Saturday morning

Bertrand Russell said, “a generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, newly divorced from the slow processes of nature, in whom every vital impulse withers."

Seneca commented on escape from taedium vitae, “the weariness of life,” “it is your soul you need to change, not the climate."

Thomas Merton said “in a society focused and organized for profit and marketing… there is no real freedom.  You're free to choose your brand of T.V., your make of car, but you are not free not to have a car."

“Wealth accumulates and men decay." Oliver Goldsmith 1870.

“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of the nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." Nehru, Indian Prime Minister.

Very appropriate quotes, very relevant today.

The Tao teaches us to return to the uncarved block.  The question we have to answer is who or what were we when we were that uncarved block. What was I before the currents and ocean waves of the world began to work and chisel at my uncarved block. So many events, so many days, so many experiences have chipped, washed, cut, and sanded away at my uncarved block that I don't know or remember what I was back then.

I cannot undo the action of waves on the coast line. I can, however, looked at the effects of these things and know more about my true self.  Like Thich Nhat Hanh says, start peeling away the labels and names we have given ourselves or those that have been given to us, just like peeling away the layers of an onion, and you will find your true self, your uncarved block.

I liken the Tao’s command to return to the uncarved block to Jesus’ command that in order to enter into the gates of heaven you have to be as a child. These two concepts go together I believe.

One last thought and it focuses on the concept of wu wei, which is doing not doing.  Get involved without manipulating.  Isn’t this a wonderful thought?  Being with nature and living your life in your relationship with the universe is being involved without manipulating. One need not get involved by taking over, by trying to change things, by trying to fix the world.  The world is not broken.   An unknown commentator said “it is the nature of purposive action that it arises from some sense of lack, some feeling of incompleteness. When you understand this, you realize that intolerance of what is not leads to unhappiness."  I think everyone of us should practice "doing not doing" more often.  And so it is.