Been a while...

Amazing how quickly a month can pass.

Part of the reason is that I have become disinterested in spiritual debate. Too much Zen perhaps? It simply doesn't interest me right now. I'm currently "translating" the Dao De Jing, something I've dabbled in for well over ten years now. I put together a spiral bound version that contains six or seven of the more popular translations per each of the 81 chapter headings. It's a couple hundred pages thick. It's a nice instant reference but it isn't as good as taking the time to try and understand the Chinese original.

I can't speak Chinese. I know enough about Chinese to find characters in a dictionary and some of the more common characters I can recognize and sometimes recall some definitions. So I have a functional knowledge of the language. I understand radicals and how characters combine to make other characters. As I continue "translating" based on working with the Chinese my knowledge gets a little deeper and I see how the other translations came to be.

So lately my focus has been on the Dao De Jing. As I continue to work on it, I continue to see its truths operating around me. It isn't a mystical book at all, something escapist, revealing some esoteric truths. It's quite earthy. Anything "esoteric" truths are only so in their obviousness. As the DDJ notes, people prefer the byways. Yet what is obvious is right in front of us and can seem quite awe inspiring because it has been there all along.

So those who tend to romanticize or exoticize "eastern" religions do so in an escapist fashion. In other words, doing this is an act of self not necessarily something inherent in the religious tradition. Even the Biblical faith works this way. The deeper into it one goes, the more one should realize that it is quite practical, quite earthy and, thus, deep. It is not some "out there" religious mysticism. No, mysticism, its mystery, is in its application in the real world, not in being deep or some guru-like being.

So where am I today? Quite here and now. Drinking my ridiculously large Boo Koo energy drink, typing away on a blog that no one reads, listening to some really interesting music through my iPod Shuffle connected to some Bose Triport headphones while at work at 5:15 a.m. How is this a spiritual act? Maybe it's the caffeine but it seems that lately all of life has been infused with a spirituality I've not noticed before. It isn't anything soul shaking or mind bending. It just kind of is. It is this is-ness that is the essence of spirituality, reality as it is. Stand back and look at it. See it for what it is. Don't label it, don't try to read into it, don't try to bend it to your own sense of understanding. Just bask in it.