Our senses deceive us.

For millennia the religious life taught us that the Earth was a prelude, a shadow, even an illusion, a pale and distorted reprint that can lend only hints as to the true nature of Heaven or Enlightenment. Then science saved (or re-saved) us from delusion and myth, claiming unimpeachable principles that could grant us perfect knowledge through the diligence of human effort, alone and unaided by mysterious, indescribable forces. Our senses were the basis of experimentation and observation, confidently distilling equations and diagrams from a jumbled but imminently knowable universe. Even today, this unshakable confidence in our way of life—and the institution of reason underlying the forces that shape it—dominates modern thought and action.
But we grow discontent as our lives become as formulaic as our equations. More and more, traditionally held views about the definitive validity of the scientific mindset are being challenged.

This unusual manifestation of an old accusation does not find its source with the persistent devotees to the God of organized religion. Rather it is science itself that has boldly asserted evidence for seemingly paradoxical truths, truths whose essence comes into mortal conflict with the “rational” assumptions and conduct of the modern man or woman.

Such assumptions can be paraphrased as follows: “There is no evidence for anything that we cannot experience (or hope to experience) through our senses—so why should there be anything else there at all? If it can’t be proved through rational and empirical means, it might as well not exist.” What this view suffers from is both the blanket assumption that the nature of “evidence” lies purely in the observable [universe] and the flawed preconception that humans possess the potential for perfect objectivity.
Think of any scientific experiment: the validity of the methods and the accuracy of the results depend on observers who theoretically exert no outside influence over the course of events or data involved in the experiment. But when the people being studied and doing the studying are one in the same, and when the universe being tested is the same one in which we live, how can we possible achieve objectivity? Is there anyone out there who can honestly claim an objective understanding or give an objective account of him or herself?

“The spiritual or metaphysical world has no observable properties,” the assumers might say. “We can explain everything from the formation of the universe to the human brain utilizing one scientific code. Even emotions are merely composed of chemical reactions. Where does this so-called spirit or soul fit in here?”

And yet much of humanity still yearns for some greater force, still feels its presence, still feels a lack of satisfaction with the answers of modern science to some of mankind’s greatest questions about the nature of existence. We feel that we are beings too dignified and transcendent to be determined by particles alone. That we even have the need for some transcendental element to explain and manifest our complexity—and the very conception or existence of such a non-physical world in our imaginations—requires us to reexamine our rejection of the immaterial universe, the land without borders, names, or classifications. If we can imagine something, we must allow for the possibility of its existence

For most hard rationalists, such spiritual instinct or core feeling does little to persuade them of the existence of this hidden universe. Maybe science can. Recent developments in physics cast doubt on the apparently limitless potential for human understanding and experience of all phenomena. Up to 90% of the universe’s matter may be “dark,” possibly so small as to be undetectable by the instruments of man. Even more baffling is the so-called “dark energy” that scientists are increasingly convinced inhabits billions of light-years of empty vacuum, causing the acceleration of the universe’s expansion and possibly woven seamlessly into the very fabric of space-time itself. String theory postulates that the three observable dimensions (four if you count time) are merely a fraction of the ten or eleven dimensions that are required to hold together the tapestry of physical space and time, most of which are unobservable to human senses. Loop quantum theory suggests that space-time does not take the form of a continuous brushstroke but rather an incremental series of discrete units with some unknown factor existing between the units like white space in a pointillist portrait.

How can we possibly observe something that isn’t in the space-time that we inhabit but forms the very structural basis of that space-time? It’s like trying to look at your own eyes under a microscope (assuming of course that they are both still lodged in their appropriate sockets). To have even the possibility of “seeing” the universe objectively we would have to actually be located outside our universe, just as we would need to be outside our body to see our own eyes.

We might never be able to directly witness the existence of these foundational phenomena with our given senses. These are all speculative theories about the fundamental form of reality, based on indirect evidence at best. Yet such creative speculation may reveal entirely new avenues of exploration and imagination. How often do we learn things about ourselves through indirect means, side effects, inexplicable reactions that surprise even us? How often do we uncover the subconscious secrets hidden to ourselves through unchained ponderings, free associations, imaginative wanderings?

We can, however, achieve some measure of “out-of-bodiness” through creative imagination and inner meditation on higher unities. For both Newton and Einstein, imagination, unbridled creativity, and a belief in the connectedness of all things were at least as important as reason and empiricism in opening new doorways of human understanding. We would be wise to follow their example by relegating scientific observation back to its proper role as a servant and not a master of humanity. To limit ourselves to only one way of looking at all things is to insult the cornucopia of faculties—spiritual, mental, emotional—with which we have been blessed.

What our future knowledge may hold for us none can say. But let us not neglect the empty spaces, the unobservable, and the wisdom of the unknown— both in our cosmologic habitat and within our own immensely personal universe. For what lies there may be the truths for which we really should be searching.

al-Harizi’s decision to translate the most popular Arabic work of the age, move back to the East, and span the full generic range available to him in his own work, also indicates an acute and often very moving awareness of the need to document a past about to be lost.  His position, then, for the Hebrew/Jewish culture of the Levant is analogous to that of Aristotle’s in the Hellenic world and Chaucer’s in medieval Europe.  All three gather paradigms in an attempt to fend off the sweeping effects of changing orders without realizing the overarching trajectory of their gestures, the fact that their work would go on to reanimate the life of forms by sustaining the specific knowledge contained within them.
-Ammiel Alcalay, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture

Yehuda Alharizi, also Judah ben Solomon Harizi or al-Harizi (Hebrew: יהודה בן שלמה אלחריזי‎, Yehudah ben Shelomo al-Harizi, Arabic: يحيا بن سليمان بن شاؤل أبو زكريا الحريزي اليهودي من أهل طليطلة‎, Yahya bin Sulaiman bin Sha’ul abu Zakaria al-Harizi al-Yahudi min ahl Tulaitila) was a rabbi, translator, poet and traveller active in Spain in the Middle Ages (in Toledo? – 1165, in Aleppo – 1225). He was supported by wealthy patrons, to whom he wrote poems and dedicated compositions.

He was a rationalist, conveying the works of Maimonides and his approach to rationalistic Judaism. He translated Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed and some of his Commentary on the Mishnah, as well as theMahbarot Iti’el of the Arab poet al-Hariri, from the Arabic to Hebrew.

Alharizi’s poetic translation of the Guide for the Perplexed is considered by many to be more readable than that of Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon. However, it has not been very widely used in Jewish scholarship, perhaps because it is less precise. It had some influence in the Christian world due to its translation into Latin.^[1]

Alharizi’s own works include the “Tahkemoni”, composed between 1218 and 1220, in the Arabic form known as maqama. This is written in Hebrew in unmetrical rhymes, in what is commonly termed rhymed prose. It is a series of humorous episodes, witty verses, and quaint applications of Scriptural texts. The episodes are bound together by the presence of the hero and of the narrator, who is also the author. Another collection of his poetry was devoted to preaching ethical self-discipline and fear of heaven.

Harizi undertook long journeys in the lands of the Middle East. His works are suffused with his impressions from these journeys.

He not only brought to perfection the art of applying Hebrew to secular satire, but he was also a brilliant literary critic and his maqama on the Andalusian Hebrew poets is a fruitful source of information.^[2]

[Source: Wikipedia]

Pollution is not only an “environmental” issue, it’s a public health issue. Learn about the industrial chemicals that are building up in our bodies, and why we need a revolution in toxics regulation.

From conditioner to lip balm to plant-based pedicures, companies and spas nationwide are offering vegan products and services. That typically means there’s no testing on animals, and ingredients are free of animal byproducts – including beeswax and carmine, a commonly used red coloring made from beetles. But these goodies aren’t tucked away on a dusty bottom shelf in a health-food store. They’re at the hair salon, on the shelves of Lush, or even at the local Rite Aid.

But domination is always the sort of interfering or coercive action called wei that the Dao warns us against. Barack Obama’s leadership is a case study in wuwei; he never forces himself, he lets the situation dictate the response. In boxing it is called “the ropeadope” and Muhammad Ali was indeed a guru in the true sense of that philosophy. Taking punches (figuratively as well as literally) weakens you enemy even as he seeks to weaken you; he takes you on full energy while your energy is full as well. Having survived his onslaught, you are now much closer to having a full reserve as you begin your counterattack even while he is exhausted and vulnerable. You increase your chances of success and what you need to expend in terms of power decreases. It’s an incredibly simple and proven formula but it is so hard to attain only because of the irresistible human urge to dominate, to attack. Human insecurity expressed through overaggression on every level of existence is one of our most defining characteristics, which is why the Obamas and the Alis — men who have no right being on top based on society’s usual rules for their respective politics/sports — can be king, by exploiting the overaggressive strategies of the John McCains and George Formans out there.

In the course of life we bump into obstacles large and small at every turn. The 21st century world has multipled those obstacles to near infinity, so that it seems every moment we are faced with choices — indeed, this is one of the main goals of the Free Market, to multiply choices ad infinitum. It is believe that this equals freedom — endless choice — but truly it is another form of enslavement. If one is required to constantly be making choices, one is also being forced to flirt constantly with the very “purposive action” (wei) that is scorned by the Daodejing.

Now at each of these millions of junctures we can flow with the Dao… or we can resist, push back, overthink, fight against through manipulation, overcalculation, and any number of other wei-type strategies. By this I mean going against the instinct of what feels naturally “right” (ziran).

Does this mean we should float through life unconsciously, enabling our every impulse under the false pretense of insinctive action? Absolutely not. Thinking is not the same as overthinking; just as changing is distinct from manipulating. It is ok to think things through; in fact it is required Daoist procedure to do so! But it is the way we think things through that is at stake here — and the resulting course of action.

Being instinctive does not mean being impulsive, and in fact obeying one’s instincts is a skill that takes great honing over one’s entire lifetime; in fact, it seems to me that knowing one’s own instincts, recognizing them for what they are when they speak to us, might be the very definition of wisdom.

Roger Ames and David Hall propose an understanding of wuwei that “involves the absence of any course of action that interferes with the particular focus (de) of those things contained within one’s field of influence.”

Wuwei as non-interference is a recurring theme in a number of interpretations. Wang Qingjia sees wuwei as a “non-interference with others” that includes both refraining from interference as an agent-self, as well as requiring the agent to “recognize and to have respect for the existence and the directness of the recipients of that action.”

However, wuwei is a more expansive account of action than simply “passivity in the sense of complete inertia.”

Indeed, it is associated with the human impulses of movement, harmony, creativity, and participation in the dao’s unfolding of events. In Chapter 10 of the Daodejing, the sage practicing wuwei is “nourishing the soul and embracing the One,” “cultivating and cleaning,” “loving the people and giving life to the state,” “opening and closing the gates of Heaven,” “understanding all with the four reaches” (H10)

– all seemingly “active” procedures in the process of “giving birth” and “nourishing” the myriad things in the image of the dao. The Zhuangzi informs us that wuwei involves stillness as well as movement:

Sages rest in [the Way and virtue]. Resting they are empty; empty they are full; full, they are prepared. Empty, they are still; still, they begin to move; moving, they attain. Still, they are nonactive; nonactive, they entrust their responsibility for affairs to others.

His movement is heaven; his stillness is earth.

In the view of David Loy, although non-interference is an indispensable component of wuwei’s consistency, it is a secondary characteristic of the essence of wuwei. Practicing such aspects of wuwei is not even possible unless one has “dissipated the fog of expectations and desires that keeps one from experiencing the world as it is in itself.”

One consequence of this interpretation is that wuwei involves a process of healing that eliminates the fixation on an isolatable, substantive “self” that isolates us from immediate experience of the world. The sage has then “no awareness of the agent as being distinct from ‘his’ act,” and thus the meaning of “no action” is that there is no action separate from the actor herself. A further consequence of this process is that, in addition to the cognitive separation between actor and action falling away, so too does the distinction between actor/action and the recipient “other” of the action dissolve. A common variant on wei (“to do” or “to act”) is yiwei, which might be translated “to take [something] to be [something else]” or “to regard [as something].”

In practicing wuyiwei, our tendency to “regard” things as other than they are – as having substance or “otherness” to any significant degree beyond the temporary and perceptual – is nullified.

It is critical at this juncture to point out that wuwei is not a concept that can or does stand on its own in Daoist philosophy. The basis for wuwei is the idea of “naturalness,” or ziran, which Liu Xiaogan calls “the most basic message and purpose”of the Daodejing and the “highest value” being extolled therein. The overall message of “naturalness” can actually be split between two related but distinct senses of the word. According to Zhang Qin, the first sense is that of “originally so” or the “primordial state of things.”

Initially, we might think that this sense is concerned with an ontology of origins and first causes, and the consequent unfolding of events that follows from them. But as we can see from the second sense of ziran – naturalness as “uncoerced” or “uncaused” activity – the very notion of “origins” and “first causes” would in fact directly counter to the Daoist cosmology. In fact, Ames and Hall use instead the term “acosmology” to describe the Daoist worldview, because the “acosmostic” worldview indicates an absence of “some overarching arche or ‘beginning’ as an explanation of the creative process.”

Ames and Hall take issue with Zhang and Slingerland’s categorization of ziran as a “primordial” state. Rather, such a state is endlessly “fetal” whose “origins” are spontaneous and cyclical instead of causal and linear.

Consequently, the Zhuangzi advises us that one should not dwell too extensively on the “whys” of the universe. Without a first cause or primary causer (e.g. God) the “whys” simply don’t exist in the sense of a purely logical and linear progression of causes or facts:

All under heaven are drawn into life but do not know why they are alive, and all are alike in attaining their ends without knowing why.

Though we may know destiny, we cannot perceive its antecedents.

With the admission of ziran to our understanding of wuwei, we can see why Ames and Hall would be of a similar mind as Loy and Slingerland in seeing at least one aspect of wuwei as pertaining to “non-dualistic action.” Within the ongoing stream of our experience,

there is no isolatable, efficient agency within it that claims a controlling ownership over the process. The successful maturation of each thing within experience is achieved only through a collaboration with its environing others that entails both contribution and deference.

For the sagely individual, it is the intuitive understanding of when to contribute and when to defer from this process that is a measure of her sageliness. In this way, wuwei can be seen to constitute not passive inaction, but action that does not coerce or work against the natural underlying flow of the dao and the myriad things. Hence, we arrive upon another alternative translation of wuwei as “non-coercive” or “nonassertive” action. At the same time, wuwei promotes an understanding of the things in the cosmos in which the inherent unity or “non-dual” nature of those things is prior to their perceived individuality. It must here be pointed out that the idea of “naturalness” attached to ziran does not refer to “nature” in the strictly ecological sense. Rather, the term refers to “the state of ‘acting naturally’ or ‘letting things develop by themselves.’”

This is a critical distinction because it does allow for the possibility of progressive human action. Not only humans but animals develop methods to manipulate their environments to increase their chances for survival and overall well-being. In other words, while Laozi would probably find the ecological destruction of the planet almost certainly contrary to the principles contained within ziran, this understanding of ziran still permits – and in certain cases might even sanction – ecological manipulation. This could allow the moral admissibility of technological development and what we in the West would consider “human progress” without necessarily betraying the general principle of ziran.

Laozi does seem himself to hold the ideal of a primitivist, sedentary, agrarian ideal as much more conducive than technological, bureaucratic civilizations to a life that accords with ziran:

Let the states be small and the people few…
Have the people regard death gravely and put migrating far from their minds.
Though they might have boats and carriages, no one will ride them…
Neighboring states might overlook one another,
And the sounds of chickens and dogs might be overheard,
Yet the people will arrive at old age and death with no comings and goings between
them. (H80)

Nevertheless, in maintaining a distinction between what is found in “nature” and what is “natural” to do according to ziran, we can therefore see that it is not technology in itself to which Laozi would object but rather the coercive, self-serving way in which we often find it being used. This also solves the theoretical conundrum of the all-things-as-natural hypothesis by postulating a narrower definition of what is constituted by “natural.”

And one of the things being construed in the Daoist texts as “natural” is the realization that events in nature “unfold in accordance with the laws of change” and are disinterested in and impartial to the “goal-directed conduct of men”that seeks to fulfill desires and attain selfish ends. Another meaning of wei other than “to do, act” is “for the sake of,” action that “one takes after consciously deliberating the alternatives.”

This is also connected to Slingerland’s translation of wei as “regarding,” in the sense that wei “causes a person to value one thing over another, and therefore provides ulterior motives for action.”

Thus, we have another variant of wuwei as “not-for-the-sake-of” – in other words, a total “absence of purposive activity” in one’s actions. The point here is that nature never acts for the sake of something, it simply does what it does in accordance with the unpredictable and indeterminate flow of the dao. The sage follows this course of action himself, shunning the “purposive activity” of wei that multiplies one’s selfish desires and inevitably leads to a departure from the harmonious balance of spontaneous forces operating effortlessly across the universe.