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Posted by Lian Dao on 6/18/2009, 5:06 pm, in reply to "Re: An Unforced Response Has Occurred."
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: Indeed we all have individual understandings
: of what 'cultivation' means and entails,
: Nina--and therein lies much of the
: 'friction' experienced on these dao-focused
: boards, imo.
:
: Of course I have a practice. Only dead
: people don't have practices.
:
: My practice, however, doesn't involve
: 'cultivating the dao,' as 'cultivating the
: dao' is--for me--a non sequitur. In the
: same sense that it would be a non sequitur
: to say that my nose cultivates my face.
:
: I understand cultivation as the proactive
: attempt--the effort--to further the natural
: processes that define and shape
: me--intellectually, emotionally, and
: spiritually.
:
: As I read Laozi, I'm reminded that I'm best
: off when I allow nature to take its course.
: Best off when I stop trying to improve the
: universe--'universe' understood as being
: both internal and external to me.
:
Nature is simply decay and death. i would go so far as to suggest that (I) am not nature but rather that which animates and is able to be aware, to whatever degree, of the natural processes that arise and then fall away.
Identifying with the phenomena, whether you deem it internal or external to your sense of me-ness, merely means to cultivate a working knowledge of these natural processess that lend us a discursive notion of an intellectual, emotional or spiritual appreciation of the phenomena as it occurs both spatially and temporary.
Whether or not one 'cultivates' or not is irrelevant, if we simply engage in an observation of the natural processes as they occur. What should rather be focused on is that which is focusing. It is a backward glance back to the source in the direction of the Tao, whose notion is return.
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"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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