Taoism - Tumblr Posts
Optimism is Not Insane (by vlogbrothers)
This is what gives me faith in the Path.
Keep Calm and Carry Water
I should preface this by saying that I am an above average driver (I do my best to fight the stereotype). I get to my destinations smoothly and efficiently, have never caused any accidents, and have never even received a speeding ticket. That being said, I do not enjoy the act of driving. Due to a combination of some traumatic experiences in the past and my own sense of self-preservation, getting behind the wheel generally instills a certain anxiety within me. Even under the most ideal conditions, I tend to get an elevated heart rate, sweaty palms, and other symptoms of nervousness.
And of course, we almost never drive under ideal circumstances. Whether we are driving someone else’s car, facing the sun, or even just having a bad day, the situation on the road is honestly filled with hazards that could easily lead to a turn for the worse. But if we take a moment to breathe before we get started, we can find our center enough to move forward with confidence and purpose. Even when facing down something that terrifies us, indulging our sense of fear and dread will only make the situation worse. This is, I believe, the best mindset for approaching any of life’s darker moments. It’s not about denying the existence of fear, or denying the existence of danger. Recognizing the truth of the situation is the first step in working through it. Once we have grounded or mental state in reality, we can start to put our emotional state on the same level footing. And then, as the saying goes, we can continue to carry on down the Path.
How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
A bit of a read, but absolutely worth it. This article really demonstrates the need for us to separate our emotional attachment to political and social issues, to exercise our faculties of discernment as much as possible. Reality is reality, and no matter what you value in your life, denying the way things actually are will never make things better. Remain calm and keep your mind open to the evidence that is there.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/U68bZbMM7q8?feature=oembed
Sendak On Death (And Life) (by efwffw fewfwf)
Some good words on truth, life, and non-life.
always room for words from the old man.
- Lao Tzu
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them. Because she has let go of herself, she is perfectly fulfilled
Tao Te Ching (via samsaranmusing)
always room to reblog the old man.
The wise are good to the good, but also are good to the bad. Wise people trust those who trust, but also trust those who do not trust... Goodness and trust are the very nature of the Path. -Paraphrasing from the old man, chapter 49.
It reminds me a great deal of the quote from Nietzsche, where one must take care not to fight monsters, lest you become a monster yourself. I believe that people should be judged by how they treat their enemies, as this is the clearest indication of one's character. Eye for an eye and all that. I do have a tendency to explain quotes with other quotes, apologies for that.
I freely admit that I am a Sam fanboy. Simple things, friends, simple things.
One of the most frustrating things for me is dealing with people who constantly complain about anxiety and depression and expect that some words from me can help but will not even do simple things like get more sleep, eat a healthy diet, take a 30 minute walk at dusk or meditate for 20 minutes a day. They are in a prison of their own making with the key in their hands. Yes, these simple things can change lives.
This is the need for discernment.
I often refer to these images from the HSBC ads a few years ago to talk about interpretation of images/symbols in artworks and how our experiences can alter how we read things.
edit: added more from @sevenhued-cerise
This is Dao.
"It is important to maintain your equanimity. You cannot let yourself get too ‘up’ or too ‘down’ based on your circumstances." “Too ‘down’ I understand. But why not too ‘up?’” “Because the higher your mountains are, the deeper your valleys will seem. You should not react to the world. You should respond, but not react. A response is an action based on logic. A reaction is an emotional state. Your reaction will not change the world. Your reaction only changes you. Your response will change the world.”
Some more wise words.
How do I balance compassion and not let people be rude to me? I am forgiving but sometimes it makes people think it is ok to be careless towards me... Thanks! :)
A mother is most compassionate to her children. She loves them with all her heart and yet does she allow them to misbehave, to take advantage of her love, to use her as a doormat?
The mother tempers her kindness with firmness. She may have a soft spot for her children sometimes and may be tough of them at other times.
It is similar with the compassion we practice towards all. People may be rude and careless regardless of your compassion, that is something you simply need to accept. But that doesn’t mean you have to meet that kind of behavior with passive allowance. You can remove yourself from the situation or respond to it with tough love, that’s up to your discretion.
But the crux of compassion is acknowledging what is best for all. If all the cars coordinated perfectly, there would be no traffic. Similarly, if all were compassionate toward one another, life could be more harmonious.
You do not need to wait for everyone to take up the practice of compassion. Being a practitioner of compassion yourself is enough to ease up the traffic around you. Just remember the tao of the Mother: absolute love tempered by having people’s best interests at heart.
Taking advantage, being harmful toward one another, and general carelessness is in no one’s best interest. But there is also a line between knowing when to stand up to it and knowing when to let it go. Time and experience will make that clear to you.
Namaste :)
Simpler Times
When people wish they could return to simpler times, what do they truly mean? Often, there is a desire to return to childhood and youth, or even to travel back to a different era of history, one without the fears and complications of our modern world. But what are they really seeking?
If we look at the times they wish to return to, the trend seems to be to relinquish a certain amount of control and power over their lives. No more managing your appointments and meetings and trying to find time for love all on your iPad, your Blackberry, your fifty different planners. And to be sure, having so much control over every waking minute of our lives is a scary thing. As I talked about before, there is definitely a comfort in relinquishing control.
But it is not the control that people really wish to relinquish, but the opposite: they wish to relinquish the feeling of powerlessness. Having such a technological world gives us immense power over our lives, but it also highlights the areas where we lack power. We are very much at the mercy of our bosses, our government, even our neighbors. But this would not change, even if we were to travel back to our youth, back to the romanticized past. The world will always be divided into areas where we have control, and areas where we will not, and this is okay. What is needed, then, is a change of perspective. We must give up trying to control that which is beyond us focus on the choices we can make right in front of us. We cannot change the minds of other people any more than we can change the weather around us. By accepting this, we can find much more happiness in our lives and compassion for the lives of others.
Oh shut up. Every time it rains, it stops raining. Every time you hurt, you heal. After darkness, there is always light and you get reminded of this every morning but still you choose to believe that the night will last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Not the good or the bad. So you might as well smile while you’re here.
I Wrote This For You (via cold-winter-days)
I suppose this is also Dao.
We should all care, all the time.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -MLK
I just found myself pondering: You do a lot of public support for racial/ethnic diversity in media, which I very much support! Do you ever get questioned as to why, as a white person, this means so much to you? Because I've done a lot of LGBT-supporting stuff in the last five years or so, and every once in a while get asked/told that because I care about it so much, I must be SECRETLY GAY. I need to know your answer because I'm sure people don't call you SECRETLY ASIAN or something.
My white Israeli boss, when we got into a discussion about Trayvon Martin a while back, asked “What happened to you?” when I was explaining racism, as if some tragic event must be behind a white person caring about racism.
My parents are often baffled by it too. They have asked, “Who told you this?” and “Why does it matter?” and “What made you feel this way?”. It’s especially weird to them because when I talk about sexism and stuff they like to accuse me (subtly) of playing the victim, but they hate when I do the opposite and say “Hey, we’re kind of wealthy and have benefited from whiteness.” Like, they don’t think that’s true and also don’t see the benefit of claiming it and they ask me why a lot. (One conversation in Disney World a couple years back about the white princesses being so overtly first tier while the POC princesses were second tier comes to mind, where my mom said something like “I remember you loving having your blonde dolls! Why do you want less of them?” and “What would be wrong with it if the princesses just were all white, anyway?”) [you would seriously never know, until you bring these things up very directly, that my mom feels this way]
White people, especially in public forums or online where people are mostly strangers, have also asked me, “What, are you dating a black guy? Why do you care?”
And I have been, at least once, asked if I was mixed only after talking about racism (so I guess that’s the SECRETLY ASIAN thing).
In short, yes, I get questioned as to why, as a white person, it would mean so much to me.
I just don’t understand why it WOULDN’T. I mean, people are being mistreated. I’m benefiting from it. Of course it’s important to me that that stops.
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes."
"I can’t stand moral absolutism. You know, there’s always that guy who wants to point out that Martin Luther King cheated on his wife— as if he obviously couldn’t have been a great person if he did something like that. Or someone will bring out an inspirational quote, and get you to agree, and then inform you that Hitler said it. As if a good thought couldn’t come from Hitler. Moral absolutism keeps us from learning from the past. It’s easy to say: ‘Hitler was a demon. Nazis were all bad seeds.’ That’s simple. It’s much harder to say: ‘Is that humanity? Is that me?’"
The story of the useless tree.
The Crooked Tree
Hui-tse said to Chuang-tse, “I have a large tree which no carpenter can cut into lumber. It’s branches and trunk are crooked and tough, covered with bumps and depressions. No builder would turn his head to look at it. Your teachings are the same, useless and without value. Therefore, no one pays attention to them.”
"As you know," Chuang-tse replied, "a cat is very skilled at capturing its prey. Crouching low, it can leap in any direction, pursuing whatever it is after. But when its attention is focused on such things, it can easily be caught with a net. On the other hand, a huge yak is not easily caught or overcome. It stands like a stone, or a cloud in the sky. But for all its strength, it cannot catch a mouse."
"You complain that your tree is not valuable as lumber. But you could make use of the shade it provides, rest under its sheltering branches, and stroll beneath it, admiring its character and appearance. Since it would not be endangered by an axe, what could threaten its existence? It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way."
Om.
MANY PEOPLE OFTEN ASK, WHY IS JESUS THE ONLY WAY?
The answer is excerpted from Eli Kittim’s book, “The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days,” pp. 246-247:
“Of all the famous teachers throughout history——Moses, Confucius, Buddha, and Muhammad——no one has ever made any claims of being divine. All these men admit to being either founders of a particular way of ‘being in the world’ or messengers of God. Only Christ makes mention of his preexisting divinity, which echoes the theophany of God’s name in Exodus 3.14: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was born, I am’ (John 8.58). Moreover, Jesus says, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through me’ (John 14.6). In the Revelation to John, Christ emphatically says, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, . . . who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’! (Rev. 1.8, cf. 1.1). In the final analysis, either Christ is who he claims to be, or he is the greatest hypocrite the world has ever known. You decide.”
——-
That is the question we all have to grapple with in this life, and, in all probability, the one which we will ultimately be judged by . . .
——-
The Eternal Tortoise Vol. 2 Issue 1 #comic #webcomic
The Old Wise Tortoise explains the ancient chronicles of the universe and the tortoise race to our young protagonist. Better pull up a chair, this is gonna take awhile.
edit 2/23/2013: The following is outdated. Pay no mind.
And to celebrate the start of T.E.T Volume 2, I redid our old website and turned it into:
eternaltortoise.com (!)
Now you can read your favorite immortal comics at our new site : O We're going to be adding some cool stuff there in the future, so keep an eye on that baby. Right now there's a developing archive of our old SmallComics, and an Art section with a painting of a psychedelic doggy. Hope all your tumblie pals enjoy! =]