Places of Tao: Kailash

Kailash (Kailas), 6.638 m - Tibet

Gange source

Tao fashion in Rome

sitting at the feet of the Tao

Isa Upanishad, Wellcome Library, London

The emphasis of the Upanishads (lit.: sitting at the feet of the Master) is on Wholeness. Remember, it is not on perfection but on wholeness. The moment one becomes interested in being perfect, the ego enters in. The ego is a perfectionist – the desire of the ego is to be perfect – and perfection drives humanity towards insanity.
Wholeness is totally different; its flavor is different. Perfection is in the future: it is a desire. Wholeness is herenow: it is a revelation. Perfection has to be achieved, and of course every achievement takes time; it has to be gradual. You have to sacrifice the present for the future, thetoday for the tomorrow. And the tomorrow never comes; what comes is always today.

All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession.

Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.

Sunless are those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom where to all they in their passing hence resort who are slayers of their souls.

One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.

That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught.

He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness? 

It is He that has gone abroad — That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone. 

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Knowledge, other that which comes by the Ignorance; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys Immortality.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Non-Birth, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone.

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Birth, other that which comes by the Non-Birth; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

He who knows That as both in one, the Birth and the dissolution of Birth, by the dissolution crosses beyond death and by the Birth enjoys Immortality.

The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.

O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I.

The Breath of things1 is an immortal Life, but of this body ashes are the end. OM! O Will, remember, that which was done remember! O Will, remember, that which was done remember.

O god Agni, knowing all things that are manifested, lead us by the good path to the felicity; remove from us the devious attraction of sin. To thee completest speech of submission we would dispose.

English translation: Sri Aurobindo

Tao ethico

I - § 6.

What, then, is good? How is good to be defined? Now it may be thought that this is a verbal question. A definition does indeed often mean the expressing of one word’s meaning in other words. But this is not the sort of definition I am asking for. Such a definition can never be of ultimate importance to any study except lexicography. If I wanted that kind of definition I should have to consider in the first place how people generally used the word good; but my business is not with its proper usage, as established by custom. I should, indeed, be foolish if I tried to use it for something which it did not usually denote: if, for instance, I were to announce that, whenever I used the word good, I must be understood to be thinking of that object which is usually denoted by the word table. I shall, therefore, use the word in the sense in which I think it is ordinarily used; but at the same time I am not anxious to discuss whether I am right in thinking it is so used. My business is solely with that object or idea, which I hold, rightly or wrongly, that the word is generally used to stand for. What I want to discover is the nature of that object or idea, and about this I am extremely anxious to arrive at an agreement.

But if we understand the question in this sense, my answer to it may seem a very disappointing one. If I am asked, What is good? my answer is that good is good, and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked How is good to be defined? my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it. But disappointing as these answers may appear, they are of the very last importance. To readers who are familiar with philosophic terminology, I can express their importance by saying that they amount to this: That propositions about the good are all of them synthetic and never analytic; and that is plainly no trivial matter. And the same thing may be expressed more popularly, by saying that, if I am right, then nobody can foist upon us such an axiom as that Pleasure is the only good or that The good is the desired on the pretence that this is the very meaning of the word.

2D Tao palindrome

Oppède-le-Vieux, Petit Luberon, Provence, France

Tao genius and Tao madness: a study

Tao genius and Tao madness

101 Tao: 62

62. In the Hands of Destiny

A great Japanese warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt.
On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his man, 'After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If head comes we will win; if tails we will loose. Destiny holds us in her hand.'
Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily.
'No one can change the hand of destiny,' his attendant told him after the battle.
‘Indeed not,' said Nobunaga, showing a coin, which had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

Tao dance

Tao in D major

Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1956 Tao

de-formed Tao

Ray and Maria Stata Center, MIT, Cambridge, US

Noam Chomsky

 Ray and Maria Stata Center

the sweet sound of Tao

Soprano: Inva Mula;London Symphony Orchestra

Il dolce suono mi colpi di sua voce!

Ah, quella voce m'e qui nel cor discesa!

Edgardo! io ti son resa, Edgardo, mio!

fuggita io son de tuoi nemici.

Un gelo me serpeggia nel sen!

trema ogni fibra!

vacilla il pie!

Presso la fonte meco t'assidi al quanto!

Ohime, sorge il tremendo fantasma e ne separa!

Qui ricovriamo, Edgardo, a pie dell'ara.

Sparsa e di rose!

Un armonia celeste, di, non ascolti?

Ah, l'inno suona di nozze!

Il rito per noi s'appresta! Oh, me felice!

Oh gioia che si sente, e non si dice!

Ardon gl'incensi!

Splendon le sacre faci, splendon intorno!

Ecco il ministro!

Porgime la destra!

Oh lieto giorno!

Al fin son tua, al fin sei mia,

a me ti dona un Dio.

Tao reflections

the last pianoTao

101 Tao: 26

26. Trading Dialogue for Lodging

Provided he makes and wins an argument about Buddhism with those who live there any wandering monk can remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on. In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brothers monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye. A wandering monk came and asked for lodging properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teaching.
The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the  younger one to take his place. 'Go and request the dialogue in silence,’ he cautioned.
So the young monk and the strange went to the shrine and sat down. Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: 'Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me.' 'Relate the dialogue to me,' said the elder one. 'Well,' explained the traveler,' first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here.' With this, the traveler left.
'Where is that fellow?' asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother. “I understand you won the debate.' 'Won nothing. I'm going to beat him up.' ‘Tell me the subject of the debate,' asked the elder one. 'Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers congratulating him that he her two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, bur he ran out and that ended it.’

Tao psicothesis

Sigmund Freud has done great work in creating psychoanalysis, but it is only half.
The other half is psychosynthesis done by Assagioli – but it too is only half, the other half.

It is not that he is right and Freud is wrong; both are wrong taken separately.
They are right only when they are put together.

Psychothesis* is the whole. 
* Thesis, latin, from greek ϑέσις (position, something which is placed), derivation of τίϑημι, set, placed.

we all have a Tao to cry for

Perigeo

Tony Sidney (guitar)

Bruno Biriaco (drums)

Giovanni Tommaso (cello and bass)

Claudio Fasoli (sax)

Franco D'Andrea (keyboards)

very far Tao

Hubble Space Telescope

silencing the Tao

'Silencing' is an illusion that happens when an object that is moving is also changing it's appearance. Normally we can immediately tell if an object becomes lighter or darker, if it changes colour, or if it changes shape. However this recent paper by Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez, published in January 2011, shows something quite extraordinary.

The authors created a number of videos in which an array of dots change their appearance. In one video, the dots keep changing their colour. Initially this is very easy to see. In fact, it is completely obvious what is happening. What happens next however is amazing. The pattern of dots starts rotating. Play the video below, staring all the time at the little white dot in the middle. Initially all the dots are changing colour. What do you see happening to the colour of the dots when they start to rotate?

Instructions: Play the movie while looking at the small white speck in the center of the ring. At first, the ring is motionless and it's easy to tell that the dots are changing color. When the ring begins to rotate, the dots suddenly appear to stop changing. But in reality they are changing the entire time. This failure to detect that moving objects are changing is silencing.

For most people, when the dots start to rotate, they either completely stop changing colour, or they hardly change colour at all. However the reality is that the dots are still changing colour, just as they were before they started rotating. Even when you know that the dots are changing colour, it does not affect the way you see the illusion.
In another, they keep changing their shape:

In another, they keep changing their size:

The authors explore various hypotheses as to why our visual system is fooled. It seems that the faster the movement, the greater the degree of silencing and that movement of the image across the retina is the key factor - if instead of staring at the white dot in the centre of the screen, you watch a particular dot as it moves around the screen, you will then see that it is changing colour, or changing shape, or whatever the change is.

So when an image of an object moves across our retina, our ability to detect changes in that object is substantially diminished.

“SILENCING demonstrates the tight coupling of motion and object appearance. Simply by changing the retinotopic coordinates — moving the object or the eyes — it is possible to silence awareness of visual change, causing objects that had once been obviously dynamic to suddenly appear static.”

Silencing

sleeping Tao