Year of Faith

I know, I know, I haven’t been updating like I said I would.  This is mostly due to the bad emotional state I’ve been in for the past week.  I go through these ups and down pretty naturally, actually.  Call it manic-depression, call it being moody, I just know that every once in a while shit gets put on hold while I deal with myself for a few days.  Taoism helped initially, but as my belief in my own abilities and in the project failed during the week, I just retreated into myself like I usually do.

Having a retail job hasn’t helped either.  As my fellow “sales associates,” past and present are sure to tell you, customer service exposes you to some of the most aggravating human beings on the planet.  I had to carefully consider my words there, because I don’t want to make it seem like I am involved in The Worst Thing Ever.  It doesn’t take much to imagine someone who would have it worse off than myself, living in the first world with a full time job and enough time on my hands to write a blog, and badly at that.  It’s tempting to make my plight seem terribly important, because I’m angry and frustrated and still a little depressed, but it really isn’t.  I just hope you understand that when you work in a store that is called “The X Shop” and people, day after day, walk in and say, with complete and bloody sincerity,

“Do you sell X?” Yeah, you get a little loopy.  Taoism has really helped with this. I must say that I am a whole lot more tolerant and patient with people, especially at work.  Well, I was. Like I said, this last week was a bit of a write off, and I’m not proud of that.  Losing that kind of time when I only have a month to experience these ideas is hardly… um, ideal.

Anyway, I’ll be writing up a summary of my thoughts on Taoism during the weekend.  I will also be trying to figure out how to best spend my free time so that I’m in a good state of mind going into the Baha’i Faith in March.  I get to start with a 19 day fast heading into the Baha’i New Year, so I have that to look forward to.

But on to the meat of the post.  Ridiculous news stories mean I get to vent and feel superior for a little while longer.  Science Daily ran a story a few days ago about how researchers in Montreal found evidence suggesting Zen meditation helps to mitigate pain.

Which isn’t really news.  Like, not even slightly.  The point, surely, is that these researches have figured out how this works, that the methods involved in Zen meditation help, “thicken certain areas of [the] cortex and this appears to underlie their lower sensitivity to pain.”  But to me this article reads more along the lines of, “We have found that there is a positive correlation between meditation and pain management,” not, “Thích Quảng Đức must have had a brain as dense as a neutron star.”

I just wanted to make sure everyone knew this.  Self-immolation is one of those things that kind of interests me (wow, that was a weird thing to write) and it bugs me when someone implies that people aren’t smart enough to draw these kinds of connections.  It doesn’t take much to see a man with a history of intense meditation set himself aflame without so much as twitching and realize that there is something special going on here.

Alright, I think I’m done being self-righteous.

These last few days I have been extraordinarily content.  I have been going over the Tao te Ching and the Chuang Tzu, meditating, but still conducting my life mostly as usual.  It’s an odd thing to say, but I think that for all intents and purposes, I’m kind of exactly where I want to be with Taoism.  There’s always more to read and experience, and I still know that, but I no longer feel any pressure.  It’s like I have reached some kind of Goldilocks zone.  Everything is just right.

At the end of January I was fairly satisfied with where I was, but I was still hungry for more.  I was disappointed that most of my books hadn’t arrived in time, and there was still a lot to explore and experience.  I could have kept doing another two months of Satanism, there were so many desires, sins, and ideas to unpack and talk about.  But right now, I feel like I could stop Taoism tomorrow and be totally satisfied.

I don’t know if this is because of some kind of essential wisdom I have found in the Tao, because I fear I might also be using Taoism as an excuse to have a month off.  Compared to almost every other religion that I will be experiencing this year, Taoism is very light on the dogmatism- there aren’t a lot of rules that you have to follow.  It feels a lot more like the constant posing of questions and riddles, a bunch of invitations to think about things so that you have the freedom to find your own Way.  I can really appreciate this, but I’m concerned that I may have accepted this invitation and then put it on the back burner, not really giving it much thought.  Maybe I’m just being too hard on myself.  I’m quite happy with where I am, that doesn’t mean everything has to be perfect.

I suspect my suspicion stems from the fact that I have yet to really master my desires, and this is something that is definitely required befre on can genuinely find the Way.

Therefore, those constantly without desires, by this means will perceive its subtlety.  Those constantly with desires, by this means will see only that which they yearn for and seek.

Te-tao Ching, Chapter One, translated by Robert Henricks

Much thanks to Satanism I am completely aware of what my desires are, how I meet them and how they affect me.  But I don’t think I have really taken the time to step away from them so as to see how they drive me and how I see the world and react to it.  I am definitely comfortable with them, and with myself, but I cannot let this turn into complacency.  There is still a lot left to do, but right now it is so easy not to worry about it.

Well today was mostly horrible.

Work started with several failures at doing something simple, which made me feel useless for most of the day. That carried me through to after work, where I watched five full buses go by before I finally got my frozen ass onto the sixth one. As I worked my way home via the liquor store I reflected on how a crap day fits into Taoism.

Answer: pretty well. Much like Satanism, Taoism doesn’t punish failures or errors with guilt. When you make a mistake as a Taoist, you know, your whole day echoes with it. You are off track- it could be the way you woke up, the way someone spoke to you, the way your partner slammed the door, whatever. You are out of balance, and you will suffer it out for as long as it takes for you to find the Way, and then the world will bloom for you again.

There is no concept of sin here, no great principles that can be broken, no dogma. You do something wrong, you atone and you deal with it. You learn from it so that you won’t lose your Way again. You experience it for what it is, and then let it go.

Today started badly, but ended well.

The other day I witnessed something that struck me as particularly Taoist, and since I owe two posts today I thought I would take this moment to share. This is also the first post that I’m writing on my new iPhone through Wordpress’ handy application, so here’s to hoping for more frequent posts.

There is a bus driver who works a particular route that I take to work. Now, a lot of the drivers that I have interacted with here in Vancouver are very easy going. I guess you sort of have to be in some parts of this city. I don’t know if this is endemic in their particular occupation, having to deal with tourists and the homeless, or perhaps it’s part of our supposedly natural Canadian politeness. In any case, giving people breaks on their fare, especially on the first of the
month when people might have forgotten to buy a new pass, is fairly common.

But that isn’t true of this driver. This guy is firm. No, you can’t ride for free, and you can’t pay for only one zone if you’re just “passing through” the second zone. You pay the full fare, or you don’t ride. This driver has stopped the bus at the terminus of the first zone, walked up to people who got a one zone ticket, and insisted they either pay for the extra zone or get off. People don’t argue, they know that they won’t win this one.

This might not seem like a big deal, but it really falls to the sides of the bell curve of normal behavior that I have learned to expect from bus drivers. This is a man who obviously believes in the rules. Very black and white, and not very Taoist.

One morning a woman comes on and pays for one zone, even though she will be going through two. The driver informs her that she can’t do that, she disagrees claiming that she has done this before, obviously to no ill effect. They quickly come to an impass, she takes a seat and the driver calls transit security to get her escorted off the bus. So now we have to wait at the station until this is resolved. It is early in the morning, everyone has somewhere to go, and no one is impressed.

Then this young guy stands up. He’s around my age, mid-twenties, calm and collected as rain water. He walks up to the woman and offers to pay the rest of her fare. She is noncommittal about the offer. She doesn’t want to be dragged off the bus but she doesn’t want to admit that she is wrong either. The man then goes to the driver, explains his plan, pays, and gives the woman the new ticket.

She doesn’t thank him, but that doesn’t matter. We are on our way and we spent barely a minute waiting. Again, this may not seem strange, a random stranger doing a good deed. It was the way he did it though, like it was nothing to him. He showed neither pleasure nor displeasure in the act, no pride nor sense of good will. I had the impression that he asked permission from the woman to pay her fare not because he wanted to or thought it was proper to ask, but because if he hadn’t it would have been a hindrance to his solution. If he had just bought her a ticket and tried to give it to her without any prompting it might not have been as effective as going through the motions that he did. The fare needed to be paid, that was it.

This situation in and of itself wasn’t particarly Taoist, but the way this guy carried himself was. He flowed like water, seeking the path of least resistance. It was fascinating to watch.

I dont’ carry change with me, but if I had I probably would have done the same, as would other people on the bus had they the time to think it over. But all of us lacked the immediacy and effortlessness of this young man, the “doing without doing” characterized by the Way.

Or least that is what I told myself.

Sunday and Monday was my weekend.  No work, and only a few chores to do, it was great.  I like having free days like that, and it’s a chance to partake in my favourite pastime- video games.  I could spend days at a time with a controller in my hand and a decent title in the box.  It’s becoming such a passion that you might be seeing a post on religion and video games here in the near future. But with the Year of Faith project underway I feel like I need to be spending every moment in Taoism, or whatever religion of the month I will be in.  There’s a lot of books to read, a lot of people to meet, things to do, etc.  I’m constantly feeling like I’m missing something.  But on the other hand, I need downtime.  I hate it when I have no time during the week that is devoid of anything, a happy little blank expanse that is totally and completely mine to deal with.  So little of my time is my own, I get very protective of it.  So this weekend I realized that I need a day or two where I can leave my life behind and just unwind.  To this end I think the best schedule for me, writing wise, is to have a post up every weekday that I’m at work.  That means at least four during the week, maybe one or two on weekends.

I realize the futility of trying to shoehorn myself into a schedule, but I really do see the success or failure of each day in the Year of Faith project in terms of how much I update the site.  Updating means I had something to write about, having something to write about means I had a new thought, or a new experience, and that means I learned something new about the religion.  Or I just had a funny story.  Either way, I think it works as a good mechanism to keep me on task.

Next week I might have yet another plan of attack.  I’m definitely still playing this by ear.

I’m meditating regularly now.  Honestly it is getting kind of addictive.  It’s not that I’m craving it, rather I’m more and more curious about how it will progress.  Every time I come away calm, peaceful and focused and I can maintain that mindfulness for a few hours afterwords.  It makes interacting with people easier and feels more genuine, makes food taste better… no, that isn’t right.  Meditation has, so far, made it easier to focus.  That’s it.  Nothing else is really changing, I’m just better at being in the moment, isolating things and experiencing them one at a time.

This is why it feels like I’m high.  When you’re stoned, you become more sensitive, more receptive.  Similar effects, different causes. And this is only from a few sessions no more than half an hour long.  People in monasteries do this for hours.  I could also be completely on the wrong track, I don’t really have any idea right now.  Could just be all in my head.

Heh, “All in my head.”  What?  I thought it was funny.

Meditated for the first time this year yesterday.  Did about fifteen minutes, and it felt like I was reading the Tao-te Ching, only more so.  Calm, focused, and… well, slightly odd.  Without any external stimulus, without any distractions or movement, you only have one place to go- inside.  It felt much longer than fifteen minutes, and I would have done more, but I was antsy to eat something after getting home from work.  Will do more meditating after this post, I think.

I was planning on meditating at work, before I opened the store.  It’s dark and quiet and there are plenty of cushions, but the Olympic torch was heading through downtown, waylaying my transit plans, and making me late for work even when I left early.  I tried meditating on the way over, which was still calming, and certainly made the commute go by faster, but it wasn’t the same.  Harder to focus, harder to center.

I’ve started to read the Chaung-Tzu, a compilation of stories and Taoist wisdom from a man of the same name and a few other Taoist teachers.  It is considered one of the central texts of Taoism, alongside the Tao-te Ching, but it is very, very different.  Much like how Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is praised because of it’s timeless wisdom in the art of conflict, the Tao-te Ching is timeless in it’s easy to understand advice and observations on the human condition.  If The Art of War is good for battle, then the Tao-te Ching is good for the soul.

But the Chaung-Tzu is an enitrely different kind of animal.  Instead of simple allegory and common sense sayings, it relies on word games, paradoxes, and strange stories to convince the reader of the uselessness of words and definitions to work your way through the world.  Better just to be and let the world in unlabeled, without expectation.  To show you what I mean, here is how the Tao-te Ching begins:

As for the Way, the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way.  As for names, the name that can be named is not the constant name.  The nameless is the beginning of the ten thousand things.  The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.  Therefore, those constantly without desires, by this means will perceive subtlety.  Those constantly with desires, by this means will see only that which they yearn for and seek.

Alright so maybe that doesn’t seem as straightforward as I thought it would, but it’s a walk in the park compared to what you find in the Chaung-Tzu:

In the northern darkness there is a fish and his name is K’un.  The K’un is so huge I don’t know how many thousand li he measures.  He changes and becomes a bird whose name is P’eng.  The back of P’eng measures I don’t know how many thousand li across and, when he rises up and flies off, his wings are like clouds all over the sky.  When the sea begins to move, this bird sets off for the southern darkness, which is the Lake of Heaven.

That’s how this book starts.  It hasn’t drawn me in the same way to Tao-te Ching has, but it’s still good.

One of my dream careers would be to become a Christian priest, probably protestant (lots more free will, a lot less tempting young boys, apparently).  I’ve always seen it as an opportunity to learn the true length and breadth of Christian doctrine and how it relates to other religions and to people directly.  I could be the spiritual head of a diverse community of believers, and lend spiritual and moral wisdom to numerous personal issues and problems, and lead compassionate initiatives internationally and throughout the community.

I’ve always seen the priest as a mix of two things that are very important to me- accumulating knowledge and wisdom, and then using that knowledge to help people in a very real and immediate fashion.  There are so many opportunities to help people deal with their faith and their understanding of God and their religion, to be able to have these kinds of conversations with the troubled and the curious.  This kind of prospect genuinely excites me.  Now I might have a completely unrealistic and romanticized view of the priesthood, but that’s the point of a dream job, isn’t it?

Slight hitch though, not a big problem, but something that may or may not come up once in a great long while- I don’t believe in God. It would be an unorthodox kind of life to lead, to be sure, an atheist priest.  Someone who is supposed to lead people to God and understand God and yet has no such faith.  Probably wouldn’t go down so well with the congregation, I fear.

Stranger still though, it’s never occurred to me that this would be detrimental to my understanding of the Christian faith, God, or Christ.  Knowing these things inside and out, as I am want to do, and knowing how to interact and converse with people in a religious sense seem to be the real necessary skills for a priest.  So long as I could cultivate these things, as well as the skills necessary for the other minutiae of the priesthood, isn’t that enough?

I honestly believe that being able to deal with a congregation from the point of view of an atheist would be a real boon rather than a blunder.  An atheist knows how difficult it is to accept the idea of God, they know the ins and outs of all the arguments, they know how absurd faith can be, how hard it can be to square this faith away with reason, and they certainly know how religion can be criticized and assailed from without and within.  I love religion and God just as much as the average Christian, I just don’t believe He exists, which changes the kind of love to be sure, but I’m still very much caught up in the whole thing on a  day to day basis.

The reason I bring all of this up is that I recently read a news story about a fellow who is actually living my dream.  Klass Hendriske turned more than few heads in the Netherlands and throughout the Christian community in 2007 when he published a book called Believing in a God Who Does not Exist: Manifesto of an Atheist Preacher. He obviously came under a lot of scrutiny from the powers that be (or may not be, in this case) but just recently the Protestant Church of the Netherlands declared that they will not be taking any action against Hendriske, saying that his views are actually sympatico with other liberal theologians within Protestantism.

So no burning collar, no cassok striping, nothing ontoward at all.  As you can imagine this news was rather uplifting for this little dream of mine.  I doubt that it will actually happen for me, but it’s nice to know that it’s possible.  Seems that the Protestants have put themselves on some shakey ground though, as Hendriske himself says, “If my view is allowed, then there’s something wrong with the foundations of the church.”  Yes Klaas, there is something wrong, and you and me both know what it is.

In any case, I’ll be looking forward to an English translation of his book.

Taoism doesn’t feel like a very big shift for me, behaviorally speaking. It’s not that I do tai chi and meditate all the time, it’s that I tend to be very calm and balanced. I assess things and take my time to understand them, I’m soft spoken and it’s very hard to raise my temper.  I listen closely to my own body to figure out what it is I want to do, what I want to eat, etc.

Taoism calls for all of these things, but the difference is that Taoism begins and ends with the Tao, the Way, from silence and emptiness.  This is the onus for all the actions of the Sage (the perfect Taoist).  I don’t really know why I am the way that I am, as far as I know I’ve been this way most of my life.  I discovered the Tao-Te Ching early in my life, before I started reading any other philosophical or religious text, and some of those passages have been with me ever since.

So the Tao-Te Ching may be the reason for me acting the way that I do, it may have influenced my behavior in some way, but it was not through any meditation or deep insight.  It just made sense, and it still makes sense.  More than that, it just feels good.

I read the Tao on my way home from work today and I started to feel… well, almost high.  Not like disassociated or elated or giggly or anything.  I was still very much in control of all my faculties.  But I felt warm, reassured, and happy.  Just reading this thing makes me feel at peace.  It’s like it is strumming the chord of my being, and all I can do is sit back and hum.

So to recap, I may have Taoist-like tendencies, but I don’t think that counts unless it comes from the right place.  Knowing my desires through and through does not make me the master of them, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m starting this from an advantageous position.

First off, I wish to extend my thanks to Professor Paul Crowe for sitting down with me this morning and talking about Taoism and his experiences living it and teaching it.  This post is a direct result of our talks and his past lectures.

Taoism is very hard to define.  It isn’t really a religion, and I don’t mean that in the same way that Satanism or atheism “aren’t really religions.”  Atheism is, strictly speaking, just a statement of belief, an idea that can be part of a wider whole, like theism.  Satanism is a religion, but it comes without the familiar myths and components of every other faith.

Taoism is more of a process, a word that can describe a very long trend through Chinese thought and history, which intersects with Confucianism, Buddhism, and various folks beliefs and practices.  Now there are certain texts that can be called Taoist, like the Chaung-Tzu and the Tao-te Ching, but these don’t contain prescriptions for living and for belief like other religions do.  Nothing is really codified here.  It is almost better to call it sage advice, wise words that can be picked up and tried out.  It’s not dogmatic, but it isn’t completely ambiguous either.

It is very hard to define, but basically Taoism, as I am going to treat it here, is a practice through which you learn to settle your own mind in order to listen to your body, to your surroundings, and the people around you, so that you can respond to them properly, and treat them as they need to be treated.  Taoism’s morality could be called a kind of virtue ethics, in which one strives to live up to certain standards and perform to the best of one’s ability, but no where are these golden rules dogmatically laid down.  Instead you try to be completely receptive to each given situation, so that you can respond in the best possible way.  The standard you are striving towards is not to be moral, right, virtuous, or good, it is to be.

This is going to be somewhat difficult to practice, as there are no set things that I can check off like ‘going to church’ or ‘read the Qur’an.’  Things like reading Taoist literature and doing things like sitting meditation or tai chi will certainly help, but none of them are necessarily required in order to be a Taoist.  I will still be doing all of these things, as I always want to be getting the most out of this month.  But when you get right down to it, Taoism is about balance within your own mind and body, and maintaining that throughout your daily life.  This can be awfully trying in average day to day existence, and so things like meditation help maintain that steady clam and responsiveness.

On the plus side this means I don’t really have to give up the things I learned that I enjoyed last month, or really do anything strenuous or out of the ordinary (unless I feel like testing my newly found Taoist resolve).  However, actually trying to explain Taoism is going to be difficult.

There are parts of Taoism that can certainly be called religious- there is a long history of hermitages, ceremonies, chants, priests, etc.  Separated from everything else, these bits of Taoism, if observed and practiced by a group of people, could be called a religion, and I don’t mean to discount that.  It just doesn’t fit our standard expectation of what a religion is and how it manifests in human thought and behaviour.  Or perhaps it does…

All that I’m trying to say is that I think I get it now, and am more confident in moving forward now than I was at the beginning of the month.

If Taoism is like water, then Satanism would be a fucking diamond.

The Tao itself is fluid, undefinable, able to fill in the nooks and crannies of every place, person, and thing.  It is the foundation and component of every proper being, flowing around obstacles, acting without acting, doing without doing.

Satanism on the other hand, was solid, definite, and obstinate.  Any barrier is shattered by it, every lie made humble.  It makes no excuses for itself.

It was a lot easier than this.  Taoism does not reveal itself bluntly, it does not state that it is ’so and so.’  What can be named is not the Tao, the Way is purposefully obscure- not impenetrable, but not definite either.

My inner Satanist is having a hard time with this.  This is a really big gear shift.

Cranky today.  These transitions are not going to be easy.