Physical Taoism

Here's another essay I have created for The Rambling Taoists.  You can read it there too, where it will likely generate comment.  Or not.

Physical Taoism

On the occasion of Trey’s recent un-birthday, I remarked that he had yet to reach the real milestone, the 60th, which in traditional Taoist, and Asian cosmology generally, is a significant one.  There is a sixty-year cycle based in the wuxing and stem and branch theory.  Before dismissing this as not germane to the “philosophical” thrust of this blog, please note that I consider the philosophical/religious distinction somewhat arbitrary, made by westerners cherry-picking and interpreting the texts and traditions for support of pre-existing socio-political or personality predispositions.  Although there is ritualistic temple-oriented Taoism, the underlying principles of Tao and the cultural and historical milieu in which they developed are one (just as western thought and “practice” is rooted in Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian attitudes).  Although we don’t generally do it, you can make a distinction, I suppose, between “philosophical” Christianity and “religious” Christianity, but really only someone outside or sailing against the tradition is likely to do that.

The 60-year cycle though, to this yin creature, makes sense, and it suggests to me a physical Taoism that is referred to in both the “philosophical” and “religious” realms. Taoists have long been preoccupied with the physical maintenance and condition of the body to be in balance in the world. For women, the physical connection with the universe is for most of our life, a chronic condition. One of my first qigong teachers, a kind and sensitive one-time karate champion, once said, sympathetically, “It’s hard to be a woman.”

In a post comment earlier about tattoos and Barbie dolls (strange, the topics that turn up here) I voiced my concern about the early puberty of girls in westernized culture, even before I read the article (a recurring theme over the past decade) in the most recent issue of Time magazine.  (There is also some concern that boys may be subject to early puberty, but it seems less easy to measure, and I sensed a so-what attitude, “so they ejaculate early, boys will be boys.”)  And, concerning the other side of the coin, in yet another memoir by one of the hip generation of women discovering menopause, Sandra Tsing Lo wrote in the Atlantic that, “all women are different” (from each other, to say nothing of men)…but suggested that maybe the menopause, generally complete by 60, is a returning to the girls we once were.  That is, our reproductive cycling is perhaps the out-of-norm, not the other way around.

It is my observation, from that yin sensitivity to physical cycles, that at this certain age, women, and men too, have the opportunity to return to the personhood we were developing at 12, but which was so rudely interrupted by the biological destiny thrust upon us by the universe (and now, too soon, like an artificial climate change phenomenon). Women who found complete identity in the aspects of this destiny spend their later years in a Joan Collins drive to stay attractive, cling to younger men, or if of the nurturing persuasion, obsess on grandchildren, or become social moms, putting notable noble nurturing energy into community causes.  But some of us may be glad to be rid of that entire identity, still yin, but returning to the wonder of childhood—learning, exploring, creating, and playing with the energy of a 10-year-old, albeit with five decades of acquired wisdom and experience, to use or abandon.

I recently have taken up the paintbrush, a Chinese one, and have been drawing and painting with abandon and fervor, in the way I once did before I “became a woman,” like a girl with her crayons, spending whole rainy afternoons in artistic play.  Had I been encouraged—an interesting word, to be given the courage—I might have pursued this passion through my life, like my teacher and friend who paint like magicians because they’ve been doing it daily for 30 or 40 years. 

I also observe in men similar “return” phenomena. Men who die a week after their retirement or vegetate in the La-z-boy have probably failed to rediscover who they were before they “became” adult and burdened with worldly concerns and red dust.  Those who do, tend to become the pre-adolescents they once were, clever and exploring, or preoccupied with toys and torment.

There is a tradition in certain Taoist sects (and other spiritual traditions too) to retreat after 60, to turn inward to develop that part of ourselves that we lost in the hormonal shift called growing up.  That’s one reason for maintaining health and energy.  It is too bad that today’s children may be experiencing that moment too soon.  I only hope they can live long enough to complete the cycle of return and enjoy the spring of their lives once again.  We who aspire to Tao-based lives often talk about being childlike, returning to that less-carved state of wonder and innocence.  But perhaps only after we achieve a certain age, can we really accomplish that.   

“Things grow and flourish and then go back to their root.” (TTC v. 16 tr. Joseph Hsu.)

Change

Driving home from my Chinese painting class in the driving rain, thinking about the inevitability of change to come with the new Rabbit Year energy, changes I want, changes I might dread, this came up on my iPod. I didn't even know it was there...was it Wilson Pickett? Someone solo with Booker T. and the MGs? Sam and Dave? I couldn't even be sure of the decade. I repeated it about 10 times and finally recognized Taj Mahal...from 43 years ago.



I think the iPod on shuffle is a great metaphor for fate and destiny. When you hit that shuffle command, your fate is pretty much set. It looks random, but really there is an unknown but unchangable path set like fate through your music library. You can walk back through the shuffle and see the "random" selections frozen in time. But, reset it and you can change your destiny any time.

If only life had such an easy reset feature. In any case, "Everybody's Got to Change Sometime."

Went to See the Guru

...and the guru said...why not enjoy living, because you're not dead.

Well, not exactly what he said, but that's the message I took away.  This was Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not THAT Ravi Shankar), leader of a non-profit organization called the Art of Living Foundation.  (First time I heard of him, I thought he was Irish: Art O'Fliving.)  Six years ago,  I went with a friend when the good guru visited Hawaii to talk and lead us in meditation and answer questions about the meaning of life. Then, as he was ceremonially exiting the hall, I offended someone with my quip, "And next week, the Pope."

But yesterday, I saw an ad in our vaguely alternative newspaper announcing his appearance again at the Japanese Cultural Center (of all places).  My horoscope in the same newspaper suggested that this would be an "excellent time for you to take inventory of what brings you pleasure....see if you can gain access to an experience that could accurately be described as a blessed state of bliss."

Well, I just HAD to go.  The newspaper also had an ad for a concert of Cantonese music, naahmyam, at the East-West Center.  Seeking bliss, I dragged the Wizard (who loved it) to this event, featuring a singing style performed in brothels and opium dens in turn of the century Canton. By blind musicians.  It was really interesting, but that's another story.

And here it is:  Naahmyam is an operatic storytelling style, sentimentally like Mississippi Delta blues or Portuguese fado:  I think of it as Pearl River Delta blues.  I didn't understand a word of it,  but the emotion was conveyed.  By Blind Willie McCheong.  The Doc Watson of Guangzhou. Or  even Stevie Wonder. No, I'm not making fun, it was really cool. Not exactly the state of bliss suggested in my horoscope, but it was certainly worth the attention.

Back to Sri Sri.

The guru is about a decade younger than me.  He taught a head massage which was very like some Taoist qigong techniques I have learned, and then a meditation which was good, but interrupted with some weird "Oms" and guidance that I found distracting.  The persons at my left and right in the hall were fidgeting.  The meditation ended much sooner than I expected.

Still, his comments and responses to questions were right on.The local person who introduced him talked about "aloha" and "Ha-wai-i". "Ha" is the Hawaiian word for breath (like prana or even qi); wai means "sea" and "i" is spirit. Alo-ha is the sharing of "ha"(which is why it can be both a salutation or greeting and a farewell). I'm not really enchanted with aspects of ancient Hawaiian/Polynesian culture, (kind of stone age, really) but spiritually there is a commonality...breath and spirit...so whether it's a Hawaiian kapuna (an honored elder), Sri Sri, or Hu Lao Shi (my Chinese Tao teacher)...the teachings are similar.

I don't really know what a holy person is. But there are times when you meet someone, are in someone's presence, that you get an energy, a confirmation of things you know to be true. Maybe that's bliss. Maybe my horoscope was right.

Alternative Transportation

Is there anything more metaphorical, romantic, or mysterious than trains?  I come from a family with a history in trains ("The Pennsy"--the PRR, the great Pennsylvania Railroad, now absorbed by AMTRAK). Great-great-uncle Hiram on Mom's side was a railroad man,  as was my grandfather on Dad's side.  My father recalled taking the train as a child to visit relatives 75 miles up north of the town I grew up in, which during the industrial 20th century was a major center of rail commerce and locomotive building and maintenance.   But I'd never taken a train anywhere until I was in my 30s, and then because it was convenient to get back and forth from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.  They were trips I took because I didn't have a car: the bus was creepy and boring and uncomfortable, and flying was too expensive.  But the train--what a relaxing and economical way to travel.  Have a beer and watch the world go by, sort of slowly, really, while basking in that comforting confidence that the train knows where it's going, you don't have to do anything.  I took the train about 10 years ago from Philadelphia to Altoona, while re-reading "Brave New World,"  a once futuristic and slightly lascivious book that now seems as quaint as riding a train.  I finally got to observe the "World Famous Horseshoe Curve" from the Curve itself.  When I was a child, we used to visit the Curve on family Sunday drives; it was supposedly an engineering marvel and a kind of shrine for railroad families. I used to irk my father by asking if they knew about the World Famous Curve in Pakistan. (They probably did, India and Pakistan being train-dependent countries.)  There was a point on the curve around the mountainside where the locomotive and the caboose would be just a few feet from each other if the train was long enough.  It's a pretty cool thing to experience, like being in a model train layout (another icon of railroaders, to be found under every Christmas tree).

For a recent gathering of family and friends for a wedding in Palm 

Springs, California, I was nostalgic when I got RT tickets for my son and his SO on the Coast Starlight, a train that runs down the west coast, from Seattle to LA.  I was vicariously anticipating the romantic 30-hour each way North-by-Northwest journey, with sleeper cabin and dining car, indulging in ancestor worship and thinking of trains in China.  My son took a fabulous photo from the train which I don't think he will mind my sharing here.

This image  seemed so Chinese to me, the beautiful cranes observed from a train, and made me think about my China train travel experiences.  (One in particular, a wonderful moment 20 years ago in the Chinese countryside when the Wizard was able to use, quite clearly in Mandarin, a phrase he had learned by rote: "Why is the train not coming?")

Here in Hawaii, we are having a major political "discussion" about rail, because we need alternate transportation really bad.  In terms of both destination and placement, the crux of the issue is "Where will it go?"  As if there will be one single long track that goes from here to there and solves everyone's problems.  In Hong Kong, and Greater China, EVERYONE can get ANYWHERE because the trains go EVERYWHERE.  Under harbors, through mountains, across deserts, below cities like mole tunnels.  And routes are added constantly, like the controversial train to Tibet, and new lines all the time in Hong Kong, which challenge the whole infrastructure to update fares, route maps, stations, all of which can be accessed with a convenient debit card system.  It makes the Horseshoe Curve seem really primitive.

This September, traveling from Xian to Wudang, literally THROUGH the series of mountains I had just two days before flown over, I was struck with the metaphor of train travel, the way we would be cruising through a long dark tunnel to burst out for a few seconds to glimpse a dreamy bright image of  landscape in a valley with houses, laundry hanging out, a truck crawling along a dirt road, peasants tending a field, construction of a bridge, then suddenly back in the tunnel for a few more minutes until another glimpse, a crazy slide show that went on for hours. It was a metaphor for daily living, as we move through our workweek, with glimpses, flashes of insights as we go in and out of the tunnel.  The metaphor of the train is so pervasive in modern literature, like that story of the train to hell we all had to read in high-school German class, and train references in blues songs. The train carries messages about love and death, destiny and fate.  Standing next to a waiting train, you feel it vibrating,  pulsing, breathing like an indifferent animal.  In the great new Christmas classic movie, Polar Express, (which must be loved by anyone of a certain age who ever had a model train layout under their Christmas tree) the train is like the Tao.  Just get on.  Go visit the relatives. Watch the world pass by.  

The Slow Train from Xian to Wudang