Taoweblog

The
romantic young man turned to the beautiful young girl in his bed and asked,
"Am I the first man you ever made love to?"

She thought for
a moment and then said, "You could be -- I have a terrible memory for
faces."

In a small
school a teacher asked the little kids, "Do you know of any animal who
when he goes out of the house he goes like a lion, and when he comes back into
the house he comes like a mouse?"

Little Ernie raised his hand.
He was the last person to do something like that. The teacher said, "Good,
Ernie. Do you know the animal?"

He said, "I know perfectly.
He is my dad. When he goes out, then you see he looks like a lion, and when he
comes in, then you see he looks like a mouse."

There is no one among men who has not a special failing:

And my failing consists in writing verses.

I have broken away from the thousand ties of life:

But this infirmity will remain behind.

Each time that I look at a fine landscape:

Each time that I meet a loved friend,

I raise my voice and recite a stanza of poetry

And am glad as though a God had crossed my path.

Ever since the day I was banished to Hsun-yang

Half my time I have lived among the hills.

And often, when I have finished a new poem,

Alone I climb the road to the Eastern Rock.

I lean my body on the banks of white stone:

I pull down with my hands a green cassia branch.

My mad singing startles the valleys and hills:

The apes and birds all come to peep.

Fearing to become a laughingstock in the world,

I choose a place that is unfrequented by men.

Die Pariser Sammelgruben waren bis weit ins 19. Jahrhundert
hinein Teil eines stinkenden Gürtels, der die Stadt einkreiste und zu ersticken
drohte. Noch 1821 verlief ein Teil der peripheren Abflußkanäle, der Grand
Canal, unter offenem Himmel. Erst 1823 wurde er überdacht. Die Grube von
Montfaucon an der Grenze des Faubourg Saint-Martin wurde erst 1849 geschlossen.
Die Senkgruben verursachten stinkende Gase, die von Tierkadavern, Exkrementen
und Schlachtereiabfällen hochstiegen. Im frühen 19. Jahrhundert lag der
Schwerpunkt der Diskussion noch auf der Nutzbarmachung menschlicher Exkremente.
Es ging um Rückgewinnung und Wiederverwertung, um die Frage, wie man durch den
Einsatz spezifischer Geräte die Ausscheidungsprodukte entmischen, d.h., wie man
die flüssigen von den festen Stoffen trennen konnte. Es ging also um Apparate,
die der Gefahr einer Verdünnung entgegenwirken sollten. Gegen die
Schwemmkanalisation wurde eingewendet, sie würde zu einer Verringerung und
somit Verschwendung von wertvollen Stoffen führen.

In den geheimnisvollen Tiefen des sozialen Organismus fand
eine subtile Alchimie statt, im Laufe derer der ausgeschiedene Kot in wertvolle
Düngemittel transformiert wurde. Die reinigenden, ununterbrochen zirkulierenden
Ströme der Kanäle verwandelten die stinkenden Fäkalien sterblicher,
individueller Leiber in wertvollen Dung. Der Kot durfte sich nicht am Rande
anhäufen, beschwor er doch damit die Schreckensvision einer plötzlichen
Verstopfung oder Stagnation, die Vorstellung einer von Dreckhaufen umzingelten
Stadt, die in ihrem eigenen stagnierenden Schlamm unterging.

Der Kot wird durch die Gedärme der Stadt reingewaschen und
durch eine Art zweiter Verdauung seiner eigentlichen Bestimmung zugeführt.
Verwandelt sich hier ein Strom in den anderen? Ist die urbane Unterwelt der
Kanalisationen eine parallele Gegenwelt, in der eine alchimistische Umwandlung
der fäkalen Ströme in lebensspendendes Blut stattfindet? Die späten Gegner der Schwemmkanalisation
artikulieren ihre Vision des Verlustes im Bild einer gekreuzigten, zu Tode
verletzten, verblutenden Stadt: „Die Schwemmkanalisation ist eine klaffende
Wunde in der Seite der Stadt Paris, durch die, zusammen mit den Eingeweiden,
auch die Ehre, das Kapital und die Gesundheit seiner Einwohner entströmen.“

Kalkutta ist hässlich. Jeder sagt das. Es ist die Stadt der
schrecklichen Nächte, ein Ort, den man vergessen soll und aus den Reiseführern
streichen, ein Moloch, der sich aufteilt in sterbende Bettler und Nonnen, die
die Sterbenden Huckepack schleppen.

Läuft man morgens um halb sechs den Haji Mohammad Moshin
Square hinunter, besoffen vom Geruch nach Fisch, Abgasen, Sandelholz,
gepresstem Zuckerrohr, Chai, am Straßenrand gekochten Dhal, nach käsigen
Ledersandalen, von Fliegen übersäten Tierleichen und gut vermischtem
nachtwarmen Müll, kann man auf dem Fußweg gar nicht laufen. Ausspucken,
Urinieren, Zähneputzen, Kochen, Wohnen, Essen, Schlafen, alles wird dort
erledigt. Auf der Strasse kann man auch nicht laufen. Rikschas, Fahrräder,
Taxis, Kulis nähern sich krakeelend aus allen Himmelsrichtungen. Man taumelt
durch Gruppen von Spaniern, Koreanern und Japanern mit harter Währung in
verschwitzten Brustbeuteln und guten Absichten im Herzen. Sie alle sind um
Auftrag des Herrn unterwegs.

Raschelnd zieht das Heer der Nonnen ein in die Morgenmesse,
mit gestärkten blütenweißen Saris und gesenkten Köpfen. Nonne sein! Armut
geloben! Entbehrungen tragen! Konvertieren! Missionieren! Egal wen, egal von wo
nach wo.

Der Linienbus erinnert von außen an einen Tierversuch mit
Ratten.

Neben dem Wallfahrtsort für orthodoxe Hindus, dem großen
Kali-Tempel, in dem täglich mehrere Ziegen geköpft werden und in dem voll die
Shakti-Energie ist, etablierte sich in einem verlassenen Flügel dieses Tempels
ein Wallfahrtsort für orthodoxe Gutmenschen. Mutter Teresa, die verschrumpelte
Nonne, die herkam, um den Ärmsten der Armen zu dienen, hatte Mutter Kali, der
Göttin der Liebe und des Todes, ein Stück Revier abgetrotzt. Als erstes fällt der
Blick auf ein Foto, auf dem die greise Teresa und der greise Papst Händchen
halten, Adam und Eva ohne Sündenfall. Hier sieht es so aus, wie man sich die
Armut in Kalkutta vorstellt: Gichtige hohläugige Menschen auf Pritschen,
geschorene Köpfe auf krankenhausgrünen Kissen, glitschige Steinbecken, nach
Desinfektionsmitteln und Exkrementen stinkende Abflussrinnen.

Brauchen wir eine Disziplin, um einzusehen, dass Schauen
Handeln ist? Brauchen wir das wirklich?

Ein Soldat bei einer Parade, der ist doch sehr ruhig,
kerzengerade, das Gewehr ganz genau im Griff; so ist er gedrillt worden, Tag
für Tag; jede Freiheit ist ihm zunichte gemacht worden. Er ist ganz ruhig; doch
ist das Ruhe? Oder wenn ein Kind im Spiel versunken ist – ist das Ruhe? Nimm
ihm das Spielzeug weg, und das Kind wird wieder, was es ist. Wird also
Disziplin Ruhe zustande bringen? Sie bringt vielleicht Schwerfälligkeit, eine
gewisse Stagnation, aber bringt sie eine Ruhe zustande, die intensiv tätig und
dennoch Ruhe ist?

Lebe, lebe in dieser Welt! Diese Welt ist so wunderbar
schön. Es ist unsere Welt, unsere Erde, auf der wir leben können. Aber wir
leben nicht, wir sind engstirnige, wird sind entfremdete, wird sind
sorgenvolle, wir sind furchtsame Menschenwesen, und daher leben wir nicht, wir
haben keine wirklichen Beziehungen, wir sind isolierte, verzweifelnde
Menschenwesen. Wir wissen nicht, was es bedeutet, auf jene ekstatische,
glückliche Weise zu leben. So kann man nur leben, wenn man weiß, wie man von
all dem Stumpfsinn seines Daseins frei werden kann. Davon frei zu werden ist
nur möglich, wenn man sich seiner Beziehungen bewusst wird, nicht nur zu
anderen Menschen, sondern auch zu Ideen, zur Natur, zu allem und jedem. In
diesem Beziehungsgefüge entdeckt man, was man ist, seine Ängste, Sorgen, seine
Verzweiflung, seine Einsamkeit, seinen völligen Mangel an Liebe. Jeder ist voll
von Theorien, Worten, Wissen darüber, was andere gesagt haben; doch über uns
selbst wissen wir nichts, und daher wissen wir nicht zu leben.

23. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE TWO TYPES OF KARMA, ACTIVE AND DORMANT, OR UPON OMENS AND PORTENTS, THE EXACT TIME OF DEATH CAN BE PREDICTED.

24. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON FRIENDLINESS, OR ANY OTHER ATTRIBUTE, GREAT STRENGTH IN THAT QUALITY IS OBTAINED.
25. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE STRENGTH OF AN ELEPHANT, THE STRENGTH OF AN ELEPHANT IS OBTAINED.

26. BY DIRECTING THE LIGHT OF THE SUPERPHYSICAL FACULTY, KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED OF THE SUBTLE, THE HIDDEN, AND THE DISTANT.
27. BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE SUN, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS GAINED.

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7. Shih / The Army

above K'un The Receptive, Earth


below K'an The Abysmal, Water

The Judgement

The Army. The army needs perseverance
And a strong man.
Good fortune without blame.

The Image

In the middle of the earth is water:
The image of The Army.
Thus the superior man increases his masses
By generosity toward the people.

The Lines

Change at the beginning means:
An army must set forth in proper order.
If the order is not good, misfortune threatens.

Change in the second place means:
In the midst of the army.
Good fortune. No blame.
The king bestows a triple decoration.

Change in the third place means:
Perchance the army carries corpses in the wagon.
Misfortune.

Change in the fourth place means:
The army retreats. No blame.

Change in the fifth place means:
There is game in the field.
It furthers one to catch it.
Without blame.
Let the eldest lead the army.
The younger transports corpses;
Then perseverance brings misfortune.

Change at the top means:
The great prince issues commands,
Founds states, vests families with fiefs.
Inferior people should not be employed.

Rabbi Longbleibt of Far Rockaway had a well-deserved reputation for being long-winded. On this Sabbath, he was in especially good form. His topic for the day was "Prophets of the Bible." "Now then," he added, after speaking for half an hour, "we have disposed of the major prophets. Next we come to the minor prophets. To what place, my dear friends, shall we assign them?" From a seat in the rear of the temple, a bored-looking stranger arose. He waved an explanatory hand at the seat he had just vacated and said, "One of them can have my place!"

It is impossible to understand even the people who are just like you. What to say about buddhas? They speak from sunlit peaks and you live in dark valleys. By the time their words reach you they are no longer the same. By the time you hear them, great interpretation has happened. Your mind has colored them in its own color. Buddha says: Now YOU ARE WISE. YOU ARE FREE FROM DESIRE. That is the sign of wisdom: freedom from desire. Only fools desire. Wise people live and live joyously, but without desire. Either you can desire or you can live, you can't do both. If you desire, you postpone living; if you live, who bothers about desiring? Today is enough unto itself. ... AND YOU UNDERSTAND WORDS AND THE STITCHING TOGETHER OF WORDS. This is a very beautiful sutra. Buddha says: The words of the awakened ones have to be understood in a special way because they are stitched in a special way. Between two words there is silence; that is the stitching. You have to read between the lines. If you can just understand the lines you will miss the whole point. You have to read between the lines. You have to read between the words. You have to read the silences, the pauses. Hence it is more easy to understand a living buddha than to understand a dead one, because with a living buddha you can experience his pauses, his periods, when between two words suddenly there is a gap, the interval, which is far more pregnant than the words themselves. ... AND THE STITCHING TOGETHER OF WORDS. AND YOU WANT NOTHING. Once you have become silent and you have understood the words of the awakened ones, what is there to want? You have already got it. You have got the inexhaustible treasure. You have become a king. "VICTORY IS MINE, KNOWLEDGE IS MINE, AND ALL PURITY, ALL SURRENDER." In silence, everything is yours: victory -- victory for which you have been struggling your whole life, maybe many lives, is suddenly yours. And without any fight it is yours because it has been yours from the very beginning. You simply never looked within.

This is the moment of embarking.
All auspicious signs are in place.

In the beginning, all things are hopeful. We prepare ourselves to start anew. Though we may be intent on the magnificent journey ahead, all things are contained in the first moment: our optimism, our faith, our resolution, our innocence.

In order to start, we must make a decision. The decision is a commitment to daily self- cultivation. We must make a strong connection to our inner selves. Outside matters are superfluous. Alone and naked, we negotiate all of life's travails. Therefore, we alone must make something of ourselves, transforming ourselves into the instruments for experiencing the deepest spiritual essence of life.

Once we make our decision, all things will come to us. Auspicious signs are not a superstition, but a confirmation. They are a response. It is said that if one chooses to pray to a rock with enough devotion, even that rock will come alive. In the same way, once we choose to commit ourselves to spiritual practice, even the mountains and valleys will reverberate to the sound of our purpose.

The real question is that of ability and not of the existence, or otherwise, of God. If you have the ability you will surely experience those truths which are beyond your reach now; in the absence of that ability, those truths will necessarily seem untruths. If some vague fear compels us to accept truths they cannot be real truths, for real Truth is what is experienced as such.

Twenty-five centuries ago a seeker after Truth fell at the feet of Lord Buddha, beseeching his guidance. "How do you visualize it?" he said. "What is your conception?" The Enlightened One said, "What I have conceived may not help you much since you don't have the eyes competent enough to visualise Truth. Whatever I may say will be taken as untruth because you cannot realize the reality of what you cannot experience." Narrating an anecdote the Buddha continued, "I had been to a village where they brought me a blind man, requesting me to convince him of the existence of light. I told them it was no better than madness since he hadn't the instrument of vision, namely the eyes. They should rather take him to a doctor who could rectify his eyes. Where there are eyes to see there is light." I say the same to you. Your concern need not be Truth. It should rather be whether you do have the eyes competent enough to see beyond the object. What is seen is nothing but matter and whatever there is, besides and beyond it, falls outside the range of our experience. Its sympathetic impulses, its waves of reaction fail to have any impact on us. When you meet a friend, your contact with him is confined only to his physical being. You do not come into close touch with his soul. When you see a tree in the open yard, you stop at the outer limits of its physical presence, but you do not have any access to its inner soul. Why? That is because one who has had no close contact with one's own soul and one who has had no experience of the sentient energy within, cannot hope to realize the all-pervasive Sentient Being. The question, therefore, is not of God, Truth or light but of vision. In my view, Dharma is more a remedy, a means of cure, than an object of deliberation. Fresh vistas of experience will open out within us if the slumbering impulses are goaded into activity, leaving at our disposal the knowledge of those things without which there is no purpose, no aim, and no meaning in life. Matter recedes into the background, leaving the impalpable behind, as our sensibility grows finer and our receptivity keener. A point is reached when the entire universe ceases to appear as a gross object of perception, and the pure unclouded vision of the Supreme Soul alone remains. In order to achieve this we shall have to prepare ourselves. The farmer prepares the soil before sowing seeds. Persons seeking the realization of the supreme must keep the ground in readiness and tune themselves within in order to hear the all-pervasive divine music without. The sun is visible because our eyes perceive it. The sun may leave its impact on us, because we have both, the visual organ and sufficient receptive capacity. I am speaking and my voice enters your heart, producing a responsive echo, because you have a sense-organ which enables the sound to come up to you. The Supreme Soul never ceases to exist even for a moment. Our vital breaths are all His; every limit is His; but we do not realize it because our own hands keep the passage of entrance closed to Him.

The sun will rise in America; the future of religion is in America, not in India. India is bound to move on the path of communism. It cannot avoid it, it is already on it. It is moving slowly. It is a very old country so it moves very slowly, at an old man's pace. But it is moving; slowly, slowly it is moving. It is dropping democracy, it is dropping freedom, and it is becoming more and more materialist, socialistic. That is the first step; then by and by it will be a communist country. By becoming communist it will become rich again; by becoming rich it will become religious again. America has become rich and will become poor, sooner or later. You can see the hippies: they have already moved. They have dropped out of the rich society because they have seen the futility of it. It is meaningless. They talk about love, not about war. The moment you start talking about love and not about war, your country is going to become poor -- because to remain rich one has to remain continuously violent and aggressive. They are talking of the simple life, but a simple life cannot be a rich life. Technology will disappear. If technology disappears, richness will disappear. America is rich, will become religious, and by becoming religious, by and by, it will lose its richness. There is a possibility of Russia, somewhere in this new century, becoming very rich and suddenly becoming religious. The wheel of history is very dialectical -- thesis, antithesis: this is how it moves. If you are very intelligent, then even in your poverty you can see the futility of riches. But then you have to be very perceptive: you have to think about something that you don't have and you have to recognize that it is meaningless. Without having it, to recognize it as meaningless is very difficult. Having it and recognizing that it is meaningless is simple. So if a poor man becomes religious he shows intelligence, and if a rich man remains irreligious he shows stupidity. A rich man who is not religious simply means he is a fool. A poor man and not religious simply needs sympathy; he is not a fool. You can forgive him. No rich person can be forgiven if he is not religious; that shows he is stupid: he has riches, and yet he has not been able to see that they are futile. Your greed simply shows that you are feeling empty. Now, you can fill it with things but it will never be filled. Or, you can start growing into your inward consciousness, and it will be filled. People can continue for their whole lives wasting all their energies in greed, this ambition is not going to help you.

Mulla Nasrudin and his neighbour were talking about the problems of raising their boys. "Is your son very ambitious, Mulla?" asked the neighbour. "Yes," said Nasrudin. "He has such big ideas about being rich and successful that already he has begun to look on me as a sort of poor relation."

Die UFO-Forschung schildert seit vielen Jahren immer wieder UFO-Fälle, die von sog. Entführungen sprechen. Viele sehen hier leibhaftig agierende UFOnauten, Lebewesen von den Sternen, die uns Menschen und zahllose Tiere der Erde zu Versuchszwecken missbrauchen. Auch wenn Herkunft und Absicht der fremden UFO-Wesen ungeklärt bleiben, sind die Taten der Fremden offensichtlich nicht neu. Eingriffe unbekannter Geschöpfe des Himmels oder schlicht anderer Sphären gab es schon vor Jahrtausenden, vielleicht sogar zu Beginn der Menschwerdung. Berichte darüber sind so alt wie die Geschichte der Menschheit selbst.  UFOs, Mythen und Märchen sind untrennbar miteinander verbunden. Aspekte aus der UFOlogie sind unbestreitbar schon von unseren Vorfahren niedergeschrieben und erzählt worden. Wir haben es hier mit einem Phänomen zu tun, das seit Jahrhunderten global kursiert.
Diese Phänomene stehen nicht im Widerspruch zur Natur - sondern lediglich im Widerspruch zu der uns bekannten Naturwissenschaft.

There are many things in this world that can be known through others, many things that can be known with no personal experience. Whatever we know about this world, whatever information we have about it, for the most part is given to us by others. Scientists give us information about the various sciences; experts in geography tell us where the Himalayas are and where Tibet is, and this is how we gather information. This information received from others about the world can be accepted, but you cannot accept information from others about your self. One cannot find truth by mere thinking. Thinking is not the process that leads you to the truth. It leads only to inference. And inferences are just inferences, they are hypothetical. They may be true, they may not be true. They are just conjectures, not real conclusions. But the mind lives in thinking and it goes on believing that its conjectures are conclusions. They are not conclusions. Truth is achieved only by awareness. It is not a mind process at all; it is a totally different phenomenon. You are not to think the truth, you have to stop all thinking to know truth; you have to forget all about truth, to know truth. You have to unburden yourself of all the theories, hypotheses, philosophies, ideologies that you have learned. The process of achieving the truth is a process of unlearning; it is a process of unconditioning. Slowly, slowly one has to get out of the mind, to slip out of the mind; and one has to become just a pool of consciousness, a pure awareness. Just a sheer watchfulness: doing nothing, just watching, watching all that is happening in the outside world and in the inside world.

The phenomenon of people living alone is disgusting because it is out of frustration. They wanted to be with someone, they have tried and they have failed again and again. Now it is out of failure they have reached to a conclusion that it is better to be alone, but their aloneness will be sad, empty, ugly, because it has not come out of any abundance of love -- it has come out of the psychopathy of love. And it is true, the best couple in the world is one in which one partner is a masochist and the other is a sadist. They fit very well. The sadist wants to torture; the masochist wants to be tortured. You cannot find a better combination. Both are happy -- there is no complaint, but the situation is ugly. To settle in such a state that the one is sadist and the other is masochist; two sick people cannot create a healthy relationship. In fact, their relationship is based on sickness. Most of the couples who seem to cling together are of this type because they are fulfilling each other's need, and it is a natural by-product -- if you cannot find somebody who fits with your psycho-pathology, it is better to be single... but that is not going to make you psychologically healthy. Your singleness may create thousands of perversions. I have read a story that two men were going to Alaska. At the last village they stopped to purchase few necessary things: toothpaste et cetera, and the shopkeeper said that, "I have something more which perhaps you are not aware, you will not get a woman there." They had not thought about it -- that is true. In Alaska, where you are going to get a woman? So the man said that, "I have some arrangements, I have a rubber woman. You just pump it and it is more beautiful than any woman, and it is very easy, it never quarrels, never nags you and easy to carry, just take the air out, fold it back and keep in the pocket -- nobody will know." They both looked at each other and said, "It is a good idea." But one said, "I don't have money." The other said, "I have money." So they purchased the woman -- a really beautiful woman with filled air with all the right proportions of the body. After two years, one man came back. The shopkeeper said, "As far as I remember, two men have gone, where is the other?" He said, "Don't mention him. I shot him." He said, "Why you shot him, he was your friend?" "Don't call him my friend!" he said. "When I was out, he was making love to my woman. He was cheating me continuously. I had asked him again and again, are you making love to my woman? Because I had paid for it. And he said, `No, I am not interested in women.' But one day I came in the middle of the day and saw him making love to my woman. I shot both." These singles will find rubber women, these singles will have to come to some understanding about their sexuality.