who knows where the Tao goes?

Across the evening sky all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Putney Vale Cemetery and Crematorium, Wimbledon, Greater London, England

il Te del Tao: LXIX - L'USO DEL MISTERO

LXIX - L'USO DEL MISTERO

Sull'adoperar gli eserciti c'è un detto:
non oso far da padrone e faccio l'ospite,
non oso avanzar d'un pollice e indietreggio di un piede.
Questo vuol dire
che non vi sono truppe da schierare,
che non vi sono braccia da denudare,
che non vi sono armi da impugnare.
Sventura non v'è maggiore che osteggiare alla leggera.
Se osteggio alla leggera
son vicino a perdere quel che m'è più prezioso.
Perciò quando gli eserciti
si mettono in campagna per scontrarsi,
quello che è più pietoso vince.

Tao primi gemelli

Congettura dei numeri primi gemelli
Esistono infiniti numeri primi p tale che anche p + 2 sia un numero primo.
Twin prime conjecture
There are infinitely many primes p such that p + 2 is also prime.

ANNALS OF MATHEMATICS
Princeton University & Institute for Advanced Study

la Guida (3 di Denari)

La figura angelica di questa carta, con ali d'arcobaleno, rappresenta la Guida che ognuno di noi porta dentro di sé. Come la seconda figura che appare sullo sfondo, anche noi a volte possiamo essere un po'riluttanti ad aver fiducia in questa Guida allorché ci si presenta davanti, perché siamo abituati a cogliere i segnali provenienti dall'esterno, e non dall'interno. La verità del tuo essere più profondo sta cercando di mostrarti dove andare; quando questa carta compare significa che puoi fidarti della guida interiore che ti viene data. Essa ci parla bisbigliando, e a volte possiamo esitare, non sapendo se abbiamo compreso correttamente. Ma le indicazioni sono chiare: seguendo la guida interiore ti sentirai più completo, più integro, avrai la sensazione di muoverti verso l'esterno partendo dal centro stesso del tuo essere. Se lo segui, questo fascio di luce ti porterà esattamente là dove hai bisogno di andare.

---

Cerchi una guida all'esterno, perché non sai che la tua Guida interiore è nascosta dentro di te. Devi trovare la tua Guida interiore, ed è questo che io definisco “il testimone”. Questo è ciò che chiamo “il dharma”, “il tuo buddha intrinseco”. Risveglia quel buddha, e la tua vita verrà inondata d'estasi, di benedizioni. La tua vita diventerà radiosa, colma di bene, divina più di quanto tu possa immaginare. La luce opera in modo molto simile. La tua stanza è buia - porta una luce. Basterà una piccola candela per far scomparire tutta quell'oscurità. E, una volta che hai una candela, saprai dov'è la porta. Non dovrai pensarci - solo i ciechi pensano a dove sia la porta. Le persone che hanno gli occhi e sono provviste di una luce, non ci pensano. Ci hai mai pensato? Semplicemente, ti alzi ed esci. Non pensi mai a dove sia la porta; non la cerchi a tentoni, né pesti la testa contro il muro. La vedi, senza che in te si muova il benché minimo pensiero, ed esci, semplicemente.

R.I.P. nel Tao

Cavalli corpi e lance rotte

si tingono di rosso,

lamenti di persone che muoiono da sole

senza un Cristo che sia là.

Pupille enormi volte al sole

la polvere e la sete

l'affanno della morte lo senti sempre addosso

anche se non saprai perchè.

Requiescant in pace. Requiescant in pace.

Requiescant in pace. Requiescant in pace.

Su cumuli di carni morte

hai eretto la tua gloria

ma il sangue che hai versato su te è ricaduto

la tua guerra è finita

vecchio soldato.

Ora si è seduto il vento

il tuo sguardo è rimasto appeso al cielo

sugli occhi c'è il sole

nel petto ti resta un pugnale

e tu no, non scaglierai mai più

la tua lancia per ferire l'orizzonte

per spingerti al di là

per scoprire ciò che solo Iddio sa

ma di te resterà soltanto

il dolore, il pianto che tu hai regalato

per spingerti al di là

per scoprire ciò che solo Iddio sa.

Per spingerti al di là,

per scoprire ciò che solo Iddio sa...

Francesco Di Giacomo (Siniscola, 22 agosto 1947 – Zagarolo, 21 febbraio 2014)

il lascito del Tao - VII

Angels Fear Revisited:
Gregory Bateson’s Cybernetic Theory of Mind
Applied to Religion-Science Debates

Mary Catherine Bateson

The Fundamentalist Error Today

It is probably no coincidence that at the same time that these old epistemological debates resurface, we are seeing a renewal of apparently religiously inspired warfare all over the planet, and we are seeing a resurgence of the kind of understanding of faith that was expressed by my fundamentalist student who believed in the literal truth-value of religious texts. We are seeing not only Islamic fundamentalism, not only Christian fundamentalism, but also Jewish fundamentalism, Hindu fundamentalism, and patches of Buddhist fundamentalism (although Buddhism has some built in protections). Fundamentalism is not limited to “religions” however – it arises in Marxism and psychoanalysis, and, most seriously in America today, in free market economic fundamentalism and the strict construction of the Constitution, constitutional fundamentalism.
So a pattern of thinking – this style of taking things literally rather than regarding any text as having multiple levels of meaning with the interpretation changing over time, always depending on the context – is becoming a widespread epidemic. Both Christians and Muslims are increasing in numbers, and in many places, especially Africa, the forms of Christianity and Islam that are spreading are the most literal and the most supernaturally oriented, without the polite reinterpretation of texts as myth or metaphor that is fairly common among believers in the West.
Much of this has developed since Gregory’s death, but I remember arguing with  him in the 1970s that fundamentalism is by definition a modern pathology. Certainly the ancients took the creation story as true. But, without the modern concept of scientific knowledge as a particular kind of knowledge that is established and modified in specific ways, truth had a different, more ambiguous meaning. Fundamentalism attempts to give to non-scientific ways of knowing the status that is given to science, but it omits the openness of science to new evidence that is essential to that status.
Although what is happening in the United States these days looks fairly strange from the vantage point of Europe, what is equally worrying is that so many educated people throughout the industrialized world have simply become deaf to religious language, and have no access to thinking about the meaning of religion in people’s lives and motivations. Fundamentalists think their beliefs are “true” in a simplistic way, while others think they are “false” in a simplistic way. Scientifically educated people have not only ceased to believe particular doctrines but they have lost the capacity to empathize with those who do, transforming methodologies and useful heuristics, like reductionism, into ontologies. We need to be equally on guard against multiple kinds of illiteracy, for aesthetic and spiritual illiteracy may be as dangerous as scientific illiteracy.
Some of the pathologies of contemporary life may be due to the loss of kinds of knowledge that are now unacceptable because of the way they are coded and mixed with muddle-headedness. The rise of fundamentalism in a secularizing world is reminiscent of the Gospel story,

44 Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished.
45 Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
(Matthew xii:44–45)

44 Allora dice: Ritornerò nella mia casa donde sono uscito; e giuntovi, la trova vuota, spazzata e adorna.
45 Allora va e prende seco altri sette spiriti peggiori di lui, i quali, entrati, prendon quivi dimora; e l’ultima condizione di cotest’uomo divien peggiore della prima. Così avverrà anche a questa malvagia generazione.
(Matteo, 12:44-45)

where a man is cleansed of an unclean spirit who then comes back with seven others more evil than himself and, finding the man’s soul swept and garnished, moves back in with his companions. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I think that the only defense against what I take to be a dangerous and erroneous set of attitudes towards religion is a much more flexible understanding of the possible meanings of faith, as contrasted with belief, in people’s lives, and in the lives of scientists. There is an apparent symmetry of mutual blindness.
There is still however a need for an integrative level of scientific description such as Gregory found in cybernetics. Perhaps our view is necessarily dependent on multiple alternative descriptions – we may even need a little help from some of the nine and sixty tribal ways to understand the world. It has been a mission of anthropology to collect and make available these multiple visions. What we ask of science is first of all, that it always include a degree of tentativeness and openness – and second, not that it be true but that it fit the evidence, which is very different. One could ask the same kind of questions of mythologies of many sorts. Do they fit? Do they offer an interpretative frame for the adaptation of a cluster of human beings in a particular environment?
Much of Gregory’s portion of Angels Fear was written at the Esalen Institute, in California, where Gregory went to live after his cancer, in the year before his death. In one essay written there, titled “Neither Supernatural nor Mechanical”, Gregory says he is horrified both by conventional scientific and technological views of the world and by the supernaturalism of Esalen. “The problem is not, however, entirely symmetrical,” he wrote, “I have, after all, chosen to live at Esalen, in the midst of the counterculture, with its incantations, its astrological searching for truth, its divination … My friends here love me and I love them … The beliefs of the counterculture and of the human potential movement may be superstitious and irrational, but their reason for being … was a good reason. It was to [generate that buffer of diversity that will] protect the human being against obsolescence”. The bracketing of a portion of the previous sentence indicates an insertion that I made in editing, for one of the strangely attractive features of Esalen is the comfort with which a huge miscellany of beliefs manage to co-exist. No zero sum truth there. Gregory feels sure that his counterculture friends are talking nonsense, but perhaps the nonsense is connected to something worth knowing, which might promote a degree of sensitivity or empathy with other organisms and a degree of perception and response to the pattern which connects.

il lascito del Tao - VI

Tao bird

Lincoln Cemetery, Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri, USA