a candidate. She asked the elephant and it advised her to go full speed ahead. She had done that and she got the job. The thing that was less nice about Beejay's elephant was that it would give her it's opinions and advice sometimes when she didn't ask for them or maybe even really want to hear them. For instance when she had insisted on getting her own way in a meeting with her new staff, though some of them clearly wanted to go in another direction, she came away feeling like a powerful leader. But later the more she thought about it, the more she worried that she had been too autocratic. It was a serious issue in her mind, and it made her feel important to have important things like that to worry about. Then, suddenly out of the blue, Beejay heard her elephant laughing at her. Beejay told me that to her ears the laughter was so loud that she looked around to see if anyone else could hear it. Beejay asked her elephant, "Why are you laughing? This is a serious issue. Can a supervisor really get the best from her staff if she acts autocratically and stifles their initiative? And what about the ethical issues of abusing power?" The elephant seemed to raise its trunk a little and it said, 'Beejay, my dear, You aren't nearly as powerful as you think you are and other people aren't nearly as helpless.' And though Beejay asked it to explain further, that's all it would say. As if that weren't bad enough, about a month later Beejay came out of a meeting with her boss, and was feeling frustrated, resentful and angry because her boss had turned down a proposal she made. Then later, when the anger and resentment wore off and she felt only frustrated and powerless and very sorry for herself. She slumped down at her desk and brooded on how little authority she really had around here, when suddenly she was again jarred by the sound of her elephant's rolling chuckle. And she heard it say, "Beejay, you aren't nearly as helpless as you think you are and other people aren't nearly as powerful." "C'mon Bill," Max said, "do you really expect us to believe that?" "Which part?" asked Bill.

That's an assertion contradicted by the sutras. However, it seems to me a reasonable one, in its context. There is truth-absolute, which is inexpressible in words. There is truth-relative, which is dependent on the context within which it is expressed and the perception of its receiver. For instance the universally accepted precepts of the physical sciences (like gravity ), or the 'honest' reporting of personal spiritual experience by one individual to another. The rest is fiction, which can be divided into: constructive fiction, that moves in the direction of truth, and popular fiction that reinforces the hearer's habitual prejudices. Most people prefer popular fiction (according to their group's version).

A Buddha can not live (much less learn anything) without the energy of mind transmitted by those who think upon him/her/it, whether favorably or not. There is no Buddha in Nirvana.

Paradox The Tao, as many other 'wisdom' guides, is translated and interpreted by people. Its messages therefore are subject to the conscious and unconscious predispositions of both the translator and the reader. The Tao, in particular, written in Chinese characters, is open to a wide range of interpretation. To some it seems to advocate total passivity, others find its message to be 'act naturally', but do act. Which is correct and which is wrong? Both are correct and wrong. Can that be? A word that captures the spirit of this discussion is "Paradox". Wikiipedia defines: "

A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation that seems to defy logic or intuition." There are paradoxes in physics, mathematics, logic, moral philosophy and many other fields. Examples:

 ➢ How can light travel as both a particle and a wave? 
 ➢ How can stress both weaken and strengthen muscle tissue and the immune system?
 ➢ If the laws of cause and effect are absolute, how can there be free will? 
 ➢ Can the existence of evil be compatible with the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect god? 
 ➢ Is it moral to kill one person in order to save the lives of many? 
➢ Which is moral, to punish the evildoer or to forgive him? 
 ➢ If one thing is certain, it is that nothing is certain. This then must be a false statement. 

 In my view the capacity for spiritual development, (within the context of living daily life in this world), surely requires consideration of new unknowns. Truth and relevance for each person depends on her current place on her path. We are able to consider new ideas when we are ready to consider them, and only if we are willing to. In true science paradoxes are not ignored, but explored, and eventually they are often reconciled in a new burst of constructive creativity. So it is also in the realm of our spiritual growth. To deny or ignore paradox is to imprison one's self within an isolated fortress.

Another facet of the devil and his work: When most people think about the devil it's usually with a frown and a little worry line or two (who knows, he might be out there, just watching and waiting). Or worse, he might know more about you--the real you--than you would like. R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Religion at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a psychological literary critic wrote, "The apocalyptic beast let loose has become a reality to our generation, and nobody knows what is still ahead of us... [but he is most frightening] because we fear the devil's sight more than his activity, and because of a very understandable reticence to force open our 'whited sepulchres' (i.e. a person who regards himself as inwardly evil but outwardly professes to be virtuous)." A devil's advocate is someone who argues with "what everybody believes" (or pretends to believe). He and She takes a position (he does not necessarily agree with) just to test whether what everybody believes is really true or not. Does the claim hold up or does it need to be modified, qualified, or even tossed away? Curiously enough, the devil's advocate, originated with the Roman Catholic Church's process for canonizing candidates for sainthood. He was a canon lawyer, appointed by the church to argue the case against the candidate. His opponent was called God's advocate. The devil's advocate's job was to be a skeptic, to question the validity of the supposed miracles the candidate had performed, to look for holes in the stories and flaws in the candidate's character. The position was established in 1587 during the reign of Pope Sixtus V and lasted for almost 400 years. It was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983. Following its abolition nearly 500 individuals were canonized and over 1,300 were beatified during John Paul's tenure as Pope, as compared to only 98 canonizations by all his 20th-century predecessors.

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Nicely said. This is what I think Verse 1 is about (in contemporary context): 1. You can choose how you think and what you act upon. You may center your attention on what is real and valid, according to your own observations and experiences, or you can become a contributor to the latest and most fashionable tower of babel. If you choose to be a tower builder, you put on the uniform of a particular profession or trade or political movement or social or economic group. You go along and get along. You pledge allegiance to your group's slogans and interpret events according to its generalizations. If you choose to be a reality hunter you place your self somewhat apart from the popular view and concentrate on discovering what is going on beneath the slogans. Both courses have their advantages and disadvantages. If you choose to help build the tower, sooner or later, you will be disappointed because what is supposed to happen (according to the slogans) doesn't happen, and you are thrown on your own devices. If you choose to be a reality hunter you find the hunt is not an easy one, and it can get lonesome. Some choose one course and some the other to travel their lives. A few recognize their equal validity. To respect popular generalizations but not to depend upon them is healthy. To increase your capacity to cope with their crucial exceptions is skill. When you depart from your usual pattern, whether by necessity or choice, the crucial moves of your life are made.

Interesting, I've been doing the orbital circulation for years, without knowing its name or where it came from. One can get to putting it into action even when in the midst of doing something else--it seems great for healing (self and others). It can also lead to internal awareness of tensions and soreness, and alleviating them.