Dao De Jing #27: Perfection

The Dao De Jing is one of the world's classics of literature. It is also one of the foundations of Daoism. Only the Bible has been translated more often. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to an online version of this work or art. Here follows Chapter #27, Perfection.

The perfect traveller leaves no trail to be followed;
The perfect speaker leaves no question to be answered;
The perfect accountant leaves no working to be completed;
The perfect container leaves no lock to be closed;
The perfect knot leaves no end to be ravelled.

So the sage nurtures all men
And abandons no one.
He accepts everything
And rejects nothing.
He attends to the smallest details.

So the strong must guide the weak,
For the weak are raw material to the strong.
If the guide is not respected,
Or the material is not cared for,
Confusion will result, no matter how clever one is.

This is the secret of perfection:
When raw wood is carved, it becomes a tool;
When a man is employed, he becomes a tool;
The perfect carpenter leaves no wood to be carved.

Three Years

It was nearly three years ago when I began blogging here at Cook Ding’s Kitchen. There have been over 25,000 hits.

For starters, there are those who wonder who the heck is Cook Ding? Cook Ding is a character is a story by Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zi) in the Inner Chapters section of his eponymus book, which is one of the foundational texts of Daoism. Here below is a translation of that story:

A cook was butchering an ox for Duke Wen Hui.
The places his hand touched,
His shoulder leaned against,
His foot stepped on,
His knee pressed upon,
Came apart with a sound.

He moved the blade, making a noise
That never fell out of rhythm.
It harmonized with the Mulberry Woods Dance,
Like music from ancient times.

Duke Wen Hui exclaimed: "Ah! Excellent!
Your skill has advanced to this level?"

"What I follow is Tao,
The cook puts down the knife and answered:
Which is beyond all skills.
"When I started butchering,
What I saw was nothing but the whole ox.
After three years,
I no longer saw the whole ox.

"Nowadays, I meet it with my mind
Rather than see it with my eyes.
My sensory organs are inactive
While I direct the mind's movement.
"It goes according to natural laws,
Striking apart large gaps,
Moving toward large openings,
Following its natural structure.

"Even places where tendons attach to bones
Give no resistance,
Never mind the larger bones!

"A good cook goes through a knife in a year,
Because he cuts.
An average cook goes through a knife in a month,
Because he hacks.

"I have used this knife for nineteen years.
It has butchered thousands of oxen,
But the blade is still like it's newly sharpened.

"The joints have openings,
And the knife's blade has no thickness.
Apply this lack of thickness into the openings,
And the moving blade swishes through,
With room to spare!

"That's why after nineteen years,
The blade is still like it's newly sharpened.

"Nevertheless, every time I come across joints,
I see its tricky parts,
I pay attention and use caution,
My vision concentrates,
My movement slows down.

"I move the knife very slightly,
Whump! It has already separated.
The ox doesn't even know it's dead,
and falls to the ground like mud.

"I stand holding the knife,
And look all around it.
The work gives me much satisfaction.
I clean the knife and put it away."

Duke Wen Hui said: "Excellent!
I listen to your words,
And learn a principle of life."

This has been on of my favorite stories.

I had just recently changed jobs when I began this blog, and have just recently changed jobs again a few months ago. I am still with a Japanese company, and am once again surrounded by Japanese colleagues who are encouraging me in my study of their language. My progress is slow but steady. This will be a life time study to achieve any fluency.

My oldest daughter has graduated from the university and is now officially unemployed. I can find no fault in her efforts to find work in her field though. The opportunities are few and the competition is fierce. I am sure that something will break her way soon. She’s had four interviews with one company. She’s supposed to hear something this week.

My youngest daughter just finished a successful club season in travel volleyball. The summer camps have begun, and we look forward to a successful high school season for her senior year. She has some small schools interested in her playing volleyball for them. I am cautiously optimistic that we’ll find a fit for her. The main point is her education. If she can play at the college level and get some money knocked off the school costs to boot, then it’s a no brainer. The question is no longer can she play in college, but whether there is a good fit or not.

My wife and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary. As I look back on our life together, I look forward to our retiring together in about another 10 years or so. We can clearly see the day when our oldest will be out of the house on her own. In another year, the youngest will be off to college. Just as it was when we first started out, it’ll just be the two of us.
I am approaching one year of training in the Wu style of Taijiquan. I have learned the sequence of both the 108 standard and 54 round competition forms. I have been introduced to the “24 forms”, the supplementary exercises of the Wu style, and I have also been introduced to the first three of the 12 basic types of push hands exercises.
It’s been very good for me. I feel great. I am relaxed, and clear headed. I feel strong.
For my second year of TJQ training, in addition to continual refinements to both the 108 and 54 forms, I hope to refine the 24 forms and better integrate them into my personal practice, especially the standing practice; as well as learn more of the push hands sequences (with whatever skill level I can bring). I am not really interested in adding any weapons forms until after my youngest graduates from high school. So my priorities are: form refinements, integrating the 24 forms into my personal practice, and going deeper into push hands practice.
With the coming of the warmer weather, I haven’t been lifting weights or walking on the treadmill as much. I find myself outside doing yard work a lot. Truth be told, I’d rather get my exercise that way. As the seasons change, we change the way we live our lives. This is one of those changes. I have also come to accept that I don’t get as much reading done during the summer as the winter, which makes one less thing I can make myself crazy about.

With the economy the way it is, especially here in Michigan, there are a lot of vacation homes for sale. I’ve dreamt of living on a lake for years. We’re looking, but also realize that taking on a vacation home is taking on another obligation (payments, taxes, maintenance, time to get there and back, fuel, etc.). I can tell you that the prices aren’t as rock bottom as the news might lead you to believe; at least for the listings we’ve looked at.

Speaking of the economy, in the yin and yang of things, I see a lot to be encouraged about. In Michigan, especially SE Michigan, when the automakers do well, we all do well. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed much over the years. The Detroit 3 (who used to be known as The Big 3) are all making painful changes that they really should have made years ago.

When people start buying cars again, it will be like rain in the desert around here.

One of my favorite stories from Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zi) is the story of the fighting cock:

Chi Hsing Tzu was a trainer of
fighting cocks for King Hsuan.
He was training a fine bird.
The king kept asking
if the bird was ready for combat.

“Not yet”, said the trainer.
“He is full of fire.
He is ready to pick a fight
with every other bird.
He is vain and confident
of his own strength.”

After ten days he answered again,
“Not yet. He flares up
when he hears another bird crow.”

After ten more days,
“Not yet. He still gets that angry look
and ruffles his feathers.”

Again ten days.
The trainer said,
“Now he is nearly ready.
When another bird crows,
his eyes don’t even flicker.
He stands immobile like a block of wood.
He is a mature fighter.
Other birds will take one look at him and run.”

The other day a friend of mine sent me an article on Tiger Woods, the golfer. A portion of the article is to be found below. The topic of the article is Woods' amazing focus and concentration when it comes to golfing.

He just won the US Open on a bad leg. His leg had just been operated on. His doctor thought he should be on crutches, not golfing. He managed to pull it together and beat everybody else.

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to the full article.

The Frozen Gaze

By DAVID BROOKS

Rocco Mediate’s head swiveled about as he walked up the fairway of the sudden-death hole of the U.S. Open on Monday. Somebody would catch his attention, and his eyes would dart over and he’d wave or make a crack. Tiger Woods’s gaze, on the other hand, remained fixed on the ground, a few feet ahead of his steps. He was, as always, locked in, focused and self-contained.

The fans greeted Mediate with fraternal affection and Woods with reverence. Most were probably rooting for Rocco, but only because Woods, the inevitable victor, has risen above mere human status and become an embodiment of immortal excellence. That frozen gaze of his looks out from airport billboards, TV commercials and the ad pages. And its ubiquity is proof that every age finds the heroes it needs.

In a period that has brought us instant messaging, multitasking, wireless distractions and attention deficit disorder, Woods has become the exemplar of mental discipline. After watching Woods walk stone-faced through a roaring crowd, the science writer Steven Johnson, in a typical comment, wrote: “I have never in my life seen a wider chasm between the look in someone’s eye and the surrounding environment.”

The coverage of him often centers upon this question: How did this creature come about? The articles inevitably mention his precocity (at age 3, he shot a 48 on the front nine of a regulation course) and provide examples of his athletic prowess: Once Woods tried out four drivers that Nike was experimenting with and told the lab guys that he preferred the heavier one. The researchers thought the clubs were the same weight, but they measured and Woods was right. The club he’d selected was heavier by the equivalent of two cotton balls.

But inevitably, it is his ability to enter the cocoon of concentration that is written about and admired most. Writers describe the way Earl Woods, his lieutenant colonel father, dropped his golf bag while Tiger was swinging to toughen his mind. They describe his mother’s iron discipline at home. “Old man is soft,” Kultida Woods once said of her husband. “He cry. He forgive people. Not me. I don’t forgive anybody.”

Tiger was the one dragging them out on the course to practice. At age 6 months, he was put in a baby chair and had the ability, his father claimed, to watch golf for two hours without losing focus.

As an adult, he is famously self-controlled. His press conferences are a string of carefully modulated banalities. His lifestyle is meticulously tidy. His style of play is actuarial. He calculates odds and avoids unnecessary risks like the accounting major he once planned on being. “I am, by nature, a control freak,” he once told John Garrity of Sports Illustrated, as Garrity resisted the temptation to reply, “You think?”

And for that, in this day and age, he stands out. As I’ve been trying to write this column, I’ve toggled over to check my e-mail a few times. I’ve looked out the window. I’ve jotted down random thoughts for the paragraphs ahead. But Woods seems able to mute the chatter that normal people have in their heads and build a tunnel of focused attention.

Writers get rhapsodic over this facility. “Woods’s concentration often seems to be made of the same stuff as the liquid-metal cyborg in Terminator 2: If you break it, it reforms,” David Owen wrote in Men’s Vogue.

Then they get spiritual. In Slate, Robert Wright only semi-facetiously compared Woods to Gandhi, for his ability to live in the present and achieve transcendent awareness. Analysts inevitably bring up his mother’s Buddhism, his experiments in meditation. They describe his match-mentality in the phrases one might use to describe a guru achieving nirvana. He achieves, they say, perfect clarity, tranquility and flow. We’re talking about somebody who is the primary spokesman for Buick, and much of the commentary about him is on the subject of his elevated spiritual capacities.

And here we’re getting to the nub of what’s so remarkable about the “Be A Tiger” phenomenon: He’s become the beau ideal for golf-loving corporate America, the personification of mental fortitude.

The ancients were familiar with physical courage and the priests with moral courage, but in this over-communicated age when mortals feel perpetually addled, Woods is the symbol of mental willpower. He is, in addition, competitive, ruthless, unsatisfied by success and honest about his own failings. (Twice, he risked his career to retool his swing.)

During the broadcast of Monday’s playoff round, Nike ran an ad that had Earl Woods’s voice running over images of his son: “I’d say, ‘Tiger, I promise you that you’ll never meet another person as mentally tough as you in your entire life.’ And he hasn’t. And he never will.”

You can like this model or not. Either way, the legend grows.

Dao De Jing: Chapter #26, Calm

One of the world’s classics of literature is the Dao De Jing. It is also one of the foundations of Daoism. If you click on the title of this post, you’ll be directed to a free online version of the Dao De Jing in both English and Chinese.

#26: Calm

Gravity is the source of lightness,

Calm, the master of haste.

A lone traveller will journey all day, watching over his belongings;

Yet once safe in his bed he will lose them in sleep.

The captain of a great vessel will not act lightly or hastily.

Acting lightly, he loses sight of the world,

Acting hastily, he loses control of himself.

A captain can not treat his great ship as a small boat;

Rather than glitter like jade.

He must stand like stone.

A Clear Mind

A friend sent me these articles. I usually just post an excerpt, but this is short and very very good. Note that the links to the original articles at the New York Times will be found at the end of each one.

These two articles both describe interesting aspects of the mind, which applies equally to martial arts, zen, daoism, ... you name it. Enjoy.

Pitching With Purpose

By DAVID BROOKS

A few years ago, a former professional baseball player mentioned a book that had made a great impression on him. It was called “The Mental ABC’s of Pitching,” by a sports psychologist named H.A. Dorfman. I read the book one spare evening, though, as you may have noticed, I’m not a pitcher — and no major league organization has expressed interest in making me one.

The book left an impression on me too, mostly for its moral tone. Dorfman offers to liberate people from what you might call the tyranny of the scattered mind. He offers to take pitchers, who may be thinking about a thousand and one things up on the mound, and give them mental discipline.

Others are eloquent about courage and creativity, but Dorfman is fervent about discipline. In the book’s only lyrical passage, he writes: “Self-discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear — and doubt.”

His assumption seems to be that you can’t just urge someone to be disciplined; you have to build a structure of behavior and attitude. Behavior shapes thought. If a player disciplines his behavior, then he will also discipline his mind.

Dorfman builds that structure on the repetitiousness of baseball. It’s commonly said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any craft — three hours of practice every day for 10 years. Dorfman assumes that players would have already put in those hours doing drills and repetitions. He urges them to adopt their own pregame rituals. He notes that Trevor Hoffman, the San Diego Padres closer, walks from the clubhouse to the dugout every game in the fourth inning and moves to the bullpen in the seventh.

As a pitcher enters a game, Dorfman continues, he should bring a relentlessly assertive mind-set. He should plan on attacking the strike zone early in the count, and never letting up. He will not nibble at the strike zone or try to throw the ball around hitters. He will invite contact. Even when the count is zero balls and two strikes, he will not alter his emotional tone by wasting a pitch out of the strike zone.

Just as a bike is better balanced when it is going forward, a pitcher’s mind is better balanced when it is unceasingly aggressive. If a pitcher doesn’t actually feel this way when he enters a game, Dorfman asks him to pretend. If your body impersonates an attitude long enough, then the mind begins to adopt it.

Dorfman then structures the geography of the workplace. There are two locales in a pitcher’s universe — on the mound and off the mound. Off the mound is for thinking about the past and future, on the mound is for thinking about the present. When a pitcher is on the pitching rubber, Dorfman writes, he should only think about three things: pitch selection, pitch location and the catcher’s glove, his target. If he finds himself thinking about something else, he should step off the rubber.

Dorfman has various breathing rituals he endorses, but his main focus during competition is to get his pitchers thinking simple and small. A pitcher is defined, he writes, “by the way the ball leaves his hand.” Everything else is extraneous.

In Dorfman’s description of pitching, batters barely exist. They are vague, generic abstractions that hover out there in the land beyond the pitcher’s control. A pitcher shouldn’t judge himself by how the batters hit his pitches, but instead by whether he threw the pitch he wanted to throw.

Dorfman once approached Greg Maddux after a game and asked him how it went. Maddux said simply: “Fifty out of 73.” He’d thrown 73 pitches and executed 50. Nothing else was relevant.

A baseball game is a spectacle, with a thousand points of interest. But Dorfman reduces it all to a series of simple tasks. The pitcher’s personality isn’t at the center. His talent isn’t at the center. The task is at the center.

By putting the task at the center, Dorfman illuminates the way the body and the mind communicate with each other. Once there were intellectuals who thought the mind existed above the body, but that’s been blown away by evidence. In fact, it’s easiest to change the mind by changing behavior, and that’s probably as true in the office as on the mound.

And by putting the task at the center, Dorfman helps the pitcher quiet the self. He pushes the pitcher’s thoughts away from his own qualities — his expectations, his nerve, his ego — and helps the pitcher lose himself in the job.

Not long ago, Americans saw the rise of a therapeutic culture that placed great emphasis on self-discovery, self-awareness and self-expression. But somehow the tide seems to have turned from the worship of self, and today’s message is: transcend yourself in your job — or get shelled.

A fitting reminder from opening day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/opinion/01brooks.html

Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind

By SANDRA AAMODT and SAM WANG

DECLINING house prices, rising job layoffs, skyrocketing oil costs and a major credit crunch have brought consumer confidence to its lowest point in five years. With a relatively long recession looking increasingly likely, many American families may be planning to tighten their belts.

Interestingly, restraining our consumer spending, in the short term, may cause us to actually loosen the belts around our waists. What’s the connection? The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren’t out shopping.

The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task.

In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every “e” on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall.

Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone. Task persistence is also reduced when people are stressed or tired from exertion or lack of sleep.

What limits willpower? Some have suggested that it is blood sugar, which brain cells use as their main energy source and cannot do without for even a few minutes. Most cognitive functions are unaffected by minor blood sugar fluctuations over the course of a day, but planning and self-control are sensitive to such small changes. Exerting self-control lowers blood sugar, which reduces the capacity for further self-control. People who drink a glass of lemonade between completing one task requiring self-control and beginning a second one perform equally well on both tasks, while people who drink sugarless diet lemonade make more errors on the second task than on the first. Foods that persistently elevate blood sugar, like those containing protein or complex carbohydrates, might enhance willpower for longer periods.

In the short term, you should spend your limited willpower budget wisely. For example, if you do not want to drink too much at a party, then on the way to the festivities, you should not deplete your willpower by window shopping for items you cannot afford. Taking an alternative route to avoid passing the store would be a better strategy.

On the other hand, if you need to study for a big exam, it might be smart to let the housecleaning slide to conserve your willpower for the more important job. Similarly, it can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success.

Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

No one knows why willpower can grow with practice but it must reflect some biological change in the brain. Perhaps neurons in the frontal cortex, which is responsible for planning behavior, or in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is associated with cognitive control, use blood sugar more efficiently after repeated challenges. Or maybe one of the chemical messengers that neurons use to communicate with one another is produced in larger quantities after it has been used up repeatedly, thereby improving the brain’s willpower capacity.

Whatever the explanation, consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life.

Sandra Aamodt, the editor in chief of Nature Neuroscience, and Sam Wang, an associate professor of molecular biology and neuroscience at Princeton, are the authors of “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/02/opinion/02aamodt.html

Daoist Downloads

If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a website entitled Hermetica. The author of this website, Bradford Hatcher, has translated an enormous amount of Daoist material (among other things) available for download. Free. Donations are welcome though.

There is a massive translation of the I Ching, the Dao De Jing, Zhaung Zi; and a large number of very high quality links.

Please pay a visit and take a look around. You can also find the link over at the right.

I Ching Resource

I find the study of the I Ching to be bewildering. Never the less, it's a book that I want to someday study in depth. I've found a resource here that might just help me get started. You can also click on the title of this post to be directed to the I Ching with Clarity web site. Please pay a visit.

An excerpt from the website:

People have turned to the I Ching for some 3,000 years to help them uncover the meaning of their experience, to bring their actions into harmony with their underlying purpose, and above all to build a foundation of confident awareness for their choices.

Down the millennia, as the I Ching tradition has grown richer and deeper, the things we consult about may have changed a little. But the moment of consultation is much the same. These are the times when you're turning in circles, hemmed in and frustrated by all the things you can't see or don't understand. You can think it over (and over, and over); you can 'journal' it; you can gather opinions. But how can you have confidence in choosing a way to go, if you can't quite be sure of seeing where you are?

Only understand where you are now, and you rediscover your power to make changes. This is the heart of I Ching divination. Once you can really see into the present moment, all its possibilities open out before you - and you are free to create your future.

Gentle Persistence

This post is about some observations I’ve made regarding my Taijiquan teacher over the past several months. She is Sifu Genie Parker, and she’s been at this for 20 years. If you click on the title of this post, you’ll be directed to the school’s website.

The single quality of hers that strikes me over and over again is her gentle persistence, which I consider Daoism put into everyday practice.

She has her goal in mind: to teach us Taijiquan. But there are obstacles, chief among them being our unwillingness to incorporate the refinements to our form and practice that she teaches. She’ll even make reference to “rubber corrections.” She’ll teach us something, and we wont’ do it. She’ll teach it again, and we still won’t do it. So she teaches us again…

She has a gentle persistence. “At this point of the form, check where you foot is. If it’s in the wrong place, put it in the right place. If you do this enough times, eventually it will go to the right place and you can correct something else.” If you didn’t practice yesterday, practice today. Eventually, if we keep at it, we’ll do it the right way.

Of course as time passes, the GM of our style will change the way the form is done, and we’ll have to learn a different way to emphasize something else, so we’ll to change our practice. Another lesson.

She doesn’t worry about things over which she has no control. For example, we get new people showing up to study all of the time. Few of them stick around more than one or two lessons. This is normal at any martial arts school. At the beginning, the fall out rate is huge. Still, she spends time with every new beginner, giving them every bit of attention. She doesn’t seem to regret what many would consider this investment in futility. Of those who decide to stick around, they seem to stick around for a very long time. This is a sign of a healthy school. That is the yin and yang of things.

She doesn’t really lecture on Daoism or philosophy. She doesn’t need to. She provides with an example each time we come to class.

Thoreau said: Philosophy practice is the goal of learning. I believe my Taijiquan teacher has achieved much.

Dao De Jing: Chapter #25 Beneath Abstraction

The Dao De Jing is one of the world's classics, and one of the foundational documents of Daoism. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to an online version.

25. Beneath Abstraction

There is a mystery,
Beneath abstraction,
Silent, depthless,
Alone, unchanging,
Ubiquitous and liquid,
The mother of nature.
It has no name, but I call it "the Way";
It has no limit, but I call it "limitless".

Being limitless, it flows away forever;
Flowing away forever, it returns to my self:

The Way is limitless,
So nature is limitless,
So the world is limitless,
And so I am limitless.

For I am abstracted from the world,
The world from nature,
Nature from the Way,
And the Way from what is beneath abstraction.

Common Sense

Ben Stein, economist, actor, lawyer, raconteur, bon vivant, and man about town, is a font of clear thinking and common sense. If you click on the title of this post, you’ll be directed to his web site.

"The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want."

Right now, I’m reading one of his books: How Successful People Win: Using Bunkhouse Logic To Get What You Want In Life. (ISBN 1-56170-975-1)

Here’s the Amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/How-Successful-People-Win-Bunkhouse/dp/1561709751/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1196104757&sr=11-1

The best descriptions of the book comes from that page.

From Publishers Weekly
While the cowboy life is basking in the Brokeback spotlight, Stein (How to Ruin Your Life) believes the mindset of these romantic figures-the cowboys' "bunkhouse logic"-is the ultimate guide to fulfillment in life. But don't let the stature of this breezy book fool you: Stein dispels wishful thinking and exhorts readers to figure out what they want and then to ask for it. Unlike most entries in the self-help field, Stein's writing is dark, funny and devoid of sunny aphorisms: readers should accept that life is a series of potentially debilitating blows, forego "illusions that anything will work out in a just or decent or proper way," realize that "constant ass-kissing is so demeaning to the ass-kisser and the ass-kissed that it cheapens life" and always "dream your biggest dreams." Stein's bunkhouse thinking revolves around realizing the stark facts of life and then acting accordingly, so associating with lucky, successful people is good, but choosing perfection over persistence is bad. Readers may be disheartened to read Stein's flip affirmation of their fears about how the world works, but this guide to playing the game will help those feeling hogtied.

Book Description

How Successful People Win is a serious self-help book using as its central metaphor the life of the cowboy and his behavior as he leaves his bunkhouse. Based upon a lifetime of observation of the successful and how they got that way, Ben Stein suggests that you imitate the determination, inner mobility, activity, flexibility—and the refusal to indulge in self-pity—of the cowboy in order to get what you want out of life.

The idea is that if you never indulge in making excuses, refuse to let other people’s hangups get in your way, and move deliberately toward clearly thought-out goals, you will get where you want to go. Just as the cowboy refuses to allow himself to get sidetracked by trivia, so can you refuse to allow life’s inevitable challenges and distractions mar your own success and happiness. The choice is yours.

------------- Me again.

Clear thinking; seeing life as it is, rather than how we wished it would be has always resonated with me. I think it also resonates well with what Zen and Daoism, while very different things, has to teach.
We create our lives. We live our choices.

The next time you’re at the bookstore, take a look.
You may find that the time it took was a few minutes well spent.

Grand Strategy

A friend sent me this. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to his blog, The Collaborative Vew.

What this concerns is an interview that appeared at Sonshi.com. “Sonshi” is the Japanese pronounciation of “Sun Tzu.” The website is dedicated to Sun Tzu, and his classic, The Art of War.

On this website is an interview with Robert Greene. Greene, together with Joost Elfers, have produced three outstanding books on Strategy. They are not only well written, they are among the most beautifully produced books that I own. What I especially like about these books are their inclusion of counter examples of strategies, and stories which illustrate various strategies. Among the most engaging stories are of colorful scam artists from the past. One of my favorites was the story of a man selling the Effiel Tower in Paris.

Here are URLs for the books on Amazon:

The 48 Laws of Power

http://www.amazon.com/48-Laws-Power-Robert-Greene/dp/0140280197/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195227636&sr=1-2

The Art of Seduction

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Seduction-Robert-Greene/dp/0142001198/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

The 33 Strategies of War

http://www.amazon.com/33-Strategies-War-Robert-Greene/dp/0670034576/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195227705&sr=1-4

Below is an excerpt from the interview with Robert Greene. He speaks of “tactical hell”, strategy, and grand strategy. In Daoist thinking, these correspond with Earth, Man, and Heaven respectively. Good food for thought.

Sonshi.com: One of the most outstanding concepts you wrote about in "33 Strategies" was number 15, "Control the Dynamic," a strategy that does not have a reversal. Central to Sun Tzu's Art of War is always being active and taking a proactive stance: from planning ahead in the temple to initiating the time and place of battle. In your opinion, of the 33 strategies, which one do you think applies most often in people's lives?

Greene: It depends on your circumstances. It's all relative. If you are dealing with stressful situations, chapter three on maintaining your presence of mind would be particularly helpful, as would chapter 4 if you find it hard to motivate yourself. Chapters 5 and 6 are particularly relevant to leaders of any group. I make the point that structure is strategy—how you organize your group will determine its mobility, efficiency, morale, etc. Chapter 8 is very important—it is about operating with economy, finding the perfect level between your means and your ends. The center of gravity chapter is critical for attacking any problem. But I suppose if I had to elevate one chapter above the others, it is the longest one in the book—chapter 12, on Grand Strategy. This to me is the apex of strategic thought—the ability to think in terms of a campaign, not battles. This has great relevance to daily life.

I make the point that most of us live in what I call tactical hell. We are constantly reacting to what others give us, managing the battles that confront us day in and day out. We rarely get control. Our minds become dominated by tactical thinking. We can only focus on details. We argue and nitpick about this battle or that battle. It is hell .

Strategy is a kind of mental ladder you climb to get above these battles, gain some perspective and plot your moves. It is a mental purgatory. Grand strategy is simply this idea taken further— gaining a perspective that encompasses months or years. It is incredibly liberating and powerful when you have clear idea of where you want to be in five years, or can focus on what you see as your destiny in life. It helps you manage your daily decisions . "It is not important I fight this battle because it does not serve my overall goals." On and on.

Grand strategy is heaven, one we rarely reach, but must always aim for. It is the ultimate form of rationality. The word is misused nowadays, and I try to correct this in the chapter. I wish everyone would read it. And it is my modest homage to the spirit of Sun-tzu.


http://www.sonshi.com/greene.html

I Ching

In addition to the Dao De Jing, and Zhaung Zi, another pillar of Daoism is the I Ching. If you click on the title of this post, you’ll be directed to the Wikipedia article on the I Ching. I’ve extracted some sections of that article and present them below.

As an introduction to the I Ching, I’d recommend The Philosophy of the I Ching by Carol Anthony, for some background information.

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Ching-Carol-K-Anthony/dp/0960383220/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192814495&sr=8-4

I’d also recommend The Portable Dragon by R.G.H Siu. The late Dr. Siu was a Chinese gentleman who was immensely educated in Western Literature and Science. I believe he was a Chemistry Professor at MIT. In this book, he uses quotes and excerpts from Western literature to help get across the meanings of the hexagrams to our Western minds.

http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Dragon-Western-Guide-Ching/dp/0262690306/ref=sr_1_1/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192815480&sr=1-1

The I Ching (often spelled as I Jing, Yi Ching, Yi King, or Yi Jing; also called "Book of Changes" or "Classic of Changes") is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. A symbol system designed to identify order in what seem like chance events, it describes an ancient system of cosmology and philosophy that is at the heart of Chinese cultural beliefs. The philosophy centres on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change (see Philosophy, below). In Western cultures, the I Ching is regarded by some as simply a system of divination; many believe it expresses the wisdom and philosophy of ancient China.

The book consists of a series of symbols, rules for manipulating these symbols, poems, and commentary.

History

Traditional view

Traditionally it was believed that the principles of the I Ching originated with the mythical Fu Xi (伏羲 Fú Xī). In this respect he is seen as an early culture hero, one of the earliest legendary rulers of China (traditional dates 2800 BCE-2737 BCE), reputed to have had the 8 trigrams (八卦 bā gùa) revealed to him supernaturally. By the time of the legendary Yu (禹 Yǔ) 2194 BC–2149 BC, the trigrams had supposedly been developed into 64 hexagrams (六十四卦 lìu shí­ sì gùa), which were recorded in the scripture Lian Shan (《連山》 Lián Shān; also called Lian Shan Yi). Lian Shan, meaning "continuous mountains" in Chinese, begins with the hexagram Bound (艮 gèn), which depicts a mountain (::|) mounting on another and is believed to be the origin of the scripture's name.

After the traditionally recorded Xia Dynasty was overthrown by the Shang Dynasty, the hexagrams are said to have been re-deduced to form Gui Cang (《歸藏》 Gūi Cáng; also called Gui Cang Yi), and the hexagram Field (坤 kūn) became the first hexagram. Gui Cang may be literally translated into "return and be contained," which refers to earth as the first hexagram itself indicates. At the time of Shang's last king, Zhou Wang, King Wen of Zhou is said to have deduced the hexagram and discovered that the hexagrams beginning with Force (乾 qián) revealed the rise of Zhou. He then gave each hexagram a description regarding its own nature, thus Gua Ci (卦辭 guà cí, "Explanation of Hexagrams").

When King Wu of Zhou, son of King Wen, toppled the Shang Dynasty, his brother Zhou Gong Dan is said to have created Yao Ci (爻辭 yáo cí, "Explanation of Horizontal Lines") to clarify the significance of each horizontal line in each hexagram. It was not until then that the whole context of I Ching was understood. Its philosophy heavily influenced the literature and government administration of the Zhou Dynasty (1122 BCE - 256 BCE).

Later, during the time of Spring and Autumn (722 BCE - 481 BCE), Confucius is traditionally said to have written the Shi Yi (十翼 shí yì, "Ten Wings"), a group of commentaries on the I Ching. By the time of Han Wu Di (漢武帝 Hàn Wǔ Dì) of the Western Han Dynasty (circa 200 BCE), Shi Yi was often called Yi Zhuan (易傳 yì zhùan, "Commentary on the I Ching"), and together with the I Ching they composed Zhou Yi (周易 zhōu yì, "Changes of Zhou"). All later texts about Zhou Yi were explanations only, due to the classic's deep meaning.

Western ("Modernist") view

In the past 50 years a "Modernist" history of the I Ching has been emerging, based on context criticism and research into Shang and Zhou dynasty oracle bones, as well as Zhou bronze inscriptions and other sources (see below). These reconstructions are dealt with in a growing number of books, such as The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the I Ching, by S. J. Marshall, and Richard Rutt's Zhouyi: The Book of Changes, (see References, below).

Scholarly works dealing with the new view of the Book of Changes include doctoral dissertations by Richard Kunst and Edward Shaughnessy. These and other scholars have been helped immensely by the discovery, in the 1970s, by Chinese archaeologists, of intact Han dynasty era tombs in Mawangdui near Changsha, Hunan province. One of the tombs contained more or less complete 2nd century BCE texts of the I Ching, the Dao De Jing and other works, which are mostly similar yet in some ways diverge significantly from the "received," or traditional, texts preserved by the chances of history.

The tomb texts include additional commentaries on the I Ching, previously unknown, and apparently written as if they were meant to be attributed to Confucius. All of the Mawangdui texts are many centuries older than the earliest known attestations of the texts in question. When talking about the evolution of the Book of Changes, therefore, the Modernists contend that it is important to distinguish between the traditional history assigned to texts such as the I Ching (felt to be anachronistic by the Modernists), assignations in commentaries which have themselves been canonized over the centuries along with their subjects, and the more recent scholarly history aided by modern linguistic textual criticism and archaeology.

Many hold that these perspectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but, for instance, many Modernist scholars doubt the actual existence of Fuxi, think Confucius had nothing to do with the Book of Changes, and contend that the hexagrams came before the trigrams. Modern scholarship comparing poetic usage and formulaic phrasing in this book with that in ancient bronze inscriptions has shown that the text cannot be attributed to King Wen or Zhou Gong, and that it likely was not compiled until the late Western Zhou, perhaps ca. the late 9th century BCE.

Rather than being the work of one or several legendary or historical figures, the core divinatory text is now thought to be an accretion of Western Zhou divinatory concepts. As for the Shi Yi commentaries traditionally attributed to Confucius, scholars from the time of the 11th century A.D. scholar Ouyang Xiu onward have doubted this, based on textual analysis, and modern scholars date most of them to the late Warring States period, with some sections perhaps being as late as the Western Han period.

However it must be noted that the value of modern interpertations is still questionable to many people. Since Western civilization did not create the I Ching it can be said that it's interpertations of the book are next to irrelevant to those who believe only a work's original culture can truelly understand it's meaning. On the other hand an alternative view does give variety and life to a work and may be equally as relevant. The relevancy of this view as with the traditional one is up to the person reading it.

Structure

The text of the I Ching is a set of predictions represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), where each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 2⁶ or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.

The hexagram diagram is conceptually subdivided into two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 2³, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system (see, e.g., Shaugnessy 1993).

Each hexagram represents a description of a state or process. When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed (that is, unchanging). Moving (also sometimes called "old", or "unstable") lines will change to their opposites, that is "young" lines of the other type -- old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.

The oldest method for casting the hexagrams, using yarrow stalks, is a biased random number generator, so the possible answers are not equiprobable. While the probability of getting either yin or yang is equal, the probability of getting old yang is three times greater than old yin. The yarrow stalk method was gradually replaced during the Han Dynasty by the three coins method. Using this method, the imbalance in generating old yin and old yang was eliminated. However, there is no theoretical basis for indicating what should be the optimal probability basis of the old lines versus the young lines. Of course, the whole idea behind this system of divination is that the oracle will select the appropriate answer anyway, regardless of the probabilities.

There have been several arrangements of the trigrams and hexagrams over the ages. The bā gùa is a circular arrangement of the trigrams, traditionally printed on a mirror, or disk. According to legend, Fu Hsi found the bā gùa on the scales of a tortoise's back. They function rather like a magic square, with the four axes summing to the same value (e.g., using 0 and 1 to represent yin and yang, 000 + 111 = 111, 101 + 010 = 111, etc.).

The King Wen sequence is the traditional (i.e. "classical") sequence of the hexagrams used in most contemporary editions of the book. The King Wen sequence was explained for the first time in STEDT Monograph #5, where it is shown to contain within it a demonstration of advanced mathematical knowledge.

Philosophy

Gradations of binary expression based on yin and yang -- old yang, old yin, young yang or young yin (see the divination paragraph below) -- are what the hexagrams are built from. Yin and yang, while common expressions associated with many schools known from classical Chinese culture, are especially associated with the Taoists.

Another view holds that the I Ching is primarily a Confucianist ethical or philosophical document. This view is based upon the following:

• The Wings or Appendices are attributed to Confucius.
• The study of the I Ching was required as part of the Civil Service Exams in the period that these exams only studied Confucianist texts.
• It is one of the Five Confucian Classics.
• It does not appear in any surviving editions of the Dao Zang.
• The major commentaries were written by Confucianists, or Neo-Confucianists.
• Taoist scripture avoids, even mocks, all attempts at categorizing the world's myriad phenomena and forming a static philosophy.
• Taoists venerate the non-useful. The I Ching could be used for good or evil purposes.

Both views may be seen to show that the I Ching was at the heart of Chinese thought, serving as a common ground for the Confucian and Taoist schools. Partly forgotten due to the rise of Chinese Buddhism during the Tang dynasty, the I Ching returned to the attention of scholars during the Song dynasty. This was concomitant with the reassessment of Confucianism by Confucians in the light of Taoist and Buddhist metaphysics, and is known in the West as Neo-Confucianism. The book, unquestionably an ancient Chinese scripture, helped Song Confucian thinkers to synthesize Buddhist and Taoist cosmologies with Confucian and Mencian ethics. The end product was a new cosmogony that could be linked to the so-called "lost Tao" of Confucius and Mencius.

Dao De Jing: Chapter #24 Indulgence

In addition to being a world classic, the Dao De Jing is one of the foundational documents of philosophical Daoism. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to an online version of the complete text.

24. Indulgence
Straighten yourself and you will not stand steady;
Display yourself and you will not be clearly seen;
Justify yourself and you will not be respected;
Promote yourself and you will not be believed;
Pride yourself and you will not endure.

These behaviours are wasteful, indulgent,
And so they attract disfavour;
Harmony avoids them.

Dao De Jing: Chapter #23 Words

The Dao De Jing is a timeless classic. If you click on the title of this post, you'll be directed to a full online version.

23. Words

Nature says only a few words:
High wind does not last long,
Nor does heavy rain.
If nature's words do not last
Why should those of man?

Who accepts harmony, becomes harmonious.
Who accepts loss, becomes lost.
For who accepts harmony, the Way harmonizes with him,
And who accepts loss, the Way cannot find.

Heading into Autumn

Labor Day has come and gone, marking the unofficial end of summer. Autumn is my favorite time of year. As we pass into the fall and the nights begin to become a little cooler, as we’re sitting around the fire pit on the patio listening to the crickets; maybe it’s time to take stock of where I’ve been and make a few plans about where I want to go.

One thing that marks the change of the seasons is how much reading I get done. During the spring and summer, as the days get longer and there’s just more to do outside, I get less reading done. I used to struggle with this, until I realized that it was a part of the change in seasons.

Under the heading of “Reading” I count my Japanese language study as well as my recreational reading. With a special effort in June and July I read all of the Harry Potter books anticipating the release of the last one in the series. I thoroughly enjoyed the books, however reading them threw a monkey wrench into my Japanese study, and after reading a foot high stack of books, I was frankly sick of the written page for a while.

I’m back on course now. The latest issues of the Smithsonian and National Geographic have come and gone.

http://www2.smithsonianmag.si.edu/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/index.html

I’ve started digging back into my Japanese study.

Looking ahead, I expect to do some traveling for work in October. That means long airplane rides, as well as layovers. It means I’ll get some reading done.

I’ve always enjoyed reading Dracula by Bram Stoker in the days leading up to Halloween,

http://www.amazon.com/Dracula-Signet-Classics-Bram-Stoker/dp/0451523377/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188933126&sr=1-2

as well as taking in as many of my favorite vampire movies as I can catch: Dracula with Bela Lugosi; Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, and Winona Ryder; Dead and Loving It, with Leslie Nielsen; and of course that instant dopey classic Van Helsing.

http://www.answers.com/topic/dracula-1931-film?cat=entertainment

http://www.answers.com/topic/bram-stoker-s-dracula

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula:_Dead_and_Loving_It

http://www.answers.com/topic/van-helsing-film

At a sale table, I picked up The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. This is a fairly new novel inspired by, and thoroughly wrapped around Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

http://www.amazon.com/Historian-Elizabeth-Kostova/dp/B000EGF0OG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188934109&sr=1-1

I’m also thinking of trying to fit in a vampire novel that I haven’t read in over 20 years, but might be ripe for a revisit. This would be Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice. This was the novel that made her famous. I tried to read a couple of her later books (I remember reading the Vampire Lestat), but they never appealed to me as much as did this first novel, and I never went back. I caught the movie version on cable a couple of times and I’d been thinking of reading it again. Maybe this year I’ll do it.

http://www.amazon.com/Interview-With-The-Vampire/dp/B000EZ3300/ref=sr_1_6/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188934282&sr=1-6

That should take care of October. For November, if I’m not sick of reading for a while, I’m thinking of revisiting one of my favorite works: The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson. Historical fiction set in the Baroque period. Newton, Libenitz, Blackbeard, the Siege of Vienna, the Barbary Pirates, Alchemy, the Royal Society, Turkish Harems, the Financial Instruments of the Dutch Republic, the Sun King, Tourettes Syndrome, Gold … there’s something in there for everyone who enjoys a rollicking story that spans the globe (several times as I recall) and generations. Who can’t help but root for Jack Shaftoe, or fall in love with Eliza?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/103-1104095-2784624?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+baroque+cycle&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

With my youngest daughter driving herself around, I find that I have more time on my hands. Wanting to put this extra time to good use, I’ve started a few new things. I’ve gone back to regular martial arts training with the Wu style of Taijiquan (Tai chi chuan). I go there once a week, pick up new material as it’s offered, try to absorb refinements as they’re presented and practice regularly.

http://www.wustyle-annarbor.com/

Something about martial arts, especially so called “internal” martial arts, tends to attract people who are … off the beaten path (for better or worse). I find that this group is the more “normal” yet diverse set of people with whom I’ve ever trained.

I’ve trained various martial arts, on and off, since I was about 16. There have been numerous and sometimes quite lengthy interruptions in my practice, but it’s always something that I’ve wanted to come back to. Well, I’m ready to give it another go.

This school is directly connected to the “gatekeeper” of this style of taiji. This is the webpage for his school:

http://www.wustyle.com/

Besides Taiji, I’ve always liked to exercise. Last fall, I got into the habit of walking the dog with my wife every evening. While it was nice to go for a walk with her, I really needed something more vigorous. She still takes the dog, we spend time together making a fire on our patio, and I’ve taken to walking pretty vigorously on a treadmill, carrying a couple of dumbbells with me. My feet and joints can only take so much wear and tear, and I’ve pretty quickly found what is my limit.

I’ve also ordered a knock off of the Bow Flex (called a Band Flex, about 1/3 of the Bow Flex cost). I’m expecting to have that assembled in my basement by the end of the week. At my age, my plan is to lift weights that are challenging, but I’m not going to put myself under any undue strain. My daughter can make use of it as well for her volleyball training.

“At my age.” Ha! Next month, I’ll turn 50. Several of my friends have already turned 50. I usually look at birthdays as just another day. None of them has really had an impact on my thinking (OMG, I’m 30!). I can’t help but think that at 50, I ought to be looking back as well as looking forward.

For my first 50 years, I’d say that I’ve had a good run. When my mother was in Hospice care, the Hospice counselor who was looking after my well being asked me if I would have changed anything in how I had looked after her for all those years. The answer is the same as I look back on my first 50 years. No. Nothing of any significance. Maybe I’d be tempted to fiddle with a little something around the edges, but I can’t think of a single thing I would want to change in my life.

Where I am right now – my oldest is in her last year at the University. She’s had a very good internship this summer working for the Detroit Tigers Baseball Team. She worked in promotions as an intern. She’d work in the office during the day, and all of the home games in the evening. It’s a great addition to her resume. She’s got quite a few stories to tell.

My two favorite are these: one of her jobs was to take the celebrity who would be throwing out the first pitch out onto the field. Sometimes, the celebrity would cancel at the last minute due to whatever reason. One time this happened with just minutes to go, and her boss told her to get somebody. She picked out a 10 year old boy, who will remember that day for the rest of his life.

Another promotion was to pick “the fan of the game.” She’d go find a family of four sitting in not so great seats, and move them to very good seats behind home plate. One family she moved was especially thankful. It turned out that one of the kids had cancer and was to begin chemo the following Monday. This was the last family big outing before his chemo began. I think God guided her hand in picking that family.

My youngest is a junior in high school. The volleyball team is the defending state champion, so this season should be a lot of fun. She’s also been selected to be a Peer Conflict Moderator, which is a pretty good leadership position, which I think will pay off for her as she applies to colleges.

My wife and I have had our ups and downs over the years, but no more so than anyone else I think. Looking back the best times we had was when we first started out, and we had nothing but each other. With the kids perched on the launching pad, I can see us coming full circle and in a way I’m looking forward to it.

The job has it’s issues, but so does every job. What I’m doing right now is what I enjoy the most. Having spent many years as a contract employee, I tend to see a very sharp axe hiding behind every dark cloud as well as every silver lining, so at least I’m always prepared. We’re kicking up a lot of dust. We’re having a good run.

Looking forward, well that’s a little tricky.

The 64^th verse of the Dao De Jing says:

64a. Care at the Beginning

What lies still is easy to grasp;
What lies far off is easy to anticipate;
What is brittle is easy to shatter;
What is small is easy to disperse.

Yet a tree broader than a man can embrace is born of a tiny shoot;
A dam greater than a river can overflow starts with a clod of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles begins at the spot under one's feet.

Therefore deal with things before they happen;
Create order before there is confusion.

The Daoist, in my mind, is above all pragmatic. He looks at the world as it is, where he wants to go, and plots his course accordingly.

One of my favorite books, which has really influenced my thinking, is Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb.

http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0812975219/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-1104095-2784624?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188936078&sr=1-1

Taleb is a mathematician, philosopher, and hedgefund manager. Among the high points of his thesis is something shared in the timeless advice from the I Ching, the classical Chinese oracle: lay low, accumulate small gains, know when to stop when a big gain comes along, and do everything you can to avoid the “big blowup.”

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/103-1104095-2784624?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=I+ching&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

The “Big Blowup” is when a stock trader’s multi million dollar fortune evaporates in one day of bad trading, for example. If you know anyone who is one paycheck away from living in a box, they are begging for the big blow up to happen. I know someone in that situation. His future is not something he likes to think about.

At 50, it’s not a bad idea to look at one’s retirement plans. Are you saving enough money? Are you hedging against the big blowup? Do you even have a plan? When you’re younger, you can recover if something doesn’t turn out well. When you’re older it’s much harder.

My wife works at a credit union, and they’ve added a new service. They now have a financial planner on the staff. As an introduction, all the staff members were given a free consultation with him. So we gathered all of our financial figures, which was an exercise far beyond what you normally do for your taxes, and sat down with him. That exercise in itself was mind opening.

We handed over a stack of papers, and began talking about what