Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 16, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English When I strive, when I work hard to forge a path, I lose sight of the Tao. Following Nature should be . . . natural . I should not have to force it. If I do, I'm doing it wrong.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 15, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English   Another where usefulness, capability, and potential are all located in the negative space, the absence of realization, the lack of resolved form and purpose. But I need to wait until the time is right, the Tao is ready. I have to practice patience, watchfulness, perception and recognize when Nature is leading that I may follow.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 14, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Like verse one, I love the absence definition of Tao here. The omitted piece, the area used to engage the existing bit which needs to be changed, is what's important. It may be obvious or crude. It may be subtle or hidden. Maybe weak or brittle, fragile. Maybe sturdy and functional. We don't know. That's the point. Tao can come in any form. We must be ready.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 13, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English This one really speaks to me. I try to accept that I'm a role player in most of life, rather than a star. I'm usually fine with it. (Though I fully admit that I love appreciation when it is given.)

Today's Meditation(s): Meditations 5.19-20 (Waterfield) . The last bit is the famous part: the obstacle becomes the way . In his Daily Stoic email today, Ryan Holiday says, " People are endless, people are complicated . . . they present us unlimited opportunities to practice all sorts of virtue. Not always the virtue we want, but an opportunity none the less. "

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 12, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Don't multiply entities beyond necessity.  Do not add to impressions.  Accept what is. It is enough.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 11, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English I'm the most useful person in the world! A common joke, I figure, but it came to mind. Finding my inner spaces, voids? And . . . use them? I guess discovering how is the hard part.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 10, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Connection. Relatedness. Relationship. The archetypal feminine. Accepting, by nature and necessity, the inner feminine grounds me and rounds me. Letting me.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 9, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Do the right thing. It should come naturally. It can't be forced.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 8, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English I'm going to need time with this one.....

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 7, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Paradoxes today.  From the Tao, paradoxes of purposeful inaction with positive results. From We by Robert Johnson, a paradox of romantic love, inner unity, and failed human relationships. From ____, a paradoxically manic pursuit of leisure. If the secret is acceptance of uncertainty, of possibilities, what line is drawn between open-minded allowance and unreasoning acceptance?

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 6, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Anima. In the Enchanted Forest or in the Inner Citadel? A projection or an integration? Accept mistakes, make amends, do better, become whole(r).

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 5, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English True seeing — magic in some circles; capable of peering past veil and screen — as a gift of the Tao.... Acknowledging and valuing what is. Not being deceived by, not deigning to notice, what is not.  Things are what they are without me and my prejudices or built-in categories. Changing but staying ever the same. Essence does not falter. Find it and hold on.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 4, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English If it were easy, everyone would find it laying on the ground, next to the path they trod, ready for the plucking and the tucking behind an ear as a cheap ornament. But it isn't. It comes in glimpses and sudden illumination, if ever. Sometimes it's seeing the wind, invisible and intangible, for all its effectiveness and occasional fury, but there if I had the senses to find it. Sometimes its falling into an open pit of awareness I didn't see until I drop. And then I'm back on the ground, wondering if it ever happened.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 3, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English Machiavelli in Buddhist robes? How to keep your peasantry harmonious and docile? Depending on my summum bonum,  different outcomes will becone more and less likely. Commitment to the community. Commitment to the individual. They offer different resolutions, different visions of the anointed. This is a story of a man who runs away from the very life he claims to want to deal with. This is the story of a good life that sometimes seems oppressive. This is the story of aspirations and garbage time together.

Today's Meditation(s): Tao Te Ching , 2, Gia-fu Feng and Jane English The ten thousand things . My favorite phrase from the Tao Te Ching.  It's all the distractions, all the real yet unimportant reality we deal with daily. Nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. The surface contradictions distract me from seeing deeper reality. The essential connection between even so disparate parts, without which neither would exist.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #275 (Deng Ming-Dao) Tao is not my style. I prefer direct communication when I can. If this makes it harder for me to discover Tao, I try nonetheless. My training in philosophy certainly involved plenty of obscure texts, but this is different, right? It's the difference between searching in the dark and listening in a hurricane.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #269 (Deng Ming-Dao) Accepting the universe as it is, even when, especially when, it imposes some sort of hardship, is a foundational principle I try to live by and to instill in my children. No matter what else is true or false, this remains: accepting reality is going to give (me / them) the best chance of being as effectively as possible in responding to what is happening. Pretending that XYZ is not the case when it is leads to mistaken reasoning, errors navigating emotions, and suboptimal decisions.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #267 (Deng Ming-Dao) How different I am from who I was then. Pick any then. I spent some time reminiscing about my youth with my son tonight. Talking about working out, the introduction of the Walkman, bands, cassettes, vinyl, concerts, call in radio request shows, dedication shows, rock genres, and more besides. I thought of high school friends and events. Talked about being in the marching band and jazz band. And a brass quintet. A moment to remember.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #265 (Deng Ming-Dao) Beauty and innocence in today's tittles. Tiggered hues praying in silence. Silently giving. Images of Nature. Imago pr mantra. I need more nature time in my life.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #262 (Deng Ming-Dao) Being alone is fine and different from being lonely. Solitude gives me time to think and plan, explore and muddle through as I stretch to learn something new or understand something old. Being lonely sucks. It seems, in my experience, to be a lack of happiness within myself. That if I valued my own company more highly, respected myself more, I'd have weathered such times with more aplomb than was evidenced at the time.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #261 (Deng Ming-Dao) I'm a parent. Of course I seek silence. While I've usually found my own company to be sufficient, I was rarely a quiet person, preferring music or other background sounds to the silence of stillness. Moreso as I age, I find quiet appealing.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #258 (Deng Ming-Dao) Pork butt. That's my mission today. Pork butt, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, paprika, mustard, apple cider vinegar, smoke, heat, time. Making a feast for friends for tonight. It's cool this morning. 69° (20°). The smoker slightly warmer. An all day affair. It feels so good to be out in the air, preparing food for my dear friends that we can share another evening of life and camaraderie. It's a good time to celebrate life together.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #257 (Deng Ming-Dao) When the doldrums hit, row!,  right? "We will either find a way, or make one." Hannibal* I'm in a stall in many ways. In my career. In my health. In my psychology. In my progress. ===== *  One of two quotes on my office wall. The other is by William Strunk (of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style fame): "Omit needless words."

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #256 (Deng Ming-Dao) If there is to be meaning in my life, I have to make it happen. I have to put it there. My life has what meaning I give it. Will I try to impose it upon the universe or allow myself to discover it as I go along? Which is Tao? Which follows Nature?

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #255 (Deng Ming-Dao) Many plans filled my youth. To be perfectly competent was one. I still don't quite understand how that one was supposed to work . . . . As I get older, my hopes narrow: that I be good; that my kids be good people; that I can provide for my family . . . . I still have everyday wants — new grill grates, that cool shirt I saw, more sleep — but my real desires are more focused and that is good.  Agreeable and comfortable.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #250 (Deng Ming-Dao) Potential. Limitless possibilities. Anything, everything might appear on a blank page. Even wisdom. Even beauty. Even truth. Yet none bother to attend today....

Today's Meditation(s): The Practicing Stoic  by Ward Farnsworth. p. 140 Pittacus. I need to remember his name. One of the Seven Sages of Athens. Famed general. Olympic champion. Elected tyrant in Lesbos. Lawgiver. Poet. I remind myself of his quote whenever I think life is getting tough. I know lots of people have things worse than I do. That many of the things I worry about don't even register to them because they're fighting at a baser level of need. And I thank goodness for only my troubles.

Today's Meditation(s): 365 Tao: Daily Meditations  #249 (Deng Ming-Dao) A place can be magical. It can inspire or ensorcel. Good and bad, dependent on situation: characters in play; mindset; systems; settings; portal dimensions. Setting up to host soon, my friends come to share my stoa.  Pulled pork and borracho beans. Modelo and margaritas. It's evenings like these help define, give meaning to, my life.