A quiet watercourse

Another move

2007-05-31T11:26:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I posted on here, though I see it still gets a few hits.

My last post was to let you know that I'd moved to Wordpress.com. Well, I decided to have a go at running things by myself, and seeing how I got on.

You can now find me at http://quietwatercourse.co.uk.

Watercourse: Reloaded

2006-12-21T16:03:00.000Z

I've decided to take the plunge and make a change. No, no, not a sex change, this isn't a Culture novel!

I've moved my blog to Wordpress. I think it offers me more flexibility than Blogger.com, Blogger has served me well, but it's time for a change.

You can find me here.

Making it real

2006-12-20T17:15:00.000Z

I was thinking the other day about our habit of making things real that don't exist. I think the technical name is Reification.

Amazing thing when you think about it, let me try to do something here, I'm going to try to argue that Britain does not in fact exist. Though this could go for any nation.

What is Britain? A patch of land, air and water? Some buildings and cities? I don't think so. After all what is it about those things that makes them British? Put some under a microscope, analyse it, and you won't find any molecules of Britishness there at all.

In my view, Britain is a set of ideas and concepts, yes there are passports, driving licenses, all sorts of things, but subject them to the analysis above, you'll not find any Britishness. Without the idea, the concept of Britishness, they're just so much paper and ink. Our minds are responsible for making it real.

We do this with our problems as well, I've caught myself doing it a lot recently, treating problems as a physical thing. I went to a Buddhist meditation session at a local Buddhist centre last weekend, the focus there was on just how much of what you think is important isn't, it's all in your mind and it's just temporary.

I was amazed at how freer I felt when that finally sank in.

Going through changes.

2006-12-11T16:26:00.000Z

Well, it's been a while since I posted. A lot has happened, those of you who've cast an eye over my updated profile will have guessed that my long term relationship is over and I'm trying to find my way on my own again. It's a difficult time and I'm just taking things one day at a time.

Its been a huge change in my life and the ramifications of this are still being played out. I can't help but feel that these things happen for a reason, and I'm focussing on what I've learned from the last three and a half years and just getting into being back in the Black Country.

I've been looking at things and I've realised that as things gradually settle, I have a chance to completely revisit my core beliefs/interests and explore new avenues of interest. The whole thing is tinged by sadness that I have nobody to share it with.

Single willed

2006-11-24T15:59:00.000Z

I've been reflecting that a divided will halves your power. I've been trying it at work, if I do somethign else while waiting for calls, then I find that I can easily be off balance when they arrive. Whereas if I try not to surf or do anything not strictly work related, I find that I react much better. Even if it is work related, I find that it's better to set time aside to concentrate on it fully.

This is another reason I dislike multitasking, I always thin of it as the ability to do two things half as well.

Star Wars Character Quiz

2006-11-09T14:29:00.000Z

What the hell, it's Friday....

Your results:
You are Qui-Gon Jinn

Qui-Gon Jinn		67%
Chewbacca		64%
Obi-Wan Kenobi		63%
R2-D2		60%
Yoda		60%
Lando Calrissian		55%
Luke Skywalker		54%
An Ewok		54%
C-3PO		52%
Boba Fett		52%

Overall, you're a pretty well balanced person.
But maybe you focus a little too
much on the here and now.
Think about the future before its too late.

(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)

Click here to take the Star Wars Personality Test

Experts

2006-11-09T12:40:00.000Z

I've been coming to the conclusion just recently that there's really no such thing as an expert.

Think about it, the only thing that is constant is change, so that must mean that whatever knowledge anyone has is always going out of date. In Taijiquan, all the people I've seen are constantly learning and developing their skills, surely the definition of expert is someone who knows everything about their field? In my chosen field of IT, change is quite rapid and constant, it can be a constant game of catch up.

I've said before that in my opinion, if you can get a very solid mastery of the basics in any field you're sorted, and you can easily build on that in the moment. One of the things I've learned from Tai Chi practice is that it's pointless to try and remember lists of moves.

Get the basics right, build on them, react from them. I don't think you can go too far wrong.

Faith and society

2006-11-07T21:21:00.000Z

The question that seems to be bubbling under the surface of things right now is the role of faith in society.

Now, in general they mean religious faith, but it's a question that can be aimed at spirituality as well. The separation of Church and State is a must for modern Britain, we're a multifaith society and one faith mustn't have the ear of the government to the exclusion of all others. Also, decisions made by the Government should not be influenced by religious doctrine.

The role of Atheism is an interesting one, as some of the Atheists I see these days resemble evangelical fundamentalists, I see also an element of kicking apart a dolls house there. Fair enough, if they try to get creationism into schools and pass religious doctrine off as scientific fact, but the counter attack can go too far.

Trying to eliminate Religion from society, is certain to fail, the Chinese tried state enforced atheism and it really didn't work. Spirituality is a different beast, for me it's about working with reality, and trying to understand that all our different views are just roads up the same mountain, thinking less about the rules and more about the people.

We also need to remember, science can be a source of spirituality as well, it certainly has been for me

Knowing it all.

2006-11-03T13:16:00.000Z

I was thinking about knowing the other day.

Here in the west it's sometimes practically a crime not to know it all, in my job I'm expected to be a fount of all knowledge, though truthfully a lot of it comes from a database. I was looking at science, but also at the antagonism between science and religion after reading Richard Dawkins recent article in the times.

I have to say I find the Taoist method more comforting, simply truthfully admitting that we don't know and might never know can be a very liberating experience. Of course, the Taoist view as I see it is that the important question is, do we really need to know, from a practical viewpoint does it really add anything to be like a bull at a gate after knowledge for the sake of knowing it all?

I give much Kudos to the Buddha for simply remaining silent on many issues, he knew better than to appear all knowing. Too many religions are in the business of trying to provide all the answers, which is dishonest in my view.

It's OK not to know.

Multifaith Schools

2006-10-27T12:48:00.000+01:00

I see that a source close to the Education Secretary has said that schools will be asked to ensure that they teach about different faiths in class and that faith schools will be expected to take pupils who are not of their faith or are secular.

Further to this, teachers will be encouraged to break down barriers between faiths and schools should try to help improve interfaith relations in the community.

According to the Times, this move was quickly opposed by Catholic, Jewish and Muslim groups and the government backed down. Now, that really is pandering to special interests, after all, regular schools take faith pupils, why not the other way round? Unless, you're frightened of something? Letting the wolf into the door, maybe.....

The Times newspaper suggested that these groups saw this as the beginning of secularisation, well, the horse is long gone from that stable. Britian has a large secular segment to it's population, and the long term trend is for it to increase. In my view, the best course of action by far, is for everyone across creeds and faiths to engage openly and equally. I can't see how we'll solve our current cultural challenges by building walls when we should be building bridges..

Update: Looks like it's turning into a bit of a row, BBC News Coverage here.

Sprituality and Secular Society

2006-10-27T12:27:00.000+01:00

I've trying to put something into words for a little while about the place of spirituality in a Secular society. I have felt for a while that we need to develop spiritually more than religiously, and that simple spirituality can offer us better guidance than formal straight jacketed religions. I remembered this quote from the Dalai Lama, which to be honest, pretty much says everything I wanted to say:

"…I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another, an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of metaphysical or supernatural reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or nirvana. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, rituals, prayer and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit - such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony - which bring happiness to both self and others. While ritual and prayer, along with the questions of nirvana and salvation, are directly connected with religious faith, these inner qualities need not be, however. There is thus no reason why the individual should not develop them, even to a high degree, without recourse to any religious or metaphysical belief system. This is why I sometimes say that religion is something we can perhaps do without. What we cannot do without are these basic spiritual qualities."

Can slower be faster?

2006-10-26T16:03:00.000+01:00

During my day I handle a lot of problems, the pressure is to get things done as quickly as possible. When things aren't done quite right by the analysts, the calls are passed back to the service desks and we have to revisit our old work.

Taking a slightly slower approach usually means having to redo less work and more time to think means providing higher quality information, which helps things flow better and means individual problems actually get handled faster. Outside of work, I find it a slower approach gives better quality of life as I can take time to appreciate the world a bit better. Of course, some folk thrive on going at breakneck speed, fair play to them. But for a long time my feeling has been that we're turning into a society of rushers, with no time to stop any appreciate what we've got.

The sign on my Fiancee's wall says "Of course I don't look busy, I did it right the first time!", I have to say I prefer "The more haste, the less speed".

Ecological footprint

2006-10-24T15:05:00.000+01:00

I found an interesting site that allows you to measure your ecological footprint against the average one for your country, it also give suggestions on what you can do about it.

Check out ecofoot.org.

Humanity and the Environment

2006-10-24T14:02:00.000+01:00

I was reading about our impact on the environment in todays times, it seems that humanity is exceeding the Earth's ability to support us by 25%!

Each of us in the UK uses 2.2 hectares of resources to live, but the Earth can only renew 1.8 hectares. The article said there's a strong possiblity of a large scale collapse of the eco system by the middle of this century.

Once again the point was made that the UK is quite a bad offender, though there are worse out there. This just makes the point about humanity's need to get into tune with our environment. Benjamin Hoff said in the Te of Piglet that the environment would eventually turn on us, I'm reminded of the Taoist principle that when something reaches an extreme it become it's opposite. Unfortunately, unles we get proactive very quickly, it'll take an extreme event to make us change.

I can't help feeling the the emphasis is on the average Joe/Jane to make the running on this one, in this case, the big corporations and government need to be driven by public demand. What's needed is for the public to lead the way, it really is in our hands.

More on BBC News Online here.

Religions & Freedom of Speech

2006-10-23T21:52:00.000+01:00

Well, there was a program on Channel 4 tonight about Islam and freedom of speech. The question posed is "Do muslims threaten freedom of speech?". The Channel 4 Dispatches forum made interesting reading afterwards.

Now that's a bit of an inaccurate question, as there are most cetainly Muslims who hold moderate views and are not opposed to freedom of speech. With that said, there are no doubt members of every group, be it religious or political who wish that their critics would just shut up.

As I 've said before, I think that religion is too important a matter to go uncriticised. I feel that conventional book based religions are, unfortunately, much too rigid to do much to fix the points raised.

For better, or worse, we live in interesting times.

Saving Energy

2006-10-23T16:19:00.000+01:00

I was looking at both the Times and the BBC today, it seems that the UK is the worst country for energy waste in Europe.

Now I looked through a few of the things they mention, and noted with dismay that our household is guilty of doing one or two of them, mostly leaving chargers plugged in and leaving lights on and devices in standby. I can see I'm going to have to make some effort in this area, it makes me wonder how often do we use energy wasting devices when there could be a manual alternative?

For example, rather than use the PC to keep my notes and personal diary, I use paper and pen. I also find this much more satisfying, which is strange given my technophile status. Where possible, I walk instead of firing up the car, again, it feels better and gets me some exercise.

I think we could do with applying a little Wu Wei to our use of resources, try to do as much with less. When you consider the enviromental impact of a PDA vs a notebook & paper diary, you start to wonder. It's an interesting question, how many of our mod cons & gadgets could we honestly do without before it really affected us?

Personal Development

2006-10-21T17:31:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about personal development today, and it seems to me that there is a tendency to categorise personal development.

We tend to think along the lines of our roles in life, rather than looking at what underlies those roles. You have an appraisal, for example, and things are raised in the context of your job. But, surely the way you do your job is an expression of the person you are?

It seems to me that it would be better to take the approach of trying to develop (note that I don't say improve) the person you are as a whole, in the realisation that the improvements will show through in all aspects of your life, rather than just button hole your personal development into just one area of your life.

Karma and Control

2006-10-14T16:55:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about control recently. I've been looking at my finances and when you take the time to do that and then sit and think you realise that we actually hand over a great deal of control over ourselves and our futures to other people.

Consider a gym membership, typically a contract. You sign up to a 1 year contract for say, £35 per month, for example. This takes a degree of your freedom and cash for the next year, but what if your circumstances change? You now don't have as much control of your resources as you once did and may even wind up paying for something you don't use (which happened to me).

But what if, as I do, you consider Karma to simply be the long term consequences of your actions, not some mystic balance? Tying yourself into something that has long term consequences like that, is to be avoided. I know that in Taoism, we are encouraged to heed the principle of the Uncarved Block, this advises us to keep our options open and avoid lacking ourselves in a given role or worldview.

Thinking about it now, it seems that the uncarved block is a good way of not only keeping our minds open, but helping to minimise karmic consequences by avoiding us tying our own hands and reducing our options in the future.

Arnold, wisdom from bodybuilding

2006-10-10T15:56:00.000+01:00

I've been reading "Fantastic - The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger" by Laurence Leamer. I have to say, it is a very good book! Like a lot of worthwhile things in my possession, I picked it up on a whim, and I've been pleasantly surprised by it.

The book makes the point that Arnold's wisdom was learned from bodybuilding, he has said himself "Everything I learned I learned in the weight room." I thought for a minute and then realised that that isn't as odd a statement as you might think at first glance. I'm not a bodybuilder, but I've done enough sessions in weight rooms and talked to enough bodybuilders to have an idea where he's coming from.

With bodybuilding, you have to have a clear idea of where you're going, what you want to achieve. You work very methodically and in small steps, you build big muscles but you do so one rep at a time, paying attention to small details. A lot of it is mental attitude. Arnold's success owes a lot to determination and a positive attitude, I think that's admirable. I look forward to seeing what he acheives in the future.

Exercising in the real world

2006-10-05T16:17:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about gyms the other day. I used to do 6 and a half hours exercise a week, Body Combat, Thai Boxing and weights. Then one day my gym buddy and myself decided to walk to the local pub. It was uphill all the way and it damn near killed us!

It made me question, why? We worked out, did cardio, but we were out of breath, and we weren't particularly rushing. Recently, I started walking for both pleasure and fitness, after a long sedentary period. I feel a lot better than I did, but it bought that incident back to me. It's been quite surprising how a 30-45 minute walk each day makes a difference. It also makes me think about my parents generation, who never really suffered with fitness related health problems, and gyms were unheard of. Is the real root of the problem our growing alienation from the world around us? If we walked more, took more outdoor exerise, would we really need the gym?

I've been very hesitant to go back to the gym as I now feel that the best way to exercise is walking, cycling, etc, things that engage us with the real world, rather than lock us away in an airconditioned gym. Plus, I've learned more about the layout and byways of my local area by walking than I ever would have had I not started going for walks.

Impossible perfection

2006-10-03T15:47:00.000+01:00

A lot of people spend time wishing they were better, perfect in fact. You only need to look at a magazine stand in your local newsagent, have the perfect wedding/relationship/sex life/muscles, whatever.

Perfection is impossible, as the world always changes, if a perfect being existed, then that being would need to spend an enormous amount of time changing to keep up with the world. How long could anyone be expected to keep that rate of change up for without cracking up? Would you ever really be happy, never being allowed to be yourself, always at the mercy of those who are telling you what perfect is?

Should we even worry about "perfection"? In my view no. What's more important is being happy with who you are, personal development should stem from that, in the directions that you feel are important. If you keep trying to do what everyone else dictates is perfect, you start to lose control of your own future, and will always be running to keep up.

Faith schools, again.

2006-09-29T12:03:00.000+01:00

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!

Do things happen for a reason?

2006-09-27T17:01:00.000+01:00

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.

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.
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.
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.
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

The World's Shortest Personality Test

2006-09-27T15:15:00.000+01:00

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

Freedom of speech, freedom to criticise

2006-09-26T16:16:00.000+01:00

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.

The Pope and Islam

2006-09-21T12:12:00.000+01:00

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.

Critical Thought and Water.

2006-09-13T14:02:00.000+01:00

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.

The Platonic View

2006-09-10T15:52:00.000+01:00

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!

Book of Shadows - Motivation

2006-09-08T12:28:00.000+01:00

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.

Book of Shadows - Preamble

2006-09-07T13:01:00.000+01:00

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.

Taoist Book of Shadows

2006-09-06T17:24:00.000+01:00

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!

Whose Space? MySpace.

2006-09-02T18:22:00.000+01:00

Well, I finally got curious about this MySpace I'd been hearing about and signed up. It's quite interesting, there are groups and things and it seems that you can use it to easily keep up with a large network of people. There are certainly plenty of Taoists on there!

You can find my MySpace page here: Quiet Watercourse.

I think this is going to be quite interesting!

O/S Zealots

2006-09-01T19:21:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since my last post. I've been reading a bit of Chaung Tzu recently and his story about the p'eng bird rang a few rather rusty bells. The peng is a huge bird, able to fly huge distances easily, but it's seen by a small Dove..

A cicada and a young dove laughed, saying, "Now, when I fly with all my might, 'tis as much as I can do to get from tree to tree. And sometimes I do not reach, but fall to the ground midway. What then can be the use of going up ninety thousand li to start for the south?"

The crop of O/S zealots remind me of the dove in this story. This O/S is the best, or that one is the best, there is no middle ground there, they can't see past their own view point. The thing is that any given Operating System is simply a tool in a toolbox, useful in one situation but maybe not so much in another, each has its own respective strengths and weaknesses.

I feel that the best way lies between the zealots, the middle way. Use each tool as appropriate, don't think that one tool is the entire toolbox.

The Illusion of Duality

2006-08-23T15:48:00.000+01:00

I was thinking more on positive and negative again. In my previous posts I feel I've seperated and limited my definitions too much. I really should refer to them as yin and yang actions as these definitions are a bit wider than simply positive/negative or light/dark. I'd tried to explain things using western terms, but I now realise that I'm better off using the eastern terms.

If I refer to things as either light/dark, positive/negative, I feel that these have connotations that lead back to good/evil, which are purely artificial intellectual viewpoints and largely depend on a shifting point of view.

But, in addition, all things contain both yin and yang, for example if I eat an apple, then yes I am nourished, but the apple is destroyed in the process. Another example is night time, yes it's dark (yin) but there are always the moon and the stars (yang), so the position of duality is really an illusion, there is no duality and everything is really one source viewed subjectively.

Blogger beta & new layout

2006-08-18T17:14:00.000+01:00

Well, I took the plunge and migrated to the new Blogger Beta!

I already have a Google account, so I thought why not,? I'd already been working on some CSS and a new layout, but this has saved me the trouble.

I was also going to try grouping posts by subject. I've seen other folk do it and the plan was that instead of writing articles on a subject, I'd let them write themselves as the posts built up. Google have saved me the trouble of all the HTML though by adding labels to posts, you can find it on the left hand side. Not much there right now, but it's slowly being worked on!

If you try to post comments, you may find you can only do so anonymously, this is a bug in the new Blogger Beta, but put your blog URL in the bottom of your post if you want.

Seperation from the real.

2006-08-14T16:52:00.000+01:00

I started thinking more on the content of my last post, I was thinking about the last time I used my chip & pin card.

Whenever I use it, I feel no connection to my finances, yet when I have a note or coins in my hand I feel more in control and it feels realler. Am I alone in thinking that this constant pressure for the quicker, more rushed way of doing things is contributing to our seperation from the real?

Distractions from the moment

2006-08-10T15:40:00.000+01:00

I was thinking last night about the way our society prevents us from living in the moment. I was driving along last night on my way into the city centre to pick up Xenia and I was trying to ecodrive the car.

I turned off the radio and tried to relax into the moment. I noticed the sheer amount of distractions that there are in terms of roadside adverts and the like, the radio was also noticeable by it's absence. When working on my laptop, the internet is a constant distraction and if I really want to get anything done, I have to unplug the network lead.

I always used to disagree with my previous employers' policy of not allowing the radio in the office due to the distraction, but now I begin to understand their point of view.

The Power of the Dark Side.

2006-08-08T10:45:00.000+01:00

I was sat thinking last night. I'm in difficult times at the minute, but something came to mind that I read while browsing a book on Buddhist spirituality on the Evolution store in Birmingham over the weekend.

The author was of the opinion that our darker nature contains spiritual gems, anyone who's been reading me regularly will know I agree with that view. But a thread on Star Wars over at the Tea house reminded me of something I read elsewhere about the Dark Side.

We all know the character of Mace Windu, he was a very powerful Jedi. More so than Yoda, or so it's implied. Why? Because he didn't fear the dark side, to quote the Revenge of the Sith novel (p330):

There was a time when Mace Windu had feared the power of the dark; there was a time when he had feared the darkness in himself. But the Clone Wars had given him a gift of understanding: on a world called Haruun Kal, he had faced his darkness and had learned that the power of darkness is not to be feared.

He had learned that it is fear which gives the darkness power.

He was not afraid. The darkness had no power over him. But-

Neither did he have power over it.

This concurs with my own feelings on the matter, that your own dark side only has power over you if you fear it. This is also true of a dark time or situation, if you realise that you always have some power in any situation, you don't have to fear it and so it has much less power over you.

A first look at Buddhism

2006-08-07T16:15:00.000+01:00

I've been looking more into Buddhism quite recently, I was pleasantly surprised by how much it has in common with Taoism and I'm finding an awful lot to like in it.

One of the quibbles I have is with the undertaking that forbids harming any living thing.
I went hunting on the web and found the the Buddhist code that governs the life of monks allows self defence. I was also surprised to find that there are Buddhist inspired martial arts, for example Taekwondo can be traced to the 6th century Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The Shaolin Order, also, are famed for their martial ability.

Now, as someone who trains in Taijiquan, and has some experience in other martial arts, then I see no reason that a person shouldn't be allowed to use martial techniques purely in self defence. In my opinion, it's a question of showing self restraint and using the minimum nessecary force, not actually trying to vindictively hurt an attacker.

Sci-Fi

2006-08-04T12:13:00.000+01:00

So, I hear the the new Star Trek movie may have Matt Damon cast as a young Capt Kirk. Now I'll put my hand up to being an SF fan, but IMO Star Trek should've been laid to rest for a good long break. Now I know there are some very good Sci-Fi series out there, I'm a fan of the new Battlestar Galactica and loved Red Dwarf. But I feel that TV and movie SF, while good, will never get near written SF.

I've always liked William Gibson, Ian M. Banks and Arthur C. Clarke, though I really didn't think that the 2001 movie did the book justice and I'm not sure I'd ever like to see any of the Culture novels committed to film. The problem here, I think, lies with the studios and the fact that they want to stick to tried and tested formulas for things rather than experimenting.

Hmm, I think I'll put Zen and the Art aside for a while and pick up "Look to Windward" again!

Terminating climate change

2006-08-01T12:24:00.000+01:00

I read today that Tony Blair has broken ranks with the White House and cut a transatlantic deal with the state of California regarding emission reduction. Allegedly, Tony is not at all happy with George Bush's approach to the issue of climate change.

I personally find this to be a welcome move, Governor Schwarzenegger seems to have a more positive approach to climate change. I hope it helps start the ball rolling on US emission reduction, and also helps establish Tony Blair as not being a poodle for the White House. I also hope this helps to move the White House to a more positive position on the issue of climate change.

I'm reminded of a sentiment from the author Iain M Banks on change in a political of social hedgemeony from his essay "A Few Notes on the Culture":

"while the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once"

Another quiz.

2006-07-26T14:17:00.000+01:00

So I'm lurking at home chilling out, now my laptop is back up I've upgraded my Ubuntu PPC install to the latest and greatest, and then this pops up during my idle surfing....

Which OS are You?

I definitely take that as a compliment!

Gender roles

2006-07-21T12:51:00.000+01:00

I was reading an article a few days ago, one of those "Battle of the sexes, men under siege" sort of things. A decision by the government to extended fertility treatment to lesbian couples and single women, without needing for a male figure in the childs life, had sparked a load of articles in newspapers about the redundancy of the male.

I think what's redundant is that way of viewing the world. What matters more is what you bring to the party as an individual, not a given gender or race. A good parent can be male or female, what counts more is the kind of role model you are and the quality of your parenting.

It's the same at work, a good staff member can be any gender or race. What matters are the qualities that the individual brings to their role. These old discriminatory prejudices are a massive negative influence, I hope we as a society can move beyond them.

Sport Relief

2006-07-17T16:39:00.000+01:00

I got involved in Sport Relief on Saturday night, it was a brilliant experience, I recommend it if you ever get the chance. I joined a large group manning a call centre at work to take calls for Sport Relief, we were part of a 7000 strong nationwide call centre.

Our little part of it in South Birmingham took 3725 calls and processed over £84,000 in donations! As part of it our managers hired an artist to do caricatures of us, you can see a small version of mine as my profile avatar.

Comic Relief is on March 16th 2007, it's in my diary already!

Intellectual breadth

2006-07-13T17:02:00.000+01:00

I've started to reread Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author was writing about us having intellectual breadth but not depth, in essence the river runs wide, but not deep. It feels like it's worse today than ever. There's more and more to know, or at least so it seems, and a never ending stream of information.

My line of work is IT, and that never stops changing, there's always more to learn. I've found that the only way to cope is to focus on the strictly relevant information, and simply keep the rest as notes. I've also been experimenting with mind mapping software, with some success.

I've also found you can go a long way by just getting your basics right, without lots of complication. For example with computer security, it's a very big and complex field, but a bit of attention to your basic setup and a few basic do's and dont's and you're quite well placed without needing a huge breadth of learning. Much easier!

Duality and evil.

2006-07-08T22:44:00.000+01:00

I've been thinking about the dualistic mindset very recently. This need to have "Them and Us", the need for evil. A need for evil? Do we need evil, or is it just the lager talking?

I think some folk do need the concept of evil. They can take the things that make them uncomfortable, that they don't like, and distance themselves easily. I suppose these things can ideologies, people or organisations. Simply package those things as "evil" and it's easy to distance yourself.

But what of the Taoist? We don't do the dualism, we recognise that positive and negative exist in the same person and, like a magnet, you need both poles for it it work. You can't distance yourself from the things that you think are negative (others may disagree) and you have to accept them. One or two of my earlier entries touched on this and I suppose this is an extension of my thinking there.

A policy of violence

2006-07-07T14:41:00.000+01:00

We did the two minutes silence at 12:00 for the victims of 7/7. It was strange to hear the whole customer service centre go quiet.

Some would say that the West is reaping the result of decades of bad foreign policy in the Middle East. It's a fair point, though for my part I believe that their policy of violence is simply not the answer.

The terrorists are not having their desired effect, their violence simply hardens resolve against them and justifies ever more repressive laws and actions. Martin Luther King and Ghandi knew the correct way of going about achieving change in the face of a more powerful regime and violence is never the answer.

The secularisation of Europe

2006-07-07T11:58:00.000+01:00

Another day, another Times article, they were talking about the Catholic church being troubled by "the creeping secularisation of Europe". They were using Spain as an example, where many people claim to belong the church but the majority don't go. The blame for a large part of the decline seems to be laid with the changing role of women, that women are more equal and have much more real power now.

Their religion seems to be partly sustained by keeping women relatively powerless, and this sounds like the same story as the Anglican church during Women's Lib in the 60's. You can't sustain a religion by putting half of the human race into relative servitude, a spiritual path should include everyone as equals, no exceptions.

Times change, the Catholic Church is in the difficult position of all dogmatic religions. Change is very difficult, look at the recent problems in Anglicanism for example. I for one doubt that it will survive in it's current form in the long term. We're seeing unprecedented change, that will require a level of change that I don't think the Vatican can make.

A small change

2006-07-05T08:56:00.000+01:00

I have to apologise for not posting so much of late, I hope to be a bit more frequent from now on. I was reading the Times the other day and an article highlighted the challenges faced by the Catholic church. Like how to make an increasingly cynical and secular actually give a damn.

I have to admit to being one of the cynics, I mean I've found the Greek Orthodox Church to be really not so bad, as I've said before. But the Catholic Church I really am cynical about.
It's interesting though how the Church only starts to change when utterly forced to, though I think this is true of any huge organisation.

It reminds me why Taoists talk of the virtue of the small. Large organisations can have lastability, but are slow to change. In our fast moving modern world, this can be a huge disadvantage. I think we'll see the Church change, but I can't help thinking that it won't be the kind of change they're thinking of, it may well be one dictated by the watercourse, not the church leaders.....

2006-06-21T13:39:00.000+01:00

I remembered this prayer the other day, it's called The Serenity Prayer, I find it quite Taoist in it's sentiment. Nobody is really sure who wrote it, some credit Reinhold Niebuhr, some Friedrich Oetinger in the 18th century, still others credit the philsopher Boethius in the 6th Century.

There are various versions in existance, I've chosen a short version as I like to keep things short and fairly simple, I've found this prayer very comforting of late.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Women priests

2006-06-14T16:15:00.000+01:00

I was reading a letter in the newspaper the other day a letter from an Anglican Bishop commenting on the division that the issue of women priests has caused in the church.

I find it odd that one gender should be considered more spiritual than the other, some of the most spiritual material I've read has been written by women!

It's tempting to take the cyncial Bill Hicks view: "Great, now it's priests of both sexes I don't listen to!", but I do find that the church has a great deal to say of spiritual benefit, if only it could get past its' issues.

Passing the spiritual buck

2006-06-11T18:21:00.000+01:00

I was taking a Da Vinci Code inspired look at Christianity the other day, and was thinking about spiritual buck passing.

It's really quite a dangerous thing to do as it places the control of your spiritual development in someone elses hands. I find it quite unsettling, simply accepting what a pastor/priest/guru says without any form of critical examination.

What happens when the preconcieved code that is handed down from past times doesn't fit, or has doubt thrown on it's reliability? How long can you paper over the cracks?

It's for reasons like this that I think critical thinking and spirituality should go hand in glove.

Values and the tide

2006-06-05T22:55:00.000+01:00

It's interesting to look at the truths we cling to.

These things look so solid, almost timeless, but are they? Lao Tzu warns us that our precious truths are totally subjective, they change with time and place. For example, what is considered beauty in one culture or era is not necessarily so in another. Many politicians try to play to the idea that ideals and values are always the same, changeless, "traditional values".

Of course, this isn't always the case. So called traditional values aren't always the best recourse, the best way is to adapt and change. A refusal to accept this puts you in the position of King Canute, trying to stop the tide, look what happened to him.

A bit of light relief.

2006-05-31T22:03:00.000+01:00

You Are Rain

You can be warm and sexy. Or cold and unwelcoming.
Either way, you slowly bring out the beauty around you.

You are best known for: your touch

Your dominant state: changing

What Type of Weather Are You?

Charity that puts you in chains.

2006-05-28T13:05:00.000+01:00

I was out with an old friend last night, it was good to catch up and have a long chat. One subject came into the conversation that we both agreed was out of order. My friend had been along to a Christian music festival, now given that he's a pagan, that was an eyebrow raiser. The subject we meandered into from there was even more so!

We all know about the various sponsor a third world child type charities. Well, my friend told me that there's a Christian charity that does a similar thing. With a catch. The child will be fed and taught, etc, but on the condition that the child is indoctrinated into and converts to Christianity. We both find this outrageous!

Charity should be given freely, without clauses. Any act of charity that puts a person in chains is not an act of charity, it is an act of enslavement.

Getting in our own way

2006-05-25T10:24:00.000+01:00

I'm amazed by how much we keep getting in our own way sometimes.

It's as if there's a little gremlin in our heads that sets us up to fail, constantly undermining us and taking any excuse to help us procrastinate. One of the things I've learned from practicing meditation is that it's possible to turn that gremlin to your advantage.

It's like Tai Chi, you use it's force against it, in meditation you use the fact your mind is wandering to remind you "Hang on, I should focusing!". So, why not use the fact your gremlin is acting up to remind you that generally, you're a lot more capable than you give yourself credit for?

Monkey with syntax

2006-05-20T22:38:00.000+01:00

I caught a report in the Times newspaper recently about the Putty Nosed Monkeys in Gashka Gumti National Park.

Scientists studying them have found that they're capable of very rudimentary syntax. Previously this was only thought possible in Humans, though there's no sign of abstract thought. For me, this helps to underline the truth that whatever airs and graces we may give our species, we're not as far removed from the animal kingdom as we like to make believe.

Alternative energy sources

2006-05-18T20:59:00.000+01:00

I was reading the Times newspaper the other day and I saw that Venezuela's president had said that if there's any action against Iran, then Middle England will have to stop using their cars. So, our over reliance on oil has now been used as a tool to threaten us with, I'd wondered how long it would take.

As much as it's up to the government to develop alternative energy sources to oil, it's up to the people to lead them. The government won't shift until it's forced to, which makes sense, in an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" kind of way. But in this, there's no choice but action, what's needed is the people to lead the way, to try to stop using our cars without need and to try to stop wasting energy.

What's amusing is the thought of the sheer panic that it would cause in the Treasury if everyone actually bought and used a bike!

Playing the role

2006-05-14T16:20:00.000+01:00

I changed jobs recently, it's been a positive experience so far.

The change brought to mind the Uncarved Block, this is one of the basic principles of Taoism, my interpretation has always been that it's about a state of mind. We often get lost in our role in life, we get so caught up in playing the role that we forget that it's just a role, a label. Doctor, Lawyer, Mother, Father, these are just labels, they don't define the spirit that exists in each of us.

Our spirits are expressed through our interactions with the world, the roles we play in life, this thought underlines the importance of seeing beyond our contrived labels to the reality beneath.

The darkness within the light.

2006-05-11T13:53:00.000+01:00

I figure I'm going to try and put a few thoughts in order regarding the Taiji symbol. I personally interpret the symbol as representing a system, be it a person or a company.

All things are made up of qualities, and each quality has it's opposite, love/hate, hot/cold, wet/dry etc. Obviously these things are subjective labels, after all what meaning does wet have for a fish? But we are purely concerened with the human viewpoint here.

In each side, there is a small piece of the other, this shows us that each thing contains it's opposite, which moderates it. Thus a storm cannot last forever, it must eventually stop. In the same way, summer can't go on forever, there must eventually be autumn, then winter.

I feel that this also acts as a guide for our behaviour. For example, if forced to use violence in self defence, we should moderate it's use, shown by the darker side of the symbol. In altruism, we should keep a guard there so that we don't get taken advantage of, as shown on the the light side. The Taji is a profound symbol, it always manages to surprise me!

Patriotism is not enough.

2006-05-04T20:04:00.000+01:00

Sorry for the delay in updates, I've just started a new job, and I'm finding my feet. We were in London over the bank holiday, doing some sightseeing. The pictures are going up in my Flickr account and a video in my Youtube account as we speak!

At one point, I happened across this monument, it's just up from Trafalgar Square.

I took one look at the inscription and knew I had to get a picture, I think this inscription has a great message for us.

It reads:

Patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone

With all the trouble that old fashioned notions of patriotism are causing, I think this is a very good reminder of how things ought to be!

Moderation in Tolerance

2006-04-26T21:24:00.000+01:00

We're urged to tolerance at all times. Indeed, without tolerance, modern society simply couldn't exist at all. However, there are those who'll take a state of tolerance and abuse it as much as they can.

In Taoism it's recognised that any extreme situation must, eventually, swing back to a balanced position. This what I mean by moderation in tolerance, that yes we should be a tolerant society, but when people abuse that tolerance, there should be sanctions applied to those people.

It's the same on a personal level, tolerant should not equal doormat. We shouldn't have to be afraid to have views and defend them with quiet, firm diplomacy when needed. But with the way things are going, any view that doesn't conform with what people want to believe as the norm is attacked. We shouldn't have to be afraid to think outside the box, as long as those views are in touch with reality and are defendable.

DRM and The Watercourse

2006-04-25T21:41:00.000+01:00

DRM is a fairly hot issue in the geek community. The notion that you can't have any control over something you've already paid for is a thorny one. Does your cash buy you a copy of the music or video, or does it only buy you the right to watch it? Frankly, this could be covered by an essay, never mind a blog entry!

Lao Tzu warns us about too much regulation and control, he believed that it was better to let people be, rather than seeking to bind them. Too many laws make criminals out of people who aren't really doing much wrong, they also threaten to make a complete ass of the law. For example, the RIAA recently prosecuted a family for music downloading, the problem is that the family doesn't even own a computer!

I personally, consider the Creative Commons to be much better aligned with The Watercourse Way, simply let people use your art or create derivative works with the only provisio that it remains in the commons.

Blogging with the flow.

2006-04-24T21:11:00.000+01:00

I've found something interesting. The very act of Blogging can be a Taoist experience.

Some days, the words flow, I can write and write, on others, it's like a mental block. Generally I think up enough material on the good days to see me through the bad ones. But on the bad ones I've learned that it's best to walk away from the keyboard, I can never force the words if they're not ready.

It's the same with the Tea House, sometimes I'm quiet, others more vocal. But I can never force it, it just happens when it's ready.

I'm convinced that this creativity flows from the subconcious mind more than the concious one, so the only way to access it is to go with the flow of the watercourse.

Dogma and The Watercourse Way

2006-04-23T22:30:00.000+01:00

Dogma

A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.
a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof

Most organised religions are dogmatic to one degree or another, I personally consider dogma to be a fairly bad thing. From my perspective dogma gets in the way when trying to follow The Watercourse Way, what happens when your dogma tries to take you against the flow? It breaks. The problem is that dogma is inflexible, the eventual effects of flowing water on inflexible things in it's path are well documented, eventually they have to give.

For me, part of the flow of Taoism is accurate correspondance with reality, if a doctrine or dogma contradicts reality, which is most likely to be in error? There are numerous examples of religious doctrine contradicting what science has revealed about the world, how then can anyone be expected to believe in a doctrine that is full of holes? Such doctrine does have wisdom in it, but that wisdom is not in the literal interpretation. Something religious dogmatists would do well to consider in my view.

This is the reason I stopped putting my faith in religious doctrine and one of the major reasons I find Taoism such a good fit.

Spirituality and religion.

2006-04-22T22:53:00.000+01:00

Wait, aren't they the same? In my opinion no, spirituality provides a basis on which all religion is built. Spirituality is the cake, religion is simply the icing. To continue the analogy, you can change the icing on the cake, even take the icing away, the cake remains fine. But if you take away the cake, the icing is left in a mess, with nothing to hold it up.

Coming from an Anglican background, I'm no stranger to organised religion. As I'm due to marry into a Greek family, I'm going to have at least a passing acquaintance with the Greek Orthodox Church, but I can see the commonalities on the spiritual side.

One thing I can see is that spirituality can be done without religion, eastern philosophies tend to be a good way of starting on that path, also this tends to give a more understanding approach to other beliefs. Religion without spirituality however, is just a shell. People will attend church mainly to keep up appearances, it becomes a very ornate social club. The other very real danger of the spiritual disconnection is that the dogma becomes more important than spiritual growth. That's when the real trouble starts....

Battlestar Galactica Game

2006-04-21T08:15:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm going to stay off on my Sci-Fi tangent for a little longer.

I've come across a fan written Battlestar Galactica game, it's based on the new series, not the old one and they're making a lot of progress, the gameplay videos are awesome!

Here's the link: Battlestar Galactica: Beyond The Red Line. Well worth a visit!

Which Star Wars character are you?

2006-04-20T08:06:00.000+01:00

I've been a bit on the serious side lately, so it's time for a bit of light relief! This one is courtesy of my fellow traveller on the watercourse A.V. Michaels, you can find his blog at Surfing The Tao.

If I were a Star Wars character, I would be:
Qui-Gon Jinn.
You're very in touch with nature and greatly value living things, even the more inferior creatures. Your calm demeanor is admired by many and you don't sweat the small stuff and things you can't change. You're kind, quiet, and strong.

Take the
" Which Star Wars Character Am I?" Quiz
by Always Two There Are

This is quite cool, as Qui-Gon Jinn is one of the Star Wars characters I admire.

Green politics

2006-04-19T13:15:00.000+01:00

I noticed that the Conservative party is making promises about their new environmentally friendly policies. They promise to lead a new green revolution in Britain.

Apparently, they plan to run council vehicles on Biodiesel, starting with a pilot project in Kent and claim to have the highest recycling and composting rates of any of the main three parties.

While I applaud any positive environmental commitment from any of the three main parties, I'm all to well aware of what happens in politics, these promises are all too soon forgotten.

I honestly think that if we're to have a green Britain, the best way is to give incentives to the public to use environmentally friendly alternatives.

Let me clarify my position a little.

2006-04-18T16:41:00.000+01:00

I think it's time I took the chance to clarify my position on Creationism. I do oppose it, not out of blind hate.

My problem with it is twofold. Firstly, it fails to provide any evidence for it's assertions, as a movement it wants the respectability of science, hance the term "Creation Science", but doesn't want to go through the method that brings that respect.

This leads to my second problem with it. The lengths that are gone to in order to distort science, befuddle the layman and raise a smokescreen. I have seen logical fallacies and distortions used quite blatantly in articles and essays by Creationists and have heard of intimidation against people who oppose them.

Just thought I'd get that off my chest!

It's a cat's world.

2006-04-17T12:50:00.000+01:00

I'm sat here watching our cats at play. I'm amazed at the way they simply play, anything can become a cat toy! Ours have a habit of doing fuzzy escape artist tricks as well.

It's amazing, they simply sit quietly and watch the world go by, but come to some very clever conclusions. Mia, for instance has now worked out door handles. They've also worked out that if they get the timing and hang around the front door first thing in the morning, and when we get home at night they can avoid the effort of having to use the cat flap!

Sit quietly, pay attention, don't let things get too complicated. I think there's a definite lesson to be learned from them!

A Taoist Easter

2006-04-16T11:20:00.000+01:00

Happy Easter! Now as a secular non-Christian, I don't take the Easter story literally. It's more of an illuminating story as far as I'm concerned, positive, uplifting, but not literally true. So, from my own viewpoint, what message does Easter have for me as a Philosophical Taoist? What can a non-believer derive from a Christian story?

Well, to summarise my understanding of the story, Jesus overcomes death itself and changes things for mankind forever, however he must still ascend to heaven as his time here is done.

The message I get is one of the impermanence of things, all things change and no-one is exempt. Jesus changed things for everyone, people who supported him, even people who weren't connected. In the Celtic legends, there is the story of a hero who at the time of the crucifixion felt it happen, and was so affected that he drew his sword and hewed down trees till the effort killed him, our actions change things, sometimes for the last people we'd expect!

There is another subtext here, stemming from the Crucifixion, Jesus has to die in order for the changes to happen. This highlights another Taoist theme, that destruction must proceed creation. Change is the creation of a new status quo, but the old order must be destroyed in order to be replaced, ths is true of every change, no exceptions. The death of Jesus is an allegory for that destruction of the old order, his rebirth for the birth of the new order.

Our third theme is his ascension into heaven, this is clearly a message that all things must end. No matter how powerful and important you are, you can't resist change and you can't stay on beyond your time. This reminds us to value our time here, whether you accept reincarnation or not, this incarnation is a one off and should be cherished as such, it'll never come again.

The Easter story then, does have a message for Taoists, but then this simply shows that no matter who you are, there is a rich vein of spiritual wisdom that underpins all our beliefs.

A secular state

2006-04-15T17:33:00.000+01:00

Things are looking interesting if you read the right papers. There was an editorial in the Daily Express on Friday regarding a public library that had refused an Iranian Christian group permission to post flyers about an event they were planning. Of course, no religious notices at all are allowed in libraries and it's been that way for years.

This outraged the papers editor who chided those involved for forgetting Christianity's "Special Place" in this country. Not a day before, they were taking fire at the government over a law that banned marriages of convenience. but had failed to ban them in the Church of England as the priests "closely question" the couple. Of course, the law was challenged and beaten on Human Rights grounds.

Now, let's get this in perspective. The first incident shows an unbiased secular policy working as intended, the second incident could quite easily have been avoided all together if a proper, unbiased secular policy had be in place!

The point that should be made is that a large portion of the UK is non Christian, and the figure gets higher the young the age group. The only sane way forward at this point is a secular government and the seperation of Church and State in Britain!

You can find the BBC/ICM poll on religious denomination here.

Acupuncture.

2006-04-14T13:15:00.000+01:00

I was reading the newspaper the other day and I came across a centre page feature on Acupuncture. It seems to be getting a lot more attention these days, this article focussed on four women who'd failed to concieve via every "conventional" treatment, but who had great success via Acupuncture. Furthermore, in Men's Health this month they mention research that shows acupuncture might be beneficial for certain types of Cancer!

In an earlier post I briefly touched on science finding out more about Acupuncture. It's a very odd position to find myself in, escpecially given my views on scientific accuracy, at the moment I feel like science has it pegged up to a point, but there's more.

It's as if there's a whole layer of things hidden away, and science is just starting to maybe peel back the cover and peek inside.

I think things are going to get very interesting as they learn more.

Another link in the evolutionary chain.

2006-04-13T13:10:00.000+01:00

My Google Reader pointed me at an interesting piece of news, a cache of fossils has been found in Ethiopia that fills in a significant link in the Human evolutionary chain.

This simply provides further proof of the fact of Human evolution, and one more nail in the Creationist coffin.

More details can be found here.

Science, Tolerance and the Tao.

2006-04-12T21:16:00.000+01:00

I made a post on the Tea House about the Royal Society lecture, the resulting thread made me stop and think.

Philosophical Taoism is about taking careful notice of the world and trying to live as much harmony with it as possible, you can't allow sacred cows to get in the way. What matters is harmony with the Tao in your situation or peace.

It's similar with Science, Scientists have to take careful account of reality and attempt to explain it as accurately as possible. Science is a powerful tool for Taoists and one I think we should be taking full advantage of.

I've seen the view that we should be tolerant of other beliefs, and I have no problem with that. But what if those beliefs clash with observed reality, if they're plain wrong, and all the available evidence points against them? Creationism is a belief that so strongly contradicts the available evidence that it's not even a bad joke, many proponents have used deceit and trickery to promote it, in the UK one millionaire is sneaking it into schools he sponsors via the back door. When questioned in the commons, Tony Blair attempted to distract attention by referring to the overall record of the schools. Even the Prime Minister can't defend it!

So, if a belief can't stand up to scrutiny, can't be promoted on it's own merits and has to be sneaked in with dirty tricks, what does that say about it? That it's just plain wrong, and the sooner it's left behind the better!

More FUD, the alleged new Linux virus.

2006-04-11T18:30:00.000+01:00

Well, there's been an interestng turn up for the books. Kaspersky Labs has been trumpted about a new virus that infects both Linux and Windows, called Virus.Linux.Bi.A.

Now the interesting thing is that things is purely a supposed proof of concept, no need for such alarm bells yet, though Kaspersky is a Microsoft partner, so on Redmond's past form who knows?

Now, some caveats:

Firstly the code can only run as the local user, with no elevated priviledges, as it would on a Windows system, so the potential damage is limited.
For such a thing to work on Linux, the user would have to download and then execute the program, no fancy automatic scripting here.
Setting the default file creation permissions to exclude the the 'x' bit on any of the octets would help guard against that as well. Obviously it's not a total cure, with sufficient social engineering, the user could still be conned into running the file.

Admittedly, Linux isn't perfect and I've no doubt that there will eventually be more serious malware. But on a technical level, the O/S doesn't have half the avenues for potential infection as I hope I've helped show above, I know where I'd rather be!

Balance and Darkness.

2006-04-11T13:53:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about my post on The Dark Side of the Tao the other day. I'd had a conversation recently about the way that a lot of racial minorities are quick enough to claim racism, but also quick enough to perpetrate it against others.

I think that this, among other things, comes down to the inability of our dualistic worldview to deal with the darkness in our nature. This darkness is there is each of us, it can be denied but never destroyed. In dualistic religion and the philosophy, we are supposed to repress our darker impulses and refuse to acknowledge them. I think that the whole belief in a war between good and evil, a "God" and a "Devil" is a huge metaphor for that.

As I've opined previously, this repression means that when balance is restored the pressure has built up and the darkness is expressed ferociously. To repress and deny a huge part of our nature is an irresponsible mistake. Once you're aware of that, it's easier to see how dangerous this mentality is these days, how much damage and pain it's causing. Once you know where the darkness comes from, and you're aware of it, you can redirect it's energy to assist you in avoiding that sort of behaviour.

For example, religious or racial discrimination. This stems from our tribal past, when to belong to a tribe meant conformity with a set of rituals, beliefs and behaviours. People of other tribes were competitors and were to be distrusted, the tribes became larger and eventually nations replaced tribes, but that mentality remains. Once you're aware of it, you can redirect it's energy in an almost Tai Chi like way, thus using it to reinforce a more positive, non-discriminatory mode of behaviour.

It's worth a try, we need everyone no matter race or creed to work for a more tolerant society. The alternative .... now that path really does lead into the darkness!

Science Vs Creationism

2006-04-10T13:50:00.000+01:00

Well, this is a big event. Tomorrow night, The Royal Society will launch a high profile counter attack on Creationism by Science.

The lecture will be delivered by Professor Steve Jones a leading genetics expert. You can find details on the Royal Society's website here. I've been looking forward to something like this happening, it's about time there was a concerted media offensive against this half assed Creationist bullshit. It's been creeping into the UK by the back door recently, and frankly, it needs to be challenged.

Faith schools and fundamentalism

2006-04-10T08:10:00.000+01:00

Well, here's an interesting read, somewhat old, but still of interest!

It's about UK faith schools, there have been calls for them to stop recieving state funding, but also there are concerns about the influence of fundamentalist school sponsors with agendas and money to burn, who could use their influence to present their own narrow minded points of view to school pupils.

I notice that the Government is claiming that the schools are popular, but statistics can be made to say anything you please, as I've demonstrated before. I think we should recall what's been done over the years to massage and spin the UK's unemployment figures.

My own view is that faith schools shouldn't recieve a penny of state funding. The state has to remain neutral and secular, away from religious fundamentalism. This is the whole point of the seperation of church and state thing, but also, sponsored funding should be more tightly controlled and it should be illegal to attach strings to the money.

Goodbye British Democracy?

2006-04-09T14:05:00.000+01:00

I've been downed with a touch of food poisoning the last day or so, so I must apologise for not updating as usual.

I had a heads up courtesy of my local LUG (Linux User Group) mailing lists on a piece of legislation that our government are trying to push through called the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Bit of a mouthful. So what's the deal? Nothing less than the end of British parliamentary democracy, that's what! This bill will give ministers these powers:

It grants any minister the ability to amend, replace, or repeal existing legislation.
Ministers can make major changes to the law without Parliament being able to examine them properly.
The minister involved can amend any existing legislation; nothing is protected. Including the bill itself!
Ministers could also give the power to pass laws to other individuals, who are not necessarily elected.

The real worry is that this bill is in real danger of becoming law, and the government has rejected any attempts to add safeguards to the paltry one already in place!

You can find out more here at Save Parliament, and UK residents can write to their MPs here at writetothem.com.

I've already contacted my local MP to voice my concerns and I strongly urge all UK residents to do likewise!

An Eclipse from the ISS, nuclear power.

2006-04-07T13:55:00.000+01:00

I recently came across this picture here. It shows the solar eclipse of March 29th as seen from the ISS.

I wanted to share it as I feel it underlines how fragile and precious our planet is, and how much we're a part of a huge system which extends far beyond our world.

On another note, my fellow traveller on the watercouse, The Rambling Taoist has made an informative and alarming post regarding the nuclear power industry, whch I strongly encourage everyone to read, especially if you're in the UK!

HAL, technology and spirit

2006-04-07T08:10:00.000+01:00

I came across this news story recently. It's a good read.

The short version is that a climber is going to carry Seiji Uchida, a Japanese quadriplegic to the top of a Swiss mountain. Pictures of the mountain helped bouy his spirits during his convalesence and he's decided to visit it in person.

This is a cool story by itself, but the even cooler part? The climber will be assisted by a HAL robotic exo-skeleton. I like stories like this, technology assisting a human being in achieving his dream.

A lot of people take a negative view of technology, that technology is somehow the enemy of the human spirit, Robert M. Pirsig touches on it in Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance. Of course, there's good and bad to be said about technology, but it's all about how you use the tools.

Personally, I think technology can assist us in our spirituality, the internet being a prime example. As long as it's used as a tool and not as a crutch, it can be our greatest asset.

Well, it's a body blow for Intelligent Design....

2006-04-06T13:50:00.000+01:00

It's a bad day to be a supporter of Intelligent Design, scientists have found a fossil that bridges the evolutionary connection between animal life exisiting in the sea and then making the move onto land. Check out the story here courtesy of the Guardian newspaper.

Not only does this shows that opponents of evolution are in a very King Canute type position, but it shows the incredible predictive power of science. The scientists could predict what they were looking for, and even where to look with a high degree of accuracy.

Quite simply, this is a massive body blow for opponents of Evolution, it shows what happens when you let indoctrinated religious rhetoric rule your world view to the point that you're unable to make an objective assessment of what's right in front of you.

The beauty of Taoism is it's all about of taking account of nature and the universe and keeping an open mind, it works much better with science than anything else I've seen.

Bloat and the Wu-Wei for computers.

2006-04-06T08:13:00.000+01:00

I see Nicholas Negroponte, the creater of the $100 laptop, has criticised the IT industry (including the Linux crowd) for putting out bloated products. In my own view, he's completely right to do this and he echoes my own feelings on the matter totally.

A major theme of Taoism is keeping things simple and small, the simpler and smaller you keep things the less there is to go wrong and the less overhead they take. This also is part of working in harmony with the system you're within, in this case the computer systems you're developing for, Wu-Wei for computers, if you will.

Inefficiently hogging system resources is about as far from harmony with the computer as you can get, not to mention causing disharmony between your software and it's users. It's not all doom and gloom, the GNOME desktop team, for example, have recently started to do wonders with their software's peformance.

Let's hope everyone else listens, we need to change the downward trend.

A year older.

2006-04-05T13:15:00.000+01:00

So I'm a 31 today, it's only a pity I have to spend it working, but them's the breaks.

I don't really feel any different, but I've been thinking recently about aging, and I don't think you really get to know yourself till your third decade. I seemed to spend my twenties finding my feet, all the real development, both personally, spiritually and professionally seems to have happened since I hit the big three-zero.

I'd be interested to hear feedback on how other people feel on this, does life begin at 30?

Pandora's Box

2006-04-05T08:15:00.000+01:00

I like to keep on eye on cool new things on the web, so I'd encourage everyone to check out Pandora. It's mostly RIAA tunes, but it's an extremely interesting concept!

You have to supply a valid US ZIP code to get signed up, but it lets you create custom radio stations and then rate the songs it plays you. I supplied a California ZIP code, but I figure it's on my head not theirs. It changes the playlist depending on your ratings, so it's kinda of like having your own DJ.

The RIAA alienate yet more potential customers

2006-04-04T13:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I find out this morning that the music industry is launching yet more lawsuits against file sharers in Europe. What a great way to utterly alienate your customers!

Now, I don't share music, but if I did and I got targetted by one of these lawsuits, it would only make me resolve never to buy from the record industry again. What people don't realise is that you have a choice. Seriously.

What the RIAA don't want you to know is that you can get good music independently of them.

Check out this page of RIAA free CDs at freeculture.org, also check out the Creative Commons Audio page.

Taoism , Jedi and Star Wars

2006-04-04T08:15:00.000+01:00

This is kind of a continuation from that quiz I posted a few days ago. Star Wars (more accurately the Jedi) always struck me as being similar to Taoism.

So, as I like both, I've been poking around a little further. I've dropped a couple of links in below. It's actually fascinating the way things have come full circle. The whole fictional Force/Jedi things being inspired by Taoism and Buddhism, then coming full circle and manifesting as a religion in it's own right.

The Tao of Star Wars

The Jedi Force as Religion - Faith in Star Wars

The Dark Side of The Tao

2006-04-03T08:15:00.000+01:00

Light and Dark, thanks to films like Star Wars, it's powerful imagery. In most spirituality too, we're encouraged to favour the light, to utterly exclude the darkness. It this a good thing? Im not so sure that it is.

It's nessecary to understand that the darkness isn't evil harmful or negative, but it can have it's benefits, it's share of the beauty. We have to remember that the darkness and the light are complimentary, two sides of the same coin. To deny one of them only gives it more power, eventually balance will be restored, and the worse the denial the more devastating the swing back to balance will be.

Taijiquan has a lot to teach us here, it can be practised for health reasons and it makes a good calming meditative technique, not a replacement for sitting meditation though. But within the form are the seeds of a potentially deadly martial art, and in order to practise Taijiquan properly you need both the light and the darkness. I really think there's a lesson in that.

When the going gets tough

2006-04-01T11:45:00.000+01:00

I got involved in a thread over at the Tea House recently, and it started me thinking about bad times. Many of us see ourselves as spiritual people, and that's easy to see when things are going our way. But when the going gets tough, and the cracks in our composure start to show, we often feel like we've failed spiritually.

I feel that there's a tendency to overlook our very human limitations, we over-focus on the nice things and forget that there are other nastier traits there as well. When these traits surface, we're shocked because we'd been so busy tending to one side of things, we'd quite neglected the other side.

These things are part of our nature, we try to pretend they're not there and we set ourselves up for failure by trying to match up to the image we have of our spiritual idols. Thing is, they were human too, we just never got to see the nasty side of them.

When the going gets tough, we may not match up to our lofty ideals, but that doesn't make us spiritual failures. These times can be as much a source of true spiritual development as the good times.

More media.

2006-03-31T08:15:00.000+01:00

Well I've thrown some more media files into my Flickr and Youtube accounts.

They're from a little day trip we made last year to Morewellham Quay in Devon. I know they're old, but they've made good desktop wallpaper for me over the last year, so I figured I'd share them.

A Complex Vista or a Linux Swarm?

2006-03-30T13:10:00.000+01:00

I was lurking in my Google Reader the other day checking the news and I noticed a story about the Windows Vista release date slipping again. Now when given the choice, I tend to reach for Ubuntu Linux, so this news doesn't bother me. What interested me is the reason, the fact is that Windows has grown so big and complex that it's giving Microsoft real headaches.

From a Taoist viewpoint, this sort of monolithic complexity is a real no-no. Far better, the more modular Unix and GNU/Linux approach, with a collection of small programs that each do one job and do it well. Small programs can have functionality added quickly and improvements and fixes will help everything that depends on them.

This is a much better approach than trying to create a huge monolith. Firstly, bits can be added or removed to tailor the system to a specific task, secondly new functionality can be easily built on top of the standard tools, anyone who's tried their hand BASH scripting can testify to this.

But a Linux install can take hundreds of Megabytes or more, isn't that a monolith? No, each component comes from a different development team, and they are drawn together into a cohesive distribution.

This model isn't a lumbering monolith, it's a collection of smaller more agile units working together, I think a good word is "swarm".

Resorting to FUD

2006-03-29T13:10:00.000+01:00

A news item came to my attention the other day, it was from a consulting firm that was making all sorts of claims about why Windows was better than Linux, etc. The thing was, I could shoot most of them down, even without doing any research! Annoyingly, I can't find it in my reader or I'd post a link. This isn't the first time that FUD has been used against OSS, and it's usually shot down in flames fairly quickly.

Now I personally believe that if the tool is right one for the job then you use it. In some situations, it'll be Windows and in some Linux, both are just tools in a toolbox. Each has it's strengths and weaknesses, my own leanings are obvious from my previous posts but I currently use both Windows and Linux at work and home.

When I see a company resorting to FUD to promote it's products, I start wondering. It seems to me that if a company needs to do that, or to pay others to do so on it's behalf, then you have to not only question their ethics but you have to question the prospects of their product.

Either line of questioning leads me to the conclusion that it's worth investigating alternative tools.

Focus, concentrate ... Hmm, not quite.

2006-03-28T13:05:00.000+01:00

In many of the things we do everyday, we are required to focus and concentrate. There's a slight problem though, we tend to do it inefficiently. Consider, you try to concentrate, so are you concentrating? Or is your focus on trying to concentrate, not actually on the job you're doing?

Multi-tasking is another thing, how on earth are you expected to concentrate is you have to keep your mind on your other tasks? It's an interesting problem, and certainly one that I've had myself.

I always find that the Taoist principle of Wu-Wei comes in handy, I always try to relax into what I'm doing. Instead of trying to force my focus, I allow myself to focus, I also find meditation works better like this. Multi-tasking is simpler this way, I find that relaxing into it helps you to keep from getting flustered and that leads to easier multitasking.

It's always important not to force it, if you try to force it, you just trip yourself up. The point of Wu-Wei is to let it flow, not to get in your own way, this needs a lot of practice though.

Judgement, my new article

2006-03-27T13:10:00.000+01:00

Well, it's about that time again. I've got a few more views to air, this time I try to order my thoughts on the topic of Judgementalism.

You can find the article here. If you fancy a bit of further reading, you can find a list of my articles here. The site that hold all this can be access from the My Sites section on the left hand side of my blog.

On a less serious note.

2006-03-24T20:59:00.000Z

Xenia found a groovy quiz the other day, and also predicted every answer I gave.

That's my girl!

how jedi are you? :: by lawrie malen

Islam to Christianity.

2006-03-24T20:32:00.000Z

I came across this story on BBC News today and I strongly encourage everyone to read it.

It concerns Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Muslim who has converted to Christianity. Anyone who knows me will know that I care little for organised religion, but this case highlights something I'd like to comment on.

I've talked before about the need for moderate Muslims to take back their religion, as I believe that the militant extremists are doing a massive disservice to the people they claim to speak for.

What this story shows is the close-minded position of religious militants of all persuasions. Many religions claim to be peaceful, tolerant, and kind, but only on their terms and conditions. I've found that the less dogmatic religions (Taoism, Buddhism, etc) are far more tolerant and peaceful as they are less inclined to enforce a point of view, the teachers aren't threatened by dissent, in fact they welcome discussion as it serves to further our ability to work in harmony with the world.

As far as conversions go, a Taoist may decide to change his or her beliefs, but that's always seen as their choice. Frankly, I think a line from Star Wars - A New Hope can be adapted here:
"The more you tighten your grip, the more believers will slip through your fingers!"

This is getting ridiculous!

2006-03-20T13:55:00.000Z

I saw this and thought they were joking, unfortunately, they're not. Marvel Comics and DC Comics have tried to jointly enforce trademark the term "Super Hero".

This is ridiculous, OK, superheroes as currently recognised are largely an American creation and we can mostly thank Superman for that. But the whole genre goes back much further, to Tarzan, Dick Tracy, The Phantom and Zorro. Even in other countries, there are certainly plenty in Japanese Anime and in Britain, Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and many other 2000AD characters come to mind.

You can find more info and commentary here on Slashdot, and here on BoingBoing.

The Tao Te Ching warns us what happens when you try to over regulate something and enforce your will through legislation. All this will do is generate bad publicity and ultimately they'll do their own cause damage.

New photos and videos

2006-03-16T21:39:00.000Z

Well, I finally got off my backside and uploaded some new content to Flickr and YouTube!

On YouTube you can find some concert footage of Duran Duran from Earls Court in December 2005. On Flickr I've had a quick rearrange and uploaded some more photos. Firstly, a nice night photo of the Birmingham Wheel. Secondly, a small selection from our trip to New York last April, these are fairly sober as they're of Ground Zero but I do want to share them.

You can find the links to my Flickr and YouTube sites on the right hand side of my Blog.