Interdependence instead of Independence is how the Universe works

I'm going over 20 year old notebooks from my graduate studies in environmental aesthetic philosophy. The following are gleanings from my notes:

An aesthetic of the sublime in nature (mountains, oceans, starry skies, for instances) is enhanced by the knowledge that we are in fact part and parcel ocean, mountain, and star appreciating themselves. Far from the narcissi obsessive-gaze, this mingling of awe and humility is a primal (yet reflectively advanced) form of worship.

Etymological investigation of the word Sublime yields:  from L. sublimus, to lift up. In chemistry, to pass from solid to gas without becoming a liquid. Interesting implications: Being lifted up by a sublime experience, toward the sky, the stars. To be inspired is to literally be breathed up, our spirits lifted toward the absolute, and solid body goes directly toward airy realms of spirit. Perhaps metaphysics and physics, metachemistry and chemistry are not so far apart after all...

Perhaps then the transcendence of small ego-self we feel when sensorily engaged with sublime features of Nature (as above) is due to our feeling a part of (instead of apart from!) the larger, incomprehensible grandeur of the cosmos; and the sublime is a literal lifting up of the human to have a glimpse at our deep cosmic ancestry and proportions. So that when I stare raptly into the Milky Way (Chinese Starry River) on a clear night, my contemplations of distant galactic features like other galaxies, trillions upon trillions of supernovae, stars, and the even greater Void of deep space, this contemplation lifts my ordinary state of consciousness to its grand origins. We can call such experiences Sublime, Divine even, but ultimately beyond words.

Refrigerator hums more beautifully than birdsong today

As I was sitting in meditation this morning: the near constant hum of refrigerator was in contrast to the fervent songs of birds outside doing their mating and communicating. It occurred to me that my refrigerator was more useful to me than their piercing cries, as I closed the window to be more focused within. It was a revelation in that I have usually preferenced the sounds of "nature" (water, wind, birds) over modern culture (machine sounds of various sorts), but that on closer inspection, I might just have well thought the opposite given the respective sound-making entities' function in my daily life. Certainly, the world needs birds and their songs for no other reason than biological diversity and their inherent beauty and worth. However, that humming refrigerator keeps my food fresh for days, saving me from a trip (in my exhaust and noise spewing car) to the coolers at the grocery store every day. To me, today, closing the window on the birds doing their own things, for their own sakes, allowed me to appreciate the refrigerator doing its own thing and me doing mine as well.

On "nature" and ontology

"[A]n aesthetic appreciation of nature, if serious, is necessarily a self-exploration also; for the energies, regularities, contingencies of nature are the...[same] that sustain my own embodied life and my own awareness. Nature may be "other" to us, but we are no less conatural with it. We do not simply look out upon nature as we look at the sea's drama from a safe shore: the shore is no less nature, and so too is the one who looks."

(from article "Trivial and serious in aesthetic appreciation of nature," R.W. Hepburn in the book "Landscape, Natural Beauty, and the Arts," Kemal and Gaskell editors, Cambridge UP 1993, pg. 69)

As John Muir said, "I found that by going out, I was also going in."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/29/hacking-the-nervous-syste_n_7469526.html


This article, while mildly interesting, to me points up the need for people to HEAL THEMSELVES VIA DEEP BELLY BREATHING, TAI CHI AND QIGONG, instead of the invasive technological interventions that even the most clever western doctors can scheme up.  I would almost guarantee all the results and more, without the side effects of drugs and surgical interventions, by empowering people to heal themselves with the techniques I teach--such as belly, or diaphragm breathing.  The vagus nerve has branches that extend THROUGH the DIAPHRAGM...need I say more?  Oh, and that "mysterious" (to western medical science) way one part of the brain instantaneously effects another part of the body?  Daoist Meridian theory accounted for and has practiced its healing applications for over 2000 years!  Western bio-pharmaceutical butcher-mechanics, get over yourselves and start learning that the sages were way ahead of you--millenia ago~

Chris Hedges: America's Mania for Positive Thinking and Denial of Reality Will Be Our Downfall | Alternet

Chris Hedges: America's Mania for Positive Thinking and Denial of Reality Will Be Our Downfall | Alternet


I mostly agree with everything he says--except that he is exhalting the supremacy of the "wisdom of transcendence," and in rather vague terms.  I would have been more comfortable had he suggested the need for INTEGRATION of knowledge and wisdom, body, mind, spirit, rational and intuitive...etc.  It's like saying we should only value the Feminine, whereas what we need is the RE-INTEGRATION with the Masculine traits he is disparaging.

Elves Do Tai Chi and Qigong to stay young, healthy, and magical

I just saw the the second part of the Hobbit movie, and now can say without doubt: its Tai Chi and Qigong that the Elven folk practice to live forever, heal naturally, and of course: even kill Orcs if they need to!  See the movie, which has some of the most incredible martial-art like action scenes ever done...by Elves! It did over-do the action and fighting and under do the magic and beauty of the first part of the trilogy, however. We can only hope for a grand synthesis with the concluding movie next year, where of course the Light and Magic harmonizes with (remember, the oppositional yet complimentary functions of Yin and Yang) the Dark and Dismal.

Radio Interview with Lama Tantrapa August 2012

Live from the 'Lama Den' in Portland, OR.  We discuss my newly revised and  republished book of poems and color photos, Water Seeking Light, and the topic of the intersection of tai chi/qigong and poetry.  Questions such as:  What is "natural," and "How do tai chi and qigong help one align themselves with Nature, Flow, and Creativity," are addressed.  Pardon the poor sound quality, we were recording via Tantrapa's iPhone.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/qigongmasters/2012/08/11/christopher-anderl