Do You Believe in Magic? Solala’s Blog for week of 1/13/14

0

IMG_0440

Do You Believe in Magic?

 

I was driving today and saw a bumper sticker in front of me that said, “I brake for elves and unicorns.” It made me chuckle and it also made me think. I like the idea of being open to magic, miracles and wonder. Laozi said something like, when people lose their sense of awe Dao itself is lost. Or you could perhaps say, when people lose their sense of magic, they are lost.

Laozi says we need to become as children to enter Dao (or the as the other prophet said, into the kingdom of heaven.) What does he mean by this? Perhaps that a childlike sense of awe and magic is what we need to get us through the hard times as well as the good ones. Perhaps we need to remain open to miracles, the miracles of daily life as well as the once-in-a-lifetime ones.

I was very excited when I discovered the world of Daoism. I felt like I had come home. I still feel that way 25 years later. I have lost none of my excitement and wonder about this rich, endlessly fascinating life-long quest to experience myself as a living embodiment of Dao. Of course, you are also a living embodiment of Dao as are all living things, the “ten thousand beings.”

Zhuangzi says:

Words are not just blowing wind, they have meaning. But if we cannot agree on what they mean are we really saying anything? People think that their words are more meaningful than the peeping of birds, yet are they really any different? Dao is hidden behind partial understanding and the meaning of our words is hidden behind a screen of flowery rhetoric.

So how can we get beyond words, beyond “flowery rhetoric?” How can we become living embodiments of Dao? How can we remain open to the miracle of life and death and all that lies between? How can we not lose sight of the wondrous, the magical and the sublime? How can we wake up, more and more, deeper and deeper, vaster and vaster? How can we not lose sight of the amazing experience of students of the Way, in general and particular?

By practice, by going deep within, by meditating, by dwelling in the silence, by applying the words of Laozi, Zhuangzi and all the other great masters, now and before. By believing in magic and miracles and wonder, both within our own lopsided selves and in the world around us. By not thinking we know it all, by not thinking we know much at all.

Laozi says,

Abandon sageliness, renounce (book) knowledge,

and people will be a hundred times better off.

Take this advice:

know the plain and embrace simplicity;

reduce your sense of self

and lessen your desires,

give up (book) learning

and you will have no worries.