A Day of Gratitude

"Man, as a living being, is not rooted in himself. Rather he is nourished, sustained and held in order by Nature whose laws operate without his knowledge and assistance."

Karlfried Graf Durkheim

Many if not all virtues are interrelated, the lines between them blurred. Aristotle believed that no virtue was found in isolation.

Stop for a moment and think about it. Everything around us is a gift. Our life is a gift, our body is a gift, and the air we breathe is a very welcome gift from the universe…To paraphrase another source that escapes me, we walk without knowing how what it is that moves us; we stop without knowing what it is that stops us. We assimilate what we eat without knowing how we assimilate it. How can we presume to appropriate anything to ourselves? It is foolishness and pride not to be awed by the miracle of life. But we so easily get caught up in the petty game of striving to get what we want that we forget to appreciate and enjoy what we do have. The game is only a game, and it is not even our own playing board. But we can step back from the game and change our perspective and our attitude. Gratitude changes the rules of the game immediately. It becomes a delight to play instead of a struggle. And, best of all, we never seem to lose…Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy - because we will always want to have something else or something more.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. ~G.K. Chesterton

I I'm always reminded how extremely precious each minute of our life is. Four years ago I had surgery on my back (Spinal Surgery) I had to rest during the healing process. First was an inner struggle "because I had so much to do". After a few days I finally surrendered to a different pace and became so grateful for the time and ability to walk. The trip to the kitchen to open the windows and greet the new day took on a new meaning. I had some inconvenience of using a walker to get there, so of course my pace was slower and more deliberate. I had time to see and experience things as I made my way to the window. I would stand on the walker and breathe deeply and look at the houses, trees and flowers and be grateful to be alive and healing.
Everything was more vivid because I was moving slower and taking time to experience things. Eventually my mind slowed down. I even took naps during the day. I had so many creative images coming to me. I remembered “Be still and hear." so I started asking questions that I wanted answers to, and to my delight, I was hearing answers.
"Be still and know." In the stillness I was also able to reconnect to my home, my life, the friends who came to love and support me, and to myself. I found that my having to recover from spinal surgery was definitely a good thing for me to experience.
"In all things there is a message." It became clear to me that the message was to stop and think about my life. I had been getting messages about this for months and had not listened. In the quiet that resulted from resting I was sourced with the ideas and insights. I used some of my down time to develop the new direction of Sansei, the requirements, and also write some new ideas for curriculum.
"Every cloud has a Silver lining." I am among the many people when something happens that is bad, have usually been so upset that I fail to recognize that when one door closes another one opens. We can find the light in every circumstance if we are willing to look.
The people who touched my life during that time have left lasting impressions on me. Their willingness to help me, to dress me, to bring me to a better place will never be forgotten. All have intertwined into my heart. I am filled with gratitude.
When we realize how precious each minute of our lives are, life will also ask us to live as if each minute counted. Last night I sat for some time and asked myself. "Would I be happy with what I had accomplished if I were to die right now? Would I feel that I did my best and had lived the message, the vision I believe so deeply in? Would I have forgiven all for what I considered unjust in my life? Would I have asked for forgiveness for all those I treated unfair? What part of my life would feel incomplete? Would I have some regrets? In the silence of the moments after asking the questions, I heard the answers. Yes, I have done the best I knew how, I am happy with what I have accomplished but, there are things that I want to clear up, to acknowledge while there is still time, I still have work to do. I choose to take the time to do it now. To live as each moment counted.
My experiences that time put have put me in touch with gratitude. How I in my haste to accomplish things I have forgotten to be grateful, to take the time to sit down and everyday and write down at least five things that I am grateful for this day. I know that when I have done this before my life seemed to change as it put me in touch with the beautiful things that have touched my life in the Now moment of this day!
I have made a commitment recently to write in my journal of gratitude every day. I am not waiting until the New Year to start. I am starting now. I choose to be in touch with the many things that bless my life every day. I encourage you to do the same. You can have a beautiful journal to write in or a loose leaf binder, whatever fits your needs. Make a definite date with yourself, a time to sit down and review your day, then write at least five things that you are thankful for. You may be amazed that you have more; I have found my list growing as I get in touch with all the little things that bless my day. And as I read them, I come in contact with gratitude, a deep and profound sense that all is right in my world and how many times I am touched by kindness, beauty and love.
Today I wrote in my journal;
I am grateful to be alive and walking.
I am grateful for experiencing the life I live and feeling it's effects in my being.
I am grateful for the gentle fall breeze blowing through the trees.
I am grateful to have been loved by my Mother,Father and Brother
I am grateful for the space of safety to cry, think and experience.
I am grateful for friends who never give up on me.
I am grateful for you my real loyal students who understand our way.
Have you ever experienced a moment when you said I am so grateful? I would love to hear what you are grateful for, and also if you are keeping a gratitude journal

The Philosophical question

What constitutes a good philosophical question?

I have myself complained, and heard others complain that there aren't that many truly philosophical questions asked. So my question is what a good philosophical question. How do we define it, how do we know it, and how do we know if it is indeed intelligently philosophical or just trite poser questions that clearly have no definable goal or point save subjective ramblings to reach such as "What is the meaning of life?"

Asking people to get together and talk about the "meaning of life" is like getting on a merry go round for the duration of the conversation.Because there is nothing logically provable as to the meaning of life, everyone's subjective opinion must be accepted, and no one's subject opinion can be rejected. Therefore, you spin around on the conversational merry go round, never getting anywhere, never learning anything new, and getting pissed off because other people's fundamental meanings are different then your own.I think philosophy needs to intelligently discuss how we think about things, why we think about things, how language affects how and why we think about things etc...Maybe a better philosophical question to ask would be "Why do humans think that the meaning of life is such an important question, when it is so obviously completely unanswerable?"

Answer

What constitutes a good philosophical question is whether the question leads to an understanding of the nature of knowledge, wisdom, morals and ethics, rational inquiry, language, or logic. There are questions as to schools of philosophy and history of philosophy that are good. Also there are questions of comparison and interpretation, particularly in regard to values and opinions that have valid philosophical answers. Questions as to the categories of time and space and their interrelationships provide fruitful discussion. It is possible for the question of life to come under this heading so long as it does not degenerate to the usual cross fertilization of ignorance.

Southern Shaolin (Know your roots)

Southern Shaolin...
The north is famous for its kicks. The south for its punches.Many true Southern Shaolin techniques emphasize the importance of stance and it is from stance and the ability to be solid that the power of the punches are recognised.A small history first...What does 'Kung Fu' mean? Like many other terms used in connection with the Martial Arts today, the term 'Kung fu' is often mis-applied. Translated literally, kung fu means 'excellence through hard work' or 'skilled achievement'. Therefore one could be said to display 'kung fu' at cooking or at computer programming. There is nothing inherently martial about the term, but in the 1950s, the Hong Kong film industry started using the two characters 'Kung Fu' for their martial arts action movies and the phrase has been closely associated with Chinese Martial Arts ever since - particularly in the West.Professionals refer to the practice of Chinese martial arts as 'Wu Kung' or 'Wu Shu' which connote the specific martial (Wu) development of skill (Kung) or art (Shu). What's the difference between Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and Karate/Judo/Taekwondo? Chinese martial arts were formalised over two thousand years ago, and were developed primarily by Buddhist and Taoist monks. Thus, the Chinese are universally acknowledged to have have the oldest, best-proven systems - almost all other legitimate systems will acknowledge the debt they owe to the Chinese systems, which spread throughout Asia. Methods such as Karate, Judo or Taekwondo were developed hundreds of years after the formalisation of the Chinese systems, and as such, owed much of their development to Chinese martial arts systems - Karate, as first taught by Southern Chinese monks and practised on Okinawa, was originally called 'Tang Te' which translates as 'Chinese Hand'. The characters were later changed to 'Kara Te' ('Empty Hand') during a period of strong Japanese nationalism. What are Traditional Chinese Martial Arts? In Chinese culture, there are the so-called 'five excellences.' These are: Calligraphy, Poetry,Painting, Music and Martial Arts. The objective in mastering any of these arts is to achieve a state of calmness and equilibrium which the Chinese refer to as 'enlightenment'. Mastery of any of the excellences would grant this state of peace and balance; traditional martial arts grant further benefits as well - health, fitness and the ability to defend one's self or others. In trying to understand these arts, it is important to realise that in China, they were developed primarily by Buddhist and Taoist monks whose goal was to prolong their lives. The key for these aesthetes was to enrich themselves spiritually - self-defence was of secondary concern. However, when monks were sent out from the temples to gather alms, the harsh reality of having to defend themselves arose and the techniques that they had developed and practised purely for health reasons had to be adapted to deal with the threats of the outside world. The systems that these holy men developed spread throughout China and across Asia, some being adapted for purely combative use, some strictly for health development, some for theatrical performance while others retained the essence of the original arts - to prolong and enrich the life of the practitioner, with the added benefit of providing an effective system of self-defence, should the need arise. What's the difference between Traditional Chinese Martial Arts and Kick-boxing? Kick-boxing is a sport. It's all about scoring points in competition 'fighting' where there are a clear set of rules, gloves, pads and a referee to control things. Traditional Shaolin training is not concerned with competitions of this nature. The techniques as taught are given to deal with real life situations where there are no rules and no referee to step in and save your life! Traditional techniques were developed to save lives under the most extreme circumstances - no really conclusive test is possible between students of traditional Shaolin, unless they choose to get involved in a all-out, real fight since Shaolin techniques are inherently dangerous and do not lend themselves to control measures. One Shaolin Master recently wrote: "Shaolin in its orthodox form, is not a game to be played for the entertainment of an audience or the whims of sports-minded exponents. Although there have been competitions between Shaolin experts, none of these have proven satisfactory to orthodox practitioners." So at the end of the day...North versus South...there is no permanence.The more Shaolin there are, the better.

Chinese Fables (Story of the Sun)

The sun is called tai-yang (太陽). One story about the Sun in China is like that of Helios in Greek

mythology. Helios, also identified as Hyperion, is the father of Phaeton, who was given permission to drive the chariot of the sun. He soon betrayed his incapacity and threatened the earth with a conflagration. Zeus, perceiving the disorder, hurled a thunderbolt and struck Phaeton who fell into the river Eridanus (Po).
The Sun, according to a Chinese myth, kept a bird and a rooster. The bird was called ho niao (火鳥) or Fire Bird (Phoenix) and the rooster qin qi (金雞) or Gold Rooster (Coq d'or). The Sun is the symbol of yang (陽) or the masculine and positive principle. Because yang's numbers are odd, both the Phoenix and the Coq d'or had three legs each, instead of two, which is an even number. They were spirits, the Phoenix representing heat and the Coq d'or light. The Sun rode a chariot that traveled above and across the earth every day. He started in the east and went all the way to the west, keeping a close eye at the same time on what was going on down on earth.
The Sun's chariot was drawn by dragons, rather than steeds. Six dragons drew the chariot. Yi He(義和) or Justice Peace was the chariot driver. The Sun began the travel at Yang Ku (陽谷) or Bright Valley early in the morning and got off the chariot at Yu Chuan(虞泉) Worry Spring in the evening to rest. It was daylight while he was traveling. Night fell as he came to rest. Unlike Phaeton, the Sun in China was not struck down by any higher-up god, however.
In another story, the sun was not a god. It was the two eyes of a mountain god called Cho Yin (燭陰) or Light Dark. Yin also means the feminine and negative principle, which, according to Chinese cosmology, combines and interacts with its opposite yang to produce all that comes to be. When Light Dark opened his eyes, the earth was bright - and it was daylight. When he closed his eyes, it was dark: night came.
Light Dark not just controlled day and night. He blew air from his mouth to keep down the temperature as well. He blew and blew, creating cold winds that cooled the earth: winter arrived. If he opened his mouth to shout, well, it was summer, because the earth turned hot.
He lived at Chung-shan (鍾山) or Bell Mountain, which was in northern China. Still another story of the sun says there was a huge rock on Bell Mountain. That rock was known as Stone Neck or Shih-po-tzu (石脖), because it looked exactly like a human neck. Stone Neck had a pair of eyes and a mouth. Its left eye was the sun and its right eye the moon. Stone Neck alternately opened and shut the two eyes. It was day when the left eye was open and the right eye shut. Vice versa, it was night. When the mouth was open, it was spring and summer. If the mouth was closed, it was autumn and winter.
One myth denied Phoenix and Coq d'oro were Sun spirits. There was only one Sun spirit, whose name it was Yu Hua (鬱華) or Melancholy Glory. At first, Melancholy Glory was a mere immortal. He later went to Heaven and stay there with the sun as his abode.
Another myth relates there were ten suns during the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao (堯). One sun was good enough, but ten would scorch all the emperor's subjects to death. Trees and grass died. The people were scared to death. They were afraid of a conflagration, like the one Phaeton had threatened to start by driving recklessly his borrowed chariot of the sun. So the emperor had to think of some way to get rid of nine of the ten suns.
One day, the emperor hit upon a good idea. He ordered his champion archer, by the name of Hou Yi (后羿) or Back Flight to shoot down the nine suns. His nine arrows hit the marks, and the nine suns, together with as many Phoenixes, came down. The world was saved. Similar stories abound in Austronesia. One legend of the Aborigines in Taiwan describes a brave going afield to hunt down nine of the ten suns. He succeeded, of course.
Legend also has it that a queen of a country far away from China bore ten suns. The queen was called Yi He, just like the driver of the dragon chariot for the Sun. The country, located near Kan zhuan (甘泉) or Sweet Spring in the Southeast Sea, was also known as Yi He. The queen and her ten sons - the ten suns - would go to Sweet Spring to take a bath. Back Flight the archer, according to this legend, must have gone hunting down the ten suns and shot to kill the nine princes of Queen Justice Peace.
That is closer to the story of the Aborigines on Taiwan about their brave hunting down the nine suns in a place far, far away from home.

Shaolin Temple and Zen

While teaching his disciplines how to practice meditation, Bodhidharma (菩提達摩) found some of them

becoming drowsy and starting to sleep. It's only natural for the young learners to fall asleep in "meditation." Nowadays, a senior monk carries a birch with which to beat novices awake at every Zen temple when he sees any of them begin to drowse.
One way to chase away drowsy boredom, of course, is to get those people sitting unmoved in meditation to stand up and move around a bit -- or stretch their legs. For his disciples Bodhidharma developed a form of calisthenics, which has come to be known as the Eighteen Tricks of the Arhat or Lo-han shipa shou (羅漢十八手). An arhat or arahat or arhant is a Buddhist monk who has attained Nirvana. The last Sanskrit word was transliterated into Chinese as A-lo-han (阿羅漢), which is abbreviated to Lo-han. It actually means a person deserving respect. Its Japanese counterpart is Rakan.

There is a well-known story of how Shaolin monks -- thirteen of them, to be exact -- saved Li Shimin (李世民), the Emperor Tai-zhong of the Tang Dynasty (唐太宗627-650).

Shimin's father, the Emperor Gao-zu (高祖), founded the dynasty in 618, but there were many rebels who resisted his rule. One of them was Wang Shichong (王世充), a marshal of the previous Sui Dynasty. In 620, Li Shimin led a Tang army to suppress the Wang rebellion. He asked his younger brother Li Yuanji (李元吉) to engage Wang's well-trained army, but the Tang troops were routed battle after battle. In the last encounter, however, the soldiers led by thirteen Shaolin monks rushed into the battlefield. They turned the tide of the battle, and annihilated Wang's rear-guard to take his nephew Wang Renze (王仁則) prisoner. The nephew was a general commanding the rear-guard. After the battle, Li Shimin was able to defeat Wang Shizhong. The Shaolin monks saved the future Tang emperor from the brink of a certain defeat. In appreciation of their succor, he had a special monument erected at the Shaolin Temple. The eulogy inscribed on the stone monument, signed by Li Shimin, is still extant.

Gao-zu abdicated in favor of his son Li Shimin in 627. The son was one of the ablest monarchs and had one of the most brilliant reigns in China's long history. Still only twenty-one years of age when his father ascended the throne, he contributed markedly to the latter's triumph, and although he opened his own way to the succession by killing two of his brothers, including Li Yuanji, he proved to be, for an autocrat, fairly magnanimous, frugal in his private life, usually affectionate to his family, and one who could attract and hold the loyalty of subordinates. During the nearly quarter of a century of his reign, he succeeded in thoroughly unifying the country, in stimulating its culture and increasing its prosperity, and in placing it on a new pinnacle of power.
One of the Shaolin monks given imperial applaud was Jueyuan (覺遠) or Know-Far. He learned the Shaolin boxing art at the temple for a long time, winning fame as a top kung-fu trainer. He wasn't satisfied, however. He left the temple to seek a new master for himself, and finally found Pai Yufeng (白玉峰), a Shaolin boxing art champion. In the end, however, both of them returned to the temple to continue practicing to perfect the Shaolin pugilistic art.