Category Archives: Asia

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Writing

Right Regrets

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62  bar rises 29.84  0mpn NEE dew-point 61  sunrise 6:29  sunset 29.84  Lughnasa

Waning Crescent of the Corn Moon

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” – Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller.  Once married to Marilyn Monroe.  A right regret?  Who knows.

His point seems apt.  Until scientists convince us we do not have free will (another time), all we have in life are the choices we make.  Since the world and its manifold dynamics function chaotically (thought not without a kind of order), making choices that reflect our true values and our authentic Selves are the best we can do.  Results have so much to do with accidents of birth, i.e. man, woman, white, black, Latino, Asian, African, poor parents, middle class parents, rich parents, country of origin:  USA, Namibia, Brazil, Bangladesh, France, Georgia, era: middle ages, reformation, 19th century, 23rd century, not to mention genetic endowments and psychological environment, the crucial forks in the road for each individual life.

This reality gives Taoism a special resonance for me.  Conforming ourselves to the movement of heaven means recognizing all these various factors as they come to a point in an individual life, our life.  Attunement rather than atonement.  We scan the heavens, using the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, our minds and discern where to adapt and where to use the times as leverage for our choices.  Even a perfectly attuned Taoist, a sage, may have no result in their life if the times and the heavens have no room for their ambitions.

leaves.jpg

Thus, we can only choose.  Our choices, not the results, define our regrets.  If we choose paths consistent with our values and our authentic Selves, then we will have only the right regrets.   Why?  Because we will have not betrayed who we are and we  will not have betrayed those values we clasp to our hearts.  The results come from the movement of the heavens as  our choices either align with them or bump into their hard reality.

It may be that I have added one step too many.  If we align ourselves with the Tao, the movement of heaven, then our values may be of no importance.  If a value serves to set one in conflict with the movement of heaven, then, if I understand the Tao, it can force one out of alignment with the Tao.  This can violates conforming ourselve to the movement of heaven.

This is what I mean when I say life does not need meaning, it is meaning; life does not need purpose, it is purpose.

Asia

Chou Nu Er, Xin QiJi

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A final post for the China poetry series

Chou Nu Er

In days when I was young and didn’t know the taste of sorrow
I like to climb the storied tower,
I like to climb the storied tower;
To write the latest odes I forced myself to tell of sorrow.

Now that I understand the taste of sorrow altogether
I would like to tell, but stop,
I would like to tell, but stop;
Instead I say, ‘What a cool day! Such lovely autumn weather!’

Asia, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays

Remember The Sabbath Day And Keep It Holy

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76  bar steady 29.97  0mph NEE dew-point 58  sunrise 6:10 sunset 8:25  Lughnasa

Waxing Gibbous Corn Moon    moonrise 1633 moonset 0040

Strange how I have to relearn, sometimes again and again, simple home truths.  A day of rest is good for the soul.  The Jews knew it.  The traditional Christian community knew it.  It may be a Western contribution to humanity.  I’ll have to check, but I don’t think the Asian communities have a similar notion.  Yes, they have festivals and holidays, that’s for sure shared, but the notion of a weekly day of rest?  I don’t know.  Those of you who read from Southeast Asia, what do you know?

Anyhow, I woke up today recharged and ready to go.  This in spite of my lingering doubts yesterday.  Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.  Quite a while back I got interested in the idea of sacred time, my commitment to the Celtic calendar is an example.  I also observe a week long retreat at the end of each year thanks to the Mayan concept that the last five days of the year are best left alone in terms of work.

I took from the Spanish cultures, especially Colombia and Mexico, the siesta.  A nap a day continues to be a cornerstone of how I live daily.

The religious communities with whom I shared a vocation for a time convinced me of the value of regular retreats.  The retreats and the Sabbath day have been honored more in the breach than the observance, but I believe that is about to change.  Our body needs sleep, perchance to dream, and, it turns out, our mind does, too.  Recent research shows that the mind sifts, weighs, analyzes and interprets the days events while we sleep.  I suspect the same thing occurs when we take a regular caesura from the usual rhythms of our week and our year.

Please note I’m not talking about vacations here.  Those exist for a different reason, I believe.  Vacations allow us to vacate the norm and experience another world.  They are more for fun and for education seen as fun.

The holy rhythms of which I write here are different.  They focus on the spirit, the care and maintenance of our soul.  Our doubts about such a metaphysically evanescent idea may have contributed to our immersion in and the stickiness for us of the material, outer world.

Well, time to put this regathered energy to work.  See you on the flipside.

Asia, Garden, Great Wheel, Weather +Climate

An Existential Chill

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66  bar steady 30.06  1mph NE dew-point 48  sunrise 6:09 sunset 8:27  Lughnasa

First Quarter of the Corn Moon    moonrise 1533  moonset 2334

We will never be an advanced civilization as long as rain showers can delay the launching of a space rocket.  George Carlin, RIP

The drum tower in Beijing.  Anyone who’s gone on the one week quickie tour of Beijing and environs has at least had a chance to climb it.  As early as the Han dynasty (206bce to 220ace), these towers used drums and bells to mark dawn and dusk. Kate and I climbed the drum tower when we visited Beijing in 1999. (I think it was 1999.)  I recall it as a dusty place with open areas used for storage, like an old barn.  Three stories high it had a commanding view of a market and one of the old style Beijing neighborhoods.  We were there at the end of December and the drum tower was cold in the way only bare, featureless spaces can be cold.  A sort of existential chill.  Maybe Kate didn’t go up, I do not remember now.

The death of Todd Bachmann, CEO of the premier garden center corporation in the Twin Cities, shocked me.  Many of our plants started their life at Bachmann’s.  Long ago in another life I was in a year long class with a Bachmann who had chosen the Lutheran ministry.  Then, too, there is the somehow stronger link with the site itself.

So often when events happen abroad, they happen in a place that is at best abstract:  Darfur, say, or Baghdad, Ossetia, even Jerusalem.  Once you have been there, walked those streets, seen the heaped up spices and vegetables in the market near the drum tower, then what happened is no longer abstract or far-away because the context is available to your own sensorium.  My feet recall the climb in the cold December weather.  My eyes recall the sights of the market and the small shops.

A strange sense of lassitude has come over me today.  On Sunday I do not work out, so there is a feeling of expansiveness, but also relaxation, a similarity to the sabbath.  The weather is perfect, moderate, sunny, low dew-point.  A great day to work outside, but digging out the firepit seems to have used up that motor for right now.  Even so, I’ll probably pick up the spade and spading fork and begin removing day lilies to new locations.

This is a task that has a window, a window created by the ideal time to transplant iris, August.  In this way my time must conform to the garden.  It is a happy bondage, though, and one to which I willingly submit.