Showing posts with label Tao Te Ching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tao Te Ching. Show all posts

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Mayan Calendar 2012

Such a strange universe I find myself in today. Or is it the other way around? Oft confused as to which is being mirrored. Never mind that. Forget about all coincidence you should happen upon as well. What is intuition anyway? The other day I found myself sitting on a rock in the desert. No big deal really, except that I time traveled. Have you ever forgotten who you are and where you are? Even if just for a moment... perhaps you can't remember? I guess if you didn't remember that you forgot, well then you would not have forgotten in the first place. Crazy talk. Sitting there on this rock, I recalled something that died in me, years ago in another desert. Me. The linear concept of time existing independent of ourselves is a misleading fabrication. More accurately, we are time. Right then and there in the desert, I died again. Of course, I realized that the only reason I knew this death was because there was rebirth. Literally, not symbolically. Or wait, am I switched around again? Hmmm... I certainly knew this before. Within our lifetimes we will all die many times, in passage and in evolution, in change and in growth. Everything is manifest through cycles. Cycles within cycles, cycles begetting cycles. From the microscopic, to the outer reaches of the universe, we observe cycles.

This brings me to the Mesoamerican long count calendar (aka the Mayan calendar). Although NASA has predicted that an upcoming peak in the solar cycle "around" this time "could" have a "significant" impact on telecommunications, air traffic, power grids and GPS systems, 2012 doomsday prophecies are misconstrued. The Mayan calendar doesn't really end on December 21, 2012 as it is often said. It cycles! Just like the Gregorian calendar. Doomsday prophecy based on the Mayan calendar “ending” is equivalent to predicting the end of the world every December 31, based on the end the Gregorian calendar. The Mayan calender will reach 13.0.0.0.0 on December 21, 2012. This will mark the end of the thirteenth b'ak'tun and the start of another series of b'ak'tuns (1 b'ak'tun = 144,000 days). Mayan culture is amazing and fascinating. Perhaps there are many lessons to be learned from the Maya. We have drifted very far from nature and its cyclic and renewable tendencies. We should view December 21, 2012 as a symbol of cyclic transformation and as a sign to realign ourselves with our planet and sustainable living practices!
 We should look towards 2012 with a mind to initiate cyclic transformation of ourselves and of all human action on earth.

The reiterated theme, cycling. Yes, we should all be thinking about riding bicycles, but I really mean to point to the nature of cycles or I mean the cycles of nature. Chapter 14 of the Tao Te Ching reads, "Approach it and you will not see a beginning; follow it and there will be no end."

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Tao Te Ching: Chapter 71

Written in the 6th century B.C. by Lao Tsu with three English translations show here.

Chapter 71:

Not-knowing is true knowledge.
Presuming to know is a disease.
First realize that you are sick;
then you can move toward health.
The Master is her own physician.
She has healed herself of all knowing.
Thus she is truly whole.


Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.
If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.


To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment; not to know and yet think we do know is a disease.
It is simply by being pained at the thought of having this disease that we are preserved from it.
The sage has not the disease. He knows the pain that would be inseparable from it, and therefore he does not have it.