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Posted by Butcho
on 8/1/2009, 9:25 am, in reply to "Rat and the Dandelion"
216.96.15.x
--Previous Message--
:
: Pu gong ying felt the soft brushing of rat
: whiskers on its soft yellow pedals.
:
: I think we have been waiting for you, but
: wasn’t aware of it until now.
:
: Greetings Rat, why do you appear before us
: today?
:
: I’m here now because you are ready to
: experience all this, with your Apophatic
: nature.
:
: How do you know we are ready, old rat?
:
: Because, pu gong ying, you have forgotten
: all, and live by nurturing the way.
:
: in peace,
: gar
:
:
gar,
Yeah, I think that is the gist of it. Until we let go of even our concepts, or way of seeing reality filtered through the darkened lens of our conditioned thus limited understanding we are not able to see the light of day as it is. Let alone anything else.
The beginner's mind is no longer trying to create reality. In this way reality can be seen as it is. Zen is not a pragmatic consideration, but a practical application. In this sense Aaron in his decree that it does not matter what we think nearly so much as it matters what we do is spot on in my opinion.
... speaking of rat I suppose there is a bit of the old apophatic mysticism in my comings and goings as well. Of course I am not as good at negation as the old rat is but then I am better looking. I am easier to look at even when I can't be seen. What are you looking at you preteritic voyeur you? Tourist anyway. I digress. Again. That is I like to say that existence is ineffable. Beyond this or that. Beyond our best attempts to label It, Her, Him, Whatever. The eternal Tao. Or, hold on to your girdles ladies and gentleman, God!
I am bad. Somebody spank me. Where is Steve when I need him? Upstart anyway. Speaking of Lian Dao Nina must be pulling her hair out by now. What goes around comes around I always say purple hair in purple places. Now I've gone esoteric. I am really in a bad mood today. Or was it yesterday? Whatever it was it came suddenly.
Oh hell, I may as well go and say it. Apophatic is the yin to the yang of cataphatic. One being negation the other being affirmation. So even though the apophatic mystic reports that the unknowable can only be known through what it is not there is another side to the unitive sided rhetorical arguments of the great mystics. It is the negation of even our negations and our positions, of the via negativa and the positiva, that leads to the Great Affirmation. The negation of our concepts that leads to the Great Beyond that is both far and near. We always create a dichotomy when we point in one direction only.
There are two paths that lead to the unitive path. The eternal Tao has two sides.
The above views are not necessarily the views of the management of Tao Speaks.
Butcho
668
"The Tao is basically utterly open. Utter openeness has no substance. It ends in endlessness, begins in beginninglessnes".
-Li Daoqun
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