Shenzi VII

Scott Bradley

They began by equalizing things, saying, "Heaven can cover things but cannot support them; earth can support things but cannot cover them; the Great Dao can encompass things but cannot distinguish between them."
(Zhuangzi 33; Ziporyn) (Note: Ziporyn translates Dao as "Course"; I prefer the more flexible Dao and take the liberty to change it.)

I stated previously that I have difficulty understanding how this (and following) quotes definitively demonstrate the conclusions the author draws from them. Here, I also don't understand how this distinction between Heaven and earth supports the parallel that Dao encompasses but does not distinguish. Nevertheless, we are able to understand from this statement that Shenzi and friends understood Dao to be "all embracing and non-partisan", the idea of which the author tells us they had "got wind of", but later tells us "they really did not know".

Dao is all-embracing and thus is ultimately equalizing. This perspective is what is metaphorically revealed in the idea of "hiding the world in the world where nothing is lost". It is not that we cannot make distinctions between things and behaviors, but that when informed of the equality of things we also have a sense in which these distinctions are relative and ultimately inconsequential.

The real question this treatment asks, however, is what Shenzi meant by "the Great Dao". Is this a metaphysical Dao? Does this support Chad Hansen's assertion that Shenzi was an "absolutist"? And, more importantly, if he was, and Zhuangzi was not, what can we learn from their differences?

The comparison with Heaven and earth seems to suggest a metaphysical Dao. We can drop the definite article "the" and the capitalization since they do not exist in the Chinese and which connote a definite something to our ear, but still that it is "great" suggests it is more than just a point of view. Ziporyn's rendering "Great Course" somewhat resolves the question since "course" is intended to convey the idea that dao is a "course of study", not an entity, but this is precisely why I find the universal translation of dao as "course" problematical; it is too inflexible.

Based on this quote and ones to follow (which for reasons of brevity I must consider in later posts) it seems to me, therefore, that Shenzi did in fact believe in a metaphysical Dao. And I, for my part, have drawn from the conclusions to which that belief led him — most especially, his assertion that a "clump of earth cannot stray from Dao". Perhaps this is one reason the author concludes that Shenzi did not "know" the Dao. For him, we must remember, it is the "Art of the Dao" that is under consideration, not a metaphysical entity. If Shenzi “knows” of a Dao beyond the art of dao, then he knows neither.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

TYT - Soup Kitchen Rejects Atheist Volunteers

Yang Zhu, Chapter 13, Part 2

THE VANITY OF REPUTATION

"Kun's services in regulating the water and earthworks being impracticable, he was put to death on Mount Yu Shan.

"Yü, his son, continued his task, served his enemy, and spent all his energy on the earthworks. When a son was born to him he could not take him in his arms, nor in passing his door did he enter. His whole body became withered, his hands and feet hardened by toil. When Shun yielded the empire to him he still lived in a small house and wore only an elegant sash and a coronet. He also had to toil and slave till he died. Of all mortals he was the most overworked and fatigued.

"When King Yü died Cheng was still of tender age, and Duke Chow became Prince Regent.

"The Duke of Chow was dissatisfied, and spread evil rumours about Chow throughout the empire. Chow stayed three years in the east, caused his elder brother to be beheaded and his younger to be banished, and nearly lost his own life. Till he died he had to toil and slave.

"Of all mortals, he was the most menaced and terrorized.

Translator of Yang Zhu's Garden of Pleasure is Anton Forke. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Yang Zhu label below.

Yes, All the Major Players Are Culpable

Trey Smith

A person would have to be naive to the max not to know their own government routinely spies. It doesn't matter if you live in a democracy or not; government by its very nature tends to be intrusive. So, the newest revelation in Spygate is the least shocking of all. It turns out that many of the European nations expressing dismay over the NSA's wide reach are, in fact, doing the same thing AND secretly cooperating with the US and UK while doing it.

In the latest story from the Guardian, it was revealed yesterday that "German, French, Spanish and Swedish intelligence services have all developed methods of mass surveillance of internet and phone traffic over the past five years in close partnership with Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency." This collegial cooperation goes a step further: All these agencies work together to help each other circumvent their own domestic laws on spying.

For example, if the laws of Nation A do not allow for a certain activity, their spy agency asks one of the others to collect the data and then share the results. In this way, their reps can go before legislators and say with a straight face, "No, we're not doing anything illegal. Our agency abides by the law."

For decades, many rabid conservatives have warned that the UN is trying to create a one world government. As it turns out, these "kooks" have been half right. There is a group that is trying to take control of the planet, but it's not the UN. No, it's the corporate elite. They are the ones who feel it necessary to keep tabs on the unwashed masses and it's not difficult to understand why. The elite represent a miniscule number of the world's population. If the rest of us got together, we could knock them off their perches lickety-split!

Afternoon Matinee: Protest - General Strike

Performed by D.O.A.

Shut it down, we're tired, yeah

Tired of workin', yeah

Workin' for nothin' we all want

What we got comin'?

All we need is a break

Come on, take a break

Everything is not all right

And there's no end in sight

You can call it, watcha like

Come on, stand up for your rights

Stand up, stand and unite

It's time for a general strike

We been out breakin' our backs

Been out workin' gettin' no slack

All week long, payin' those bills

That's just the people that still got a job

What about the rest of us on the Soup Line?

Stand up, stand and unite

It's time for a general strike

Stand up, stand and unite it's time

~ from Lyric Wiki ~

Taoist and Buddhist Tweets 122

Ta-Wan

Water is always at water level,

a person's legs go from ground to hip.

Tea tastes of tea and smells do not enter the ear.

When there is work to do,

you can complain, you can rejoice.

Either way, when it is done, it is done.

Did thinking ever change a thing?

It was always going to be this way.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Bit by Bit - Chapter 23, Part 15

Trey Smith

It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture - this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality yet there is no place where it resides - this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end - this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in - yet in the coming out and going back its form is never seen. This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself.
~ Burton Watson translation ~

At one point in time, I didn't exist.  From this state of nothingness, I came into being.  I am alive now, but one day I won't be.  I will return to the state of nothingness.  It works this way for everyone and everything.  It is the way of The Grand Mystery.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Minus One

Trey Smith

It happened as planned. The woman who had called a few days previous came yesterday to adopt Dylan the cat. Even though he wasn't in the friendliest of moods, the woman was not scared off. I loaded him into the cat carrier and carried him out to her car. And that was it. The woman and her husband drove off with "our" cat.

Della was a real trooper. She held it together until after we went out the door, but as soon as the door shut behind us, she burst into tears. Dylan had been her buddy for 13 years and, just like that, he was gone. As her tears flowed, she talked about the feeling of betrayal -- one that a teary-eyed me agreed with.

For the most part, parents don't give away their children when the kids become inconvenient or circumstances change. Children are keepers and you figure out a way to make each situation work. In our present circumstance, we both feel as if we handed one of our "kids" to a complete stranger. We really have no way of knowing if Dylan has found a new and loving home or if these two people were salivating at the thought of a free cat dinner!

It's probably not the latter, but who really knows these days?

Yang Zhu, Chapter 13, Part 1

THE VANITY OF REPUTATION

YANG CHU said:

"The world praises Shun-Yu, Duke Chow, and Confucius, and condemns Chieh and Chow. Now Shun had to plough in Ho-yang and to burn tiles in Lei-tse. His four limbs had no rest, and rich food and warm clothing were unknown to him.

"His parents and his kinsfolk did not love him, and his brothers and sisters did not bear him affection.

"In his thirtieth year he was obliged to marry without telling his parents.

"When he received the empire from Yao he was already an old man and his mental powers were declining. His son Shang-Chun having no talents, he left the imperial dignity to Yü. Still he had to toil and slave till he died.

"Of all mortals he was the most pitiable and miserable.

Translator of Yang Zhu's Garden of Pleasure is Anton Forke. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Yang Zhu label below.

Shenzi VI

Scott Bradley

They began by equalizing all things . . .
(Zhuangzi 33; Ziporyn)

If we conclude that equalizing all things is a psychological activity, it still remains to be understood what this really entails. The title of the second chapter of the Zhuangzi, Qiwulun, can be translated as "equalizing our assessments about things". In other words, it is coming to understand that all our judgments about things are based on our unique perspective and thus all views are, from a wider view, equal. This results in an openness toward all points of view, but does not necessitate the abandonment of our own point of view.

"Things" (wu), Ziporyn points out, means a great deal more than simply inanimate objects; it includes all beings and, perhaps most importantly, all our responses to the world as we experience it. It thus means that we equalize "benefit and harm"; we may seek what we think to be the former and avoid the latter, but we are also able to equalize them in terms of our responses to them. Equalizing in this sense is the freedom realized in an equaniminous mind. Nothing can "enter our Numinous Reservoir" so as to disturb us, because we depend on no outcome, whether thought to be beneficial or harmful, for our inner peace. We equalize "good and evil" not because we negate their validity, but because we have a point of view from which we realize that they cannot effect ultimate outcomes. Evil may kill me, but death and life are a single thread, so what is ultimately lost?

The reader may have noticed that I said that equalizing things implies equalizing our responses to things, yet I have prescribed a certain kind of response, equanimity. So, let us equalize equanimity and non-equanimity; let us equalize how we would like to be and how we actually are. Let us realize that the equalization of all things means that there are no conditions which have to be met for us to be absolutely affirmable just as we are. There is nothing we need become, however messed-up we may think ourselves to be. Equalizing things means everything, right now, just as they are.

Equalize it, mon!

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

DN - Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Spying on Allies Shows "Institutional Obsession" With Surveillance

Yang Zhu, Chapter 12, Part 2

SELF-SACRIFICE AND SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT

Thereupon Ch’in-Tse told Meng-sun-Yang, who replied:

"I will explain the Master's meaning.

"Supposing for tearing off a piece of your skin you were offered ten thousand gold pieces, would you do it?"

Ch’in-Tse said:

"I would."

Meng-sun-Yang again asked:

"Supposing for cutting off one of your limbs you were to get a kingdom, would you do it?"

Ch’in-Tse was silent.

"See now," said Meng-sun-Yang. "A hair is unimportant compared with the skin, and the skin also is unimportant compared with a limb.

"However, many hairs put together form skin, and many skins form a limb. Therefore, though a hair is but one among the many molecules composing the body, it is not to be disregarded."

Ch’in-Tse replied:

"I do not know how to answer you. If I were to ask Lao-tse and Kuan-Yin, your opinion would be found right, and so also if I were to consult great Yü and Me-ti."

Meng-sun-Yang upon this turned round to his disciples, and spoke of something else.

Translator of Yang Zhu's Garden of Pleasure is Anton Forke. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Yang Zhu label below.

Worried About a Tad Bit of Overexposure

Trey Smith

A revealing page-one article in [Thursday's] New York Times (“Tap on Merkel Provides Peek a Vast Spy Net”) reports on how the NSA’s global spying program, dating back at least to early in the Bush/Cheney administration, was vacuuming up the phone conversations (and no doubt later the internet communications) of not just leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but opposition leader Merkel before her party took power in Germany.

As the Times puts it, the phone monitoring, which actually dates back to the Cold War Era before 1990, “is hardly limited to the 35 leaders of countries like Germany, and also includes their top aides and the heads of opposing parties.”

That’s pretty far-reaching, and the paper says that it has learned, primarily courtesy of revelations from the documents released by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden, that the spying went even beyond that, to target up-and-coming potential leaders of so-called “friendly states.”

But the Times buys without question the explanation offered by professional liar James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence and ultimate head of the embattled National Security Agency, that the NSA’s spying on leaders and potential was and is and has been, first of all, well known to presidents, and secondly that its purpose was simply to see “if what they’re saying gels with what’s actually going on, as well as how other countries’ policies “impact us across a whole range of issues.”

That’s pretty broad. The first explanation is really a euphemistic way of saying the NSA wants to see if American’s purported friends and allies are lying. The second is a euphemistic way of saying that the US is spying to gain inside information about its allies’ political goals and strategies, and probably their negotiating positions on things like trade treaties, international regulations, etc.

What the Times does not ask in its entire report on this spying program on leaders and potential leaders is whether there could be another motive for this extraordinary spying campaign on leaders: blackmail.

How else to explain the remarkably tepid response from the leaders who are the victims of this spying by the NSA on their private communications? How else to explain Europe’s unwillingness to grant sanctuary to Snowden, who after all has allowed them to know about the perfidy of the US? How else to explain Europe’s supine acquiescence to the US in its criminal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and its unquestioning support of Israel?

Nor does the Times ask the next obvious question, which is: If the NSA is spying on foreign leaders so widely and thoroughly, actually recording the conversations, not just the numbers being called, and submitting the recordings to keyword searches, isn’t it likely doing the same thing to leaders in the US? And if it is possible to imagine that the NSA is enabling the blackmailing of foreign leaders, isn’t it equally possible that the same thing is going on domestically?

Following that line of thinking, we should next ponder who would be doing the blackmailing? There has been some suggestion from the White House that the president “didn’t know” about the spying on Merkel and other leaders. Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander have denied that the president was kept in the dark about its spying on leaders of friendly nations, but both men are known to be liars regarding the NSA’s actions. Clapper indeed was forced to admit that he lied to Congress -- and right there we have prima facie evidence that the NSA has been blackmailing members of Congress, or at least that the members of Congress think they are vulnerable to blackmail. This is because despite Clapper’s outrageous offense of lying to the Congress about his agency’s massive spying program, not one member of either Senate or House, or of the two Congressional Intelligence Committees, has called for a contempt resolution against him.


How can that be? Members of Congress routinely cite or threaten to cite sports figures for contempt of Congress for lying to senators or representatives about their steroid use, and yet when the head of the nation’s spying organization network lies about an unprecedentedly huge spying operation, they just let it pass?

There has to be a reason for such cowardice in the face of such an institutional insult.
~ from Is NSA Spying Really About Blackmail? by Dave Lindorff ~

Leave it to a journalist like Dave Lindorff to ask some of the obvious question unasked by the mainstream media. Come to think of it, I raised similar questions about members of Congress awhile back too!

It shouldn't take a brainiac to figure out that something is going on that either we aren't being told about or the mainstream media is not looking into. While it is readily apparent that certain elements within the US government want to have a leg up in every negotiation -- insider information -- it should also be readily apparent that this kind of information provides the perfect scenario for blackmail and, concurrently, intimidation.

This is a point I have raised on more than one occasion. If the NSA is hoovering up information willy nilly, it stands to reason that some of that information pertains to members of the elite. Not only do US spy agencies have the capability to figure out who you and I text or skype with, but they must also know what members of Congress are discussing with staff and amongst themselves PLUS they must know what Wall Street is up to at any given moment.

For all we know, the NSA may be spying on the US Supreme Court! What's next? Might they also be tapping into the thoughts of God?

Afternoon Matinee: Protest - Power to the People

Performed by John Lennon

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

Say we want a revolution

We better get on right away

Well, you get on your feet

And out on the street

Singing power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

A million workers working for nothing

You better give 'em what they really own

We got to put you down

When we come into town

Singing power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

I gotta ask you comrade and brother

How do you treat you own woman back home?

She got to be herself

So she can free herself

Singing power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

Now, now, now, now

Oh well, power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

Yeah, power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people

Power to the people, right on

Power to the people

Power to the people

Oh well, power to the people

Power to the people, right on

~ from Lyric Wiki ~

Taoist and Buddhist Tweets 121

Ta-Wan

Did you see the 200 year old turtle apply wrinkle cream?

Did you see the Lion condition his mane?

Did you see the bird plan her journey?

All trust Nature.

You can check out Ta-Wan's other musings here.

Bit by Bit - Chapter 23, Part 14

Trey Smith

The Way permeates all things. Their dividedness is their completeness, their completeness is their impairment. What is hateful about this state of dividedness is that men take their dividedness and seek to supplement it; and what is hateful about attempts to supplement it is that they are a mere supplementation of what men already have. So they go forth and forget to return - they act as though they had seen a ghost. They go forth and claim to have gotten something - what they have gotten is the thing called death. They are wiped out and choked off - already a kind of ghost themselves. Only when that which has form learns to imitate the formless will it find serenity.
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Death is something most of us don't like to contemplate. It stands on every horizon. Many people live their lives scared of death which impedes the ability to live fully.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

One Last Time, Part 1

Trey Smith

Yesterday I drove to Ocean Shores and brought back Della and Lily to South Bend. Today and tomorrow we will hold our personal liquidation sale. These 2 or 3 days will be the last time our little family occupies this house.

Della won't be sleeping here, though. Her bed is in Ocean Shores. So, owing to the gracious invitation of our next door neighbor, Della will be snoozing close by.

A woman has contacted us about adopting Dylan the cat. She told us that she will be by today which means that our little family may be minus one by nightfall...or Dylan could go run and hide. It will be interesting to see where Dylan is as of tomorrow morning.

If all goes well, our house will be greatly emptied out by late Saturday afternoon. While that will certainly help the last phase of this process -- intense cleaning -- it will be very hard on me emotionally. I get very attached to things -- a lot more so than people -- and most or all of those things should be headed out the door in other people's possession. My hope is that I can hold it together and not get all weepy like I did years ago at my maternal grandparent's estate sale.

Most likely, I will take Della, Jaz and Lily back to Ocean Shores on Sunday morning. I will return to South Bend that afternoon. My last few days in this house will be very strange indeed. No wife. No pets. Few belongings. I am not looking forward to it at all, but...it is what it is.

Yang Zhu, Chapter 12, Part 1

SELF-SACRIFICE AND SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT

YANG CHU said:

"Po-chêng-tse-kao would not part with a hair of his body for the benefit of others. He quitted his country and became a ploughman. The great Yü did not profit by his own body, which grew quite emaciated.

"If the ancients by injuring a single hair could have rendered a service to the world, they would not have done it; and had the universe been offered to a single person, he would not have accepted it.

"As nobody would damage even a hair, and nobody would do a favour to the world, the world was in a perfect state."

Ch’in-Tse asked Yang Chu:

"If by pulling out a hair of your body you would aid mankind, would you do it?"

Yang Chu answered:

"Mankind is surely not to be helped by a single hair."

Ch’in-Tse said:

"But supposing it possible, would you do it?"

Yang Chu gave no answer.

Translator of Yang Zhu's Garden of Pleasure is Anton Forke. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Yang Zhu label below.

Shenzi V

Scott Bradley

They began by equalizing all things . . .
(Zhuangzi 33; Ziporyn)

This is as good a place to start as any other, I suppose. Indeed, though it sounds like but the first step of many, if actualized, wouldn't it obviate the need for any other? There are many ways to verbally frame the view from Dao, but that view, once realized, realizes them all.

Equalizing all things is an activity with which we are familiar from Zhuangzi, and if Shenzi did indeed write before him, then it is quite possible that Zhuangzi was in some sense indebted to him, as he was to many others. But then, we only have the author of the Tianxia chapter's interpretive word for it — it is he who tells us that Shenzi and friends began by equalizing things. Here, and elsewhere, the author makes an interpretive assertion about Shenzi and then provides a quote intended to demonstrate that assessment that, to my thinking at least, fails to unambiguously support the interpretation. It may very well be that he is anachronistically interpreting Shenzi in the light of later philosophizing, namely that of Zhuangzi. Still, Shenzi and friends seem to have been working on the same approach to inner freedom as Zhuangzi.

Did Shenzi then manage to equalize all things? Did Zhuangzi? If all things are already equal, why would they require equalizing, and if not, how could they be made so? But they are not equal, or at least we need not assert their equality, for the equalizing of things is a psychological activity, not a metaphysical assertion. Thus, if Shenzi and Zhuangzi did manage to equalize all things, then they did so in terms of their own awareness, their own interface with life. The equalization of all things is a 'state' of mind.

We can say that these two began by intellectually equalizing things as a matter of a first step toward realizing it in their conscious experience. Zhuangzi, in the Qiwulun chapter (2), makes a reasoned case for the equalization of our opinions about things. All our judgments are born of our individual perspectives. We think a woman particularly beautiful, but deer flee from her as if from a monster. The view from Dao appreciates that though we must necessarily have a particular perspective we need not cling to it as if to 'truth'. We can appreciate that every perspective is an expression of Dao, even as every sound the forest and crannies make in response to the wind is of equal value.

But this is not the equalization of all things. Though "saying so, makes it so", as Zhuangzi tells us, it remains only intellectually so. The point is to make it so in our actual conscious experience. That is equalizing all things.

You can check out Scott's writings on Zhuangzi here.

RT - First Rule of Global Spying: Don't Spy on the Elites