the Teh of Tao: LXXXI - PROPOUNDING THE ESSENTIAL

LXXXI - PROPOUNDING THE ESSENTIAL

True words are not pleasant; pleasant words are not true.
The good are not contentious; the contentious are not good.
The wise are not learned; the learned are not wise.

The holy man hoards not.
The more he does for others, the more he owns himself.
The more he gives to others, the more will he himself lay up an abundance.

Heaven's Reason is to benefit but not to injure;
the holy man's Reason is to accomplish but not to strive.

Translation by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus

1000 Taos: the conclusion of Tao

March 4, 2010 - July 21, 2014

In the 1001 posts (433 in this english partial version) of the full italian version of this blog an attempt was made to describe the complexity of multi-levels systems and processes that in this century will bring a radical destructive and irreversible change of the global ecosystem, here identified with the myth of KaliYuga.

The two main guidelines are represented by Global Dynamics Processes - GDPs - the description of the physical-chemical-biological-social-mental and environmental processes involved starting from the hierarchical levels of natural sciences and of the knowledge domains to the logical levels of knowledge of knowledge.

The second guideline is called Pattern which Connects and is mainly based on the wide variety of ideas developed in the systemic-cybernetic-environmental fields by Gregory Bateson, subsequently carried out in the neurosciences and sciences of cognition fields by Francisco J. Varela and Humberto Maturana and finally merged in the modern science of complexity mainly due to the work of Edgar Morin.

Into these two guidelines - interlaced with each other - there are the connected lines of Tao, based upon the 81 chapters of Tao Teh Ching, the one of Synchronic Tao, based on the description ensemble of the 78 +1 symbols of Tarots, Tao Interlude and, starting at a specified point, the one of of Tao Level 3 and beyond, linked to the two main guidelines for descriptions in areas higher then the logical level 2 of complexity.
The full italian and this partial english versions coincide till June 13, 2011; afterwards only some selected posts are published in the english version, tagged Over The End of Tao.

The evolution of the real KaliYuga - not mythological - in the next decades is naturally unpredictable, both because it involves an ensemble of the most complex systems known, and because phenomena and conditions never occurred in the past will become effective.

Though everything brings to believe that quantitatively the global ecosystem will be destroyed or radically transformed, it is always possible that in a highly complex system of this type relevant choices and actions different from the past may lead to other types of evolution.

One moment it was there, another moment it is gone.
One moment we are here, and another moment we have gone.

And for this simple moment, how much fuss we make - how much violence, ambition, struggle, conflict, anger, hatred.
Just for this small moment!

Just waiting for the train in a waiting room on a station, and creating so much fuss: fighting, hurting each other, trying to possess, trying to boss, trying to dominate - all that politics.

And then the train comes and you are gone forever.

Heaven's Reason is to benefit but not to injure;
the holy man's Reason is to accomplish but not to strive.

© Elena Cinguino Illustrations

all the cards of Tao

the Place of Tao

meta Tao design: Reflections

METADESIGN

Humberto Maturana

PART III

* Reflections.

Technological transformations do not impress me, biological technology does not impress me, Internet does not impress me. I say this not out of arrogance. No doubt much of what we do will change if we adopt the different technological options at hand, but our actions will not change unless our emotioning changes. We live a culture centered in domination and submission, mistrust and control, dishonesty, commerce and greediness, appropriation and mutual manipulation ... and unless our emotioning changes all that will change in our lives will be the way in which we continue in wars, greediness, mistrust, dishonesty, and abuse of others and of nature. Indeed, we shall remain the same. Technology is not the solution for human problems because human problems belong to the emotional domain as they are conflicts in our relational living that arise when we have desires that lead to contradictory actions. It is the kind of human being, Homo sapiens amans, Homo sapiens aggressans, or Homo sapiens arrogans, at the moment in which we have access to a new technology, either as users or observers, what determines how we use it or what we see in it.

We frequently speak as if the course that human history is following were independent from us as individual human beings, and as if we were carried by powerful forces beyond our control. But, to what extent such a manner of thinking is valid? Our life is guided by our emotions because our emotions define the relational domain in which we act, and hence, what we do. Each culture is defined by a particular configuration of emotioning that guides the actions of its members, and is conserved by those actions and the learning of the configuration of emotioning that defines it by the children of its members. If this systemic dynamics of constitution and conservation of a culture is broken, the culture comes to an end. So, we are not trapped, it is not what we do, but the emotion under which we do what we do. It is not technology what guides modern life, but the emotions, that is the desires of power, riches, or fame, ... under which we use or invent it. We human beings can do whatever we imagine if we respect the structural coherences of the domain in which we operate. But we do not have to do all that we imagine, we can chose, and it is there where our behavior as socially conscious human beings matters.

Our brains are not being changed by technology, and what is in fact happening to us through it, is that we change what we do while we conserve the culture (the configuration of emotioning) to which we belong. Unless, of course, our emotioning changes as we reflect on what happens to us through using or contemplating it and we undergo a cultural change. In fact our brain needs not to change for us human beings to be able to manage and understand whatever technological change that the future may offer us if we are willing to start from the beginning. What our brain does is to abstract configurations of relations of activities in itself, which if coupled with our operation in language permit us to treat any situation that we live as a starting point for recursive reflections in a process in fact open to any degree of complication. It is what happens in our emotions what determines the course of our living, and since emotions as kinds of relational behaviours occur in the relational space, it is through the conservation of cultural changes (as changes in the configuration of emotioning that are conserved generation after generation in the learning of children) that the course of our biological history may result in changes in our brain.

Biological evolution is not changing its character as as the constitution, conservation and diversification of lineages which are defined by the systemic conservation generation after generation of manners of living that extend from the inception to the death of the reproducing organisms. The same occurs with the evolution of cultures. Cultures are closed networks of conversations conserved generation after generation through the learning of the children that live in them. As such cultures change if the closed network of conversations that the children learn as they live in them changes, and a new closed network of conversations begins to be conserved generation after generation through their living. One can say in general systemic terms, that what is conserved in a system or in the relations between the members of a group of systems what determines what can or not change in the system or in the group of systems.

Biotechnology is not a new practice, although what we can do now is very, very different from what we humans could do in that area hundred or fifty years ago. Internet with all its richness as a network not something basically different from other systems of interactions that facilitates the use of libraries and museums. No doubt the interconnectedness reached through Internet is much greater than the interconnectedness that we lived a hundred or fifty years ago through telegraph, radio, or telephone. However, we still do with Internet no more no less than what we desire in the domain of the options that it offers, and if our desires do not change, nothing changes in fact because we go on living through it the same configuration of actions (of emotioning) that we used to live. Certainly I know much of what is said and is happening in the domain of globalization of the flow of information, but it is not information what constitutes the reality that we live. The reality that we live arises instant after instant through the configuration of emotions that we live, and which we conserve with our living instant after instant. But if we know this, if we know that the reality that we live arises through our emotioning, and we know that we know, we shall be able to act according to our awareness of our liking or not liking the reality that we are bringing forth with our living. That is, we shall become responsible of what we do.

I want a cultural change, I want to contribute to a work of art in the domain of human existence, I want to contribute to evoke a manner of coexistence in which love, mutual respect, honesty and social responsibility arise spontaneously from living instant after instant such configuration of emotioning because we all cocreate it in our living together. That configuration of emotioning cannot be imposed, nor can it be demanded without denying it, it must be lived spontaneously as a matter of course because that is the way we learned to live in our childhood. Violations of such manner of living will be legitimate mistakes that can be corrected because there will be no intrinsic shame in them, they will be only errors. If indeed we were to live such a cultural change, what would be most remarkable, is that the configuration of emotioning that such a manner of living entails, would arise in us without effort as we begin to live in it by living in it. Moreover, such configuration of emotioning will be conserved generation after generation as our manner of cultural living if our children live it because we live it with them. Indeed, such a manner of living is what we all want to live in our desire for material and spiritual wellbeing. Utopia? yes because it correspond to a way of living that has been ours in our evolutionary history, and most of us know it as an experience or as a yearning of our childhood. Anyway, to do that would be, no doubt, a magnificent work of dynamic art, and a responsible creative act as well if we want to live as Homo sapiens amans.

Humberto R. Maturana.

August 1, 1997

meta Tao design: Living systems
meta Tao design: Technology and Reality

Escape of 4 dimensional collapse by Mandelwerk

the last lecture on Tao

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot – Four Quartets

“I recommend you take your hand home and take a look at it when you get there — very quietly, almost as part of meditation. And try to catch the difference between seeing it as a base for five parts and seeing it as constructed of a tangle of relationships. Not a tangle, a pattern of the interlocking of relationships that were determinants of its growth. And if you can really manage to see the hand in terms of the epistemology that I am offering you, I think you will find that your hand is much more recognizably beautiful as a product of relationships than as a composition of countable parts. In other words, I am suggesting to you, first, that language is very deceiving, and, second, that if you begin even without much knowledge to adventure into what it would be like to look at the world with a biological epistemology, you will come into contact with the concepts that the biologists don’t look at. You will meet with beauty and ugliness. These may be real components in the world that you as a living creature live in.
...Of course natural history can be taught as a dead subject.
I know that, but I believe also that perhaps the monstrous atomistic pathology at the individual level, the national level, and the international level — the pathology of wrong thinking in which we all live — can only in the end be corrected by an enormous discovery of those relations in nature that make up the beauty of nature.”

The last lecture, lecture delivered October 28, 1979, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

René Magritte, The Promenades of Euclid, 1955, oil on canvas - Minneapolis Institute of Arts

the last words of Tao

wat Pho Buddha, Bangkok

Last Words of the Tathagata

      216. Then the Bhagava said to the Venerable Ananda:

      It may happen that (some among) you have this thought: 'The Doctrine; (lit, the word) is bereft of the Teacher of the Doctrine; our Teacher is no more.' But Ananda, it should not be so considered. Ananda, the Doctrine and Discipline I have taught and laid down to all of you will be your Teacher when I am gone.

      Ananda, when I have passed away, bhikkhus should not address one another as they do at present by the term 'avuso' (Friend) (irrespective of seniority). Ananda, the senior bhikkhus should address the junior bhikkhus by name, or by family name, or by the term 'avuso'. And the junior bhikkhus should address the senior bhikkhus by the term 'bhante' or 'ayasma' (Venerable Sir).

      Ananda, after I have passed away, the Samgha, the Order of the bhikkhus, may, if it wishes to, abolish lesser and minor Rules of Discipline.

      Ananda, after I have passed away, let the Brahma penalty be imposed upon Bhikkhu Channa.

      "But, Venerable Sir, what is the Brahma penalty?"

      Ananda, let Bhikkhu Channa say whatever he wishes to. The bhikkhus should neither advise him nor admonish him, nor deter him.

      217. Then the Bhagava addressed the bhikkhus thus:

      O Bhikkhus, if any bhikkhu should happen to have any uncertainty or perplexity regarding the Buddha, or the Dhamma (the Teaching), or the Samgha (the Order of bhikkhus), or Magga, or the Practice, then, bhikkhus, ask (me) questions. Do not let yourselves feel regret later with the thought that 'even though our Teacher was (with us) in our very presence, we were not able to ask him questions personally in return.'

      When this was said, the bhikkhus remained silent. ..............

      For a third time, the Bhagava said:

      O Bhikkhus, if any bhikkhu should happen to have any uncertainty or perplexity regarding the Buddha, or the Dhamma, or the Samgha, or Magga, or the Practice, then, bhikkhus, ask (me) questions. Do not let yourselves feel regret later with the thought that 'even though our Teacher was (with us) in our very presence, we were not able to ask him questions personally in return.'

      For the third time, too, the bhikkhus remained silent.

      Then the Bhagava said to the bhikkhus:

      O Bhikkhus, it may be that you do not ask questions out of respect for the Teacher. Then, bhikkhus, let a bhikkhu tell a companion (his uncertainty or perplexity).

      Even when this was said, the bhikkhus continued to remain silent.

      Then the Venerable Ananda said to the Bhagava:

      "Wonderful it is, Venerable Sir! Marvellous it is, Venerable Sir! I believe that in this community of bhikkhus not a single bhikkhu has uncertainty or perplexity regarding the Buddha, or the Dhamma, or the Samgha, or Magga, or the Practice."

      Ananda, you say this only out of faith. Indeed, Ananda, the Tathagata knows for certain that in this community of bhikkhus not a single bhikkhu has uncertainty or perplexity regarding the Buddha, or the Dhamma, or the Samgha, or Magga, or the Practice.

      Ananda, amongst these five hundred bhikkhus, even the least (in attainment) is a Sotapanna, a Stream-enterer, not liable to be reborn in any apaya realm of misery, assured (of reaching desirable realms of existence or of teaching the end of dukkha), bound for (the three higher levels of Insight, culminating in) Enlightenment.

      218. Then the Bhagava said to the bhikkhus:

      O Bhikkhus, I say this now to you: "All conditioned and compounded things (sankhara) have the nature of decay and disintegration. With mindfulness endeavour diligently (to complete the task)"

      These were the last words of the Tathagata

Angkor Wat

---

Angkor Wat

Part Six: The Passing Away

The Blessed One's Final Exhortation

1. Now the Blessed One spoke to the Venerable Ananda, saying: "It may be, Ananda, that to some among you the thought will come: 'Ended is the word of the Master; we have a Master no longer.' But it should not, Ananda, be so considered. For that which I have proclaimed and made known as the Dhamma and the Discipline, that shall be your Master when I am gone.

2. "And, Ananda, whereas now the bhikkhus address one another as 'friend,' let it not be so when I am gone. The senior bhikkhus, Ananda, may address the junior ones by their name, their family name, or as 'friend'; but the junior bhikkhus should address the senior ones as 'venerable sir' or 'your reverence.'

3. "If it is desired, Ananda, the Sangha may, when I am gone, abolish the lesser and minor rules.

4. "Ananda, when I am gone, let the higher penalty be imposed upon the bhikkhu Channa."

"But what, Lord, is the higher penalty?"

"The bhikkhu Channa, Ananda, may say what he will, but the bhikkhus should neither converse with him, nor exhort him, nor admonish him."

5. Then the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "It may be, bhikkhus, that one of you is in doubt or perplexity as to the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, the path or the practice. Then question, bhikkhus! Do not be given to remorse later on with the thought: 'The Master was with us face to face, yet face to face we failed to ask him.'"

6. But when this was said, the bhikkhus were silent. And yet a second and a third time the Blessed One said to them: "It may be, bhikkhus, that one of you is in doubt or perplexity as to the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, the path or the practice. Then question, bhikkhus! Do not be given to remorse later on with the thought: 'The Master was with us face to face, yet face to face we failed to ask him.'"

And for a second and a third time the bhikkhus were silent. Then the Blessed One said to them: "It may be, bhikkhus, out of respect for the Master that you ask no questions. Then, bhikkhus, let friend communicate it to friend." Yet still the bhikkhus were silent.

7. And the Venerable Ananda spoke to the Blessed One, saying: "Marvellous it is, O Lord, most wonderful it is! This faith I have in the community of bhikkhus, that not even one bhikkhu is in doubt or perplexity as to the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, the path or the practice."

"Out of faith, Ananda, you speak thus. But here, Ananda, the Tathagata knows for certain that among this community of bhikkhus there is not even one bhikkhu who is in doubt or perplexity as to the Buddha, the Dhamma, or the Sangha, the path or the practice. For, Ananda, among these five hundred bhikkhus even the lowest is a stream-enterer, secure from downfall, assured, and bound for enlightenment."

8. And the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus, saying: "Behold now, bhikkhus, I exhort you: All compounded things are subject to vanish. Strive with earnestness!"

This was the last word of the Tathagata.

How the Blessed One Passed into Nibbana

9. And the Blessed One entered the first jhana. Rising from the first jhana, he entered the second jhana. Rising from the second jhana, he entered the third jhana. Rising from the third jhana, he entered the fourth jhana. And rising out of the fourth jhana, he entered the sphere of infinite space. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite space, he entered the sphere of infinite consciousness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite consciousness, he entered the sphere of nothingness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of nothingness, he entered the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. And rising out of the attainment of the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, he attained to the cessation of perception and feeling.

10. And the Venerable Ananda spoke to the Venerable Anuruddha, saying: "Venerable Anuruddha, the Blessed One has passed away."

"No, friend Ananda, the Blessed One has not passed away. He has entered the state of the cessation of perception and feeling."

11. Then the Blessed One, rising from the cessation of perception and feeling, entered the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of neither-perception-nor-non-perception, he entered the sphere of nothingness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of nothingness, he entered the sphere of infinite consciousness. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite consciousness, he entered the sphere of infinite space. Rising from the attainment of the sphere of infinite space, he entered the fourth jhana. Rising from the fourth jhana, he entered the third jhana. Rising from the third jhana, he entered the second jhana. Rising from the second jhana, he entered the first jhana.

Rising from the first jhana, he entered the second jhana. Rising from the second jhana, he entered the third jhana. Rising from the third jhana, he entered the fourth jhana. And, rising from the fourth jhana, the Blessed One immediately passed away.

Wat Pho Buddha, Bangkok