Here is my work on translating and commenting on Chapter Five of the Tao Te Ching.You can see the earlier chapters here.
Chapter Five is partly controversial for its inclusion of the image of "straw dogs" which came to public attention through the 19
Read more…This morning Elja caught a train north. She is going to see a doctor at a hospital in Netherlands and is hoping that he will agree to operate on her hip. If she can get onto his waiting list that will be a big step forward. I saw her off at the stati
Read more…Faith is Part of What We Are
Spirituality requires us to have faith in faith. This faith-in-faith is well-founded because without faith we could do almost nothing and we would certainly be a great deal the less. We have to have faith in faith. On the
I'm afraid that this Daily is a bit of a hotch-potch of my current happy and sad feelings.
My regime these days is simple enough. Some mornings we have a service and some we don't. After that we have breakfast - outside if weather permits. Then I wri
So here is my complete commentary on Chapter four...
LAO TZU: TAO TE CHING: Chapter 4
TEXT:
道 沖 ， 而 用 之 或 不 盈 。
淵 兮 ， 似 萬 物 之 宗 ﹔
挫其鋭，解其纷，和其光，同其尘。
湛 兮 ， 似 或 存 。
吾 不 知 誰 之 子 ， 象 帝 之 先 。
The Tao flows out, and yet use will never exhaust it.
Ho
We had a happy breakfast outside in the sunshine, then Modgala, Adam and Elja went to Emmaus leaving me at La Ville au Roi. Car journeys do not seem to be very good for me at the moment so what is a pleasant outing for the others is an endurance test
Read more…I am gradually doing translations of the Tao Te Ching. The first three chapters have already appeared in this page. I am very much enjoying this work when I get time for it. The Chinese language is written in characters that are essentially pictures.
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Discussing the results of a good day's work. Adam has been using the strimmer to cut grass and I have been cutting ivy from oak trees. I enjoy this work, as much because one develops a more intimate knowledge of the trees, especially the large o
This Daily is from Elja
This morning I was miserable and feeling very sorry for myself. I was stuck – no laptop, worried about my operation, unable to arrange things from France, feeling defeated by the bureaucratic system. David came up to see me and
I have recently been reading Winnie the Pooh and, among other things, it is a wonderful account of everyday small mindedness. Pooh is the personification of greed. If the chance of getting "a little something" comes along he immediately becomes obliv
Read more…Doing morning service in our open-to-the-elements hall is sometimes chilly but can also be magic. This morning a shaft of light was exactly illuminating the Quan Yin shrine as the sun was gradually rising. We all read the Smaller Sutra together and i
Read more…How are we to achieve the kind of direct experience which will liberate us? The philosopher Husserl believed that this required of us a great deal of unhooking of ourselves from what we have learned. He called this "bracketing". Bracketing means putt
Read more…The term apodicity means certainty arrived at through evidence. In psychological usage it refers to experiential knowledge. Knowledge is apodictic for me when, because of my own experience, I cannot congruently doubt it. Clearly one can go through th
Read more…Visiting
Yesterday we had a very pleasant morning at the Oasis community. It is a great thing to have another small Buddhist group so close. I led a morning service and gave a Dharma talk explaining our Ju-nen practice. Then we had coffee and treats o
Some photos I took this lunchtime walking around here. The cherry blossom reminds me of times in Japan. The bluebells of woods in the south of England. It is a lovely time of year to be here.
The conclusion I have reached and that serves me best is that the basic default setting of life is faith. The snail proceeding across the garden lives in faith that she will reach the cabbage. It may be that all manner of misfortune may prevent her d
Read more…Spring Clean
Slowly, Eleusis is getting ready to receive more visitors as the weather improves. Today, while I have been busy writing, the others have all been busy reorganising the house. Elja and i have moved fully back into my rooms in the old ecur
The first two hexagrams of the I Ching are also a pair of opposites, just like the last two. To change one of these into the other you would have to change every line. However, unlike the final two, there is no natural tendency for them to change int
Read more…Through Many Offices
I don't think any of us like dealing with bureaucracy, but it does make for funny stories sometimes.
This morning we went to see the French equivalent of social security to see if it was possible to reclaim some of my medical exp
Read more…"It's nurse day," said Elja when we came to breakfast this morning.
"No it isn't," I said.
"Oh, you're right - it's only once a fortnight now!"
"That's right."
I now only have to have my blood tests once a fortnight - progress.
I got on with some mor
