Some Tenets

Better to guard your inner virtue, nurture your vital essence, protect your spirit, treasure your breath, and avoid talking too much.

Ho-Shang Kung
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Hello Margie
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In other words keep your cards close to your chest,

Mr. Kung has some good advice here, a check list of tasks which if they don't make us happy at least help us from becoming miserable,

Where's your inner virtue? Do you remember where you put it? Did you stow it away in the bottom drawer of your bureau and forget about it. Well, if so it's in a good safe place, but maybe you should remove it, air it out and have another look to see if you are still living according to it's rules.

You know what your vital essence is and where you put it. It's what makes you who you are and who you are is important to the world so don't let that essence get to sagging and attract some weeds. Give it some sunshine and some TLC. The world needs it.

Why does your spirit need protecting? Because there is an army, disorganized but strong, out to maraud and plunder you out of all that keeps you looking up and forward and facing life with a gleam in your eye. So post a watchman on the tower, fill the moat and don't let enemy through the door.

To be able to walk and breathe is the purest metaphor for freedom. We breathe, that's inspiration. We take in air that's fresh, that's rejuvenation. We experience the aromas of nature and learn her invisible secrets. All things to treasure greatly.

And lastly "avoid talking too much."

I'll say no more.

DB - The Vagabond
Never give up.
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What The Mole Does

Spirit is an invisible force made visible in all life.

Maya Angelou
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Never mind, I know what you're thinking, "Oh my, he's beating that old drum is he."
Angelou says it just about as well as anyone could. I sit here wondering if I can approach this topic with any newer, better words. Maybe, maybe not.

When I was young(er) I wondered what this word "spirit" meant. One person said it was energy. In fact a lot of people said that. Another person said to think of the spirit of a horse. Well if spirit is energy it certainly seems that the horse has more spirit than the mole. But maybe not. Maybe it's the same invisible spirit but the mole just expresses it differently.

"The hills are alive with the sound of music." When was the last time you heard the trees and flowers sing? When was the last time you saw a beautiful melody or smelled the aroma of poetry? The hills are alive not with music but with the SOUND of music. What's the difference? You won't know unless you listen.

Certainly it takes energy for the horse to gallop and the mole to dig, It also takes energy for the tree to grow and the flower to blossom. But it's not just energy. It's not energy from a bowl of cereal in the morning, running on a treadmill or burning fossil fuel, spirit is energy with a purpose.

I mean to say that it is spirit which causes the flower in the first place and that it is an expression of that spirit, an individual expression in growth and blossoms of intelligent spirit. You can dissect the flower and find no intelligence in the stems and blossoms just as you can dissect the human body and find no soul among the nerves, muscles, bones and blood. Man's spirituality doesn't live there.

What the idea of purposeful spirit does is join life and mind together in holy matrimony, or at least in mutual admiration. It is not in anything but it embraces everything. The universe is an expression of spirit; the galaxy, the space ship, the harp, the mountain, the tree, the song, the flower the horse, the poem, the mole, "made visible in all life."

When we see, hear, feel and enjoy all the things of life and mind that surround us we are witnessing the invisible spirit becoming visible. And that's the true mystery of life.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

Only 7 responses so far. Summer is closing up her gates fairly soon. Get with it. Don't be left out.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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We've Got You Surrounded

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who can make things beautiful.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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"Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or given understanding to the mind?"
(Job)

All hail the skilled worker! My neighbor Patrick repairs trucks. Not the little pick up down the street but the big ones the rumble down the highway and haul important things around the country. Sometimes it means opening the hood or climbing under to tinker with some malfunctioning part, but sometimes it means dealing with an almost total wreck. He showed me a photo one day of a truck they brought in. It's hood and part of its engine had been smashed almost to oblivion. He and his fellow mechanics knew what to do.

You may be trudging along a road with tired feet bearing or pulling some load. You may be working with tired fingers to do an endless typing job. You may be monitoring all the intricacies of a commercial jet as it cuts its way through the air at an impossible speed. You may be in a hospital making the rounds to all of your patients. You may be in an orchestra running through fast and difficult passages on your flute. You may spend the day peering into a microscope. You may be on your back under a truck.

But there, with the aching feet, tired fingers and blood shot eyes, is spirit, and that is your real condition. It's the spirit of art and beauty, of poetry and music, the spirit of instinct, intelligence and imagination, the spirit of enquiry, investigation and discovery, the spirit of ingenuity and enterprise, the spirit of risk, invention and novelty, the spirit of cooperation and collaboration. of charity and benevolence. it's the spirit of friendship, of romance and love. It's the spirit that attaches itself to us, shares its life with us and shows itself to us hoping to be understood. To understand spirit is our first and final job, and it's an infinite one.

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

5 responses so far.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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Treasure Hunt

Spirit is the animating principle in a person.

Immanuel Kant
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A biologist can take a spoonful of water out of the sea, put it under a microscope and see a vast community of unicellular creatures swimming around, looking for the ocean they once knew. Another biologist can take a pinch of dirt from the ground and see the bacteria and microbes of vital life in it under the same microscope.

Think of the astrophysicists who are using X-rays, ultraviolet rays and electromagnetism to see the dark matter that can't be seen, even with a telescope and can only be known by its effects..

On every level of life from the simplest to the most universal, things are neither what they seem nor are they likely to remain what we think we know about them after careful analysis. That's one of the things that makes life so interesting.

Which brings me to the human being, if not the most complex then one of the most complex creatures in the universe. You are not what you seem to be. You are not what you eat. You're not what you look like. And you're not what you think about most of the time. Hidden underneath the life style, the clothes, the flesh and blood and even the dark matter is a vital, animating force which defines you as a very special, unique creature of the universe. It can't be seen even under the most powerful microscope. It can only be known by its effects. But it is at work all the time, asleep or awake, knowing the unknown and getting to know the unknowable.

We are amazing things, we humans, worth more wonder and respect than we permit ourselves.

DB - The Vagabond
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Weekend Puzzle
A few attempts so far, no answer.

A minimalist cryptogram

B'S GHH GH1 TXTPE P.M.

GHH GH1 ZTTHBFI AZURE

1L'O CATPT U R & AYC U R

& BZ U R GHH GH1 2.

BPXBFI NTPHBF

(G L)
DB