Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Bob I'm Bob Insel. I'm a retired psychologist here in Rochester, New York and I'm new read of Henry's and have very little knowledge other than tangential stuff about the dao.
Have always wanted to dive deeper into it but I'm happy to be here to add whatever vantage point I can and to learn as much as I can.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Brian, I'm wondering could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and what you know about the dao de what you're hoping to gain from today.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: My name is Brian. I spend some time studying and thinking about the Bhagavad Gita and then either I think my appointed role today or self appointed role. I'm going to try to draw some parallels between the Vedanta tradition and Taoism and I think there are a lot.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Terrific, thank you Brian and Richard Grego, how are you sir?
[00:01:08] Speaker D: Thank you sir. Good to see you guys again.
I'm Richard Grego and I'm now retired philosopher and historian. I still have an affiliation with Embry Riddle University and I try to, I'm still, I guess I'd still, I guess you'd say I'm still an active scholar and like the rest of you guys here, I know I've been in, in these discussions with you before. I know that we're all sort of perennial philosophy guys I think. Right. And we all right away the first thing we're sort of both and people we see comparisons probably between these, this tradition and all the ones that we've been involved with and me and on I'm no exception to that.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: So Rich, thanks so much. And then Henry, would you just introduce yourself a little bit about co hosting today and amber light and alchemical dialogues and what we're doing here so.
[00:01:57] Speaker E: Sure, sure. I'm a retired psychiatrist in the Rochester, New York area and I worked a lot with especially kids and adolescents. I started studying Sufism around 2001 to me is the primary basket in which I understand things. I've studied some Tibetan Buddhism, some exploration in shamanism, especially the Peruvian tradition.
Grew up Roman Catholic. But I like what Rich said. I think more and more I aspire to be a mystic and I aspire to be a perennial philosopher.
I've become much more of a believer and very confident that although depth is important, you can become so narrow that you don't see the breath and you don't see the connections.
Creativity comes from the connections and so there's a balance that I want to respect the depth but that's what I resonate with the most.
And with psychology, psychiatry. Yeah, I have a certain degree of depth in that.
But the creativity that comes from the connections and how that opens the world, and you're not just being so cursory that you're not respecting the context in which it came from, respecting the culture from which it comes.
I am finding more and more that I want to respect the depth. I'm glad there are libraries, I'm glad that there are people who know something in depth.
But having the attitude of respecting that, learning from that, and then making these connections, that's where the light's going to come in.
And that's why I wanted to do this podcast with Joel.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: My name is Joel Lessees and I'm the host of Unraveling religion, founded in 2007, November 2007.
I'm very excited about today's talk. And so I thought just in our basic foundational beginning, the beginnings of where we all are at with the Dao de Jing, our conversation, I hope, serves as a bridge to others to investigate this exquisite collection of poems or verses about reality and the human condition and human psychology and spirituality. And I thought it'd be nice if we would just shout out like a number. But I wanted to begin with the Stephen Mitchell translation from 1988, where the the first Dao Dao one.
And I just wanted to read it and maybe open it up and, you know, whatever. If anyone's called to a number, you know, Bob may be like, you know, 59 or whatever, like just call it out. Let's just see where it goes. Like popcorn. But this is the Dao, the first chapter in the Dao.
The dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.
So, Rich, I'd just like you to give us a 30 page paper right now, orally, about what that all exactly means specifically. And like, you know, you better not be wrong, because there's no room in academia for being wrong.
[00:05:56] Speaker D: I'm used to that.
Yeah, I, I, that's, that's my favorite. I think that may be my favorite.
Almost the whole, I don't know, first Dao I love because it begins to me with the essence of what the substance of the Essence of what reality is. What the dao. Dao is reality. Dao is, is, is everything. It is anti foundational to use a technical term. Right.
It has no boundaries. It can't be named, it can't be described. It's incomprehensible in a sense and yet doesn't defy comprehension. And it encompasses and leads to all comprehension. Which again is such a great uniquely sort of daoist idea for me that they write, you hear referred to by scholars not only as far as the nature of the dao goes as a reference to the infinite, but. But the concept of reversal, right? The yin. Yeah, the whole Yin Yang, I guess the origin of the whole union. One of the origins of what's what the Yin Yang symbol means and, and concept means.
I, I don't know, you guys.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: I.
[00:07:06] Speaker D: You know, it's all encompassing. It's infinite and it's anti foundational but it's not nihilistic. It's there, there. There is in some sense a transcendent order there, but nothing that as soon as you obviously as soon as you put a label or try to describe what that, what that order is, you lose it. So I don't know that that's one of my favorite initial ideas in the behind the dow. I don't know what you guys think. And for by. By way of comparison I think of Brahman when I think of that emptiness. Right. Emptiness is to me is Buddhists version, Buddhism's version of anti foundationalism or is that being too simplistic?
[00:07:48] Speaker B: No, I mean, I mean when we talk about emptiness, we.
It is the Dao. The Dao and emptiness are different words used to describe reality.
There can only be silence. To truly harmonize with it, you can't. And so the other thing is that it's also the great.
It's the great holder of paradox.
So when you talk about anti foundational it is the foundation. It has no beginning. So there is. It's anti foundational because where do you what foundation. But yet it's always here. It's paradox. So yeah.
[00:08:27] Speaker D: Yeah. Which leads then to the, to what? You know, this concept of reversal and Yin Yang. And right after that initial again then I have. Since I have it in front of me. If it's instructive at all guys, just tell me to shut up if you want. But right after it talks about the nature of the dao that can't be described and that's anti foundational, exceeds all boundaries and it's infinite.
It. That sort of leads to this second I don't know if it call. Should I call it a verse that it says, when beauty is recognized, ugliness is born. When good is recognized, evil is born.
Is. Is not give rise to each other. Difficult requires easy. Long is measured by short. High is determined by low. Sound is harmonized by voice.
Back follows front. And then that in turn the realization of that which comes from the realization of the radical. You know, once you acknowledge the contingency of everything and the matrix of relationships and with every. Everything we do and think and everything, it just depends on everything else. Then the next verse after that is therefore. And this is Wu Wei. The sage applies himself to non action, moves without speaking, creates 10,000 things without hindrance, lives but does not possess, acts but does not presume, accomplishes, but takes no credit since no credit is taken, his accomplishments endure. And I just love the way those three concepts, right, the Dao reversal or yin yang and Wu Wei seem to seamlessly lead to one another.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Can I ask a question? Question is, are we talking anti foundational or anti foundational?
[00:10:16] Speaker D: I did not know the distinction. Anti foundational. Yeah, is what I'm thinking.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: To my mind that means it's opposed to. I'm thinking that this. For me that the word that jumped into mind as you read the first Dao was ineffability.
I took it as a warning. All you who are about to read this, be aware of the fact that you'll never understand it totally because it's ante prior to the foundation.
[00:10:50] Speaker D: Yeah, I agree.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: And I think that underlying all of mysticism and the attempt to understand it is a fundamental. There's always going to be a secret.
You will never get to the essence, the nub. And I think that permeates all religions and all philosophies that deal with this spiritual, mystical kind of stuff is that we do this work and we expend a lot of time and energy on it and we frequently piss each other off.
But ultimately there's going to be a secret, however close we get to it.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: Let me jump in maybe then with Vedanta, some Vedanta thoughts which says that it's not directly. It's not directly knowable, but it's known because it's you.
Right?
So the. And this is all hair splitting, which is a great joy and privilege to get to do together.
The verse that we're reading says the source is called darkness.
And that word darkness, I think the character is, is Wu. And it can mean also like nothing or the absence of something.
And. And I think that may be one place where Vedanta splits off from or has a several thousand year old friendly debate with Buddhism is whether this nothingness is nothingness or it's, it's somethingness or beyond something and nothing. Whenever there is duality, the good, the bad, there's always a third thing, the context. That which is aware of the duality. And Vedanta emphasizes this context. This context is you. You're the context for, for any of these things. And so the paradox that we're talking about is in the mind. It's never in, in reality. So there's a mystery, as you're saying Bob, for the mind, but there's not a mystery for, for me, for you, for awareness, for reality.
Vedanta says, I think there's a. My sense from this passage and from much of the rest of the Dao Te Ching is that there's a veneration and from what each of you are saying, veneration of silence.
And maybe another point is that Vedanta says there's a certain kind of silence which is compatible with ignorance.
Henry's often reminding me that Paul Broughton says, you know, hey, we, we can learn some of these things from books. And Vedanta says, hey, words are useful, but not, not.
Was it Augustine who said we, we don't have words so that we can capture God, but just so that we can talk. And Vedanta says words are useful in helping us get to this.
And the last point is that, that, that's because this Dao maybe, but certainly Brahman that we're talking about is not somewhere else.
The Atman, the individual self, the experience of ordinary everyday consciousness is a pathway to that thing that transcends everything.
Because reality is ultimately unduel. It can't, it can't be somewhere else.
So that, that may be some. There's a, there's a hopeful message there about our ability to apprehend or appreciate while not cognize some of this, this non. Thing.
[00:14:36] Speaker D: Excellent.
[00:14:41] Speaker E: I like that phrase, apprehend but not cognize.
So I remember in, when I was going through my Sufi training, I would be at a seminar with a teacher who would be talking about.
It seemed very Zen, like, you know, not trying so hard, just, just be and not, not work so hard.
So in one of my irreverent moments, which grew more and more over time, I spouted out then why am I spending all this money and time coming here to be here?
To which I didn't get any answer.
But the answer is what Brian said, which is if you don't do it, you think you're going to be there, but you're probably not.
So you have to do this. This is Paul Brunton's point. You have to keep seeking, you have to keep studying, but you have to know you'll never get there.
But by the process of studying, you'll have an opening and you'll experience something, but you won't understand it.
Then the trap is you think you understand it and then you know you probably don't. So talk about, talk about a paradox.
So some of us are trying to experience the Yoga of knowing the mind. That was the tirtan left by Padmasambhava. So Padma Sambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, was an incarnate being who brought Buddhism to Tibet from India.
Very powerful person who gave a teaching. So how many years ago when Buddhism was. Was brought to Tibet? Thousands of years ago, but he left it to be discovered now in our age.
So it's been discovered.
I don't speak Tibetan. It's been translated into English.
So there's a section and just as another sidelight, the way I learned, the way I experience this is by reading it out loud. And it takes about 40 minutes. And don't look at the footnotes because then you're studying it and it doesn't work. So if you have to look at the footnotes to study it, because you really don't get most of the terms which are Buddhist, do that another time when you're going to school. But to have the experience, you need to just get into the rhythm, read it out loud and literally let it blow your mind because it doesn't make any sense.
So here's a section that I think applies to what we're talking about.
The title that the translator gave to it is the Yogic Science of Mental Concepts. So I'm just going to read. I'm not going to read quite the whole thing.
The various concepts too. Now I think that's what we're talking about. Being illusory and none of them real fade away accordingly.
Thus, for example, everything postulated of the whole Samsara and Nirvana arises from nothing more than mental concepts.
Changes in one's train of thought produce corresponding changes in one's conceptions of the external world.
Therefore, the various views concerning things are due merely to different mental concepts skipping ahead as the thing is viewed.
So it appears.
I love that statement.
To see things as a multiplicity and so to cleave unto separateness is to err.
Now follows the Yoga of knowing all mental concepts in general, all things mentally perceived are concepts.
The bodily forms in which the world of appearances is contained are concepts of mind.
The happiness of gods in heaven worlds and of men is another. Mental concepts, ignorance, miseries, the five poisons are likewise mental concepts.
Now we get to really interesting one. Self originated divine wisdom, so parentheses the Dao is also a concept of mind.
The full realization of the passing away into Nirvana is also a concept of mind.
Gods and good fortune are also concepts of mind.
Unconscious one, pointedness, informless the darkness the Dao spoke spoke about is also a mental concept. Concept existence and non existence as well as the non created are all concepts of mind.
Nothing save mind is conceivable.
Mind, when uninhibited conceives all that comes into existence.
That which comes into existence is like the wave of an ocean.
The state of mind transcendent over all dualities brings liberation.
It matters not what name may carelessly be applied to mind.
Truly mind is one and apart from mind there is not else that unique one. Mind is foundationless and rootless. There is nothing else to be realized.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: What that text sutra is saying is that when we utter these things, they do exist. But the moment you put them into words, you must understand that ultimately it's just words. It's trying to correct itself by expressing it. You know what I mean? It's not that there is no non existence. It's just that when you say that there's non existence, you understand there is no non existence because you're saying the word. It's that the reality is the reality independent of the verbiage.
[00:20:47] Speaker E: I go back to Brian, what he said, you can apprehend it, but not cognize.
And then I would add, but if you don't try to cognize, you won't.
[00:20:57] Speaker C: Apprehend even the word apprehend. Maybe I'm suggesting kind of duality. And the Vedanta sages say something like Vedanta is the yoga of no contact, right? Yoga means union, right? There's but. But no contact. Because what we're talking about is not even a relational apprehension, but it's an identity.
And, and so what we can do with the right language as I think as, as Joel is saying, is, is reveal that when we speak about it, the thing we're speaking about isn't it? And all the words aren't it. It's the, you know, the finger pointing at, etc but, but because ignorance is beginningless and compatible with silence, it's not enough to just let the Ignorance be according to Vedanta, that we can actually benefit from, from this dialogue and talking and studying with teachers to, to help remove that ignorant. All of our mistaken. And when we get rid of all of the mistaken words at the end, we're left with a accurate silence instead of a.
A silence of beautiful ignorance.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: So let's play a little roulette. Someone throw out a number.
181.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: 17.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: 17.
The Dow. 17.
When the master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists.
The next best is a leader who is loved, next one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.
If you don't trust the people, you make them untrustworthy.
The master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done, the people say, amazing, we did it all by ourselves.
[00:23:00] Speaker D: A classic sort of that, that, that. I mean, all right, that's the sort of the, the social, political ethos that arises from, from that conception of the dao.
Hence the concept of reversal, it seems to me. Right. Hence the concept of wu wei. That's wu wei applied to political leadership. Right. Or any kind of leadership, I suppose.
You know, it's interesting, and not that I want to, because I'm sure there's. There's plenty more to discuss about this one, but it reminded me of number 38.
Every translation of this I read gives different words for these things, and I think that's this passage, and it's sort of a fascinating concept on meta ethics.
So you have this, this conception of the dao.
[00:23:55] Speaker B: It absolutely is this one. It is 38 because.
[00:23:58] Speaker D: What's that?
[00:23:59] Speaker B: It is absolutely. You're correct. It is 38 because it says when the Tao is lost, there is goodness, loss, there's morale. You're absolutely correct.
[00:24:06] Speaker D: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I, I have a hard time every time I read this in a different translation, they're using different words. But basically what the, the idea is, first, when you lose the dao, you're left as a. As a. On the hierarchy, a step down with virtue. And when you, when you, when virtue isn't good enough or when you lose virtue, you're then left a step down from that with this sort of superficial sentimentality. And when you're, when you're bereft of that, then you're left with justice.
And then when you're bereft when, when that fails, which it inevitably does, this is that you're left with ritual. You're left with sort of social and, and ethical and, you know, and interpersonal rituals.
And I Think a lot of that, historically speaking was designed to critique Confucianism with all of its very, from a Daoist perspective, rigid sense of social hierarchies and interpersonal roles and family roles and social roles and social rituals that one needed to perform in order to respect those roles, which of course daoism wanted to get rid of. They wanted it, you know, they're, they wanted to, to simplify life and, and, and you know, the living in harmony with the Dao is all about simplicity and wu wei and spontaneousness. So they wanted to get rid of all that. But I just found, find it interesting that in our Western culture, right, and our, in most Western societies, the concept of justice, I guess it's sort of an inheritance of, of Plato, right? The concept of justice is our sort of highest virtue, right. And, and maybe the concept of personal virtue in some sense, some Kantian sort of sense is higher than that.
But the idea that virtue, that justice and virtue are actually lower order ethical goals to strive for is a very radical notion. I, and I just think on a practical level when people start living their lives in harmony without, if that's your, if that's your goal, it just seems to me that the, some of the, one of the radical implications of the Dao is that you are going to put yourself at odds in a very, very radical sense with what you have been conditioned to think is sacred in your culture and your society. Does that make any sense?
[00:26:46] Speaker C: It makes, it makes a lot of sense. I'll share a parallel from the Gita and then I have a question made me think of maybe for you, Bob. The Gita talks about these three gunas, right? These qualities of existence or nature which is kind of taken out of chunk in philosophy. And the idea that satva, this goodness, light, purity is, is the highest as you're kind of, I think parallel to what you're talking about. And then when that gets broken apart or disrupted or obscured or however you want to understand it, then rajas, there's, there's action, there's, there's, there's situational, there's a rule based virtue. And then when that doesn't work, then there's Thomas. And Thomas is this heavy darkness enforcing kind of quality.
The Gita says in 2, 4, 7, you have the right to perform your duties and you're not entitled to the fruits of the actions.
So it's emphasizing throughout that how we approach it is more important than what we do. But that is such a high thing to get to that that there's you know, most of the Vedas, there's ritual and it's telling us how to do it until we get to that natural place. Bob, my sense is that there's a long history of talking about faith and action, faith and works in Christianity, and a tension between them and how they harmonize. I'm, I'm very interested to understand that better.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think that this puts that in a different context, even for me.
I mean, my understanding of that has been on two levels. One is it's an interesting quibble and worth following to see who wins, but it's also on a more experiential level that I have to deal with that question, is it enough to believe or must I act upon that belief?
And I think this creates, for want of a better word, a ladder, a hierarchy of steps along the way for that.
And very interesting because I was totally unaware of this until we bring it up here this afternoon.
And I, I don't know, I mean, for myself, the resolution is, as usually the case, I have to do both faith and action because the, the way lies in the combination of things. I was thinking when, when I was asked to introduce myself, I should probably have said I'm a synthesist.
If you present me with alternatives, my first reaction is to try to put them together.
It's almost reflexive in me.
When I look at the question of faith and action, I try to put them together, they have to occur together for there to be any value on a moral level, on a spiritual level, on a philosophical level.
And that certainly lays out a nice pathway for that.
[00:30:12] Speaker D: Bob, when you and Brian actually were both talking, when talking about this, I was just reminded, well, two things and from the Christian tradition, first of all, sort of Kierkegaard's hierarchy of ethical right, of ethical development within, in life. And then just, I think Augustine. Any you guys would know this, probably. There's that famous.
I think it's Augustine who said something like love and do what you will.
Does that ring a bell to anybody as his ultimate ethic? And I have a sense that that would be a precept that Daoism. Again, it doesn't. Not a lot of talk about love, at least. Right. In the traditional Christian sense there. But insofar, I don't know. Again, here's my, my syncretic kind of mentality to this. If God is.
And that, and there's some sort of equivalence, you want to, you want to draw bridges between the Christian concept of God and the Dao that giving yourself over to love is A lot like Wu Wei.
[00:31:18] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:18] Speaker D: Giving your. Which is giving yourself over to the dao or is that too big a leap that I'm making there, guys? I don't know. What do you think?
[00:31:27] Speaker C: I love it, Richard. And, and I think I might, I could say Vedanta would say love and do what love wills, which, which ultimately ends up in the same place when we see that we're loved. But until we figure that out, most of us like me or you know, like then, then the Gita is offering us a path. It says your love. And then Arjuna doesn't get it and says okay, okay, so do all these things. Yeah. And, and, and Karma yoga, it offers a path. And that's where a lot of Neo Vedanta or you know, these non dual modern teachings which have been around forever that just say you're non duality. Good luck with that. And don't offer that path. Leave people kind of with no way to, to get to where you're talking about. Yeah.
[00:32:08] Speaker D: Yeah. That's interesting. I, I mean I, I'm also, I think there's a, A Nietzsche quote, you know, again, drawing like east west connection. That's what is done, I think was in Beyond Good and Evil, the book he said what, what is done out of love is beyond good and evil.
And I think which I believe would also be consonant with, with Brahman, with that, that Neo Vedantan sort of spirit and as well as Taoism as well.
But perhaps I'm wrong.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:32:43] Speaker D: Maybe I'm, I'm overdrawing the comparison.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: I, I don't think this is too big a leap. And, and that comes from more from a feeling than from, from a thought. And I could trace the argument that would support my notion that it's not too big.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: It doesn't feel like too big a leap. It feels like a natural given this, then this.
[00:33:09] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: And me too.
[00:33:12] Speaker D: It's intuitive for me, actually.
[00:33:14] Speaker E: Right.
[00:33:14] Speaker D: That's spiritually intuitive to me.
I thinking that you guys all to some extent would agree, but that may be too wiggle leap. I, I'm curious to know and, and Joel, I don't know. Is that.
Is that God is love is the Da. Is the nature of ex.
If there's a fundamental nature of existence, it's the active creation process, creative process of love manifesting itself in us and through us and through the world and through reality.
Is that a, is that a central perennial message in all the spiritual traditions we're talking about? Okay, maybe that's a Leap.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: It's not a leap, but I just want to hear what Henry has to say.
[00:34:00] Speaker E: That's like asking me, what are we doing today?
[00:34:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think what are we doing today?
[00:34:06] Speaker D: Where are you?
[00:34:07] Speaker E: Apparently, we're just being. This is it, right?
This is a lot of wu wei.
So this is where it gets poetic. And you try to put it into words, but the words don't.
Don't fit. So, you know, you can.
You can call it the void. You can call it Brahman. Sufis call it zat or hadiya.
You can call it the ground of being, which.
So the Sufis say it's love.
And the Sufis say ishkala mabudala. God is lover and the beloved.
There's no distinction. It's the dao. It's the nature of reality.
You know, poetically, it's been said the Sufis say God was a hidden treasure who loved to be known.
And one way of, in that translation, to translate it is God is a hidden treasure who desired to be known and therefore created so there would be an other who would know them.
Pure velayat said, God is a hidden treasure. I have to paraphrase it.
Who, the verb love, who, in an act of love created creation, came out of love, not a desire to be known.
So God is a hidden treasure who, in an act of love created the Sufi invocation that was brought in by the lineage founder that I follow, an icon from India.
His invocation starts toward the one, the perfection of love, harmony and beauty.
Now, maybe it's because I'm a physician, I take that as a prescription, which I love. Playing with this. The prescription is love creates harmony, that creates beauty, but we play with that.
We try to create harmony to then uncover love.
We try to appreciate beauty, to let love come out.
The prescription is.
And it's really hard.
So put it in terms that I think we're talking about today.
Have the experience of the dao.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: One of the first questions in that catechism that I memorized in order to survive Catholic grammar school.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: When you reflect upon the truth of that for you, does that resonate as true?
[00:37:07] Speaker A: It does.
More so since I've begun to study Sufism with Henry and have agreed with his concept that the first reason God created was so that he would have someone who knew him, some thing, some being who would know who would know him and with whom he could then be in relationship.
Because I believe God is relationship.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: I, I, I think question marks arise in my mind when we talk about God created, that we would know him that we would love him. And what was the third thing?
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Servant. But, but I don't. I mean, that got interpreted in the context of let's say, fundamentalist, conservative Christian thinking as to do what he told us to do. I think it means that we do what it is we're created to do. That serves him right.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: Independent though. Independent that when we do what we are created to do independently, we serve Him.
It's not that he created us to serve him at all. It's the inverse of God loves to love. God gives freedom in his love freely, not for any outcome. That's why it's so beautiful that we relinquish the fruit of action because God relinquished the fruit of action.
This is God's. Rumi says this is God's crazy radio wire. Like all the. What the fuck is going on here? Like it's crazy. But what we're seeing is like God imbued each of us, as you know. Where is the center of the universe, Bob? Right where you are sitting, Henry. It's right where you are sitting. The very center of existence is right where Brian is. The very center is right where Rich is. It's where I am. And so what does that mean? It means that the sum total of the ways in which I intend, think, act and speak form existence and then we share that existence with one another. That Bob's version of existence and my version of existence will overlap in harmony and conflict and sometimes. But ultimately there's no reason for any of this.
There's not some intended outcome here of wanting something other than give love free.
