201126 — What I learned in my studies this morning

From Lao Tzu: "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao."

(Tao Te Ching, I) 

Siddhartha: "Wisdom cannot be communicated. Wisdom that a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish."

(Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse, ISBN 978-0-14-243718-6, Neugroschel trans, p. 124)

Wisdom must be experienced. From Huang Po, I have learned that enlightenment is a sudden flash, not a process. From the Tao and Siddhartha, I learn that enlightenment cannot be communicated. It must be personal, immediate to the self. 

These guide my personal search. I must discover wisdom for myself.

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From Eric Hoffer: Western colonization can have problems because it is disrupts the native social order (tribes, families, religious groups) and replaces it with freedom and independence. 

<<What it all actually amounts to is individual isolation. It means cutting off of an immature and poorly finished individual from the corporate [read: unified] whole and releasing him, in the words of Khomiakov, "to the freedom of his own impotence.">>

Soviet expansion had an advantage in this arena because, while it did tear down the old social groups, it offered a ready-made replacement in The Party.

In business, workers tend to do better as teams than individuals. Bonuses for teams, including foremen, work better than individual rewards. 

(The True Believer, V-33)

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From Zeno of Tarsus: Sometimes, we just need to do the job before us. We don't need to be a rock star. We don't need to be a revolutionary or a proselytizer. We just need to keep things going, to maintain. 

(Lives of the Stoics, pp. 51-53)