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The Spiritual and Healing Power of Dance

Culture

Clyde

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June 18, 2016

The Spiritual and Healing Power of Dance

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.” ~ Rumi

Dancing, personally I feel, is the most underrated form of spirituality. Meditative dancing, if there is such a term, can be used to transcend the boundaries of our consciousness and connect with the source.

It’s well documented that Nataraja or the dancing form of Shiva, represents the source of creation, preservation and dissolution, yet such little importance is given to dance when it comes to worship.

Dance for me has been a way of expression from the time I was a child. Till date I break into random dance at any given point, its good to remember that this does not by any means make me a great dancer, but it has never stopped me from grooving to familiar tunes.

Let’s look at the spiritual and healing power of dance

There are two incidents that I recollect where I had a phenomenal life-changing experience with dancing.

The first one was when my sister was expecting her first child, she was 8 months into her pregnancy and had come over to my parents place where I was put up at that time.

The music was playing in my room and I was completely lost in my dance, while she was sitting on the sofa around 20 feet away.

She got me out of my trance by calling me to come out. I was a bit annoyed as it brought me out of my altered state. She insisted I come out to see the baby move, even though I had felt the baby move multiple times. When I stepped out, the baby was virtually rolling in her stomach to the music.

But what happened next led me to believe it wasn’t the music, she asked me to touch her stomach. It seemed ridiculous as I could see the whole baby moving but as I reached out to touch her stomach a tiny hand pushed up and touched mine.

There was a transfer of energy that left me dumbfounded in shock, surprise and disbelief as I slowly sat on the floor.

This incident changed something in me, it made we ponder on the possibility of sharing the energy and connecting with a soul that hasn’t yet been incarnated into the world yet. While this got me thinking about the other experience I had while dancing at a party many years ago.

We were in the fields overlooking the mountains, while dancing in anticipation of the sunrise. As dawn broke, the first few rays of light peeked through above the hills and as I danced the rays turned into a huge figure that danced along with me.

As that happened for the first time I felt immense love and an energetic connection with the universe. It entered my body through the feet and exited through my head into the sky and circling all around.

This was the first time I felt one with everything and started to believe there is something, such as for the lack of words, God. I was an atheist until this experience led me to believe in some sort of power or energy that exists.

These were two transformational experiences that I had with the help of dancing that shifted the course of my life. Till date when I dance I close my eyes and begin to feel the music.

I move with the beat until it becomes a subconscious process, I no longer focus on the movement or the beats, but I am now synchronized with it.

At this point I begin to feel an energy build up, and visualize it and feel it flowing through the body. Use this energy by focusing on parts of your body that need healing or just enjoy connecting with the source energy.

It would be fair to say that I discovered a power known to many tribes since ancient times. Native Americans danced for rain, for war, for courtship and many other reasons. I love the video of this track done by Skrillex which covers part of the native’s rain dance.

Skrillex & Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley - Make It Bun Dem [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

They of course weren’t the only tribe, the whirling Sufi dervishes have always fascinated me. The main part of the dance consists of the dervishes who represent the moon, the Sheikh represents the sun as he spins on his own axis at the center, while the dervishes spin around him on their left foot.

Their right palms face upwards towards Heaven and their left hand pointing at the ground. Each part of the dance represents something specific, in short it represents the recognition of God, recognition of the existence in his unity, the ecstasy one experiences with total surrender and peace of the heart due to Divine unity. To learn more about the symbolism and dance of the dervishes you can read about the Mevlevi order.

The Sufi Whirling Dervishes - Istanbul, Turkey

Tribes across Africa have over 30 unique dances that teach social patterns and values and help people work, mature, praise or criticize members of the community while celebrating festivals and funerals, competing, reciting history, proverbs and poetry; and to encounter gods.

African dances are largely participatory, with spectators being part of the performance. Except for some spiritual, religious or initiation dances, there are traditionally no barriers between dancers and onlookers.

Many cultures have and still use dance as a means to achieve trance states for healing rituals. So always remember, dance you can and dance you must, dance for peace, dance each season and dance for no reason.

Image Sources:

Shiva

What is Your Tongue Telling You About Your Health?

Life

FE Staff

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June 14, 2016

0

What is Your Tongue Telling You About Your Health?

I recollect as a child when I fell sick, my family physician would ask me to stick my tongue out while examining me. Tongue analysis is an olden health assessment technique, still used by medical practitioners. Tongue plays a vital role in determining our health, its colour, texture and coating indicate digestive issues and body imbalances.

Anyone can learn and apply the basics of tongue diagnosis to monitor their own health.

Here are some general guidelines that anyone can use to evaluate their health.

Colour of the tongue

The normal color of a healthy tongue is a nice Sanguine pink – a perfect blend of red and white. Any deviation from the normal colour shows an imbalance in the body.

A bright red tongue could be an indication of scarlet fever, vitamindeficiencies or Kawasaki disease (a serious illness causing heart problems in children). According tosome herbalist, a bright red tongue could also be due to excess heat in specific organs. Eating foods like watermelon, gooseberry, muskmelon, honeydew melon, pomegranate and cucumber helps cool the body.

A purple colour tongue could signal problems related to blood circulation, high cholesterol, chronic bronchitis, nutritional deficiencies and even weak digestive system. Also consuming too much of cold foods can lead to the tongue turning purple.

A pale tongue indicates low levels of haemoglobin in the blood. It may also indicate fatigue and weakness. Eating foods like raisins, prunes, currants, dates, spinach, beetroots, red meat and kidney beans will increase the level of haemoglobin in the blood.

Texture of the tongue

You have a healthy tongue when it is relatively smooth and slightly moist. But thicker, patchy or coloured coatings, can signify health issues.

Dry tongue may signal dehydration, kidney problems or iron-deficiency.

Scrotal tongue or furrowed tongue is an illness where cracks develop in the tongue, giving it a wrinkled look. This can arise due to infection or malnutrition.

Geographic tongue is an inflammatory disorder that leads to formation of small pinkish-white bumps over the tongue. The name comes from the map-like appearance of the tongue. Generally these bumps heal over time, but you may experience some level of tongue discomfort and sensitivity to certain foods.

The Tongue Coating

The tongue coat, which often appears on the middle or at the back of the tongue, reflects how well you are absorbing the food you eat.

A thin white coating shows healthy digestive function. While thick white coating often happens during a cold or flu. Its also a sign that toxins are leaving your system.

Yellowish coating indicates heat in your body. It can also be due to bacterial infection or inflammation in the body.

Gray or grayish-black coating suggests long-term stomach or intestinal problems.

A thick tongue coat is associated with poor gut function.In case your tongue does nothave any coating, it means that your digestive system is not functioning properly.

Keeping the above guidelines in mind it would be easier to assess your health. Also variety of medications like antibiotics, corticosteroids, diuretics can also cause changes in the colour, texture and coating of the tongue.

In order to improve digestion and the appearance of your tongue here are a few tips that you may follow ~

Eat more of fermented foods and drink probiotic beverages to get your system back into balance.
Avoid starchy and acidic foods that can be unhealthy for your digestive system. Like the Japanese practice, “hara hachi bu” which means eat until you are 80 percent full.
Add herbs and spices like turmeric, cardamom, cumin, fennel, ginger to your food to improve digestion.
Drink warm ginger tea 20 minutes before a meal, it helps with indigestion and bloating.
Eating warm food rather than cold food is beneficial especially if you have a low metabolism rate, it aids digestion.

Resources:

Which Tongue are You?
What Your Tongue Is Telling You About Your Digestion
Is Your Tongue Giving you Clues about your Health?
The Secrets Hidden In Your Tongue

7 Important Differences Between Religion and Spirituality

Culture

Gary Z McGee

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June 12, 2016

0

7 Important Differences Between Religion and Spirituality

“It is not that the Way broadens humans; it is that humans broaden the Way.” ~ Confucius

There are roughly 4,200 religions in the world today. Most people believe in only one of them and renounce the other 4,199. While a small minority renounces all of them.

There are roughly 7.3 billion people on the planet today, and every single one of us has a different psychophysiological interpretation and perception of what spirituality and religion means. But, and here’s the rub, spirituality is inherent within the human condition and is as unique as our own fingerprint.

Religion, not so much. Religion is dictated, while spirituality is intuited. Religion preaches, while spirituality inspires. Religion pretends to be “the Way” that broadens humanity. Spirituality frees humanity to broaden “the Way.”

Religion is the parochial dead-end path of our ignorant forefathers, whereas spirituality up-ends that dead-end path and allows for a personal journey with the numinous. Indeed, as Hingori said, “Spirituality begins where religion ends.”

Here are the seven differences between religion and spirituality

1) Spirituality is flexible; religion is dogmatic

“Mystery is a place where religion and science meet. Dogma is a place where they part. Awe-based psychology is a place where they can evolve and reunite.” ~ Kirk Schneider, PhD

Dogma has been a serious psychological hang-up for our species for thousands of years. Our tendency to become rigid and inflexible in our thinking is an all too common problem. We are a young species, after all. There is still so much for us to figure out, and it can be daunting as hell (pun intended).

The problem is we tend to avoid an intimidating cosmos by closing ourselves off into the overly comfortable and placating nut shells of religion. We shut down the sacred quest. We close off the search and place all our eggs into a particular “basket,” swearing off all baskets. Even at the risk of forsaking the baskets that have the potential to help us flourish. In short: we become dogmatic and closed-off from the numinous.

But there is newfound hope when we are able to transform dogmatic religiosity into flexible spirituality. True spirituality up-ends the baskets that we cling to. It shatters the all-too-precious eggs on the tough-love concrete of an interconnected reality, revealing that flexibility and the ability to adapt and overcome is the way to move forward when facing a vastly unknown and astonishingly mysterious universe.

2) Spirituality is liberating (courage-based); religion is authoritative (fear-based)

“That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” ~ P.C. Hodgell

differences between religion and spirituality

It’s so easy for the majority of us to allow an authority to do our thinking for us. Most of us were raised in authoritative cultures and conditioned by biased indoctrination, after all. Unless at some point we are taught to question things, it’s all too easy to get caught up in authoritative jargon.

No matter how outdated or nonsensical that jargon is, if we don’t learn a courage-based disposition, we’ll always be caught in the fear-based indoctrination of authority. Mostly due to the power of cognitive dissonance. Spirituality is the courage-based liberation of the soul from the fear-based prison of church and state. It frees compassion, empathy, and morality from the fallible stranglehold of man-made laws.

If as H. L. Mencken surmised, “Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right,” then spirituality is tapping into the forces behind what makes things “right” or “wrong” (a universal healthy/unhealthy dynamic) and acting on those forces in a moral way, despite the declarations of church and state.

Spirituality courageously questions power; religion cowardly kowtows to it. Jesus and Buddha were spiritual rebels who challenged dogmatic orthodoxy, not religious zealots obsequious to it. Where religion is taking a leap of faith because of fear, spirituality is taking a leap of courage despite fear.

3) Spirituality is painful growth; religion is comfortable stagnation

“The path of the spiritual warrior is not soft and sweet. It is not artificially blissful and pretend forgiving. It is not fearful of divisiveness. It is not afraid of its own shadow. It is not afraid of losing popularity when it speaks its truth. It will not beat around the bush where directness is essential. It has no regard for vested interests that cause suffering. It is benevolent and it is fiery and it is cuttingly honest in its efforts to liberate itself and humanity from the egoic ties that bind.” ~ Jeff Brown

Religion keeps us pampered and contented. We feel nice and cozy in the teachings passed down by the authority of our forefathers. And why not? It’s so much easier to just lean on the laws created by other men.

No matter how outdated or ridiculous those laws are, and no matter how fallible and imperfect those men were. There’s no thinking involved. All we have to do is obey and not question any of it lest we appear blasphemous in the eyes of our peers. Easy!

True spirituality flips the tables on blind obedience. No fear, only fearlessness. It questions outdated laws. It upsets all dogmatic apple carts. But it is not without pain. It is not without existential angst.

As Eckhart Tolle said, “the fire of suffering becomes the light of consciousness.”

A spiritual person is a beacon fully lit, brightening an uncertain shoreline where waves of doubt crush the beaches of certainty. Those who are spiritual dip in and out of all religions, ideologies, mythologies, and philosophies, taking the healthy with them and leaving the unhealthy behind.

They are existential alchemists, transforming religious led into spiritual gold. And such gold shines all the brighter in dark times.

4) Spirituality is open-minded; religion is close-minded

“To conceive of ourselves as fragmentary matter cohering for a millisecond between two eternities of darkness is very difficult.” ~ Sebastian Faulks

A religious person stubbornly believes; a spiritual person takes things into consideration and lets things go. If “belief is a wound that knowledge heals,” as Ursula K. Le Guin states, then open-mindedness is the scar left behind –flexible and robust from the harsh lessons of vicissitude. In spiritual circles, curiosity is allowed to be foremost; in religious circles curiosity is atrophied by the reliance on outdated “answers.”

Where religion blindly clings to what it believes is right, spirituality openly surrenders to what could be healthy. Those who are spiritual tend to be more open-minded precisely because they are free to question everything, to practice probability, to embrace being wrong, and to remain curious and skeptical in the face of parochial authorities grown uncouth through the passage of time.

5) Spirituality is interdependent; religion is codependent

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.” ~ Rumi

Religion is codependent upon the establishment of church and state. Spirituality is interdependent, despite establishments. Where the religious person submits to the authority of religion and politics, the spiritual person subsumes all religious and political strongholds through flexible interconnectedness, thus transcending entrenched power constructs.

Spirituality is a force of nature, and the spiritual person becomes a fountainhead for an ecstatic universe, a mighty conduit, an existential pivot where the cosmic dance between independent observer and observed interdependence is free to take place. There is a music in this sacred space that doesn’t use words, and the spiritual person has the ears with which to listen.

6) Spirituality speaks a language older than words; religion speaks a language limited by words

“The poet and the musician together speak a natural and universal language… The original language that all creators spoke before the fall of man. This language is, of course, the language of the birds.

And, what does it mean? What does the shape of a tree mean? What do clouds mean? What is the meaning of the way the stars are scattered through the sky?… Both poetry and music lead us to the understanding of what this world is all about. Which is: It’s a dance. A rhythm.” ~ Alan Watts

Within the mysterious rhythm of the cosmic orchestra playing itself out, the spiritual person dances in full-glory. While the religious person cowers in fear of God, the spiritual person pirouettes through the fear and dances with God.

For those who are spiritual have tapped into the interconnected Mecca. They are milking the essence of all things, the language of birds and sky, fire and ice, life and death, permanence and impermanence –the voice of God and the song of Infinity.

The Truth is a gamboling gamble, and those who are truly spiritual are gamblers par excellence, knowing that the human condition is fallible and flawed, but having the ontological wherewithal to rise above it with a Promethean courage that topples outdated godheads.

They rise up with a full heart, with audacious love, with a throat chakra in full-flutter speaking fluently A Language Older Than Words. But they are still not afraid to speak their experienced truth.

For as Gustave Flaubert observed, “Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

7) Spirituality allows the Great Mystery (God) to be truly infinite

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” ~ Carl Sagan

Spirituality is vulnerable intimacy with the Infinite. Religion is veiled invulnerability pretending to be intimate. A spiritual person understands that Infinity cannot be pigeonholed into finite constructs.

God cannot be crammed into man-made models. Through such understanding, the spiritual person transcends the finite game of religion in order to play the infinite game of spirituality.

The mirror through which we reflect the Great Mystery is the same mirror through which the Great Mystery reflects us. The spiritual person has intuited this, shed the middleman, and become the mirror.

Where the religious person is desperately looking for his/her own reflection, the spiritual person has become Reflection itself, understanding that there is no duality, only the illusion of duality.

There is no finitude, only the illusion of finitude. They are walking, talking, meditating Mirrors dancing as Reflection between micro and macro, flesh and spirit, man and God, order and chaos, entropy and life. They have risen above the empty placations and petty platitudes of religion and embraced the open explication and flexible interpretation of the Great Mystery through spirituality.

The spiritually robust have moved on from the shackles of someone else’s experience in order to feel their own experience.

Understanding, as Angeles Arrien did: “We are all unique medicine.”

Image source:

Spiritual evolution
Comedy for the intelligent
Philosophy/religion

What Jealousy is Really Trying to Tell Us

Life

Nikki Sapp

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June 11, 2016

0

What Jealousy is Really Trying to Tell Us

“Comparison will strip you of power of grace and influence. Each person is unique. How then can you possibly compare unique to unique? You can’t. And when you try, you annihilate your brilliance.” ~ Amy Larson

The deeper we travel inward on our personal development journey, we begin to see that no emotion or feeling happens by accident.

Every outer situation that prompts an emotion inside us is another opportunity for us to heal something. It is a sign to become conscious of something inside us that we may have been repressing or afraid to look at. We can be assured that any emotion that we have been afraid to experience, will continue to surface until we have faced it head on.

No feeling just goes away without being healed properly through raising to a vibration where said emotion can no longer exist. For anyone who is attached to their limiting subconscious belief systems, it is no surprise that all emotions are stemming from that belief system, which is out of alignment with the “truth” of who they are.

Peace, perfection and pure happiness is actually our natural state of being. So anything that makes us feel otherwise can only indicate that our ego is attached to a belief based in fear, unworthiness or doubt.

One of the most painful and frustrating emotions of all to deal with is jealousy. To feel as though you want something that you cannot have at that moment can feel completely dissatisfying and unfulfilling. But what is the root cause of jealousy?

What is the underlying belief that we are holding about life that prompts jealousy to occur? Pinpointing the root cause is what will eventually bring about lasting transformation and healing within our energy fields.

Stop comparing yourself

“If you compare yourself to others, you may become vain and bitter for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” ~ Maxx Ehrmann

The first thing jealousy relies on in order to exist inside our psyche is comparison. To feel jealous is to compare what you have with what someone else has.

Now of course comparison can feel great when we are the ones coming out on top, but with all highs must come a low. The more we pinpoint the imperfections of others, the more painful it is when the universe throws a humbling circumstance in your direction only to allow you to see both sides of the spectrum.

It is when we are attached to being amazing at everything, that we have the hardest time dealing with seeing others succeed.

Jealousy also comes from an ego that reinforces its sense of self by seeing how less it is than others.

When you feel inferior to others, it can be common to experience some level of jealousy. The blessings you see others receiving remind you of your own unworthiness and undeservedness.

Comparison can only arise from an ego that does not realize its own uniqueness. All beings are not only completely unique and special, but every journey is different. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to live life, there is only what is right and wrong for you.

When you understand that your journey is customized to the soul lessons you have chosen to partake in during this incarnation, it becomes easier to stay focused on your own growth. The only comparison that is beneficial is between us and former selves.

Listen to What Your Heart Is Really Trying to Say

The ego has often been called the inner child inside our hearts that is begging for our attention. If each emotion is approached as such, it becomes easier to heal the emotions that are arising in our awareness.

Jealousy indicates that the attention and love that our inner child is asking for is being given to someone else’s life.

If we focus all of our concern and energy on the life of another person, our inner child can begin to feel neglected. “I want what they have,” is actually our inner child saying, “I want the attention that you are constantly giving to other people’s lives.” In this respect, the amount of jealousy we feel towards someone else is directly proportionate to the lack of love we have given our own hearts.

If we can imagine a real child that is never given love by their parent unless it is living up to the standards of others, it is easy to see how a child would begin to resent other people the parent compares him/her to. If a child is only validated when it has lived up to someone else’s level of “success” then the child is never celebrated for his/her own unique gifts.

This is exactly how our own inner child feels when we compare it to those whose journey’s have nothing to do with ours. By complimenting ourselves and recognizing our unique talents rather than focusing on others, we will begin to transform jealousy into confidence in our own selves.

Jealousy is a Natural Emotion that is here to Help You

By approaching each emotion as another opportunity for us to heal something inside us we will begin moving through a transformative healing process. There is nothing “wrong” with being jealous, it is only a natural emotion that every one of us will experience at some point or another.

Instead of repressing it we begin to recognize it as a signal that we may be spending too much time focusing on the wrong person. We will begin to raise to a level of consciousness where jealousy no longer needs to exist.

Image sources:

Jealousy in a Tear Drop
gazing at herself
green with envy eyes

5 Zen Koans that Will Open Your Mind

Spirituality

Gary Z McGee

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June 7, 2016

5

Zen Koans are self-paradoxical riddles used as a meditation discipline in Zen Buddhism. The point of the koan is to exhaust the analytic and egoic mind in order to reveal the more intuitive no-mind.

“Out of nowhere, the mind comes forth.” ~ The Diamond Sutra

They are not about arriving at an answer, but to see for ourselves that our intellections can never provide us with a completely satisfying answer. Some might even claim that koans are anti-intellectual. But they are neither anti-intellectual nor intellectual.

They simply point out that reality itself cannot be “caught.” For example, perhaps the two most well-known koans are as follows, simple and succinct, short and elegant…

“When both hands are clapped a sound is produced; listen to the sound of one hand clapping.”

“Question: What is Buddha? Answer: Three pounds of flax.”

The Zen koan serves as a scalpel used to cut into the mind of the meditator. It’s a hammer used to shatter fixed thinking, a Rubik’s Cube of words for the mind to unravel. Koans are not merely black and white riddles that our minds figure out suddenly and proclaim, “Aha! I’ve got the answer!”

They are ambiguous and paradoxical, waiting for our minds to open up enough to allow the space for deep intuition to emerge —beyond knowing and into no-minding, through the use of imaginative mindfulness.

Here are 5 Zen Koans that have the potential to open your mind.

1.) A Cup of Tea

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

This is a classic Zen koan about the importance of learning, unlearning, and relearning so as to remain sharp and free from fixed thinking. The imagery of the cup overflowing is a powerful symbol reminding us to let things go so that we can “pour” more experience into our lives.

The paradox is that we can never truly let go of what we’ve learned. It’s always retained on some level. In muscle memory, for example. What we’re “pouring out” of the “cup” of our minds is the ego’s attachment to learning and memory and a releasing of fixed opinions and rigid expectations.

Indeed, a mind-dump a day keeps the brainwash away. Similar to the Zen proverb, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Before learning, empty cup, wash cup. After learning, empty cup, wash cup.

2.) Muddy Road

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling.

Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection.

“Come on, girl” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple.

Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?”

“I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?”

This Zen koan reminds me of the following quote by Rumi, “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Ekido is so caught up in the rightness and wrongness of Tanzan’s actions that he becomes a victim of the static past at the expense of the dynamic present. Tanzan has already let it go.

Life is counter-intuitively situational. The human condition is never cut and dry. There are rules and there are laws. Some of which are in balance with greater cosmic law and some of which are not.

Sometimes the “right” thing to do is to do the “wrong” thing according to convention. Sometimes morality is just as muddy as the road Tanzan and Ekido were traveling down.

3.) A Parable

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him.

Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge.

The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

This is the ultimate Zen koan on the power of living in the moment. As mortal beings, we are constantly surrounded by death. We are forever pinched by two overwhelming infinities. No matter what, there is a crushing sense of nothingness behind us, dwarfed only by the crushing infinity that lies ahead of us.

As Sebastian Faulks said, “To conceive of ourselves as fragmentary matter cohering for a millisecond between two eternities of darkness is very difficult.”

The paradox is: how do we find joy or even happiness when caught between the rock and the hard place of life?

The trick is presence. The secret is awareness. The key is curiosity. All three are the epitome of life’s (a delicious red strawberry) overcoming of entropy (two mice gnawing at a vine) despite the inevitability of death (two hungry tigers).

4.) Futility and Absurdity

In early times in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him.

“I do not need a lantern,” he said. “Darkness or light is all the same to me.”

“I know you do not need a lantern to find your way,” his friend replied, “but if you don’t have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it.”

The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him.

“Look out where you are going!” he exclaimed to the stranger. “Can’t you see this lantern?”

“Your candle has burned out, brother,” replied the stranger.

Sometimes life is futile. Sometimes we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Sometimes good luck is disguised by bad luck and vice versa. Sometimes a kick in the ass propels us forward, and sometimes it’s just a plain old kick in the ass.

The absurdity of the human condition is both very painful and very laughable. It’s an ironic and incongruous and poignantly imperfect. But that’s also half the fun of it. Life comes at us fast, and sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to laugh despite the speed of it all.

Between the pain of life’s lessons and the medicinal laughter of cultivating a good sense of humor, there is the unvanquishable absurdity of life kicking us around. Sometimes all we can do is kick back with a ruthless sense of humor, not despite irony and incongruity, but because of them.

Dive in! The water is warm (and cold and safe and dangerous and sometimes there’s even oil in it). But don’t let that stop you from living; from dancing through the glaring futility and venomous absurdity of it all with a humor of the most high.

5.) Buddha’s Zen

Buddha said: “I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles.

I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot.

I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one’s eyes.

I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.”

One of the most powerful things we can do as mortal creatures perceiving a fleeting cosmos from a precarious perch, is to realize that all things are fleeting. All things are decaying.

All things are made up of the same perfectly imperfect matter as everything else. Permanence is just as much an illusion of reality as power is an illusion of culture. The wise thing is to be aware of both. And sometimes that requires an intellectual ruthlessness and an imaginative insouciance.

Buddha uses both in the above quote, tearing apart power constructs like they were flimsy pieces of parchment, poking holes in perceived ideologies with the hot poker of his words, and bringing the entire notion of fixed thinking crumbling down into the settled dust of free thinking, where the roots are finally allowed to be fed.

Gold melts into glittery nothingness. Fruit decays. Teachings become stagnations. The four seasons of life devour each other. What grows and flourishes eventually decays and dies. So be it.

But as Rumi profoundly stated, “Maybe you are searching among the branches for what only appears in the roots.”