The Mad Monk Manifesto. Yun Rou

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СКАЧАТЬ must peel back layer after layer of misunderstanding, self-indulgence, lack of discipline, misguided beliefs, and pathological disconnection from the natural world. The fruit of such internal resolution is external revolution. In a world of awakened human beings, so much of what is flat-out wrong can no longer stand. If we can evolve fast enough, we can tip the scales back in favor of our species, and of the rest of the world, too.

      The blueprint that follows is based on the notion of building a strong body as a foundation for an awakened mind, then using that mind to assume personal responsibility and fully awaken the self. This prescription applies even when fortune fades, moods change, circumstances worsen, and titillation dims. It emphasizes connecting with others (once we have done the work to repair damage to ourselves) and then with all of nature. It includes both hints for personal spiritual hygiene and sweeping political creeds melded together in what is the quintessence of Daoism. All this may seem mad in the sense of crazy, utopian, naïve, outrageous, extreme, unrealistic, quixotic, and hopelessly romantic, but Daoists have followed this path for millennia and never found it lacking.

      I believe that the most effective way to help each other onto the path is to foster constructive dialog, particularly with those in other “tribes,” about what matters most to them and their communities. The increasing number of seemingly impenetrable borders between us—including religious fundamentalism, greed and self-interest on a national scale, and, not least, tech-centered communication that minimizes altruism and empathy—have deprived us of such dialogs, substituting for them superficial exchanges that are quite often more bombast and bluster than compassionate substance. If we could use the ideas in this manifesto as a starting point for sustained, open, and positive channels of communication, we would certainly do better than could any top-down cohering force (an oxymoron if there ever was one), much better than any biblical or alien savior, and much better than any future digital overlord.

      Ancient masters of Way

      all subtle mystery and dark-enigma vision:

      they were deep beyond knowing,

      so deep beyond knowing

      we can only describe their appearance:

      Perfectly cautious, as if crossing winter streams,

      and perfectly watchful, as if neighbors threatened;

      perfectly reserved, as if guests,

      perfectly expansive, as if ice melting away,

      and perfectly simple as if uncarved wood;

      perfectly empty, as if open valleys,

      and perfectly shadowy, as if murky water.

      Who’s murk enough to settle slowly into pure clarity,

      and who still enough to awaken slowly into life?

      If you nurture this Way, you never crave fullness.

      never crave fullness

      and you’ll wear away into completion.

      —Laozi Stanza 151

       Notes on the Presentation

      I have woven together what I hope you will find a compelling and informative handbook for achieving personal evolution that leads to peaceful social revolution. I would like to think that the process of reading, considering, and sharing the ideas herein can catalyze true change in you and organically generate those vaunted qualities of humility, frugality, and compassion. The flow of things is as follows:

      •Specific personal and political calls to action

      •Inspirational references

      •Key snippets from Chinese history

      •A philosophical travel guide

      •Stories about the transformational power of Daoist ideas

      •Teachings of famous sages

      In presenting the material, I follow the exact model Daoist practice does, namely the precise progression from considering the work we do on ourselves to considering how that work affects the world. Accordingly, we begin with relaxing and rectifying the physical body, move to awakening our minds, proceed to contributing to community and improving culture, continue to consider how Daoist ideas manifest in culture, commerce, and government, review the relationship between sensitivity and the environment, and finally engage with the role of spirit and service in an awakened life. Within each section, there are thematically arranged groups, with the occasional stubborn thought that may not fit perfectly with the others but deserves consideration nonetheless.

      As you read, please remember that truth is invariably more complicated than we like it to be, that there are layers upon interrelated layers to what we call reality. Things are often smaller, larger, constantly shifting, a piece of something else, and an intersection of happenings and forces. There is always a great unfolding. I hope you’ll think deeply about these ideas, share them with others, and season them with the wisdom of your own insights and experience.

      There are a variety of systems to transliterate Chinese to English. The Chinese government’s standard Pinyin system, despite some awkwardness, is rapidly becoming the gold standard, so I have cleaved to it in this book. Each section ends with a quote from the much-vaunted Daodejing. I have chosen my favorite translations of the many available in English, so as to render the old master as widely and clearly as possible through various voices.

      In anticipation of your kind attention, I offer nine grateful bows.

       Chapter One

       Relaxing and Rectifying

      The seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes launched centuries of confusion about neuroanatomy and the reality of material existence with the famous dictum: “I think, therefore I am.” Daoist experience instantiates a contravening notion, namely that all distinctions between body and mind are specious. Some years ago, I attended a traveling exhibit called “BODIES: The Exhibition,” which revealed human structures in their full glory through the injection of liquid plastics that filled up and fleshed out all our systems. Perhaps the most startling revelation of the exhibit was the fact that the nervous system is not merely the brain and spinal cord, but rather, a vast, jellyfish-like array of tissue that pervades us from top to bottom, innervating our organs, including our digestive tract—where a second brain, the size of a cat, gives us our so-called “gut feelings”—as well as the skin on the very tips of our fingers and toes.

      Beyond anatomy, proof that the brain and body are inextricably interdigitated comes from both anecdotes and experiments that demonstrate the mortal effects of either fearing or wishing for impending death. Most recently, experiments in the field of epigenetics—beginning by stressing colonies of bacteria and progressing to examining changes in human DNA pursuant to various forms of stress—illustrate definitively that our emotions play a key part in gene expression, turning up and down the “volume” on the expression of genetic characteristics, ranging from a predisposition to cancer to the course of puberty and other developmental СКАЧАТЬ