Chapter X – Part 11

There is a story about Lao-tzu. When Lao-tzu was old and thought about the beautiful life he had he realized that time came to leave the Earth. He wanted to die in Himalaya.

$ The one who said “without going outside his door, one understands (all that takes place) under the sky” wanted to go to Himalaya.

$ Exactly. Listen to this. A clerk stopped him at the border and said he wouldn’t let him through until he wrote down his teachings.

$ Wonderful.

$ Bagua 8. Knowledge. Development.

$ Meditation is in the first place. I heard that 30 minutes meditation equaled 2 hours sleep. Is it true?

$ Every meditation session is different. Every hour sleep is different. Is meditation for you a kind of trade? Roll my log and I’ll roll yours?

$ Generally speaking, if I do something I do it with a certain purpose.

$ Like an eagle that learns to hunt chamois in order to become the best hunter in the neighborhood and hang as many antlers as possible on the walls in his house.

$ No, no! He eats chamois at once.

$ I’m provoking you.

$ Wait a second. What is it all about? All the time today we’re talking about targets and now you’re questioning the fact that I want to meditate with a certain purpose.

$ One thing is the way that leads to the aim. Another thing is the fixation on an aim. E.g.: one of your objectives is to organize family events. Imagine that in a couple of years your family still hasn’t taken to your idea. Will you give it up? Or imagine that every year the same 4-6 people come. Will you think you waste your time?

$ Definitely.

$ How you climb the mountain is what matters, not how fast you get there or how long you live at the top of the mountain. Meditating (or not) is a way of climbing.

$ Does it mean I’m supposed to meditate without a purpose?

$ Right. For the pure joy of meditating. What else have you got in “knowledge and development”?

$ Spanish and playing piano. And another foreign language, a really exotic one, Arabic or Japanese.

$ Or Bo.

$ Where is it spoken?

$ It’s not spoken anymore. The last speaker of this ancient tribal language died a 3 years ago in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world’s oldest cultures. Andamanese languages are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia. Have you heard that there are between 6000 and 7000 languages currently spoken, and that between 50-90% of those will have become extinct by the year 2100?

$ Unbelievable!

$ And the English language passed the million word threshold on June 10th, 2009 at 10:22 am GMT. Currently there is a new word created every 98 minutes or about 14.7 words per day.

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