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moderndayruth

~ Tarot inspired essays and more

moderndayruth

Tag Archives: China

i wish there would be following Facebook buttons, besides Like:

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in Humor

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Android, China, Facebook, First Amendment, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Health, iLike, India, IOS, Online Communities, Social media, Social Networking, Social Sciences, status, United Nations, United State, Update, World population

1. i agree 100% with your update (whatever it is & usually it’s something highly irrelevant to the 99% of world’s population) AND i wish i thought of it myself, but then i am a non-native speaker and still couldn’t word it so neatly, so i feel tad envious too;

2. i disagree completely, more so – i almost hate you right now, but can’t remove you from friends because there is no reasonable explanation to my neurotic reaction for our mutual fb friends, thus i’ll pretend i haven’t read your status AT ALL;

3. i didn’t reply to your cry for help not because i am insensitive, but because i am in another time zone and now, 22h later,  i feel embarrassed to say anything at all;

4. i hate prolonged status updates posted late in the night, i mean, c’mmon, who has the focus for that in this ADD era?!

5. you are plain WRONG, but i am too tired to argue, so here is a passive-aggressive Like with a smirk ;

6. you post in a language i don’t speak, but you look kinda hot on your profile picture, so i Like your update & keep my fingers crossed that it isn’t about your companion being ill or something;

7. iLike your status, i really do, but it’s quite personal and i am neither sure who you are nor why i added you to friends, so i’ll pass;

8. i have no idea what you are talking about & i am too busy to read it all, but given that 78 mutual friends liked your status & commented on it Like it is!

9. despite being called ‘most anti-social invention’ by some,  a Facebook “like” is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment; “Liking” something on the social media site is a “substantive statement” being made by a user – and i don’t take those lightly, because the mere sound of the phrase is legal-power-igniting & it doesn’t matter the least that i am not sure at all what substantive statements are!

10. iLike what you are saying, it comes across as intelligent and eloquent, but i am uninformed on the topic& can’t be bothered to read extensively about it, so to comment appropriately, thus i’ll pretend that i missed this one, albeit i didn’t;

11.  i think i Like your status, but i am not sure & it’s my bedtime (i am in another time zone)

12. i like your status, but then i think your significant other won’t like yet another Like of mine on your Facebook wall;

13. you haven’t Liked any of my statuses recently & being a firm believer in Facebook reciprocity, i pass;

14. yours is a marketing douchebaggery, so no Like from me, despite the big puppy eyes you are making;

15. if i Like this, you’ll expect me to Like other stuff of yours; if i do – then you’ll invite me to Like your Facebook page, if i do that – all your Facebook friends will start nagging me to Like their respective Facebook pages and i don’t really like many of their pages, but would feel thorn apart if i liked some and wouldn’t like others and i don’t wish that kind of anguish for myself, so i pass!

facebook

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The Great Wall of China & Kentucky Fried Chicken

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by moderndayruth in Photography

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Arts and Entertainment, Asia, Badaling, China, Great Wall, Great Wall of China, KFC, Montenegro

KFC is probably the last thing you think of while heading for the Great Wall – yet that was the very first thing i saw when our bus stopped somewhere at the foot of Badaling.

I swallowed the bitter disappointment and together with thousands of other tourists proceeded forward, towards the wall and… towards even more disappointment. I can’t think of enough synonyms of ‘awful’ to describe the commercialization and banality of the experience, basically it comes down to tickling  Chang Cheng off your itinerary, buying kitschy souvenirs and getting the infamous paper which says “I climbed the Great Wall.” Well, i didn’t – i went back to KFC and got myself a coffee.

The Great Wall? You must be kidding, i am from Montenegro, here almost every city is surrounded by a medieval wall of a kind – and Chinese one came across as nothing more than yet another wall…

I am not even sure how Rebecca managed to persuade me to give it another try, yet she did and soon we were on our way to the The Wild Wall, the untouched parts of the fortification… And that’s when it hit me, the realization that i am at one of the most amazing constructions ever built by a man… It is mind blowing and awe inspiring, albeit    it’s not “the only human artifact on Earth visible from the moon”, as the legend goes. 😉

“There in the mist, enormous, majestic, silent and terrible, stood the Great Wall of China. Solitarily, with the indifference of nature herself, it crept up the mountain side and slipped down to the depth of the valley. ” W. Somerset Maugham

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Chinese Curses, Costa coffee and the Meaning of Life

12 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching, Kabbalah & Western Hermetic Tradition

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Ancient Greece, China, England, Facebook, Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Judaism, Kabbalah, May you live in interesting times

SOURCE: Bernstein, Jüdische Sprichwörter und Redensarten. This is a free translation. The Yiddish word for "snail" (שנעק, shnek) does not occur in the saying. A more literal translation: Understanding (or good sense) is a creeper.

 

On occasions i feel overwhelmed and i start doubting everything i know and even my own experience.

At times like that, Tarot doesn’t talk to me. I look at the beautiful patterns in which the vegetation grows on Tarot de Marseilles cards, i gaze at the smirky Empress and elegantly crossed swords – and as much as i appreciate cards’ poise and grace, i don’t have the slightest idea what they mean.

Sometimes it is the same with life itself, sometimes it’s good , sometimes it is not – and the direct or even indirect cause escapes me, regardless the analytic skills , logical thinking and even despite the intuition and all the oracles.

Before, at times like that i would wallow in existential sorrow  for days and even weeks, but as of recently i have learned some kind of proverbial acceptance.

In terms of I Ching, it’s in the twelfth hexagram – Stagnation/ Standstill – when  “heaven is above, drawing farther and farther away, while the earth below sinks farther into the depths.” 

This shall pass too, everything does – but when i get this  feeling that all i do is in vain –  like this morning – i get together with some dear(est) to me people  and head for a coffee at local Costa cafe and some shopping at the nearest mall; when all else fails, these two activities proved to have the desired healing effect on my existential anguish.

They say the most powerful Chinese curse is ‘May you live in interesting times’ (alternatively – in the times of changes), albeit i never heard it from Chinese; after all it seems the saying  originated with an Oxford educated British gentleman, Sir Knatchbull-Hugessen – Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to China in 1936- 1937.

In his memoir written a decade later this diplomat in career notes: Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse — “May you live in interesting times”. If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfillment  (Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, Diplomat in Peace and War, 1949.)

Sometimes i think of my own life in terms of a prolonged Zazen meditation for as the time passes by  i merely witness the impermanence of various doctrines,  ideologies and systems; most of them turned out to be more fragile than my grandmother’s porcelain – you see, i still have my granma’s hand painted figurines and bowls, while i left behind three state unions, several ideologies and a concrete wall – that of Berlin…

The aim of Zazen – as well as of other Buddhist meditation practices – is to  detouch from the thought process and stemming from it judgement by letting it all pass by, by observing without involvement or reaction. It’s easier said than done – but the results can be awe-inducing as in some moment of (presumably non-existing) time we might get to peek at the reality as it is, without all the layers of preconceptions, social conditioning and emotional baggage we normally carry around… It happens seldom, but it is indeed worth years of sitting in oblivion (alternative translation of Zazen being: sitting and forgetting.)

I think all Westerners*, my little self included are suckers for proverbial meaning, yet sometimes it is painfully lacking – or at least it seems so.

 *I use the term loosely for everyone who’s been born into or living within geographical confines of the vast area where the civilizations called by umbrella term Judo-Christian has been predominant.

Be it the religious zest, characteristic of conservative circles, or the hard work by which at the time Protestantism had replaced the traditional fasting and praying – we all by default expect some kind of meaning to surface from somewhere – and to justify it all, the effort, the pain, the restrictions and sleepless nights.

On the other hand – those who ‘play against the rules’, by default expect some kind of punishment, sooner or later – because that’s what education is all about: awarding the desirable behavior and punishing the behavior which is unacceptable for the given society.

Murder, theft, adultery etc. aside – as these by now are deeply ingrained as wrong in the collective unconscious – we’ve been conditioned in our formative years to believe all if it makes sense at the end and the life unfolds by some kind of rules… Kabbalists of course have their own idea of what these rules are – and these are not  very different from, lets say –  Platonism, where the meaning of life is in attaining the highest form of knowledge, (which would be the Idea of the Good and thus human are duty-bound to pursue it/ the Good), or other schools of Greek Thought to which Judaism and Kabbalah are usually juxtaposed.

Even nihilists and chaos magicians have pre-existing sets of believes and wherever we have those (read: everywhere), the door is ajared for disappointment which more often than not doesn’t make us hold the breath for too long before it arrives.

I must digress: certainly, Hellenism was a threat to Yiddishkeit and a lot of blood is spilled to preserve Jewish values – yet it is indeed difficult to explain  in a non-dogmatic way what exactly is at the core of these believes – even to someone like me who not only studies them at academic level, but also believes in this system and lives by it; more so – there probably isn’t even a need to do so, for those who are overwhelmed by desire to understand it will certainly look up some way more reputable sources. 

Bertrand Russell’s ‘History of Western Philosophy’ is often scorned at in academic circles as being overly simplified, but in fact this opus gives a pretty clear insight into the overall development of the human thought from it’s dawn to somewhere around/after Carl Marx.

I adore Russell for he was the first one to take down the philosophers from their imaginary pedestals and talk of them and their reasoning as it should be done – with a lot of common sense, without glorification and idolization;  it is definitely not the book recommended for PhD programs – yet i always go back to it for it succinct style and certain – albeit veiled – humor.

Anyhow, all good, until we get to Jewish thought – right, Russel does go to great lengths to introduce Maimonides for example, but he is very  honest in admitting  (paraphrasing) : I respect this people for fighting bravely and sacrificing all they had to stand up for what they believe in – and that’s throughout history , but why would anyone fight and even die so not to eat pork and to get circumcised – is beyond my comprehension.

What Jews believe is not the topic of this essay, but my point is that humans started thinking more or less at the same time – some six centuries before what’s commonly called the new era – in very different parts of the world – Ancient Greece, Far East (China) and Middle East – in the parts inhabited by Hebrews; all three came up with schools of thought that will rock the world ever since and i am not sure they are not somehow interconnected.

There is a mysterious verse in Genesis (25:6) which says: And sons of Abraham headed to the East, carrying the gifts.

It’s obviously about other sons he had, except Isaac and Ishmael , those of concubines, but whether the mysterious gift they took to the East indeed was the wisdom of Kabbalah – God only knows.

Anyhow, albeit the three great traditions can’t really be compared – there is some familiar feeling that arouses when prolonged periods of time are spent studying and living them, some common denominator does arise… and that very denominator, the pursuit of ultimate fulfillment which by default seems to be imbued by meaning – is indeed ingrained in all three.

If i had to do the improbable and retell the history of philosophy in one sentence, it would go something like this: people stood in gutter for quite some time, then some of them looked at the stars and the history of philosophy is down to how each one of them imagined getting out of that gutter and becoming – a star.

At times when gutter raises up to your neck and the stars hide –  keep calm and have a cuppa.

 

illustration adopted from: http://www.yiddishwit.com/gallery/snail.html

SOURCE: Bernstein, Jüdische Sprichwörter und Redensarten ; this is a free translation – Yiddish word for “snail” (שנעק, shnek) does not occur in the saying and a more literal translation would be: Understanding (or good sense) is a creeper

Hexagram 12, Stagnation, Wilhelm-Baynes translation: http://theabysmal.wordpress.com/2006/10/25/i-ching-hexagram-12/

 

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Sitting in Oblivion and decluterring

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in Essay, Satire

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Beijing, Chi, China, Chinese Philosophy, Dao, Feng Shui, Sinology, Taoism

English: A Chinese wall mural painting from a ...

English: A Chinese wall mural painting from a Daoist temple (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I come from a long line of hoarders. Not as bad as the guys from “Buried Alive” – I mean, that’s reality TV – but definitely somewhat like Nikolai Gogol’s infamous obsessive collector Plyushkin from “Dead Souls”. My gradmother hardly ever threw away anythin, but she was OCD tidy too, so all those kitchy souvenirs – Venetian boats in red and black carrying plastic little couples across the shrine in her living room, the ballerinas performing pirouettes in their music boxes and what not –  polished and arranged neatly, did look rather nice. My father’s late sister had managed to cram into her tiny one room apartment what normal people couldn’t squeeze into a family house; couple of years ago we needed to get something from that black hole of her closet ; some note she “clearly remembered “ she had tucked into one of her handbags – black one. She had 14 almost identical envelope handbags in black and all were packed with various notes and papers, among them – a guarantee for a boiler expiring 1986 (!), valid at the territory of “autonomous region of Kosovo”… The boiler itself went down with her old house when the motorway was laid where she used to live; Kosovo had become an independent country meanwhile and the situation I am describing is happening somewhere in 2006… I wish you could see the utter shock all over her face when I suggested we could “dispose” the guarantee since, you know… NO WAY! She might need it! You never know! Sure, if we come into possession of a time-machine, she maybe would, indeed you never know!
So you get an idea about what runs in my family. In addition to that, both my parents are manic shoppers. I believe i am one of the very few people who actually sees the good side of the global economic crises – at least their residence at this time is pervious and not narrowed down to few hardly visible lanes leading among the clutter from the kitchen to the bathroom and further to the bedrooms.
My father, among else, keeps his fancy tennis gear and clothes which he was proudly showing off in various diplomatic clubs while working on his backhand… in mid seventies.
My mother only recently parted with a huge collection of fashion magazines from 80ies with advices ranging from maintenance of really big hair to how to knit your own pair of leg warmers and attach shoulder pads properly.
Both are avid travelers too – when they travelled to China ( i swear it’s not an exaggeration) dozen of boxes were sent to the customs and it took a track to deliver the ‘souvenirs’ they acquired.
Both are highly manipulative too – so when you discretely suggest that some of it eventually could be let go – they’d yell out (both in tears) WE CHERISHED IT ALL FOR YOU!!! Certainly, such caring attitude is quite endearing – but what exactly I am supposed to do with the inherited 14 pairs of worn out male shoes size 42?
Bad, bad Feng Shui!
That being said – as of recently I feel renewed urge to meddle with Chinese Philosophy. For the record I absolutely don’t intend to take it to an academic level. I am quite obsessive by default and I do need to set limits from the start. I did a year of postgrad Chinese studies at Beijing’s ‘Language and Culture University’, i was thought some I Ching by only two people I met who could make some sense of it, i am studying back and forth a dvd course ‘Great Minds of the Eastern Intellectual Tradition’ taught by a guy with Ph.D from Yale and i’ve been reading avidly last couple of decades – i absolutely have no intention of taking it any further than that.
I know Daosim meawhile became an organized religion, but I am not going there for the life of me, I really had enough of anything institutionalized and formalized. And, kill me, but especially when it comes to Dao, to me it does feel wrong.
On the other side, I do know that only 1/10th is in the books while the rest you get from a teacher. How do I go about that, given that there aren’t any Daoist masters where I am and given that I am long ago over globe-trotting in search of an enlightened Guru?
The answer is one word: Google. So, it turns out Daoist practice is something called Zazen, whatever that is. Before I commence another round of googling, I pray it doesn’t turn out to be anything like Tai Ji Chuan. Don’t get me wrong – I love Tai Ji and I could discipline myself back in China to get up at 6am to practice with a respectable teacher beside a fairytalish traditional Chinese pond. I am too lazy for that now and also, you guessed rightly, no ponds and no credible Tai Ji teachers around.
To my utter relieve it turns out Zazen is a Chinese version of Vipassana – presumably historical Buddha’s own technique for enlightment.
Now if you happen to be a PhD in Chinese Philosophy or an ordained Daoist priest or something – and the above sentence sends chills down your spine as blasphemous or overly simplified – it’s your problem; this is my personal discourse and I am sticking to it.
Back to Sitting in Oblivion – that’s how charmingly the practice is called in English.
Vipassana I had learned long ago, from teachers with impressive lineage in a respectable Buddhist tradition – that of Burmese Ji Goenka – during ten days long retreat under vow of silence and strict adherence to the Eightfold Path. Good it is so because I doubt I’d undertake anything like that nowadays – that was back in the day when I was still trotting the globe in search of a guru.
So, i added that to my usual morning religious practice– upon waking up i first devotedly drink a cup of coffee, sip by sip, and then i sit (in oblivion) for some half an hour.
I must tell you it does wonders.

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The Tao of Ruth

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

China, Chinese Philosophy, Confucianism, Daoism, I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Taoism, Zohar

I overdosed on Daoist texts yesterday. Say what you will, but those texts (any, generally considered ‘holy’ or ,as Chinese elegantly put it, ‘classical’ ) have huge impact on the consciousness. Try studying the Bible or Dao De Jing or Upanishad or Zohar, to name just a few,  for couple of consecutive hours, with an open mind and without expectations and you’ll see for yourself. In my believe, those are – for the lack of better phrasing – living beings. Wise, humorous, entertaining and on occasion satirical and even bitchy living beings. If your beloved Book of Changes has called you sometimes ‘The Young Fool’ by throwing hexagram number four repeatedly to your face, you know exactly what i am talking about.

Both main traditions of Chinese thought – Daoism and Confucianism – stem from the Book of Changes, but it is quite challenging to speak of those in Western terms.

We could say I Ching to China is what Bible is to the West and we would be both – quite right and terribly wrong as well. In the same vein, it is quite difficult to juxtapose the two schools of thought – because you can be perfectly Daoist in some aspects of your life and absolutely Confucian in others, whereas, for the sake of comparison, you could hardly be Christian in some views and Muslim in others.

Risquing the dreaded oversimplification, i’ll try to differentiate the two most generally – at least in the ways they are generally perceived in the West.

Confucianism is focused on the past and looks for guidance in the traditional, conservative ways. It’s about morals and rituals and the proper way to do things, as learned from ancestors; it is communal, active and engaging.

Daoism is way more individualistic, self-focused and unpretentious; it advises simplicity and non-judgement so to avoid polarization and stemming from it imbalance.

Too much knowledge is viewed as counterproductive, too much involvement with the society – fatal for one’s true self.

While putting away social conditioning and traditional ways of doing things – the sage focuses on his or her own inner calling and turns off the ‘human mentality’; there the mind of Dao steps in.

What is Dao exactly – nobody knows, those who know don’t speak and those who do speak – do not know it.

(Both renounce the after-life discussions though – saying that we don’t know people, so can’t know Gods and that we don’t know earthly ways, even less so the ways of heaven.)

We could look at it this way, using the parable of a storm, which could be found in most traditions. (If you recall, in Christian Bible Jesus was sleeping when the storm began, oblivious to it and thus unaffected.)

Seeing the approaching waves – Daoist would basically try to keep his distance, but if for some reason he had to to get in, he’d get his surf promptly and, ideally, would enjoy the ride.

Confucianist would first call all the emergency numbers. Then they would organize the rescue operation, put on the life west and jump in to save the drowning victims. It might turn out there were no victims in the first place. The reward for his courage might be that he drowns himself. It all might have been nothing but a bad dream. We can’t know that.

I think in such occasions most don’t reason, but simply act in accordance to their nature.  My own impulse is to jump in and i inevitably do. I’ve never “drown”,  but i don’t think i saved many (if anyone) either, i was simply acting according to my basic nature. And then one can’t go wrong, whatever they do; if in tune with inner self , there is no corruption or immorality.

But, if speaking of non-emergency situations, my own experience is that it is better indeed to keep away.

I believe i am Daoist by birth and Confucian by conditioning. My own, intimate perception of the outer reality is indeed that of something quite impermanent and illusionary; i believe it is I who validate the outer by getting involved, and not the other way around.

It’s being a while now that i am aware to which extent the outer reality is overestimated and prone to manipulation; more so there isn’t one single definition of it that philosophers (or scientists ) would agree on.

Right, evening news are reality – but only as long as you don’t turn off the tv. Some people are very real – and beside you, as long as you don’t get away from them and their words and deeds.

Having relocated often during my formative years – i can attest to that.

In my view – people from our surroundings always have expectations of us and that’s a preset pattern almost impossible to avoid, it is a trap.

Some are expected to be successful, some are expected to be loosers, some are expected to be good looking, some are expected to be drunkards and so on. On an everyday level – there is very little room to change, within those preset expectations; as we know, people instrictively hate changes and will push you with all their might not to change. Mostly unconsciously, but the effect on you is the same. It is not good or bad per se – everyone is on a stormy ride of their own and they need ‘reppers ‘; if you succumb to that, you become merely a road marker for somebody else, equally lost as you are.

Reinventing oneself through changing surroundings is thus crucial to survival. I believe literal relocation, at least temporal,  is the best; as they say – no one is a prophet in his own land.

If that for some reason is impossible, focusing on different activities and switching back and forth between various groups of people is, i believe, second best. Otherwise we are stuck in other people’s expectations and drown in by inertia.

If twenty people or even five mentally have set their own limitations for you – breaking away from those is alike to escaping the infamous Shawshank.

Because – that’s what it is, a mental prison of highest security, that of others, not your own.

As much as we are debunking prejudices and stereotypes, those were crucial for human survival. It would be impossible to conduct daily living, if we dealt with everyone and everything as if they are first of a kind we encountered.

If we contemplated for hours whether a chair is indeed meant for sitting, why some food is considered poisonous, if we gave a chance of a doubt to someone approaching us with a knife and a mad spark in their eyes – our existence would end pretty soon.

Our ancestors have survived because they learned to differentiate between a friend and the enemy – and they learned to do so fast, otherwise you and i wouldn’t be around nowadays.

Thus, while we are “breast-fed” into a way of stereotyping in order to survive – and these preconceptions are necessary for everyday living, it’s not only that we need to learn over time how to debunk discrimination, but we also need to learn how keep away from others’ preset patterns – and how to spare those others of our own limitations that we projected on them.

It is not easy, more so that these ‘preset patterns’ are indeed a part of common sense.

If your parents are wealthy and educated, chances are you’ll get a decent education and make it as well;  dysfunctional families by default grant their own offspring significantly less chances. It takes a lot to an addict to renounce their addiction, whatever it is; it takes… a lot, and it is tough to change one’s ways. But it is possible, indeed. We do have Free Will and as long as we breath, we can change.

From experience, it’s way easier to do so away from others, at least – from the usual surroundings.

What they expect of us – usually has very little to do with who we are, that’s from experience too. Also, keeping up with others and their expectations is draining, and the energy needs to be focused on the inside, so the change can be effective.

I know it’s usually believed one can’t do so if they have family, but it’s not true – take Leo Babauta’s of Zen Habits example.

So, while i can’t know what is the way to go for everyone else – or for anyone else per that matter – i do know for myself that i have to chill out. If i was left alone, i’d hardly ever get involved, i don’t strive for recognition and my own ambitions are pretty much down to my own being undisturbed and let alone in doing whatever makes me feel fulfilled. Of course, over years there were clashes with my family and friends who had very different view of what i should be doing – and as every well-meant tribe they did not save efforts and manipulation to make it be the way they thought best.

Again, i am not judging – i know it comes from the best of the intentions, but the thing is that no one can make decisions for anyone else, passed the time of their legal adulthood, and it is very wrong to do so, for numerous reasons.

There can’t be coercion of the will, nothing good ever came from it.

It’s been discussed before and there are researches and publications about differences in Western and Eastern child upbringing – basically the former is presumably focused on child’s well-being and happiness, while the latter focused on the achievements and external validation.

My own parents seem to be hidden Chinese , most parents in Balkans are. I don’t think it’s good.

Of course that everyone sane wants their children to make it, you are responsible for your children until certain age and all of it is common knowledge, but if you are pushing like mad while your grown up offspring is screaming, then something is very wrong… yet that’s common in Balkans. Manipulation, verbal harassment, intimidating – i think more or less all of us around here were subjected to that – so we’ll do what’s right.

Except universally accepted moral postulates – i really don’t know what’s right, what i do know is that most of us have been leading unwanted lives, the lives that were forced on us.

That sucks, as successful as it might come across. I do not see the point in being externally validated as successful , if you are falling apart inside.

Again, i do not see the point in external validation in the first place, as myself i accept the outer reality – to say the least – with a pinch of salt.

I went through a rough patch recently because i was for too long pushed into circumstances which i abhorred; before you ask why didn’t you simply leave, i’ll tell you that where i am  it is not that easy, more so, due to our sociohistorical background it’s close to impossible.

Of course, all things change sooner or later, but some changes do take time and usually, just before the very change occurs – the things reach extremes. That’s what’s been going on with me and it almost resulted in nervous breakdown. And it’s true what they say – it’s darkest before the dawn…

Anyhow, all of it made me once again realize we can’t change anything and anyone, but ourselves. That’s truism of course – yet what is way less known – is Machiavelli-like ways suggested in Dao de Jing for ‘the sage’ (aspiring Daoist that is) to avoid oppression, and sometimes the time is just right to apply them.

Not to forget that traditionally I Ching was mainly consulted by scholars, while in royal service – and there is plenty of advice in the book how to keep one’s head on its shoulders, while still not losing one’s personal dignity.

I apologize for being so cryptic, yet revealing personal names and concrete issues is not my stile; after all – probably every single thinking human being, balancing between what’s due and what’s one’s inner calling – has been through something very similar.

And open opposition and frontal attacs are often not the best way to proceed – that i learned the hard way, sometimes one just has to be smarter than that.

I believe these are not concepts easily accepted by a Western mind, but then the West has traditionally being way more free and democratic than the East; if stuck in the latter – a classical text The Art of War, alongside the above mentioned I Ching and Dao De Jing, might be crucial for one’s well being and on occasions – the mere survival.

Attached is the image of a reading with Osho Zen i did for myself this morning, after the above mentioned Yixue marathon; the Emperor and the Empress (Rebel and Creativity respectively) can pretty much denote Yang and Yin aspects of one’s own being; the New Vision is more so appreciated and welcomed if keeping in mind that traditionally it’s the card of the Hanged Man – denoting a new perspective of course, but not one which is quick, willingly achieved or pleasant. “Totality” would be traditionally the conflict of the Five of Wands and “Completion”, where last piece of the puzzle falls into the Brow Chakra, would be the traditional ‘Judgement’ with it’s metaphorical resurrection and healing…

Have a great weekend everyone, to those who observe – Shabbat Shalom!

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God moves in Mysterious ways

13 Tuesday Mar 2012

Posted by moderndayruth in I Ching

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Beijing, Chi, China, Chinese Philosophy, Mandarin, Pacific Ocean, United States, Yi Jing

Kong Fuzi (Latin: Confucius)

Image via Wikipedia

‘God is His own interpreter,

And He will make it plain.’

William Cowper, Light Shining out of Darkness

Beijing is in 9,763 mi  from Park City in Utah. According to Google maps, getting to the North Capital of China (as that’s what it means in Mandarin, Nanjing being the southern capital traditionally) by car, from the picturesque mountain resort in US would take 36 days  and 23 hours.

If you would be heading by car to Beijing from Park City, you should head northwest on Park Ave toward 7th St, then continue onto UT-224 N, turn left and then right to merge onto I-80 W.

Point 36 of suggested by Google maps itinerary Park City, UT, United States to Beijing, China : Kayak across the Pacific Ocean…

Google does make an effort to amuse its users with gags, Easter eggs,the famous interactive Doodles etc., and this Kayaking across the Pacific is one of those friendly pranks, because… i mean, who in their right mind would drive from Utah to Beijing?!

Yet, stranger things have happened.

Back in 1999 i moved to China and if by chance you wouldn’t have nothing better to do do with your time (albeit i doubt it), you can read about it at ‘About me’ page of this very blog.

It all seemed to had happened by chance, as the saying goes – life is what happens to us while we are busy with other things.

A colleague from the State Protocol had brought me a newspaper add where scholarships were offered for Chinese studies – she knew i was immersed in the yixie, studies of the mysterious Book of Changes, said to be the cornerstone of Chinese philosophy.

This is a rewritten post i made in 2009 elsewhere: I started some 15 or 16y ago, with Wilhelm’s translation (translated once again) into my mother tongue – i couldn’t understand the text in any other language but my own back then – and Jung’s foreword.

I loved the book immediately – i did ask what it thinks of me (as i got it that’s what you should ask ) – and it hit me with the fourth hexagram… ‘The Young Fool’.  So i thought to myself, ‘ok, this is one honest person… pardon, book that is, and this is obviously a beginning of a beautiful friendship! ‘

I couldn’t get literature specifically on Yi Jing, so i dived into Fung Yu Lan’s Chinese Philosophy and just about anything by Jung and his students that i could get.
The 8th lectures which i got later on were a discovery for me; i read and worked with all the available to me translations – including Blofeld’s , Crowley’s and R.L. Wing’s ;
had given up at one point of time; then afterwords moved to China to learn the language so i can get their civilization and overall thinking somewhat better.
Somewhere at the point when i thought to give up all together, i ran into good translation into my language and it gave me the boost i needed to go on.
Now i must say that in the course of years i had met two people who claimed to be pro’s with Yi Jing, after going for years to their lectures and studying from their materials i ended up with the conclusion they fitted whatever they believed anyway – into Yi Jing , which is wrong, its like various fundies finding quotes in the Bible that could confirm just about anything – while dismissing the fact it was written in ancient language, coded – and very hard, if possible at all to translate.
And while i couldn’t divine with the Book – it always inspired me and gave me wise advice, so i kept reading it.
Now, after all these years, i am starting to make sense of the answers i am getting.

Back then, this was an intro to an I Ching casting i shared at an online community, asking the learned folks there for insights.

You see, i am drawn to such subjects where 15-16 years of study are still baby steps in the field.

I Ching, Yiddishkeit and Kabbalah, Tarot studies – that’s my chosen subjects. I am often  credited for having the will and perseverance it takes to learn foreign languages, but the thing is that to me those languages were only means to an end where i could put my claws on books written on the subjects i was dying to learn.

And that’s how i ended up in Beijing, where i met Rebecca from Park City. Ours is one of those friendships that start ‘at the first sight’. I don’t even remember who introduced us, but we became inseparable ever since.

They say, when universe loves a woman, it sends her a friend. That’s pretty much how i felt about meeting Rebecca, she and i were together in this adventure of discovering for ourselves an ancient civilization, travelling, studying, partying and making friends.

There is something about these friendships that started at the turn of the century in a distant land – something that brought together people who by ordinary criteria don’t have much in common… and that something still keeps these people together, in a way that reminds us how intertwined our destinies are, albeit the distance, albeit everything.

All ex-Yugoslavs in Beijing became friends instantly, nevertheless our respective countries had fought four bloody ethnic wars in the preceding decade; our circle expanded and included people from every single country you can think of – and many you probably never heard of.

Israelis, Russians, Americans, Saudi Arabians, Eastern and Western Europeans… All ages, from all walks of life, with only one thing in common – travelling to a far off land to look for something that was missing at home.

I have been writing a lot about that experience as it’s basically there and then that i restored my faith in the humanity – you can imagine how shaken it was after the ex-Yugoslav wars.

Normal people, not brainwashed, not instructed, not bombarded by the media BS; far away from our respective families, from our communities and old friends – and just about anything we knew before – we built a community which was friendly and supportive and became like one big extended international family.

There was no one to remind us the wars we fought, the who bombed who, who was the “traitor”, who was the “aggressor”, who was everyone’s enemy – and so on, the usual instructing we get via formal education, evening news, family history and so on.

And i got it how it works. Borders are a fictitious things, and so are religions. It’s all quite conditional and a subject to change. It’s us who let others with agendas put labels on us and separate the humanity. Those who bring this separation don’t have a vision of a perfected world, but of a divided one, where money is made and influence gained on the very separation.

As Niccolo Machiavelli rightly noted some six centuries ago, politics have no relation to morals.

Exempt the politics – and the lobbies behind it, exempt the stupid religious dogmatism and what you get is – HUMANISM.

That’s what all of us experienced living in China, that’s what in my experience is left when  all the other –isms are cast away. And that’s the experience we shared with Rebecca and that group of friends who met in Bejing in 1999/2000.

Against the odds, we managed to keep that something that brought us together back then, more so as the time goes by, i am more and more convinced that very something does care to be kept by us who got to knew it and reminds us about itself quite often.

You see, couple of years after the Beijing experience, Rebecca did traveled from US to where i am – to the magical teeny once-kingdom, hidden high in the mountain wreaths of Balkan peninsula, and – as she would tell you – she loved it here.

And not to forget that it’s Rebecca’s mother who sent me my first Raider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, it wasn’t available in these parts back then (still isn’t, sadly).

Tomorrow evening is the launch of my third book, Devil – an unauthorized biography,  which is Tarot inspired collection of poems, coming with Francisco J. Campos’ Vaudeville Tarot.

Sadly, professor Susan Gunter, Ph.D. is out of the city, otherwise she would come – but she has my book and she knows the presenter, our gifted poetess, literature critic and known expert in William Blake – Tanja Bakic, so i don’t feel that bad about it.

And in two weeks, when Susan is back and we continue our Memoirs and Poetry Workshop at American Corner in Podgorica, Montenegro – Tanja promised to attend and   to present her work as well.

Tanja is very busy at this time as she is one of the moving forces behind Podgorica’s Winter Book Fair, so she couldn’t come to the dinner the other night hosted for Susan to meet the president of our Writer’s Guild (CDNK), Mijo Popovic – the evening was memorable…

I am a pro writer as tou know, but it might seem to you that i am loosing the plot here… well, not really;

you see, today Susan emailed me to ask whether i know certain Rebecca… My Rebecca, from Beijing. It turned out that Susan is close friends with her mother, the very lady who sent me my first RWS which in its turn became major influence on my work…

Had i mention i started writing in China, back then?

So, that’s what you get when you dare to take out the –isms… and it doesn’t really matter what you call it, the thing is that it’s good.

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