I was browsing the Times newspaper this morning, and I came across a story of a child, who attends a Church of England school in the UK. This boy who was turned away from his school bus, and faced with a 6 mile walk home, because he wasn’t a baptised Christian!

This is appalling, the boy is a pupil at the school, that should entitle him to use of the school facilities without discrimination on the grounds of his religion, or lack thereof!

This simply further justifies my convictions that Faith Schools are a bad idea and should be abolished!

I clocked a post over on Mystery Messiah the other day, it’s a good read, but I couldn’t respond as I’m on Blogger beta and we can’t add comments to non-beta blogs yet. Still, that gives me a little fuel for my own meanderings, and I feel I have more space to write here.

Why do things happen, is there a reason, is someone in control? In my view, the answer is not quite what we think. If I answer from a secular viewpoint, the reflex answer is “heck, no!”, but as a Taoist my answer is a little more involved.

In my view, everything that happens does so because of the tao of the people involved, the tao of the place/environment it happens in and the tao of the situation, which stems from its history.

An example? Let’s consider the RMS Titanic.

1. The tao of the situation. The ship was further south than was normal, iceberg warnings were ignored and the ship was going too fast and (allegedly) without due care.
2. The tao of the environment. Though the sea was calm, there were icebergs about, it was not as safe a place as it could have been.
3. The tao of the ship. The rudder was too small for that size of ship and there were not enough lifeboats aboard. Safety law and procedures at the time were not right for a ship of that size.
4. The tao of the people. There was a 1 hour(!) delay between the collision and the lowering of lifeboats, iceberg warnings weren’t heeded, the first officer inadvertantly mishandled the evasive procedures, some people refused to get into the lifeboats.

Sometimes though, we don’t have all the information, things happen because of factors we had no way of knowing about. It’s tempting to start thinking of a cruel fate, or a mysterious god, but the truth is there is always the unknown.

All these things (taos with a small t?) have their ultimate source in the Tao, and indeed, are as much a part of it as anything else. The Tao Te Ching says the Tao is unknowable and unnameable, it’s not mystic, who can honestly keep track of all the factors I just described above? All of it? Now expand it to cover the state of the whole universe known and unknown, and it certainly can’t be done! I think all we can do is realise that it’s all ultimately rational, and be humble in the knowledge that we’ll never understand all of it. As Lao Tzu says “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”.

Footnote: I’ve explained it as well as I can at this time, but I will be refining this further, it will also eventually make an appearance in the Book of Jade Mirrors

Your Personality Profile

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs.For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World’s Shortest Personality Test

I’ve been keeping an eye on the public response to the Pope’s comments. I find that the BBC website is very good for this as it has a talkback function on the news articles.

I notice a lot of points being made, accusations of hypocrisy pointed at the Islamic establishment, criticism of the Pope and people defending freedom of speech.

Now I consider that all three of the positions above have some merit to them, and with freedom of speech comes the freedom to criticise. I also agree with the principle that while I may not agree with what somebody has to say, I will defend their right to say it.

But I do think, that we have a duty to speak softly where we can. I believe that freedom brings responsibility, whether we like it or not. By all means criticise, but try to do so constructively and diplomatically where possible, if people feel that they are under attack, they’ll react negatively and any chance for finding common ground via a meaningful dialogue is lost.

I’ve been watching the controversy that Pope Benedict has inadvertantly kicked off with his comments about Islam. While I think he could have been better advised, it raises interesting points about religous criticism.

One viewpoint I’ve seen aired is that the Vatican is an institution living in the past, I feel I can’t really argue the point, though I feel that the current pope isn’t helping matters, though I’d hope there’s always potential for improvement.

The question I think this raises is should religions be exempt from critical examination and criticism? The answer, in my mind, is no. Religions claim to be able to provide concrete answers to problems we face in day to day life, if the faithful are expected to live by those answers, then they should be questioned.

I’m sitting here between calls thinking about critical thought. The process of starting my little web book (now called “The Book of Jade Mirrors”) and a post on LifeHacker got me thinking.
We all know (and often accept) that we have to drink 8 glasses of water per day, a number of health magazines parrot this figure as if it’s gospel truth.

Now, I found this link courtesy of Life Hacker: 10 Reasons to drink more water.

Ok, so far so good, now try this link at snopes.com, which is from the comments on that post.
It looks like the old 8 glasses of water figure isn’t a much of a sure thing as we’ve been told, it’s amazing how much information we accept without questioning.

Now to come full circle, I was looking at things to write about in my book and was thinking a lot of this is simply faith, critical thought doesn’t come into it. Look at the existance of Chi, an awful lot of things talk about it but it’s existance has never been proved, I know a Tai Chi instructor who doesn’t believe in it’s existance!

I think my book will look fairly secular compared to some, but I don’t know any other way of doing it that I consider to be doing it properly.

It’s interesting to sit back and watch yourself, to be aware of how you do the things you do. The Taoist way of looking at these things is very different to the Western Plato derived way of seeing things. The Platonic view is that things should be done according to intellectual theory, hence the celebrated difference between theory and practice. Taoists tend to base things on observed reality, correcting our methods and theories as we go, in order to get closer to the Tao.

My own experience involves the Japanese Kaizen method, which has always struck me as quite Taoist. This is also based on changing your methods based on real world feedback, it was applied to excellent effect by the Japanese motor industry! I’ve been trying to apply these methods to myself of late, I’m finding them to give good results and coming to the conclusion that our Western platonic mindset might just be ripe for a change!

Why write this? It certainly looks like an exercise in ego doesn’t it?

Well, I’ve always liked to make notes and diarise/write down my understanding of things. It’s a large part of my motivation for keeping the blog to be honest, the blog allows me to write and evolve my understanding better, especially now it has the categories.

In this case, I feel that if I can save someone some time and effort by doing this and help them out then it’s been worth it! I think I’m going to organise it in a similar way to Free as in Freedom, the bio of Richard M. Stallman. This means it will be a constant work in progress with a changelog. I think a “living” document is going to be a better way of going with this project.

This particular project is probably going to be better off on my Google Pages to be honest, though I’ll post update notifications here.

I feel it’s better to start off with a bit of background info on Taoism and then look further into meditation itself. These will be written as I get time to write them, so if they don’t turn up too quickly, you know why.

On the subject of the various exercises, as stated yesterday, only some will be Taoist. This is more of a work part written and part complied by someone who considers himself a Taoist than a purely Taoist work. If I see a useful exercise then I’ll add it, it may not be nessecarily Taoist in origin. Why? Put it like this, it’s better to be a Taoist who meditates, than cutting off your nose to spite your face because an exercise “isn’t Taoist”.

On the subject of meditation, I won’t go for any really advanced exercises, the thing is that meditation doesn’t always agree with everyone, it can cause problems in a small percentage of people. Advanced exercises should only be attempted under the instruction of an experienced teacher. I personally don’t see the need to go for horrifically complex visualisations, I prefer the principle of KISKIE, Keep It Simple Keep It Elegant.

Also, info provided here is provided with no warranty, and any exercises mentioned here are undertaken at your own risk.

It’s an idea I’ve been playing with thanks to Blogger’s new categories feature.

I’ve never liked the way that traditional Taoism stood on keeping techniques and information secret from outsiders. Personally I think it should be shared, as you’ve probably gathered from the fact that this blog and all of my media is Creative Commons licensed! The CC license is to try and keep the info hosted here free of charge, if you find the info elsewhere and use it from there then fine.

So I’m going to create a category, as I’m not sure what to call it I’m going to adopt the pagan term “Book of Shadows”. It’s as good a term as any and I like the name, I find it quite poetic.

Of course, a large part of this Taoist Book of Shadows will be the comments and I’d like to encourage folk to post their views, corrections and other feedback on the articles in this category. This way we can turn this into so much more than merely a book style of thing.

Finally, this section will encompass not only Taoist techniques, but other techniques from other sources to complement them. Why? Because while the tone will be Taoist, I think we should remember the Uncarved Block and keep our minds as open as we can!

This will be the first entry in that category, in time I hope to build it into a place full of useful techniques and information for everyone to use and share.

Let’s see how it turns out!