(Part 3) Of human bondage – a paradox of yin and yang
“ Of human bondage — pain, suffering and ignorance”
( “R” rating, not suitable for the ages below 19 )
( a paradox of yin and yang)
After the writing of “Stressed in Vancouver”, a subject regarding overall human condition of “suffering (or pain and disorder)” conjured up, a subject I regret to have picked up !, a subject I encounter daily with the complaints of patients. Worst of all, my speciality is in treating infertility helping to bring forth babies to this conditioned world of human bondage, which, nevertheless, is still the most rewarding and exciting experience when I look at the thoughtless eyes of the babies patients bring, the pure eyes I am addicted to.
Let me advise to the young generations; try to choose positive or proactive types of professions for a living. Be a chef in proud white gown serving your healthy and heart-felt recipes rather than be a medical doctor living on the sufferings of people, or a lawyer living on the problems of people. Be a designer rather than a mechanic, be a scientist or engineer rather than number crunching business or finance fields. Or even, hungry you may be, fields of liberal arts such as history and philosophies.
But most important of all, if you are lucky to find, follow your heart and passion !.
How about Politics ?.
Once I’ve heard that our young generations in US are Occupying Wall Street because three elements are missing in US today;
No Johnny Cash
No Steve Jobs, therefore
No Bob Hope.
Before you young folks go out into Occupying your cities, occupy your library of mind, first of all.
Know when to advance forth, know when to sit back and get prepared.
There is an old saying in “The Book of Changes (I-ching, a book about yin and yang)” ;
Do not use (or wake up) the dragon under the water.
If you have american blood of ingenuity, you’ll make even greater Pears or Oranges than California Apple.
(back to the ” Of Human Bondage “)
If you have lived long enough, past the fun-filled childhood (phase of “wood” in terms of 5 elements or phases theory mentioned before), past the sexuality awakening adolescence (phase of “fire”), past the flowering and energetic adulthood of 20’s and 30’s (phase of “earth”), past little bit more and entering the phase of “metal” – the period of harvest – about half past of a life-span with more frequent visits to medical clinic with degenerating signs popping up here and there (just like my poor 10 years old manual shifting MB (Money Breaking) requiring endless maintenance, but still loving it), there might be a moment of realization that “life” itself is a paradox since we are, in reality, living a life (yang) to die a death (yin) !.
In a way, we are doing the time of some average life-span of 70 to 80 years locked in a form factor or the substance called “physique” or body. Living a life, if reflected in terms of whole span, is significantly outweighed by the pains, disorders, sufferings, conflicts, uncertainties and unpredictabilities, for most of the people. If we reflect upon our human history in a collective measure, it is clearly outweighed by the cruelty of human violence upon each other and upon our mother earth.
(Can you imagine, over 40 million people in World War One, over 70 million in World War Two (together about one third of current population of USA) died in just less than 100 years alone besides other wars such as Vietnam and Korea.) We, the contemporarians, living in the ages of modern science and open technological civilization is behaving much better off than any other periods of recorded human history, be it for foods, resources or in the name of religions. Are we ? So far ?
Modern science and technology have created a monster with two faces, the economically affordable nuclear power energy and at the same time, the nuclear bomb. Still unsatiated, the hundreds times more destructive hydrogen bombs were tested and installed in the cold war era military race between US and Russia. Our one and only planet Earth is loaded with some 23,000 nuclear bombs in the countries of US, Russia, France, England, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. The real threat of our mother Earth is not from the external factors such as asteroids. We are actually living in the most vulnerable ages of human violence, on the thin ice of total collapse which can be triggered any time, anywhere. Human greed and ignorance know no limit.
Kudos to Germany ! , the first country declared to scrap the nuclear energy program after the almost irreversible radioactive disaster witnessed in the case of Fukushima, Japan last year. This is another paradox of yin and yang of modern science and civilization. Can’t we ever escape this trap of duality, called yin and yang ?. Sometimes, it crosses my mind that we humans living in the form of “physique” are no better than the cancer cells thriving until the limited resources of host Earth is consumed.
Beyond this world of visible forms, physiques and substances sustained with pain, suffering and conflicts, can there be something ethereal within us, that can lead us out of this paradox of human conditions ?.
Let’s close the eyes !
(The very first phrase from the ancient book of east (about 2,500 years ago) called “Tao Te Ching” or “The Book of Tao” (Tao meaning “way”) reads;)
“Genesis”
The way that can be told of is not an unvarying way;
The names that can be named are not the unvarying names;
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind. (Chap 1, Waley)
(Marcus Aurelius (121 -180 AD), one of the 5 good emperors of Roman empire, in his “Meditations” reads;)
(most of you might recall the old emperor in the earlier scenes of movie “Gladiator”)
Everything we hear is an opinion.
Everything we see is a perspective.
“Not the truth”
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
You have power over your mind – not outside events.
Realize this, and you’ll find strength.
http://youtu.be/cpi2IAec9Ho
(According to a contemporary TCM thinker in Vancouver)
When we adhere and attach to names, forms and substances, it generates the greed, asking for even more. Behind this adherence and attachment, there are five sensory organs (eyes, nose, ears, tongue and the body) at play seeking sensory pleasures, giving rise to the conflicts and sufferings. I think the human ignorance and bondage lies behind this phantom play and pursuit of our sensory organs, as we are the products of sensory bodily desires, after all.
Let’s close the eyes and ,even, ears if you can.
Let’s (truly) “see” and “listen”
deep within.
Are we really living a life to die a death ?
Let’s take a walk into the sun-shone Pacific ocean in Vancouver.
Can you “see” “hear” and “feel” the continuous flow of “something” below and above ?
It goes on and on
beyond these names called life or death !, yin or yang !.
………
…..
…
“Why we are here ?”
“What are we doing here ?”
in the vast emptiness of the great void of universe ?
Do you know ?
“ I don’t know”
http://youtu.be/KER_IcHQYcA
(According to “Tristan und Isolde” by Richard Wagner)
Wagner wrote of his preoccupations with Schopenhauer and Tristan in a letter to Franz Liszt (December 16 1854): Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter repletion. I have devised in my mind a Tristan und Isolde, the simplest, yet most full-blooded musical conception imaginable, and with the ‘black flag’ that waves at the end I shall cover myself over – to die.
(Wagner : The Ride of the Valkyries – Copenhagen Ring)
Apocalypse Now – Ride of the Valkyries ( Die Walküre )
Apocalypse Now – Playboy Playmates in Vietnam
Apocalypse Now – The End by The Doors
Apocalypse Now – a Thinker in the jungle of Cambodia – Colonel Kurtz – who I wouldn’t dare to judge
(And then Marylin Monroe in Korean War, 1954)
http://youtu.be/M6DAzqet2iA
The schizophrenic mass hysteria of a last Stalinist country in the world
(Six decades later, President Obama on the same 38th parallel Monroe was, another pivotal point of conflict between yin and yang, east and west, the noisy liberty of down under South Korea and the dead silent paranoid of up above North Korea, the Counterpoint of Bach)
http://youtu.be/y8cKQ93gaEA
(According to President Eisenhower: one of the greatest military general and politician of US)
(According to Albert Einstein)
” I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but world War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Gute Nacht !
Still sleepless ?
Let’s take a journey to Afghanistan where the micro-level human history of violence are sadly engraved by the aggressions from such superpowers as Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan of Mongol empire (whose descendants ruled the great China for some 600 years), the Great Britain, the great USSR and now the almighty USA, equipped with high-tech weapons and warfare (whose military power is greater than the sum of all military powers of some 200 countries on earth) dealing with some primitive tribal militia called “Taliban”, which was materially supported by American CIA in the early 1980’s, trained by Pakistani Intelligence and allied with Al-Qaeda, and among them was Osama Bin Laden, from Saudi Arabia !.
(Kudos to Mr. David Adams, the Aussie photojournalist who filmed it around year 2,000, one year before the attack of 911 New York, few months before the destruction of 2,000 years old Buddha image Mr. Adams cherished)
http://youtu.be/vI3F2pBgalk
http://youtu.be/IDx6DEgQMIM
“I was gripped by the misery of life as Buddha was in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death … This world could not have been the work of an all-loving being, but that of a devil, who had brought creatures into existence in order to delight in the sight of their sufferings”. ( According to Schopenhauer whom Wagner worshiped )
“Philosophy is a question, Religion is an answer”.
” Is it ?”
“ I don’t know” (According to a TCM thinker in rainy Vancouer)
…………….
………
….
.
(This is a man’s world, according to James Brown, the God of our Soul !)
http://youtu.be/PF7cLnijKBs
(Father of Jude, probably, the only musician shot to death, or perhaps, “executed” in our history of violence, for imagining a better world without violence, or even religion)
“I’m not afraid of dying.I’m prepared for death because I don’t believe in it.I think it’s just getting out of one car and getting into another.” (According to John Lennon)
http://youtu.be/kmI628zhnx8
…………….
………
…
.
Let us drink the “Love Potion” Tristan and Isolde had, and fall into sweet dream tonight.
Dr. Ben Lim / on the 2nd day of Spring / Still Sleepless in Vancouver.