CONQUERING THE NATURE OR COOPERATING WITH IT?

COMING INTO THIS WORLD, OR OUT OF IT?

THE ILLUSION OF BEING ISOLATED EGO IN THE BAG OF SKIN.

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 “But the problem of man and technics is almost always stated in the wrong way. It is said that humanity has evolved one-sidedly, growing in technical power without any comparable growth in moral integrity, or, as some would prefer to say, without comparable progress in education and rational thinking. Yet the problem is more basic. The root of the matter is the way which we feel and conceive ourselves as human beings, our sensation of being alive, of individual existence and identity. We suffer from hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body – a center which 'confronts' an 'external' world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange. Everyday figures of speech reflect this illusion. 'I came into this world.' 'You must face reality.' 'The conquest of nature.'

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not 'come into' this world; we come out of it, as leaves from the tree. As the ocean 'waves', the universe 'peoples'. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in the theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated 'egos' inside bags of skin.

The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world 'outside' us is largely hostile. We are forever 'conquering' nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order. In America the great symbols of this conquest are the bulldozer and the rocket- the instrument that batters the hills into flat tracts for little boxes made of ticky-tacky and the great phallic projectile that blasts the sky. (Nonetheless, we have fine architects who know how to fit houses into hills without ruining the landscape, and astronomers who know that the earth is already way out in space, and that our first need for exploring other worlds is sensitive electronic instruments which, like our eyes, will bring the most distant objects into our own brains.) (…) The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events-that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies-and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.

The second result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien, an mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda is the worst possible source of control for a powerful technology.”

SOURCE: Alan Watts, The book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, ABACUS, 1966

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DIFFERENT VIEWS ON EDUCATION OF OUR CHILDREN AND THE PROBLEM OF STIFFNESS.

“That spring I have realized with surprise that I can fight. Although I came back home with a nose injury, I've had a lot of satisfaction. (…) My dad was upset because since then I've been fighting quite often. He was asking if I had been behaving well and I was answering all those uncomfortable questions with 'I don't know'. I remember till now what I heard from him: everybody, either a child or an adult, has to ask himself a question – did I act honestly? Children are asked the same question in a different way – were you behaving well? It is the most important question of our life and it can not stay without any answer. You shouldn't wait till somebody else asks you this question, you have to ask it yourself every day. Buryats don't hit their children, they don't even shout at them. Dad used to say that unwise behavior can happen to every person, even being as clever as his daughter is. A mistake can be changed into something good, one just has to be able to come to right conclusions. The best is to learn with somebody's mistakes, some people can do that.”

SOURCE:
My own translation & interpretation of: Urodziłam się nad Bajkałem, Bełła-Chan Skwarska, MWK 2012; 

THE RSA ANIMATED VIDEO ABOUT CHANGING EDUCATION PARADIGMS:

“76

Men are born soft and supple;

dead, they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail.”

SOURCE: 
Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell translation & commentary : Te III

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 THE UNIVERSE & US

“The universe implies the organism, and each single organism implies the universe – only the 'single glance' of our spotlight, narrowed attention, which has been taught to confuse its glimpses with separate 'things', must somehow be opened to the full vision, which Schrödinger goes on to suggest:

Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to new striving and suffering. And not merely 'some day': now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end. ¹

1. Erwin Schrödinger, My view of the World. Cambrige University Press, 1964, p. 22”

SOURCE: 
Alan Watts, The book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, ABACUS, 1966

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EMOTIONS & CONTROL

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<<“Nothing wrong with anger or any other emotion. Just pay attention to how you behave.” (...)              

“Anger is a powerful tool to transform old habits (…) and replace them with new ones.” (…)
Fear and sorrow inhibit action; anger generates it. When you learn to make proper use of your anger, you can change fear and sorrow to anger, then turn anger to action. That's the body's secret of internal alchemy.”

Back in the office, Socrates drew some water from the springwater dispenser and put on the evening's tea specialty, rose hips, as he continued. “To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.”

“How can I control my habits if I can't even seem to control my emotions?”

“You don't need to control your emotion,” he said, “Emotions are natural, like passing weather. Sometimes it's fear, sometimes sorrow or anger. Emotions are not the problem. The key is to transform the energy of emotion into constructive action.”

I got up, took the whistling kettle off the hot plate, and poured the steaming water into our mugs. “Can you give me a specific example, Socrates?”

“Spend time with a baby.”

Smiling, I blew on my tea. “Funny, I never thought of babies as masters of emotions.”

“When a baby is upset, it expresses itself in banshee wails – pure crying. It doesn't wonder about whether it should be crying. Babies accept their emotions completely. They let feelings flow, then let them go. In this way, infants are fine teachers. Learn their lessons and you'll dissolve old habits.”>>

SOURCE: 
Way of the peaceful warrior, Dan Millman; HJ Kramer, New World Library, California 2000



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 STABILITY & FEAR

“13

Success is as dangerous as failure.

Hope is as hollow as fear. What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?

Whether you go up the ladder or down it,

your position is shaky.

When you stand with your two feet on the ground,

you will always keep your balance. What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?

Hope and fear are both phantoms

that arise from thinking of the self.

When we don't see the self as self,

what do we have to fear? See the world as your self.

Have faith in the way things are.

Love the world as your self;

then you can care for all things.

(...)One can be stable and efficient when one avoids ambition. This does not mean to not take opportunities which arise of themselves, but more to not try and raise those opportunities artificially. (...)

Hope and fear run contrary to the 'as such-ness' of events. Hoping, as it were, is to prefer one way to another; fear is that the not preferred way will come about. In both cases, it is the skin-contained ego trying to impose itself on Nature.

(...)When we can accept and love all things the Universe is doing, all of its 'wiggles', there is no need for ambition, hopes or fears (...). We do not need advantages, for everything and everyone is 'advantaged'. And one does not apply one's stability toward an isolated security, but to the well-being of all.”

SOURCE:
Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell translation) & commentary : Tao I


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 HEALTH & SMILE

www.prevention.com

“- Doctor Ho is treating only healthy people? - I wanted to be sure.

- Yes. Like every good doctor.

- So, who is treating sick people? - I asked, feeling a bit lost.

- A bad doctor – the girl said – so the one who couldn't recognize the sickness coming.

(…)

I have been observing him from the corner of the room for more than two hours. Patient after patient, without any rest, concentrated, with amazing energy and smile.

Smiling to people during one hundred years of life. Isn't it brilliant?

I was about to quit the Jade Dragon Clinic when suddenly I heard doctor Ho talking to a patient:

- Are you worried? Do you have a lot of problems?

- Oh yes, yes – she agreed, her voice sounding very tired. - A lot of problems.
- You can't sleep?
- I can't sleep.
- You worry too much – said doctor Ho.
- Yeah, I do worry, troubles at work, always something happening...

- Don't worry – doctor Ho interrupted. - Stop worrying about everything. Start feeling happy. Happiness is the best remedy in the world.

The rules of doctor Ho
(...)

The most important rules that I follow in my life and when treating my patients are:

1. Be honest and hard-working. Learn, expand your knowledge about the world. Never stop making an effort to achieve respect for yourself, trust in your power, care of yourself, independence and aspiration of self – improvement. Take care of yourself and your health.
2. Medicine has always to serve the welfare of people.
3. To make a treatment effective, a patient has to trust it, has to have optimistic, positive attitude, lead healthy, sane lifestyle and follow the rules of western or Chinese medicine – depending on needs and recommendations. Life and sickness exist beside each other, making an everlasting couple. The best remedy is optimism and positive attitude. Avoid drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Eat simple food, lead simple life and above all think positively and be optimistic.

(…)

4. Doesn't matter if you live in the times of war or peace, be honest to yourself.”

SOURCE:
My own translation & interpretation of: Blondynka w Chinach, Beata Pawlikowska, National Geographic 2012



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 BASIC NEEDS & ENDLESS WANTS

"When we returned later to the office, I asked Soc whether he thought rich people are any happier than 'poor stiffs like us'.

His response, as usual, shocked me. 'As a matter of fact, Dan, I'm quite wealthy. One must become rich to be happy.' He smiled at my dumbfounded expression, picked up a pen from his desk, and wrote on a clean white sheet of paper:

'You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. So there are two ways to be rich: You earn, inherit, borrow, beg, or steal enough money to meet all your desires; or, you cultivate a simple lifestyle of few desires; that way you always have enough money.

'A peaceful warrior has the insight and discipline to choose the simple way – to know the difference between needs and wants. We have few basic needs but endless wants. Full attention to every moment is my pleasure. Attention costs no money; your only investment is training. That's another advantage of being a warrior, Dan – it's cheaper! The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.'”

SOURCE:
Way of the peaceful warrior, Dan Millman; HJ Kramer, New World Library, California 2000



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