I
continue to pick up the petals on the path of life, this time through a reading
given to me by a friend, one of those friends who came to me as a student and
wound up being my teacher. The
reading discusses the new science of "blurred logic”, which is basically
relative logic, where things are not necessarily black and white, but rather a
series of different shades of gray, where values are not necessarily the
absolute values of a binary system: 1 or 0, but rather values of a “Real”
system, such as 0.0000004, which is not zero and certainly isn‘t one.
It sounds complex, but it is not. History describes how Aristotle, the father of logical thought, based his dissertations on a binary system: what is, intrinsically defines what is not. That is to say, it is either zero or it is not, in which case, by simple deduction, it is one. Then, Oriental masters such as Lao-Tsu and Buddha defined reality beyond being or not being, and describe it as something that is and is not. Not-being includes being and vice-versa; in short and in my eyes, the perfect description of this magical universe that is not static but flowing and transforming, a Taoist universe.
The heresy? Well the heresy is in the gray, in the shades of gray. The heresy is that there is nothing absolute. Life is not linear. We judge others based on linearity. We stand up and think we have to choose one: good or bad, black or white, hot or cold. The heresy is that there is no good OR bad. The truth is in the combination of good AND bad, of being AND not being because good/bad come after judgment, not before.
My invitation for today?
Get rid of the linear, Aristotelic glasses that require linear thinking
and judgment, and embrace Buddha and Taoism to be able to perceive that the
truth in life has shades and if we can see the world through these eyes, we
will be capable of overcoming the pettiness of judgment.
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