The Authentic Guest

Visiting a professor of Tai Chi, hoping not to break some ancient Taiwanese taboo, I decided to apologize in advance for any “ugly American” idiocy over lunch.  “Excuse me Master, I want to be a good guest, and I’m very aware of just how foreign I might seem – all white hair, blue eyes and Yankee-ness.  Aside from being from Mars, would you please tell me if I’m doing something off base and impolite?”

He lingered for a moment, contemplating

The Uses of Not

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub. It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a pot. Where the pot’s not; is where it’s useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; the space inside makes “room” for you. Therefore the profit in what is; lies in the use of what is not.”

from the Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tsu
Translation by Gia-Fu Feng, Taoist Priest

Learning, Surrender and Engagement

“The beginner’s white belt gets darker with every hour spent on the mat; at some point, it becomes black.”

-Yoshihiko Hirata Sensei
Aikido Master

All learning

In Praise of “Counselor Servant Sellers”

“One of the little joys of being a human being, is the occasional opportunity to enjoy “being human” together – to bask in the warmth of an affectionate smile, to appreciate an inside joke, to be caressed, to be served coffee by someone you know cares whether it’s gone cold…”

–  J.R. St. John
Executive

This July, think about dependence.

“Gentlemen, we’d best hang together.
Or we will most assuredly hang – separately!”

– Benjamin Franklin
American Printer, Writer, Speaker
Founding Father
(January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790)