*** Reply to note of 05/04/95 18:59
Replying to this thread on DOING/NOT_DOING or BEING/DOING as it arose
from attempts to understand a translation of a verse/line from stanza
48 of TAO TE CHING...
I seek to understand the DOing/Not-Doing distinction from the viewpoint of
ACTION and Separate Functioning.In other words: What is the strategy and
motivation of our "Doing", our activities and actions? If it is to avoid,
defer, or obscure what is "called for" or most appropriate for the moment,
then what does it serve? I have noticed in myself that I spend way too
much time and effort in such activity,and upon considerable reflection, I
have also noticed that this kind of Doingserves only to maintain a sense
of identity, or BEing: I am because I am ceasely doing (including
"internal doing" or ruminating, daydreaming, monologing, replaying old
scenes, etc). I find this kind of aimless/avoidant doing
constructs/maintains my sense of myself as a separate functioning agent.
On those occasions when I have been able to cease that aimless/avoidant
Doing, when all is still inside, I have been able to BE in a different
way. I don't experience myself as separate from anyone or anything, yet I
can act autonomously, feel automonous and unique and Absolutely
interrelated to everthing/one else. Then my DOING IS BEING and my action
is what is "CALLED FOR", it Appropriate ACTION. This, so far, is a rare
occasion. But, that it has has occured at all, is to me a joyful miracle.
So I wonder where these distinctionswill take this thread...
TIM <tjsulliv@BCSC02.gov.bc.ca>
Regards,
Tim J. Sullivan
Ministry of Health