Unimportance

Remember how I was talking about maybe converting to Taoism? Well, I don't think that's going to happen since I cant "accept disgrace willingly" by accepting that I'm "unimportant" (13). Whatever, at least my mom tells me I'm important.

In the Analects, many words are capitalized (e.g. Virtue, Way...), making them important. In the Tao Te Ching, I noticed that Self is capitalized, therefore, based on the Tao, it is not disgraceful.

If I am divine though, I will b at one with the Tao (16). So I don't have to be important, just divine.

Filial Piety was mentioned in verse 18. Chapter 18? The page that says eighteen. It is also mentioned in the Analects. Filial piety is to have a respect for parents and ancestors, and it is one of the Confucian ideals. It is also a big deal in Chinese culture in general.

"I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused." (20)

It's nice to know that Lao Tzu and I share the same thoughts. To me, this book is poetry. It is teachings of Taoism in the form of poetry, but the page that says twenty, to me, didn't feel like teachings. It felt like actual poetry; the thoughts and feelings of the author. This is officially my favorite page in tonights reading.

This book reminds me so much of the Analects. As mentioned before, Virtue is a keyword in Confucius' text. Apparently, Lao Tzu found it of importance also,

"The greatest Virtue is to follow Tao and Tao alone."

While reading the Analects, we came that Virtue is a set of certain principles to reach something god. When I think of Virtue, I think of what we Latin Americans like to call, juicio (pronounced hwee-see-oh). When a person is juisioso (hwee-see-oh-soh), they are good. Juisoso people are responsible, and don't really get in trouble.

I keep noticing how heaven and earth are mentioned. They seem to be a big deal when it comes to Taoism:

"Why is this? Heaven and earth!

If heaven and earth cannot make things eternal,

How is it possible for man?" (23)

I agree with Lao Tzu, if something as great as heaven or earth can't make something last forever, how can a man?

The Stairway to Heaven

"The name that can be named is not the eternal name" (1)

I'm sorry, but I'm not understanding this, but today is Monday so I'm a little off my rocker. We have finished Confucius' Analects and have moved on to Taoism by reading the Tao Te Ching. I have a feeling I'm going to learn a lot about many different cultures and religions; first we read about Lord Krishna in The Bagavad-Gita, Teachings of God in the Bible, Confucianism in the Analects, and now we are on the Tao Te Ching. Maybe my teacher is on a secret quest to convert us all. All jokes aside though, this book is pretty deep:

"Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.

All can know good as good only because there is evil." (2)

Many of these balances are mentioned, like " long and short contrast each other". Based on this, I think that Taoism has a lot to do with equal balances of things. In class we had a discussion about why there is evil. I wrote that I thought there was evil because we need an equal amount it, since there can't be too much good in the world; maybe I should convert (my teachers evil plan is working).

I am really liking this book. It is like poetry, and I especially like it because it really makes me think. It also shows a nice view of women:

"The valley spirit never dies;

It is the woman, primal mother.

Her gateway is the root of heaven and earth." (6)

Men vs. women is a recurring argument in my class, and I like this citation because it is saying that women are the root of everything. Yay for women! relax, I'm not a feminist, I'm just trying to prove a point.

Heaven has been mentioned many times so far. I always thought that when you die you end up on the golden stairway to heaven. And as you take those steps, you are trying hard not to wet your pants from the fear of the unknown upstairs. When you open the door to heaven, all you see are clouds and you are filled with such joy and everything is okay now. After reading up to chapter twelve, I still have that same mental image, minus the fear. Theres something calming about the text from this book and I'm liking it a lot so far. Its going to keep me thinking about the stairway to heaven

Realizations

Today as I was skimming through the bible I suddenly realized a few things.

1. Chapter 3 - Why do we only hear about the serpent once? What was his deal anyway? i mean, he seemed like an envious little creature, so he tempted Eve, who tempted Adam, and then they all got punished for it, and we never hear about the serpent again. I would have like to seen him again later on in the Bible. He could be the annoying little villain that never leaves people alone.

2. Chapter 4 - Cain was a hateful child who was EXTREMELY jealous of his brother

3. Chapter 7 - God must have hated a lot of people in order to drown them all. Sure he tells Noah to save everybody, but he could've also warned a few other people. Also, if Noah only took 2 of each animal, male and female, how did all these wild mixed races of animals become? Was there some sort of freaky polygamist animal thing going on for forty days and forty nights?

4. Chapter 17 - The whole circumcision thing was a little disturbing, partly because I was eating when I read that chapter.

5. Abraham's son, Ishmael, reminds me of a certain gorilla that I read about.

5. Random Thought #1 - I cannot spell the word "circumcision" and "circumcised" without using spell check to help me out.

7. Chapter 20 - "And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." (20:12)

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN!? were there not enough women that Abraham had to go get married with his sister? I understand that she is his half sister, but that doesn't make marrying her any less wrong.

8. Chapter 23 - Sarah lived to be one hundred and seven and twenty years old. Does that mean she lived to be 1720 years old?

9. Random Thought # 2 - I read the word betwixt again in chapter 23. I like that word

10. Why does God keep changing peoples names? Is it like a right of passage?

Example: (35:10) "And God said unto him, Thy name is Jacob: thy name shall not be called any more Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel."

Massive Family Trees, Wicked Lifespans, and Circumcision

Everybody is so fruitful and they always multiply! I consider myself to be a god student: I do my work correctly and I turn it in on time, but I honestly only read about 7 words in chapter 10 of Genesis. Don't go thinking that I am lazy, because I'm not (sometimes), but I didnt read this chapter because it just talks about the many generations that came after Noah. I'm not even going to list all the names, but I will say this: one of the children is named Nimrod. I'm sure that back then, Nimrod was a lovely name, but if that kid went to my school today, he would deffinitely have his arse handed to him.

I'm very jealous of the life span back in that time, as seen in chapter 11, everybody seemed to live to about a thousand years old:

"And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters.

And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg..."

A new discovery: God created circumcision! Yeah you read that correctly. It all happens in chapter 17, when Lord God changes Abram's name to Abraham, and He changes his wife's name from Sarai to Sarah (at least the Lord knew about simplicity). Lord God decides that he and Abraham should have a covenant, "And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me an you." Theres something in this chapter that didn't settle right for me: God DID NOT get circumcised! My motto is, if I go down, Im taking you down with me, hence: If I'm getting circumcised, you better be right there next to me waiting for your turn. Anyways, Abraham and all the sons after him needs to be circumcised. Whoever is not circumcised will be damned to the fiery depths of hell forever! but not in those words exactly:

"And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant."

Both my mom and I found this to be very interesting.

Isn't Christianity Monotheistic?

We are now interpreting the Bible(King James version) in class. Today, we noticed that in chapter 1 of Genesis, there is God, and in chapter 2, there is Lord God. Why the two God's? I thought Christianity was monotheistic. When Lord God first appears, it is when he is making Adam and Eve, and in the third chapter we hear him speak. Lord God speaks in a way that reminds me of Shakespeare: think words like thou, shalt, thee. Chapter 3 is all about the grden of eden and how Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. In chapter 4 the Lord comes out. Is the Lord the same as Lord God, or does the bible have Lord God, God, and the Lord? Maybe I'm just over analyzing.

Our class has noticed that Adam is a big oaf and Lord God is confusing. We made our discovery of Adam in the book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible!, a funny retelling of bible stories. In the book by Jonathan Goldstein, the Garden of Eden is seen as a village and Adam is seen as the village idiot. In the bible we receive evidence of this after Adam tell Lord God "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." So if the woman gave you a gun to put to your head, would you shoot yourself?

Something else that I never thought about is how confusing Lord God is. First, why would he plant the tree if nobody was supposed to eat from it? And if God knows everything, wouldn't he know that Adam and Eve were going to give in to temptation? Was it all a test? I bet they failed...poor suckers.

Adam and Eve have two children, Cain and Abel. Basically, nobody likes Cain because they are too busy worshipping Abel and when each brother presents a gift to the Lord, He neglects Cain's gift and accpts Abel's with open arms. Something clicked in Cain's mind and he got sick of everybody loving Abel, so he performs a sinful act and kills his brother. Talk about sibling rivalry. Later, Cain meets his wife and they have a child, Enoch. And Enoch has his son, Irad, and this cycle goes on for a few sentences. Meanwhile Adam and Eve have another son, Seth to replace Abel, and the whole reproduction system continues.

Disguises and Incest

This, is a story within a story. The story of Myrrha is within the story of Vertumnus and Pomona. Although Vertumnus seems a bit stalker-ish with Pomona, I think it's really cute how hard he tries to get her attention. He tells her about the story of Myrrha and her father, Cinyras. The story took Vertumnus nowhere, and Pomona is smarter than we all think because she knows it's not a sweet old lady telling her the story, but she ends up liking what she sees when Vertumnus takes off his disguise.

Meanwhile, a girl named Myrrha longs for her father, Cinyras. Don't worry folks, she knows that what she is feeling is wrong, but she can't escape it. She ends up getting what she wants, but its not much of a happy ending.

There Are Some Moments People Don't Want To Relive

In this story, we get to see what true love really is. After the reading story of Orpheus and Eurydice, I realized that true love means to always be by the persons side, to be their best friend, their shoulder to cry on, and to go down to hell if Hades takes them away from me. This is exactly what the musician, Orpeheus does. When he gets there, Hades (god of the underworld) is nice enough to give Alcyone back on one condition: she must walk behind Orpheus and he is not allowed to look at her. If your lady got sent to the fiery depths of hell and you were able to rescue her, wouldn't you actually like to see her first? I would, and Orpheus did, so he turned around. This really made me mad because they were so close to exiting through the gates of the underworld when Orpheus decides to turn around. FAIL! As punishment, Alcyone got taken away again, and Orpheus had to relive that moment over and over. Poor Guy.