One Aikido sensei of mine used to say, “There is more than one way to the top of Mount Fuji” and the system that works for me is yoga and more recently Advaita Vedanta, and so perhaps not surprisingly my favourite descriptions of “it” are in the Upanishads, and also the Bhagavad Gita, but that was after a few years of struggling with it. So I practice mostly within those (related) traditions and not from a Taoist or Buddhist tradition, but they are basically systems that are all reaching for the same thing: realization and through realization the ending of suffering.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with intellectualism or cleverness. They are very useful tools. But they are just tools, so the problem is when they are confused with the real self (or no-self, or whatever your tradition calls it.). However the opposite extreme happens with some people who in pursuing these paths embrace anti-intellectualism (and maybe there is a little of this in the Tao of Pooh, I haven’t read it so I can’t say). By strongly identifying themselves with the form of a particular method, they are committing the same error as those who are attached to their intellects. It’s the same error committed by those who are attached to their cars, to their beauty, or to any form as all forms are non-permanent and it is attachment to that which will inevitably be destroyed that is seen as the root of suffering. It’s very easy to do this and I personally do it in all areas of life including in my yoga practice, the very thing that I use to try to free myself from it.

Accepting the present moment (or going with the flow, or whatever) should not mean accepting the status quo, and anyone who says differently is in my view contorting the teachings. You see this in all traditions, religions, states, and pretty much any human organization of any kind, which in my view just shows the tenaciousness of the grip of egoic mind. The point of accepting the present moment is not to stop doing things, but to let go of your attachment to the fruits of your action. This should free you to engage in action for its own sake. If the present moment is the only thing that is real, you still plan for the future, you just don’t get caught up in it. You don’t need to worry about failing, or how you’ll look, and you don’t need to suffer now and think “I will only be happy at this point in the future when X happens.” From this viewpoint, your father’s decision to change his life fits perfectly within that framework, not least because it resulted in better lives for you and your family, and a big part of these practices is reducing the suffering of all beings in any way you can. Adherents often see all thing at their core are as being ultimately the same (non-dualism). Each person is a fragile and ephemeral manifestation of something exquisite and thus should be treasured as one treasures the brief blossoming of a cherry tree or the instant that a butterfly alights on one’s finger.

But these are practices based on experience and it’s really hard to try to find words to talk describe something wordless. That’s why I think books about these things can only go so far. It’s like reading a book about running a marathon versus actually running a marathon.

Love your blog, I am very glad I stopped by!

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xian_(Taoism))

Wu wei reminds me of Mushin, but I prefer Mushin because achieving the “no-mind” state requires constant learning and practice. You have to learn everything before you’re able to let it go. Zen + Swords ftw.

There are quite a few scholarly translations out there now of both the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, for example, along with various other core texts in the tradition, that could give you a more satisfying sense of Daoist ideas and their diversity. I’m not sure what edition of the Daodejing you picked up, but something with a proper introduction & footnotes makes a lot more sense than those versions that just toss you into a questionably translated series of aphorisms after some opening praise to the mystical wisdom of the East.

Anyway, here are some concrete suggestions. There’s http://bit.ly/9udd1x for the Laozi, which gets explicitly into a lot of the interpretive issues involved in dealing with these texts and is probably worthwhile just on that score. Then for Zhuangzi, there’s Burton Watson’s early but very readable “Basic Writings” (http://bit.ly/cxyRkt). And if you wanted something bigger-picture, I could probably dig something up – I’ve got a box of this stuff lying around my place somewhere.

(Or you could just go back & read The Earthsea Trilogy again…)

And regarding your worry about conservatism, both the books I just mentioned are pretty intensely political, which might come through more clearly in the primary texts than refracted through Hoff. I’m not saying that you’d find the arguments any more compelling, necessarily, just more interesting!

One basic point re: conservatism, for e.g., is that a Daoist might plausibly argue that abusive social relations, domination and inequality are unnatural, so even accepting that there are human goods being a stonecutter (or whatever) deprives you of – and there are quite a few classical Greek thinkers who’d probably suggest that assumption was misguided, not just ancient Daoists – then there’s grounds there for bucking the system. In that case, it would be the only natural thing to do.

And the ideal political situation described by Laozi, at least, doesn’t really bear any resemblance to modern western society, so taking his ideas as justifying today’s status quo (or any other) requires some fairly elaborate argument. Historically speaking, there’s a distinctive thread in China of Daoism as a dissident, socially volatile tradition that draws on some of these possibilities, and I know at least one or two serious contemporary philosophers who see it as a sort of indigenous democratic tradition.

I’ll give you, though, that the consequences of Hoff’s ideas might be politically obnoxious.