Philosophy

Flat Tire Philosophy

/ boz bozeman / Leave a comment

Yesterday was supposed to be a great day. After I taught two classes in the morning, I was released for a personal half-day. My plan was to get an overdue oil change, do some Christmas shopping and watch the USA World Cup game.

But after the oil change, my tire pressure light came on. At first I was just annoyed, but when I pulled up to the first store, I could hear air coming out of the stem nozzle. After the oil change place told me they couldn’t do anything about it, I rushed to a tire place. There, they told me they could have it done by 7PM. It was 11:30 AM.

I wish I could say I dealt with this well. Thoreau talked about not getting thrown off by “nutshells and mosquito wings” that fell on the metaphorical train tracks. If a train was derailed by such small objects, it wouldn’t be a very good method of transportation.

But this problem seemed much larger to me. It was derailing my plans for the day.

Continue reading →

World Philosophy Day

/ boz bozeman / Leave a comment

For this day, I thought it would be nice to post one of my favorite passages from my book. The first part is a quote from Henry David Thoreau. The second is the connection I see to Taoism.

Thoreau  

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities.  

We loiter in winter while it is already spring. 

Tao 

Earlier, Thoreau warned not to try to turn spring into summer; here he warns not to obsess on the past. Lao Tzu said: 

Why was it that the ancients prized this Tao so much? Because it could be got by seeking for it, and the guilty could use it to escape the stain of guilt. This is the reason why all 
under heaven consider it the most valuable thing. 

Learn from mistakes and missed opportunities and apply this learning going forward.  Practice forgiving yourself, especially if you have accepted the lessons from your mistakes. Forge forward with this learning, determined to make a new day and a new you. 

If you like this, you may like to read more in my book Tao of Thoreau

Losing Control

/ boz bozeman / Leave a comment
From my book Tao of Thoreau. Order it from the sidebar!

This is good advice for me at the beginning of the school year. Staying calm and remembering that all of these stresses are indeed transient is difficult right now. I am trying to remember that obstacles are also opportunities and frustrations are lessons. I can let them bog me down or believe these challenges will make me grow.

Notes on infinity

/ boz bozeman / Leave a comment

I don’t know if this is going to be a poem or article. Maybe both. I’m trying to grasp the infinite abundance of our world, our universe.

Count the pine needles
    I thought of that line as I walked through the woods, looking at the yellow blanket of pine needles on the trail and under the trees. Imagine trying to count them. It made me think about the line where measurements blur into the infinite.

Look to infinity 
Relentless abundance 
You are standing in it
Walking on it
Throbbing with it

Infinity is the disappearing importance of measurement 
Of rulers
Of defining numerals

Measure me out 
a teaspoon of thyme.
But make me the same teaspoon twice
With the exact number of grains each time.

I feel like I’m capturing something that I have been after a long time. These are elusive thoughts, though, and it takes time to refine them.

From Tao of Thoreau

/ boz bozeman / Leave a comment

This is the first entry in my book. You will see that the left side has a quote from Thoreau, and the right hand side explains the connection of his ideas to Taoism. It also talks of a Seeker, a person looking to live a meaningful, balanced and creative life.

Thoreau  

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life, to live so sturdily as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it. Or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it.

Tao 

Thoreau begins his quest by radically simplifying his world. Moving to a cabin in the woods enables him to identify distractions and illusions. Being alone helps him strip his life down to find out what is important and true in the hopes of discovering a path that has meaning and value. 

Realistically, most of us cannot separate from society. Still, Thoreau teaches the Seeker to identify parts of life that drain our energy, hold us back, and trip us up. 

This is what he means by fronting “the essential facts of life.” What is truly important? What desires are part of my path, and which pull me away from it?  Thoreau and Taoism propose a radical freedom from distracting and destructive thinking, mindsets and actions.

I would love to hear what you think about these ideas! Leave a comment.

Avoid the Beginning of Evil

/ boz bozeman / 2 Comments

When I decided to launch this website, Henry David Thoreau had a talk with me. He reminded me of a time he had three pieces of limestone on his desk, and became “terrified” when he realized he had to dust them every day, so he “threw them out the window in disgust.” 

His punch line was: “It’s best to avoid the beginning of evil.” 

Thoreau is showing his sense of humor with some hyperbole, but his point is strong: consider the new objects and projects that you take on carefully, and think about the amount of work involved in maintaining them. 

Metaphorically, Thoreau’s limestone represents any task or duty that demands our attention and work. As I say in Tao of Thoreau, when we start something new, we need to be “ready to bring the energy and focus required.” I thought about this a lot as I designed bozbozeman.com. 

I’m launching this site at the end of the school year, which can be a stressful and exhausting time. For this blog to succeed, I need to produce and post content so people who like it will keep coming back. I need to find creative ways to promote it so that it grows. This is a lot of work; moreover, it is work that I will have to sustain for a long time for this site to become successful.  

Then I realized something, so I said this back to Thoreau: “The limestone was decoration. You didn’t want to waste your time on something you didn’t have to. Writing is something I want to do. And with a website, other people can read my work, which has always been my goal.” 

I didn’t see Lao-Tzu there until he said, “That’s right.” I looked at him, and he spoke in that calm voice, echoing with centuries of wisdom: “Do you work and step back. The only path to serenity.”

Thoreau didn’t have anything to say to that, so I guess I have avoided the beginning of evil.