<font color='black' size='3' face='Times New Roman, Times, serif'><font size="3">Our rather pedestrian take on life's issues in the Saipan Tribune are occasionally shared with this listserv. Here's the Thursday, July 25 contribution.</font>
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<div><font size="3">I've been doing a daily OpEd (five days a week) in June and July, and maybe, August, for those who are curious. The website is www.saipantribune.com/opinion. </font><br>
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<div style="font-size: 16px; clear: both; ">j'aime la vie
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<div><i style="background-color: white; "><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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<div style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: helvetica, arial; color: black; ">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Jaime R Vergara <jrvergarajr2031@aol.com><br>
To: jayvee_vallejera <jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com>; mark_rabago <mark_rabago@saipantribune.com>; editor <editor@saipantribune.com><br>
Sent: Fri, Jul 19, 2013 8:27 pm<br>
Subject: Thursday July 25<br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Tao in Wudangshan</font></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Our images of <i>tao</i> practitioners
are usually those of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li flexing muscles and
agility to <i>kung fu, </i>or, the ivory
heads and mellow hearts of Big Sur’s Esalen in appropriating the gifts of <i>qigong</i> and <i>t’ai chi ch’uan</i> in the 60s.<i> </i>For some 70s TV watchers, we recall David
Carradine as the wily Taoist monk Kwai Chang Caine righting the world’s wrong
in the wild, wild west.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">All that tradition comes into prominence as a discipline and art in
the Wudang mountains astride Shiyan prefecture, flourished and intensified during
the Ming dynasty when China turned inward; the martial arts of Kung Fu and Wushu
now popularly practiced as sport’s competition even as the Qigong graces home
parlors and the Taijiquan is performed en masse along Shanghai’s Bund and
Chicago’s northshore.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Let us get metaphorical for a moment and take the code words YHWH
from the Levant and the <i>tao</i> of Wudang,
noting that what they mean, <i>The Way Life
Is,</i> lets us realize what a human folly it is to wage war against one another
over the variance of religious practices.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Let us do the YHWH code word first.
The German translation made it into our familiar “Jehovah”, which became
personalized in the atomic science of Europe before the advent of quantum
physics, thus, a substantive person. Fling it back to the witness of the Greeks’
“Iesu Kristo”, and the iconic “Caesar” of the Romans, and one gets the makings
of the Holy Roman Empire – Christo Rei, King and Pope, representing the
transcendent will of the World Beyond.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">The <i>Tao </i>means “way”,
“path”, “route”, before it is a doctrine or a principle. As a verb, it means, to “speak” – the truth,
the real, and the authentic. It is not
faith in the belief sense, rather, it is focused on practice in effortless
action, not the anxious moral virtue we find in the ethics of law and order, of
what be ought and should! </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">The social form of the YHWH tradition became “civilization”, the
Empire and the maintenance of social order through individual integrity, at
first, of the ruler, and now, the citizen; that of <i>Tao </i>emerged as dynastic social practice of <i>mianzi </i>(face) and <i>guanzi </i>(connection),
the assurance of social welfare, the empowerment of family existence, and the
reality of social authenticity.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Historically, human right in the YHWH tradition devolved into
individual duties and obligations; in the <i>Tao,
</i>human right evolved into social stability and social responsibility. Neither tradition is exclusive of the
other. The variance is on emphasis. One is promised a land of plenty elsewhere in
time, from genesis to apocalypse, in Canaan or in Heaven; the other is the
command not to do unto others what one would not want others do unto them, in
space, organized, socially stratified, and circulated in the here-and-now.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">In the scriptures of the Christian YHWH, the believer becomes a
disciple of Jesus who self-confidently claims: “I am the way, the truth, and
the life, no one comes to the Father (read, YHWH) except through me,” asking
followers to do likewise. Believers
become the revealers of truth, the vessels of the real, and the demonstration
of what is authentic. The universal “the
way life is” is the <i>logos </i>incarnate
in every birth. </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Nothing earthshaking here, except the grievous mistake of turning the
<i>logos </i>into a book <i>(biblos = books), </i>or “doing likewise”
into light-upon-the-hill exceptionalism and manifest destiny. The universal incarnate is everyone’s
prerogative. Even the Rotary Club’s
four-way test says as much, and they are definitely ahead of the Anglican
Church in getting female leadership in their ranks.</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">The <i>tao </i>is profoundly seen
in the symbol of the <i>taiji </i>and like
the <i>logos</i> in the Johannine sense, it
is very active (imagine it not as a one-dimentional <i>yin-yang, </i>but as a continually swirling orb and it will look different). In fact, the <i>tao </i>that can be named is not the
tao! Followers of <i>tao </i>focus on the action, the practice that is in tune with the way
life is, which is always experienced as seeking the balance between humanity
and nature. Maintaining unity and harmony
in the midst of diversity is the swirl of the <i>yin-yang; </i>creating and innovating from the tranquil center is the
art and discipline of the motion meditations of <i>kung fu </i>and <i>qigong</i>. Balancing the interior with the exterior, the
individual and the social, is the <i>tao, </i>the
way life is!</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">The <i>tao </i>leads to a life of
virtue, the cultivation of the <i>qi, </i>the
life force, consonant to the way life is.
Nothing particularly novel here, save the calcification of ancient rites
and rituals, and stratified society of ingrained patriarchy. The maintenance of social order and harmony
is everyone’s responsibility. Even members
of China’s Communist Party aspire to do so!</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">So, what has this got to do with the woods of Wudang, let alone, the
seashells of Saipan?</font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">It is the image of “the way life is” that comes careening at our
face, from the Levant to the </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Wudang </font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">foothills of the Sword River. The religious traditions of both YHWH and <i>tao </i>have been shaped by the requirements
of time and space. Today, we no longer
seek the Will of God in time, or the Mandate of Heaven in space, to enlighten
the choices we make of our lives. We
have become secular, this worldly whether we say so or not, with only one question
to ask, in Wudang or in Jerusalem: Is this the way life is?<i> </i></font></font></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3"> </font></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; "><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size="3">Our answers are formulated through our lives. Funny that the <i>tao </i>in Wudangshan looks exactly like the YHWH of the Levant. Let us solemnly stand before The Way Life Is!</font></span></div>
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<div style="clear: both; "><font size="3"><a style="font-weight: lighter; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><img align="absmiddle" border="0" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> </font><font color="black"><font size="3">j'aime la vie
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<div style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: helvetica, arial; "><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i><i style="font-size: 10pt; "><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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