I've seen the Taooo!!!

Chilmark cemetery, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts

	Dan Aykroyd (Elwood Blues):		... it's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses ...
	John Belushi (Jake Blues):		... hit it ...

the razor of Tao

"The simplest answer is usually the correct answer." 
William of Ockham (XIV century)

This principle, at the basis of modern scientific thought, in its simplest form suggests that it is useless to make more assumptions than those strictly necessary to explain a given phenomenon: Ockham's razor requires choosing among the many causes, one that explains easiest way to the event, and is an essential tool in order not to have a description that is more complex than the complexity that one is describing.

« Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. »

«Concepts are not to be multiplied beyond necessity »

« Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. »

« Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity. »

For example, if after parking on the outskirts of Minneapolis a canary-yellow Rolls Royce with the keys in place, and returning after a week and not having found it any more, it is legitimate to assume that this is the proof that aliens exist because they undoubtedly have taken it for their studying. Ockham's Razor, however, likely an explanation simpler and ordinary...it should be noted that while this hypothesis nothing say about the cause of disappearance or on the presence or less of aliens it tells much about the person that says it...

Ockham's razor gives a guideline in the situation where different descriptions are possible, it does not encourage the choice most banal, often the simplest description is far from trivial, as Einstein pointed out:

    "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"

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proposition 3.328 If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's razor.

(If everything in the symbolism works as though a sign had meaning, then it has meaning.)

proposition 5.47321 Ockham's razor is, of course, not an arbitrary rule nor one justified by its practical success. It simply says that unnecessary elements in a symbolism mean nothing.

Signs which serve one purpose are logically equivalent, signs which serve no purpose are logically meaningless.

Tao: the Path of flowing water

©2009 Hougaard Malan

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

The word Tao means "the path". You can not say anything about the goal: it remains elusive, indescribable, ineffable. But you can say something on the way. The Buddha said: "The Buddha can only show you the way. If you follow the path, you get to the truth. " The truth must be your own experience. No one can define the truth, but you can define the path, you can clear the path. The teacher can not give you the truth, but it can give you away. And when you know the way there, all you have to do is follow it.

The word Tao means simply "the way". We are in the Tao, where else could we be? To live is to be on the road. To live is to live in the divine. Breathing is breathing in the divine. How else could we be? But just as the fish lives in the ocean and is totally unaware of the ocean, we live in and are totally unaware of the Tao Tao. In fact it is so obvious, that's why we are totally unaware. We are on the way, we are in God, we live in and through the Tao Tao, but we are not aware. The Tao exists, because without the Tao trees do not grow, the stars do not move, the blood does not circulate and we could not breathe. Life would disappear.

Life can exist only if it is supported by a fundamental law. Life can exist only if it is supported by something. Notice the order in this vast existence. It is not chaos, it is a cosmos. What makes a cosmos? Why is there such harmony? There must be a law that maintains this harmony, which makes it flow, which keeps everything in tune. But we do not know anything. We know nothing even of our own being and through our being are united with Tao. It is the ocean of life around us. It is outside and inside of us, the pure essence. It is the existence, spirit is primary. No name can contain it. All names may be his and no form belongs to him, because all forms are forms. The Tao exists in millions of forms. The tree is green and the flower is red. Man is man, fish and seafood. It is the same law.

Tao believes that you have to put up with the existence, allowing things to happen spontaneously, without in any way to force your way, without pushing in any way the river flowing. The Tao says, "You do not have to hurry because you have available to eternity. Sowing the seeds at the right time and wait, come spring, as well as get along. When spring arrives, the flowers will bloom. But wait, do not rush! Do not start to pull the tree up, to grow more rapidly. Do not enter into the mentality which claims that everything happens as instant coffee. Learn to wait, because nature is moving very very slowly. Nature has its own grace to this his move slowly. " Nature is very feminine moves like a woman. Not running, not in a hurry, you do not jumping to conclusions. It moves very slowly, it is a silent music. In nature there is very patient and believe in the Tao way of being in nature. The Tao never in a hurry: you have to understand it. The fundamental teaching of the Tao is: learn to be patient. If you can wait forever, it could also happen instantly. But do not expect that to happen to you at once: if you claim, it could never happen. Your own claim would become an obstacle, your own desire to create a distance between you and nature. Stay in tune with nature, let nature take its course. At any moment you arrive, it is good, at any moment you arrive, you soon: At any moment you arrive, even if used for centuries to come, would never late, never too late. Always comes at the time the right time. In Taoism, the water is the supreme course of things, is the Tao itself. Lao Tzu called it his way, "the way of flowing water", for many reasons. First, the water is soft, humble, look for the lowest places. Water seeks the lowest place, the lowest levels for. It rains on Everest, but the rain does not stop there; starts flowing in the valleys and even in the valleys, reach the deeper layers. Water remains the last, is the lack of ambition. It has no ambition to be the first place. Be like water means to feel totally happy to be a nobody. Secondly, the water is movement: it is in perpetual motion. Every time he is not moving, it becomes dirty, rotten, even venomous: dies. His life is in the movement, the dynamism in the flux. All of life is a stream, has no static.

The Tao is a natural bloom. Follow nature. Nobody wants to be unhappy and all they are, do not follow nature. Everyone wants to be blessed and no one is. Listen to your aspiration, your deepest desire will tell you the right way. Your desire tends towards the bliss and beauty to something that can overwhelm you, something that can take you to the other side, to something so wonderful and incredible, able to remove yourself from the past and the future, to let in quieora. This is the Tao: the immediate, that is alive and pulsating in the present moment. The Tao does not know the past, does not know the future. The Tao knows only once: the present, known only quieora. Let your mind and you will not disappear in the past or the future. The past and future are creations of the mind: in reality there is only the present. And when you no longer the past or the future, how can you call it "present"? This makes sense only when referring to past or future. This is an interval between the past and the future: if you have taken away the past and the future, this will also disappear. When time is gone, what will be the time of the Tao. When you're totally in the immediate, in quieora, if not more of the vague ghosts of the past, nor between the images of the unborn future, what will be the moment of illumination: for the time you will no longer exist here and you will be totally , nowhere else. When time is no more, the mind does not exist anymore, mind and time are synonymous. The more your mind is present and the more you are conscious of the time.

The Tao is not a doctrine: it is a special path to become aware. It is the path of awakening, enlightenment, the way to go home. "Tao" means simply "the way". Remember that is not the meaning of the word. Every time I hear the expression "the way", you think of a destination somewhere far away, where the road takes you. Not at all, "Tao" means simply "the way", without reference to a goal! So what does this mean? It means: the way in which things are what they are. Indicates just the way things are ... I have already, are just as they are. You should not get anything, everything is already pouring into you. Just be hereandnow and celebrate!

image courtesy by:

the Teh of Tao

- 8 -

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.  

History of western Tao

«A few words of apology and explanation are called for if this book is to escape even more severe censure than it doubtless deserves.
Apology is due to the specialists on various schools and individual philosophers. With the possible exception of Leibniz, every philosopher of whom I treat is better known to some others than to me. If, however, books covering a wide field are to be written at all, it is inevitable, since we are not immortal, that those who write such books should spend less time on any one part than can be spent by a man who concentrates on a single author or a brief period. Some, whose scholarly austerity is unbending, will conclude that books covering a wide field should not be written at all, or, if written, should consist of monographs by a multitude of authors. There is, however, something lost when many authors co-operate. If there is any unity in the movement of history, if there is any intimate relation between what goes before and what comes later, it is necessary, for setting this forth, that earlier and later periods should be synthesized in a single mind. The student of Rousseau may have difficulty in doing justice to his connection with the Sparta of Plato and Plutarch; the historian of Sparta may not be prophetically conscious of Hobbes and Fichte and Lenin. To bring out such relations is one of the purposes of this book, and it is a purpose which only a wide survey can fulfil.
There are many histories of philosophy, but none of them, so far as I know, has quite the purpose that I have set myself. Philosophers are both effects and causes: effects of their social circumstances and of the politics and institutions of their time; causes (if they are fortunate) of beliefs which mould the politics and institutions of later ages. In most histories of philosophy, each philosopher appears as in a vacuum; his opinions are set forth unrelated except, at most, to those of earlier philosophers. I have tried, on the contrary,  to exhibit each philosopher, as far as truth permits, as an outcome of his milieu, a man in whom were crystallized and concentrated thoughts and feelings which, in a vague and diffused form, were common to the community of which he was a part.
This has required the insertion of certain chapters of purely social history. No one can understand the Stoics and Epicureans without some knowledge of the Hellenistic age, or the scholastics without a modicum of understanding of the growth of the Church from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. I have therefore set forth briefly those parts of the main historical outlines that seemed to me to have had most influence on philosophical thought, and I have done this with most fullness where the history may be expected to be unfamiliar to some readers-for example, in regard to the early Middle Ages. But in these historical chapters I have rigidly excluded whatever seemed to have little or no bearing on contemporary or subsequent philosophy.
The problem of selection, in such a book as the present, is very difficult. Without detail, a book becomes jejune and uninteresting; with detail, it is in danger of becoming intolerably lengthy. I have sought a compromise, by treating only those philosophers who seem to me to have considerable importance, and mentioning, in connection with them, such details as, even if not of fundamental importance, have value on account of some illustrative or vivifying quality.
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has been not merely an affair of the schools, or of disputation between a handful of learned men. It has been an integral part of the life of the community, and as such I have tried to consider it. If there is any merit in this book, it is from this point of view that it is derived.»

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950 was awarded to Bertrand Russell "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought".

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

Participation (4 of Wands)

Each figure in this mandala holds the left hand up, in an attitude of receiving, and the right hand down, in an attitude of giving. The whole circle creates a tremendous energy field that takes on the shape of the double dorje, the Tibetan symbol for the thunderbolt.

The mandala has a quality like that of the energy field that forms around a buddha, where all the individuals taking part in the circle make a unique contribution to create a unified and vital whole. It is like a flower, whose wholeness is even more beautiful than the sum of its parts, at the same time enhancing the beauty of each individual petal.

You have an opportunity to participate with others now to make your contribution to creating something greater and more beautiful than each of you could manage alone. Your participation will not only nourish you, but will also contribute something precious to the whole.

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Have you ever seen night going? Very few people even become aware of things which are happening every day. Have you ever seen the evening coming? The midnight and its song? The sunrise and its beauty?

We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in small ponds of our own misery. It is familiar, so even if somebody wants to pull you out, you struggle. You don't want to be pulled out of your misery, of your suffering. Otherwise there is so much joy all around, you have just to be aware of it and to become a participant, not a spectator.

Philosophy is speculation, Zen is participation. Participate in the night leaving, participate in the evening coming, participate in the stars and participate in the clouds; make participation your lifestyle and the whole existence becomes such a joy, such an ecstasy. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.

 

the wind-up Tao chronicle

"Between the end of that strange summer and the approach of winter, my life went on without change. Each day would dawn without incident and end as it had begun. It rained a lot in September. October had several warm, sweaty days. Aside from the weather, there was hardly anything to distinguish one day from the next. I worked at concentrating my attention on the real and useful. I would go to the pool almost every day for a long swim, take walks, make myself three meals.
But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."

I. point of view of Kasahara May