Digging Your Own Well: Part Twenty Seven

Daring to Not Be at the Front of the World

 

One of the things that institutes of higher education usually describe as “part of their mandate” is to teach young people something called “leadership”. I've often wondered why they do that. Why not teach “citizenship” instead? Actually, I suspect that most of us are a little wary of people who just assume that they should be the “leader”. Why them? Why shouldn't they be “followers”? Indeed, do we really need to have “leaders” and “followers” at all? Why not have a system of equality where everyone co-operates? Even if we accept that it is necessary to divide the human population into “leaders” and “followers”, then how do we decide which is which?

 

But if we accept that there are difficulties with “leadership”, that doesn't explain why it is that a Daoist should “dare not to be at the front of the world”. To understand this, look at what the DDJ says is wrong with it. “Daring not to be at the world's front, One can grow to a full vessel”, and, “To discard staying behind, yet to be at the front, One dies!”.

 

In some situations it can be a very bad thing to be visible. In the West there is something called “the tall poppy syndrome”. According to Wikipedia, it comes from a passage in Herodotus' The Histories where a ruler asks for advice about how to govern a city. The advice is given by a person who walks through a wheat field and breaks off all the heads that have grown higher than the average. The implication is that anyone in the city who shows exceptional ability---and is therefore a potential leader of any future opposition---should be killed. The Japanese have an aphorism that says much the same thing, "A stake that sticks out will be hammered". Which is to say, anyone who makes themselves visible by being better than the herd will end up being beaten down to conformity.

 

China has never been a liberal democracy, which means that pretty much from the time when the DDJ was first created until present days, “standing out in the crowd” has been a dangerous thing to do. In fact, I can remember having a conversation about this with a roomie from Shanghai who said that the best strategy in life is to be “useful” without being “threatening”. People get executed or assassinated in purges when they support one side and the other wins. Or, even if they just “get in the way” of another person's personal ambitions. Keeping your head down and being invisible can be life-saving advice.

 

Even if you aren't living in a piranha tank, it can pay to avoid putting yourself in front. There are a lot of very competitive places of work where anyone who aspires to upper management is putting themselves in for a big risk. Where I work, for example, managers have none of the official job security that the unionized employees have.

...........

 

Beyond this very obvious issue of “life or death”, there is another way of looking at this issue. Being able to “grow to a full vessel” has a double meaning that is missed by modern people. In ancient China minor infractions of the law involved amputation. If you made a mistake you would have a piece of your “vessel” cut off. (Just like Japanese Mafia members who have fingers cut off for minor mistakes.) But once we recognize this literal meaning, a metaphor becomes obvious---there is a psychological “vessel” too.

 

Being “in front” is a social role that requires a certain type of psychological make-up to sustain. For example, “humility” is usually considered a virtue, yet it is a vice for leaders. Leaders have to constantly blow their own horn in order to get ahead. A leader who quietly works behind the scenes will never get noticed, and therefore will never get promoted. Similarly, any leader that admits her mistakes or always tries to give credit where it is due will be seen as “weak”. In addition, leaders have to be enormously disciplined with both their attention and time in order pursue their goals---this stifles creativity and keeps them from learning unexpected information.

 

The problem with deciding to blow your own horn and never admit errors, of course, is that pretense eventual turns into belief. Play the role of the infallible leader long enough, and you will start to believe your own propaganda. And, if a person stops admitting to himself that he makes mistakes, he loses the opportunity to learn from that particular experience. Moreover, once a leader stops believing in the possibility of making mistakes, she eventually surrounds herself with “yes men” who remove the possibility of even learning about---yet alone from---mistakes. This is why so many leaders seem to constantly make the same mistakes over and over again in their careers.

 

In the same way, if someone never gives credit to others for her successes, she will soon find herself surrounded by second-rate people. Partially this is because no one wants to have the value of their work ignored. But more importantly, if you don't publicly acknowledge a person's worth, eventually you won't do so privately either. And once this happens, the leader will only be interested in the advice of people who agree with him. This is why leaders often start out with great lieutenants and end up surrounded by nonentities.

 

I used to be appalled by the number of national leaders who set out at a very early age to become the President (eg Bill Clinton) or Prime minister (eg Brian Mulroney) and then devoted all their energies to that goal. I still find it sad, but now I expect it. The “collateral damage” must be appalling---how many people devote all their energies to a goal like this yet end up falling to the wayside for one reason or another? Even if a person does succeed, how many opportunities to learn and grow as a human being are sacrificed to the all-absorbing long term goal? 

 

This is why leaders often seem so tremendously isolated from the rest of society. Think about the people who led the US into the war in Iraq. When interviewed many of them opine that “hindsight is 20/20” and “who knew that we would get into so many problems?” Well, the head of the US army, Eric Shinseki, for one---who was forced into early retirement when he warned that far too few troops were being sent. As did the hundreds of thousands---if not millions---of people all over the world who protested against the invasion. How can people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld be so obtuse? A Daoist could ask “how could they not?”. The process that led to their gaining their positions of great influence and power mitigated against them ever being sensitive to the information that was immediately obvious to many other people.

 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Digging Your Own Well: Part Twenty Six

Frugality

 

Daoists are not opposed to nice things, but they would argue that most come with some sort of cost. And it is important to be aware of that cost in advance to avoid paying too high a price. What this means is that the frugal man has fewer entanglements that limit his freedom. For example, someone who is living pay-cheque to pay-cheque is less likely to quit his job when his boss starts to pressure him to do something immoral. Similarly, he will have less money to offer to charity or a friend in need. Being “wide reaching” means thinking about more than the day-to-day grind. Being over-committed narrows that focus.

 

And being “frugal” isn't just about money. Time can also be something that we “over commit”. The conflict between family time and career has become such a commonly recognized problem that there is a bureaucratic title for the issue: “work/life balance”. Books have been written and consultants are hired to give seminars. The person who has developed a career that is too time intensive will find that she no longer has the freedom to love her partner, be a parent, or, have any real friends.

 

Just as importantly, she will also find that she no longer has time to be open to new ideas and spontaneous in her actions. Over-committed women do not read books on subjects they know nothing about. Nor do they meet people who live totally outside her class, family, or professional orbit. This means that she effectively stops learning. Again, there is a bureaucratic name for this phenomenon: living in a “silo”.

 

Think about the problem from the viewpoint of computer science. The power of a computer resides in its “RAM”. This is an acronym that stands for “Randomly Accessible Memory”. A computer with a lot of RAM is able to access and connect bits of information from a lot of different sources at the same time. In the same way, a person who has “wide ranging” interests and knowledge about society can make connections and see patterns that do not appear to people who specialize on what is important to their profession to the exclusion of all else. This is why “silo” thinking is a problem for large institutions. To give one example, if all the senior executives at your telephone company are focused on improving the ability of the existing system to provide long distance phone calls, they might not realize that there are new start up companies that are developing Voice Over Internet Phone (VOIP) technology (e.g. Skype) that completely bypasses the phone company's long distance billing system. They may also not notice an entire emerging generation of people who would rather type out chat messages than make voice-based phone calls.

 

Beyond the issue of money and time, there is another one: “loyalty”. People build their lives around allegiances to specific notions or ideals. These can include various concepts like “the Law”, “Free Enterprise”, “a Good Job”, “the Church”, “the Party”, and so on. There's the stock image of the failed party official or general who “takes the easy way out” by blowing his brains out with a revolver. We also have an iconic image of failed investors jumping to their death after a stock market plunge has “wiped them out”. Below the level of suicide, we have individuals who are so emotionally invested in an institution that they progressively find themselves committing greater and greater moral outrages in order to prop it up. One example of this is the Catholic Church's desperate attempts to protect pedophile clergy.

 

People who have signed-up to institutions that require this depth of commitment often pay a steep price for being “wide ranging” in their viewpoint. Chelsea Manning was sent to prison because she felt that people needed to see what sort of horrible outrages were being committed by the US military in Iraq. Edward Snowden is an exile in Russia because he felt that the citizens of the world needed to know how comprehensively intelligence agencies were spying on them. And, Julian Assange spent years as a prisoner in the Ecuadorian embassy because he created the institution, Wikileaks, that allowed both Manning and Snowden to expose their information to the wider world. Whistle blowers are prime examples of people who have not been frugal in swearing personal allegiance and paid a big price for being “wide ranging”. (It might be, however, that they pay less of a price than those who simply “go along” with the institutions they serve and as a result destroy their innate sense of right and wrong. There are worse places to be than prison.)

..........

 

Beyond these obvious issues, Ellen Chen's commentary on this section of the Tao Te Ching talks of resonances in the original ancient Chinese of the word that we translate as “frugality”: “Chien is organically connected with p'u, the original state of nature as the uncarved wood. Chien stands for the economy of nature that does not waste anything.”

 

This is somewhat similar to the relationship between the words “economy” and “ecology”. They are joined together by the “eco” which comes from the Greek word “oikos”, or “household”. “Eco” about where we live. And the “logy” comes from “logos”, or the various ways we try to articulate or understand a specific aspect of life. In this sense “oikos” plus “logos” means “understanding where we live”. The “nomy” of “economy” comes from the word “nemein”, or “to distribute”. So “oikos” plus “nemein” means “distributing what our home has”. For the Daoist what we call “frugality” doesn't just entail the money we save in our bank account, but also how lightly we walk upon the earth. And this doesn't mean “doing without”, so much as being integrated into the economy of nature where nothing is wasted and everything is recycled.

 

Because the Daoist has worked his way into the warp and weave of his surroundings, he is able to do things that would be impossible if he were wasting resources battling with his environs. The joke that says “When you are up to ass in alligators it is hard to remember that you are here to drain a swamp” makes no sense to a Daoist. This is because in most cases he wouldn't see why the swamp should be drained in the first place. And if he did have to do something about it, he probably would find some way of doing so that wouldn't entail causing problems for the large reptiles.

............

 

Yet another way to think about this is to consider frugality in terms of “economy of design”. Consider the 19^th century American sect called the “Shakers”. They had an aesthetic that was based on the simplicity and frugality that is very much in keeping with Daoist principles. Aaron Copeland made one of their hymns famous by putting it in his score for Martha Graham's ballet “Appalachian Spring”. The lyrics could have come from a Daoist text:

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free

'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,

And when we find ourselves in the place just right,

'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gained,

To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,

To turn, turn will be our delight,

Till by turning, turning we come 'round right.

The Shakers were also famous for their furniture, which was based on a lack of ornamentation plus utilitarian design. One of their ideas, for example, was to design chairs that could easily be hung on the wall when not in use, which allowed a room to be “re-purposed” for another task, such as dancing. (The Shakers were big into dancing, hence the “turn, turn” and “turning, turning”---which are dance instructions in the above lyrics.)

 

I'm belabouring the issue of frugality because our society seems to have lost the ability to incorporate economy into design. Instead of cooling our homes by having windows that open and catch a breeze or using shade to avoid the hot sun, we build expensive air conditioning systems that eat huge amounts of electricity. And instead of designing cities in ways that encourage people to use transit, bicycle, or walk to work---planners create sprawling subdivisions where every adult has to own their own automobile. We also create needlessly complex systems of governance that necessitate the creation of armies of non-productive “experts” who consume society's resources---lawyers, managers, prison guards, social workers, tax accountants, bureaucrats, etc. Economists have a phrase to identify this sort of “anti-frugal” design: “enforced scarcity”. That is, the creation of an environment so profoundly inefficient that people are forced to make an artificially high income in order to simply survive. This is why even though we are the richest society the world has ever seen yet, we still have beggars on the street and the government says it cannot afford to deal with them or any other major social problem.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Digging Your Own Well: Part Twenty Five

The Three Treasures

 

In Chapter 67 of the Dao De Jing we are introduced to the “three treasures”.

2. I have three treasures (pao),

To hold and to keep:

The first is motherly love (tz'u),

The second is frugality (chien),

The third is daring not be at the world's front.

3. With motherly love one can be courageous,

With frugality one can be wide reaching,

Daring not be at the world's front,

One can grow to a full vessel (ch'i).

4. Now to discard motherly love, yet to be courageous,

To discard frugality, yet to be wide reaching, 

To discard staying behind, yet to be at the front,

One dies!

5 One with motherly love is victorious in battle,

Invulnerable in defense.

When Heaven wills to save a people,

It guards them with motherly love.

Ellen Chen, trans.

The three treasures of Daoism are something like the ten commandments and golden rule rolled up into one. But to a modern Western ear they sound bizarre and paradoxical. How can “motherly love” help you win battles? How does frugality help anyone become “wide reaching”? And how does one dare not to be at the “world's front”?

 

Motherly Love

 

 

When we go hiking in the wilderness one thing that everyone knows is that you should try to never get in between a mother and her child. Not only does this apply to ferocious predators like wolves, bears and cougars, but also normally peaceful animals like moose or even deer. This is because mother animals protecting their young have a fearlessness and ferocity that is unmatched. Predators chasing prey are wary of being injured. As are males fighting over potential mates. But mothers don't care about their own safety at all.

 

The other aspect of this to remember is the immunity that mother animals have towards retaliation. If an animal attacks humans as prey or because it is too “familiar” with human beings, game wardens will hunt it down and kill it as a matter of course. But if the attack came from someone getting in between mother and cubs, generally people acknowledge that there was no blame, except perhaps on the part of the human. I have read accounts by people who were lying in hospital beds after savage maulings that show the same sentiment.

 

In the relations between people and nations it is a sad fact of existence that violence is sometimes necessary. But Daoists try to always act with the love of a mother towards her children. That means when it is necessary, they need to fight to both ferociously and fearlessly. But the act of violence needs to be directed towards only one aim: defense. All violence must be proportionate and directed specifically towards whomever or whatever is the threat. And once the threat is passed there is absolutely no room for animosity or grudges.

 

We have recently had many examples of what happens when one doesn't follow this principle. Wars that are not about defense but rather about the “interests” of states have severely damaged those same interests. And wars that were based on “shock and awe” and which accepted far too much “collateral damage” have created violent responses by people enraged by the carnage they have seen inflicted on their communities. As long as a nation restricts its military activity to genuine defence, it has the respect of the world. But once it embarks on needless adventures it becomes a pariah.

 

Exactly the same thing happens in our personal lives. We all have boundaries that we need to defend: personally, in our family, and, in the various communities we inhabit. This means that conflict is pretty much inevitable at least once in a while. But Daoists believe that the best way to manage them is by remembering to keep the ideal of the love between a mother and her child as the guiding principle that informs our actions and responses. Of course, no one can ever live totally according any ideal. But it is what we strive towards.

 

..........

 

Another way of looking at this passage is to consider the quality of the relationships one builds in society and how that affects one's influence within it. Another book strongly influenced by the Daoist viewpoint is Sun Tzu's Art of War. Consider this passage:

A general regards his men as infants who will march with him into the deepest valleys. He treats them as his own beloved sons and they will stand by him unto death. If a general indulges his men but is unable to employ them, if he loves them but cannot enforce his commands, if the men are disorderly and he is unable to control them, they may be compared to spoiled children, and are useless.

(Chapter 10, General Tao Hanzhang version, Yuan Shibing trans.)

This idea of a parent sending her children off to fight a war may grate on some people's ears. But the important issue is how the general feels towards her men. Sun Tzu's general is genuinely concerned about her soldiers. She doesn't see them as a means to an end, or, as pawns to move on a chess board in order to advance her career or to prove some aspect of a pet ideology. They are subjects, not objects.

 

Having said that, it is important to remember that a Daoist is not just any type of mother, she is someone who acts in a certain way. That is to say, she is not sentimental. This means that while she treats her soldiers like her own children, she is the type of mother that is not indulgent. She believes in “tough love”. Being overly indulgent towards your children is another form of objectification. This is because the sentimental mother doesn't see her children as individuals that have their own agendas and need to find their own way in the world, but rather as puppets that act out the emotions that dominate her consciousness. Objectively viewing your children as human beings in their own right instead of extensions of your internal mental state can be a profound act of love towards them.

 

If we treat our children as being autonomous individuals who have rights beyond what we want them to be, then they also have responsibilities too. And we expect those children to live up to those responsibilities. Soldiers do not respect officers who over-indulge them because the smart ones realize that their welfare is bound up with the group. Sailors say a “tight [ie: well-disciplined] ship is a happy ship”. This is because in a slack ship the best men end up doing extra work that the worst ones shirk. And when I read Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul, I remember him quoting wise Centurions who warned their soldiers that “indulgent generals lose battles”. And, there can be no greater calamity for a soldier than losing a battle.

 

This point is reinforced by what immediately precedes the above quote from Sun Tzu:

---the general who in advancing does not seek personal fame, and in retreating is not concerned with disgrace, but whose only purpose is to protect the country and promote the best interests of his sovereign, is the precious jewel of the state.

(Chapter 10, General Tao Hanzhang version, Yuan Shibing trans.)

The General who acts according to Daoist principles is selfless. She doesn't care about her career. She isn't dominated by whatever emotional baggage she might be carrying. She is like the mother cougar or grizzly who defends her cubs without any thought to her self interest. It is the same for the Daoist in society---only the “off-spring” may be many things. It may be the soldiers under her command, it may be the sovereign she serves, or, it may be the greater good of the entire community. Unfortunately, these sorts of leaders are very rare, which is why the competent sovereign needs to treat them like “the precious jewel of the state”.

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Digging Your Own Well: Part Twenty Four

The Frog in the Well

Donald Rumsfeld was famous for saying that there are  

things we know, things we know that we don't know, and, things that we don't know that we don't know. 

As a general principle this is quite true. In his case, however, I think it's fair to say that he was speaking in “bad faith” because he was an example of someone who refuses to interact with, let alone listen to, anyone who tried to expose him to something he “didn't know that he didn't know”. In his case the “unknown unknowns” multiplied because of his arrogance.

 

In contrast, Daoists try to remind themselves that there are “unknown unknowns”. One of the ways they do this is by thinking about a famous passage from the Zhuangzi. In the chapter identified as Autumn Floods, a character named Kungsun Lung complains to a prince Mou that he has a hard time understanding master Chuang (Zhuangzi.) Mou explains why this is by talking about a frog that lives in a broken-down well and its conversation with a sea turtle.

---'I really enjoy myself here!' it said to a turtle of the Eastern Sea. 'If I want to go out, I jump along the railing around the well, then I come back and rest where the brick lining is missing from the wall. I enter the water tilll it comes up to my armpits and supports my chin. When I slop through the mud, it covers my feet and buries my toes. Turning around, I see crayfish and tadpoles, but none of them is a match for me. Furthermore, I have sole possession of all the water in this hole and straddle all the joy in this broken-down well. This is the ultimate! Why don't you drop in some time, sir, and see for yourself?'

“But before the turtle of the Eastern Sea could get his left foot in, his right knee had already gotten stuck. After extricating himself, he withdrew a little and told the frog about the sea, saying, 'A distance of a thousand tricents is insufficient to span its breadth: height of a thousand fathoms is insufficient to plumb its depth. During Yü's time, there were floods nine years out of ten, but the water in it did not appreciably increase; during T'ang's time, there were droughts seven years out of eight, but the extent of its shores did not appreciably decrease. Hence, not to shift or change with time, not to advance or recede regardless of amount---this is the great joy of the Eastern Sea.' Upon hearing this, the frog in the broken-down well was so utter startled that it lost itself in bewilderment.

Zhuangzi, (Wandering on the Way, “Autumn Floods”), Mair translator.

The frog simply cannot understand what it is like to live as a sea turtle in the vastness of the ocean. Moreover, as someone who's lived his whole life in a well, he can't even know that the ocean exists. The only thing that he can possibly do is embrace some form of intellectual humility and realize theoretically that there are limits to his understanding and stay open to the possibility that something will come totally “out of left field” and surprise him. That's part of the Daoist response to life. How sad that important leaders of great nations often have not learned the same lesson!

 

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Twenty

Immortals and Realized Men

Daoists who are of a “New Age” or religious orientation will often talk about “Immortals” or “Enlightened Sages” who have either conquered death or at least have manifested magical powers. This idea has existed for a long time, as it stems from the Shamanistic roots of the broad movement. But as a practical philosophy I would suggest that people need not accept that there are such things as magical powers or immortality in order to be a “real Daoist”.

So let's look at how one of the key Daoist thinkers, Zhuangzi, viewed life and death.

Master Chuang's wife died. When Master Hui went to offer his condolences, he found Master Chuang lolling on the floor with his legs sprawled out, beating a basin and singing.
“She lived together with you,” said Master Hui, “raised your children, grew old, and died. It's enough that you do not wail for her, but isn't it a bit much for you to be beating on a basin and singing?”
“Not so,” said Master Chuang. “When she first died, how could I of all people not be melancholy? But I reflected on her beginning and realized that originally she was unborn. Not only was she unborn, originally she had no form. Not only did she have no form, originally she had no vital breath. Intermingling with nebulousness and blurriness, a transformation occurred and there was vital breath: the vital breath was transformed and there was form; the form was transformed and there was birth; now there has been another transformation and she is dead. This is like the progression of the four seasons---from spring to autumn, from winter to summer. There she sleeps blissfully in an enormous chamber. If I were to have followed her weeping and wailing, I think it would have been out of keeping with destiny, so I stopped.”

(Zhuangzi, “Outer Chapters”, “Ultimate Joy”, Sect 2, Mair trans.)

There is an important insight in Daoism that involves life and death. But it isn't a secret that only very groovy people are allowed to hear. Instead, its one of those insights that is relatively easy to find, but only a certain type of person is willing to listen to.

Master Lieh was on a journey and was having a meal by the side of the road. There he saw a hundred-year-old skull. He pulled away the weeds and pointed at it, saying, “Only you and I know that you have never died and that you have never lived. Are you truly distressed? Am I truly happy?”

(Zhuangzi, “Outer Chapters”, “Ultimate Joy”, Sect 6, Mair trans.)

Liezi can say that the skull has “never died” and “never lived”. That's because human beings don't really exist. They are actually only theoretical abstractions. All of us die, and we could end up dried bones on a roadside. But is the bone the man? Hardly. Indeed, is the infant the man? When you die, there is no “you” left to give a hang about being dead. No more than there was anyone to be concerned about before you were born.

And think about this. Modern psychology has proved beyond a doubt that what we call “memory” is to a large degree fiction. Our minds aren't tape recorders that keep everything on a permanent record. Instead, they are like data compression files that record a few salient elements of the past and then use our imagination to reconstruct it when required according to various protocols. This explains the phenomenon of “false memory syndrome”. It also explains why eye-witness testimony is so notoriously unreliable.1 What we remember is---to a disconcertingly large extent---fiction! What we experience of life are odd fleeting moments of self-awareness, an anticipation of what the future may bring, plus a largely fictional understanding of the past.

Look carefully at life and you don't find individuals that have lives, let alone people who are immortal. Instead, what you find is a process.

In seeds there are germs. When they are found in water they become filaments. When they are found at the border of water and land they become algae. When they are found at the border of water and land they become plantain. When the plantain is found in fertile soil it becomes crow's foot. The crow's foot's roots become scarab grubs and its leaves become butterflies. The butterflies soon evolve into insects that are born beneath the stove. They have the appearance of exuviae and are called “house crickets”. After a thousand days the house crickets become birds called “dried surplus bones.” The spittle of the dried surplus bones becomes a misty spray and the misty spray becomes mother of vinegar. Midges are born from mother of vinegar: yellow whirligigs are born from fetid wine; blind gnats are born from putrid slimebugs. When goat's-queue comples with bamboo that has not shooted for a long time, they produce greenies. The greenies produce panthers; panthers produce horses; horses produce men; and men return to enter the wellsprings of nature. The myriad things all come out from the wellsprings and all re-enter the wellsprings.

(Zhuangzi, “Outer Chapters”, “Ultimate Joy”, sect 7, Mair trans.)

Zhuangzi is having fun with the science of the day, but the point he is trying to make is that if you look at life what you see is a complex booming, buzzing series of changes. That is the Dao and the Dao is all there is. We tie ourselves in knots worrying about entities that are mere intellectual abstractions.

There are no “immortals” because there really are no “mortals”. There is just the an endless series of transformations, which Daoists call “the Dao”. A “Master”---if you want to use the term---is simply someone who's figured this out to some extent. Sometimes they can find someone what wants to hear what they have to say, and sometimes that person actually understands what they are being told. But usually no one wants to hear what a “Master” has to say, so she just goes on with her life. There is another term that is sometimes used instead---one that I like much better than “Master” or “Immortal”: “Realized Man”. Someone who has figured out the Dao is a “Realized Man”---but mostly he is just another guy who has gained some insight into what life is really like.

...........

On a more practical note, it is important to understand why it is that people might think that some Daoists actually became immortal or developed super-human powers. At various times in human history the average lifespan has been a lot shorter than what we take for granted now. Consider a time in ancient China when life wasn't very good. Peasants lived short lives because they wore their bodies out by hard, brutal labour. And wealthier people who lived in cities tended to die because of the diseases that were endemic because of bad sanitation. (It's only in the 19th century that the population of large cities became self-reproducing. Before that, disease deaths always out-paced births and to keep the population stable there had to be a constant flow of people from rural areas moving in to balance this out. Consider the fact that even Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, died in a cholera epidemic!)

Contrast this with the life of a hermit in some wilderness area. Isolated from other people, he wouldn't have been exposed to infectious diseases. And not being a peasant, he was able to avoid damaging his body through over work. Finally, being someone concerned about long life, he would have tried to have a varied diet and balanced exercise. Some of these folks probably would have been able to live to the immense age of seventy or eighty years! In a world where most people are dead by age forty and at sixty you are a very old man, someone in their eighties would be considered a magical being! Now if someone saw one of these rare oldsters, they would have talked about it. A game of “telephone” would have ensued and before long, people would have heard stories of mysterious “ancient immortals” who inhabit the mountains.

Similarly, if someone spends their time looking at the world around them and thinking about what they see, they might have noticed some interesting facts. Pass these facts onto other disciples, and eventually a body of “magical powers” can get built up. For example, for centuries religious leaders have “wowed” naive followers through ritual fire walking. Well, it turns out that even though glowing coals are very hot, they have a very poor rate of conductivity. This means that if someone walks barefoot on them, the perspiration on the soles of the feet are able to protect them from damage. (If someone put an iron railway spike in the fire---which has excellent conductive power---and people stepped on it, their feet would be terribly burned.). Now that people understand the science, fire walking is routinely used at conventions of scientific skeptics and business training seminars where there is no attempt to suggest magic is involved.

This is what my teacher used to call a “circus trick”. There are lots and lots of them and they are all based on either scientific principles that are poorly understood, or, out-and-out fraud. For ancients they were an excellent way of “gulling the rubes” in the neighbourhood of the hermitage. At the very best, this sort of thing would teach them to leave you alone. At the worst, it was a way of getting some economic support for your lifestyle. (Many “hermits” actually had people providing food and clothing---some even had servants.) Again, something unexplained would probably be spread through word of mouth and get exaggerated as it went from person to person. A circus trick eventually became a miracle.

...........

Most people really want to believe in there being “something more to life”. When they contemplate the horror and misery that many of us have to live through, they want there to be some sort of redress or balance in some future existence. Others find themselves in such drab, boring lives that they want to believe that this is just an illusion that covers something far more interesting. But these hopes don't make any sense at all---even if we assume that they have some basis in fact. For example, even if there was such a thing as reincarnation it really doesn't make our lives here and now any better. This is because it doesn't really matter if in a previous life I was the Emperor of China if I cannot remember it. And even if I did, the memory would only serve as a contrast to the blah, humdrum quality of my present 21st century existence. The same can be said about going to heaven after death, which is ultimately not much more than a specific type of reincarnation. As for there being a secret, amazing reality hiding behind normal existence, as Bishop Berkley pointed out, “esse est percipi”, or, “the essence of something is how we perceive it”. That is to say that if something “walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck”, etc---we should just accept that it is a duck instead of hypothesizing a lot of other things that no one can sense. And, as I wrote before, if the past is mostly imagination and the future mere anticipation, we only exist for the fleeting instant of awareness called “NOW!”. And if we only exist now, what does it mean to say that you live a long, short, or, immortal life?

Realized men do not know any tremendously groovy things that are hidden the rest of us. Instead, they are people who have the courage to see and accept the truths that are in front of all of us all the time.
____

1Oh, if only someone would explain this fact to the criminal justice system!

&&&&

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Eighteen

Religious Daoism

 

I started out this book by emphasizing that what I am describing is Daoism as a practical philosophy. At this point I should mention that this is in opposition to Daoism as a religion. Most Westerners don't even know that there is such a thing. Oddly enough, I've found that people really have a hard time recognizing something that they don't expect. For example, I used to identify myself as a “Daoist” and tried to live something like a religious Daoist and found that even friends simply couldn't wrap their heads around this idea. One fellow got it into his head that I was a Muslim and I could never get him to understand that I am not. Another called me a Buddhist for much the same reason. A Benedictine nun friend had the idea that I had just made up all this Daoism stuff. Well, I didn't. In China and amongst the Chinese diaspora there are temples, and, “priests” (daoshi) of a religion known as “Daoism”.

........

 

I'm not an expert, but from my reading on the subject it seems the religion came from a lot of different sources. As I mentioned above, there appears to have been an oral tradition that created foundational texts such as the Nei-Yeh and the Dao De Jing. This tradition also created meditation techniques like sitting and forgetting, holding onto the One, and, internal alchemy.

 

In addition, there was another stream called “Chinese folk religion”. This is a part of the cultural inheritance of ordinary Chinese society. It includes things like a pantheon of various gods and immortals such as the Jade Emperor, the Queen Mother of the West, the Ghost King, General Kwan, the God of Longevity, and so on. (When you go into a Chinese-owned business in the West you will often see an altar to one or several of these folk gods.)

 

In addition, there are shamanist traditions that involve things like the “sand oracle”. This involves a specialist who is “possessed” by one of the gods and who answers questions put to the her by writing with a chopstick on a pan of sand. (I was told that the fellow who travelled from Hong Kong to Canada to set up the Fung Loy Kok temple and who initiated me, immigrated on the advice of a sand oracle.)

 

Yet another element in the creation of the Daoist religion was a rebellion by the exploited lower classes of Chinese society. This was the “yellow turban rebellion” which started in the year 184 and lasted until the year 205 CE. It was organized by the “Five Pecks of Rice Daoists”, led by the “Celestial Master”. (The “five pecks of rice” refers to a tax that members were expected to pay into a communal bank and which was used to help the poor and support collective undertakings.) After the rebellion was quashed by the armies of Imperial China (part of the campaign is described in the Chinese classic novel Three Kingdoms) the movement became more religiously focused and lives on today as one of the two major daoist sects: Zheng Yi Dào, or, “the Way of Orthodox Unity”. Orthodox Daoism tends to be based on a priesthood that minister to local communities of followers. They hold public rituals, organize charitable activity, perform exorcisms and healing ceremonies, and, generally act something like pastors in rural protestant Christian communities.

.........

 

The other major sect of Daoism, the Quanzhen or “the Way of Completeness and Truth”, was founded about a thousand years after Orthodox Daoism by Wang Chongyang. The legend is that Wang met three Daoist immortals in a tavern and they taught him secret meditation techniques, which he went on to perfect while living many years of intense practice, first in a tomb and then in a hut. After this period, he adopted seven followers (who became famous as the “Seven Daoist Masters” of Chinese folklore), who then went on to found seven major Daoist sects. The most famous of these disciples, Changchun zi, caught the ear of the Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan, who granted him land in the Imperial Capital of Beijing, which eventually became one of the greatest sites in Daoism, the White Cloud Temple.

 

The Quanzhen school grew in something of a tension with Buddhism, which had come from India after the creation of Orthodox Daoism. Chinese culture was generally opposed to celibacy and monasticism, which is reflected in the teachings of the Celestial Master, who encouraged his followers to marry and integrate themselves into the community. In contrast, Buddhism has always encouraged its followers to isolate themselves from mainstream society. By the time of Wang Chongyang Buddhism had become very popular in China, and the obvious conclusion would be that it influenced the development of Quanzhen Daoism---which favours monasticism, just like Buddhism.

........

 

In addition, I understand that in the 19^th century there were popular spiritual movements amongst the lower classes which taught the unity of all religions and the importance of charity and mutual aid. Unfortunately, the Communist Party of China saw these groups as competitors and ruthlessly suppressed them in mainland China. The temple that I was initiated into, the Fung Loy Kok, was an offshoot of a Hong Kong organization, the Yuen Yuen Institute, that embodied these ideals. This adds yet another element “to the mix”.

...........

 

I suspect that the majority of people who read this book will consider all religions to be not much more than superstitious nonsense. To a certain extent I do too, but I have to offer one caveate. To understand it, I think people have to realize that while all people may be created equal, they are not created the same.

 

One of the “basic operating assumptions” that all human beings work with is the idea that each of us has a similar way of experiencing the world. When I see a rose, I assume that someone else sees much the same thing. But in point of fact, it is very difficult to know if this is actually true. I can point at what I see and tell someone else that it is a “rose”, which will lead to her using the same word whenever she sees the same thing again. But I have no real way of telling if she sees a soft, red, nest of petals. For all I know, she might be seeing what I would experience as a hard, blue, pile of crystals.

 

If this sounds absurd, consider the fact that a certain percentage of the population suffers from an affliction known as colour blindness. I went to school with a guy who simply could not tell the difference between green and red because both looked the same to him. This caused a problem for him on his family's farm because it meant that he couldn't tell the difference in ripeness for some types of fruit. His experience of a rose is significantly different than mine.

 

Now lets push this issue even further. There is also a very small percentage of people who have something called “synethesia”, which means that they experience one type of sense in ways that most people associate with another sense altogether. A sound, for example, may have a colour. This is so alien to me that I simply cannot understand what it would be like. In my experience, only visual objects have colour. Yet we don't see sound, we only hear it---so how could it have a colour?

 

Let's go totally wild. There are cases of individuals who have been profoundly blind since birth yet they have learned how to live much like normal people by developing the ability to echo locate like bats. One example I saw on YouTube has developed this ability to the point where he is able to ride a bicycle and shoot hoops with a basketball. He does it just like a bat---he makes clicking noises and uses the echos he hears to create a mental three dimensional image that allows him to navigate the world around him.

 

There are other examples. People who become chess masters often show off by playing multiple games of chess in their heads. This isn't a “fluke”, but rather a by-product of developing the ability to recognize the patterns in play that define a master instead of an ordinary player. Another example is a random pattern autostereogram (look it up on Wikipedia.) These are pictures that look like nothing at all until a person's brain learns the “trick” of decoding the information---but once you do, a full-fledged, three-dimensional picture “jumps” up at you off the page. The point I am trying to make is that contrary to naive assumptions, people do not all experience the world in the same way. And for some people religion is all total “bosh”, whereas others experience something incredibly important.

 

Part of this is a question of emotion. People aren't just thinking beings, but also feeling ones. And for many people, religion is about feeling deeply about a specific God. I've never been able to understand the strong feeling that some Christians have about their Gods (Jesus, the Father, the Saints), but then again my childhood experiences were not conducive to feeling deeply about other family members. (Union meetings where people talk about “brothers” and “sisters” also leave me cold.)

 

What I do have more sympathy towards are people who claim to have had religious experiences.

When God came into my teenage or college bedroom in that way, unasked and unmistakable, the next morning I would wake up changed. I’d go out into the world and give away everything I could. Wouldn’t drive past a broken-down car without stopping to help, was kind and grateful even with my parents, couldn’t stop singing, built houses for poor people, gave secret gifts to my friends, things like that. Sometimes it lasted for weeks; once, when I was in my early twenties, it lasted for nearly a year. It is called being on fire for God. It’s like you’ve glimpsed the world’s best secret: that love need not be scarce.

“Letter from Williamsburg”, by Kristin Dombek,

The Paris Review, Summer 2013 No. 205

I've had experiences like the ones Dombek describes, which is why I have some sympathy for them. I've also had them associated with numinous dreams where I met with figures from Daoist mythology---the Goddess of Mercy and the Ghost King.

 

People who've never had this sort of experience say that they simply cannot understand what people are talking about. (I suspect that a fraction of this population have actually had something like this happen to them, but it scared them so much that they refuse to admit it.) But I have to take most of them on their word. After all can we really know what it's like to be in someone else's skin?

 

Of course, some folks will probably just dismiss this as something akin to a manic episode and chalk all religious experiences to low grade psychiatric illness. As someone with more than my fair share of exposure to people with obvious psychiatric disorders, my humble opinion is that this is a facile response. The line between madness and sanity is far more ambiguous than that point of view would suggest. We create a socially-sanctioned definition and discard many important elements of ordinary consciousness in creating the “received version” of what it means to be a human being. My opinion is in line with that of Temple Grandin (the famous autistic professor of animal science.) I once heard her interviewed on the CBC where she suggested that human consciousness exists on a continuum and both autism and bipolar disorder are extremes of very useful human tendencies. Remove all autism from the human population and you will have removed all the scientists, mathematicians and engineers too. And take away bipolar disorder, and there would be no more artists. I won't hazard a guess about what is involved in religious experiences, but perhaps if we removed the ability to love God we would also remove the ability to love anything or anyone.

...........

 

Another thing to remember about organized religion is that it is a way of unifying a population of people around a central theme or set of ideals. When people see a ritual they are not arguing amongst themselves in a search for some sort of clear and precise truth. Instead, they are doing one or many of several different things. They might be enjoying music and art, or, they might be feeling good about being part of a community experience, or, they may be feeling nostalgic about past experiences of a similar sort, or, they might be having a profoundly emotional experience triggered by feelings associated with specific symbols. The feeling and ideas aroused by the experience may vary from person to person, indeed, they might be totally contradictory. But because the ideas and emotions raised remain on the theoretical level instead of being explicitly articulated, there is no opportunity for people to realize this fact, so the event brings them together instead of pushing them apart. For example, a given ritual might be attended by an artist who appreciates the beautiful caligraphy on the altar; an old woman who is reminded about the village festivals of her youth; a young mother who is happy to be surrounded by her extended family; children who are happy for all the noise, gaudy clothes, and, good food; and, a young intellectual who views the public worship of the Gods as a way of connecting to the long history of the nation. All the same things can be said about a Roman Catholic mass.

 

Contrast this with what happens when a philosopher tries to get people to clearly articulate their beliefs about a contentious subject. People who thought that they were in agreement usually find out that they believe very different things. Tempers often flare up. And the community divides. Ritual unites a community---discursive reasoning divides it. This is why ancient Athens put Socrates to death and why I can seem to be a total jerk at a party. But the great value of discursive reasoning is that it deflates superstition, expands human knowledge, and, separates fact from opinion. It offers progress in place of comfort. I understand the appeal of religion, but ultimately I know that I am more of a philosopher than a believer. This is why I ultimately rejected religious Daoism and am writing this book. But it doesn't mean that I cannot understand the appeal. I would hope that all those rationalists who read this book will at least try to understand this point too.

 

&&&&

 

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Fourteen

Holding onto the One

Another type of meditation practice is known as shou-i, or, “holding onto the One”. Harold D. Roth describes this practice as

---holding fast to the One entails retaining a sense or a vision of the Way as the one unifying force within phenomenal reality while seeing this reality in all its complexity.

(Original Tao, Harold D. Roth trans and commentary, Chapter 3, part XIII)

Whereas sitting and forgetting was about finding a quiet place to sit and ignore the world around you so you can focus on how your mind operates, holding onto the One is something that you try to do every other moment of your waking life. It is about reminding yourself to be aware of your surroundings and look for the subtle forces at play in it. If you remind yourself to look for subtleties, you will eventually begin to see them. And when you do, you will find yourself being able to achieve interesting results.

 

Let me give an illustrative example. Where I work I was once approached by a student who wanted the Library to install public computer printers that were able to print on both sides of a sheet of paper---to help the environment. I'm too low on the food-chain to have any influence, but I explained to him a strategy for getting his suggestion implemented.

 

I told him that there would be no sense at all trying to make a suggestion to any individual manager, as it would be ignored. Primarily, this is because he would just consider this proposal extra work with no value to his career. The solution, therefore, would be to do all the work for the manager and to submit the proposal in a venue where it would be visible to the manager's boss. The way to do this, therefore, was for him to write up a detailed proposal outlining the costs involved plus a source for the new printing equipment. This meant the manager really didn't have to do any work. And instead of just sending this proposal to the person who managed the public printers, I suggested he send the suggestion to the Library “Question and Answer Board”. Since all of these submissions went directly to the Associate Chief Librarian---who then passed them onto relevant managers with her comments attached---it would be impossible for the relevant manager to simply ignore, because it would be coming from his boss instead of just a student.

 

I outlined this strategy by first asking the student “Do you really want to get these printers changed?” That is because a lot of times people just want to vent, but can't be bothered to do any heavy lifting. The guy surprised me by saying “yes, I do”. And he also surprised me by actually following my suggestion. Two weeks later, I saw his detailed proposal posted on the Q and A board, and by the end of the semester the printers had been upgraded to do double-sided printing.

 

Holding onto the One has obvious similarities to Buddhist “mindfulness”. Both of them require reminding yourself that you exist and are an observer to your existence. Both are against “losing yourself in your delusions”. But holding onto the One has the added emphasis on looking for the subtle “Daos” that exist in our environment. In the example I gave above, I was explaining to the student the Dao of bureaucracy and how he could use my knowledge to exert some kung fu on it.

 

.........

 

Learning to hold onto the One is also a mental project, just like sitting and forgetting. You have to be aware of what your mind is doing to be able to really see what is happening in the world around you. You have to be calm to see what is in front of you. You also need to be aware of your biases if you are going to have some sort of objective viewpoint. So holding onto the One is also a process of learning about how your mind operates. And just as sitting and forgetting has potential dangers, so does holding onto the One.

 

If not done properly, the practice of constant careful observation can lead to an inability to ever relax and simply “be in the moment”. That too is important. In Japanese Zen this ability to just act without thinking is known as “mushin no shin” or “mind without mind”. It is an integral part of martial arts training, but it also blends into all of human life. To give an example, while sparring in taijiquan (ie: “push hands” or tuishou) sometimes I have had the experience of “just acting” totally without any forethought. The result is often that someone flies through the air, or, gets pinned with a joint lock. This is an interesting phenomenon, but paradoxically, to understand it you have to be willing to make the effort to hold onto the One and carefully observe the way your mind operates.

 

Consider the act of speaking or writing. Did you choose the particular word you just spoke? Perhaps you did, but how often do you stop and make the time to do that? In writing this book there have been times when I had to stop and think about exactly what word I wish to write. And, of course, I am constantly looking at the text and making changes to “polish it” to the point where it will be published. But even when I stop and make changes, the words just “pop” into existence. Again, think about the act of choosing. Did you choose the word you use? If so, did you “choose to choose” that word? Or did you just act? And even if you did “choose to choose”, did you “choose to choose to choose”? The point I am trying to make is that even in the most carefully contrived and worked-over human decision, there is ultimately an experience of a thought or action just popping into existence.

The unipede said to the millipede, “I go hippity-hopping along on my one foot but barely manage. How is it, sir, that you can control myriad feet?”

“It's not so,” said the millipede. “Haven't you seen a person spit? When he spews them forth, the big globs are like pearls, the droplets are like a mist. All mixed up together, the number that falls is immeasurable. Now, I just move by my natural inner workings but don't know why it is so.”

Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods”, part 2, Mair translation

It is possible for someone trying to hold onto the One to forget this fact and change from observing the way things really are to fretting about how things should be, or, how things come about. This gets in the way of the spontaneous generation of new actions and thoughts. This situation is like the story of the centipede that was found paralyzed by the side of the road. When asked what happened, she answered by saying that someone asked her how she could control all her different legs. Once she started thinking about the question, she lost the ability to walk. She had succumbed to “analysis paralysis”.

 

Don't let that happen to you!

 

&&&&

 

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!

Weekend Literary Supplement: "Digging Your Own Well", Part Twelve

Hard Versus Soft, or, Keeping Your Spirit “Whole”

At one point in my taijiquan training I was taught how to take a punch. What I had to do was stand in a particular stance and another student hit me as hard as he could on the chest. If I flinched or tightened up the result was a horrible bruise that would last for weeks. But I learned that if I kept totally relaxed the force of the punch would flow through my rib cage, into my spine, and through my legs and feet into the floor. This isn't a metaphor. I could feel the force flow like an electric current through my body---leaving me totally unharmed.

The soft overcame the hard.

This wasn't the result of some occult power. It was just that the inherent resilience of my bodily structure is enough to avoid injury as long as I don't “freeze” it by tensing my muscles. It's exactly the same principle that a high school chemistry teacher shows when he dips a rubber ball in liquid nitrogen and the shatters it like glass when he tries to bounce it off the floor.

..........

Zhuangzi relates that Confucius was once watching a huge cataract: “No tortoise, alligator, fish or turtle could swim there.” Yet he was surprised to see an old man swimming in the middle of the rapids. Thinking that he had fallen in, Confucius sent his disciples out along the river to try to save him. After a while, this fellow came out of the water on his own, which amazed the sage.

Confucious followed after the man and inquired of him, saying, “I thought you were a ghost, but when I looked more closely I saw that you are a man. May I ask if you have a special way for treading the water?
“No, I have no special way. I began with what was innate, grew up with my nature, and completed my destiny. I enter the very centre of the whirlpools and emerge as a companion of the torrent. I follow along with the way of the water and do not impose myself on it. That's how I do my treading.”
“What do you mean by 'began with what was innate, grew up with your nature, and completed your destiny'?” asked Confucious.
“I was born among these hills and feel secure among them---that's what's innate. I grew up in the water and feel secure in it---that's my nature. I do not know why I am like this, yet that's how I am---that's my destiny.”

(Zhuangzi, “Outer Chapters”, “Understanding Life”, Section Eight, Victor Mair trans.)

Instead of fighting against the current, the old man flowed with it. When the current pushed him away from his destination, he let himself go with it. When it pushed him towards it, he added a few strokes. Before long, he arrived where he wanted to go.

Being soft is not the same thing as being weak. Instead, it about being “non-resisting”.

..........

And non-resisting is not about just deciding to be non-resistant. Tensing up before the fist hits you is not a voluntary response---it is instinctive. So being “soft” requires more than just a conscious decision, it requires a revolution in your being. Zhuangzi talks about this at length. He has Liezi (a master of the Dao) ask another sage (Director Yin) about what is required.

“The ultimate man can walk under water without drowning, can tread upon fire without feeling hot, and can soar above the myriad things without fear. May I ask how he achieves this?”
“It's because he guards the purity of his vital breath,” said Director Yin, “it's not a demonstration of his expertise or daring.

He goes on to give a revealing example.

“If a drunk falls from a carriage, even if it is going very fast, he will not die. His bones and joints are the same as those of other people, but the injuries he receives are different. It's because his spirit is whole. He was not aware of getting into the carriage, nor was he aware of falling out of it. Life and death, alarm and fear do not enter his breast. Therefore, he confronts things without apprehension. If someone who has gotten his wholeness from wine is like this, how much more so would one be who gets his wholeness from heaven! The sage hides within his heavenly qualities, thus nothing can harm him...”

(Zhuangzi, “Understanding Life”, Part Two, Mair trans)

...........

Yet another example comes from a boatman.

Yen Yűan inquired of Confucius,saying,”When I was crossing the gulf of Goblet Deep, the ferryman handled the boat like a spirit. I asked him about it, saying, 'Can handling a boat be learned?' 'Yes', said he, 'good swimmers can learn quickly. As for divers, they can handle a boat right away without ever having seen one.' I asked him why this was so, but he didn't tell me. I venture to ask what you think he meant.”

“A good swimmer can learn quickly because he forgets about the water,” said Confucius. “As for a diver being able to handle a boat right away without ever having seen one, it's because he regards the watery depths as if they were a mound and the capsizing of a boat as if it were the rolling back of a carriage. Capsizing and rolling back could unfold a myriad times before him without affecting his heart, so he is relaxed wherever he goes.”

Confucius then goes on and gives another example that stresses the importance of keeping your “spirit whole”

“He who competes for a piece of tile displays all of his skill; he who competes for a belt buckle gets nervous; he who competes for gold gets flustered. His skill is still the same, but there is something that distracts him and causes him to focus on externals. Whoever focuses on externals will be clumsy inside.”

(Zhuangzi, “Understanding Life”, Part Three, Mair trans)

The archer who is competing for a prize is not afraid of drowning or getting nasty bruises. But his mind is distracted from the act of shooting his bow by considering what he would do with his prize. This is the point of the following apocryphal story:

A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, “I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it.”
The teacher’s reply was casual, “Ten years.” Impatiently, the student answered, “But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, ten or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?”
The teacher thought for a moment, “20 years.”

...........

Being “soft” instead of “hard” is a relatively easy concept to understand. But how one becomes truly “soft” is not. “Hardness” involves separating yourself from the universe (or Dao) around you. That punching exercise that I introduced this section was not called “taking a punch” in my school, but rather “exchanging energy”. It was not considered a skill that was to be developed to protect you in a fight, but a way of helping one another to develop a deeper understanding of the Dao.

&&&&

Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!