Motorcycle Zen

Not long ago I described a fun flat on my Harley. I managed to damage the rear wheel and rim in addition to shredding the tire – kind of a spendy repair. The shop was able to true the wheel and knock the kinks out of the rim (hallelujah!). I replaced the old rubber, front and rear, with beautifully scribed whitewalls. The ride home was circuitous, allowing time for the Harley mind-meld – that great place where rider and scooter are one… think Caddy Shack, and well, **BE the bike.** My Harley is often helpful in ways other than one might expect. It keeps me from running away from home, from going postal, from just choking the life out of people who disagree with me J

I suppose there are several reasons to mention "just being." Part of it is associated with Winnie-the-Pooh, another part with the Te of Piglet and the Tao of Pooh. In the Tao of Pooh we learn the importance of just being, Pooh just is. In the Te of Piglet we learn about something essential to the Tao – Virtue. This is a virtue that is partly reflected in the Judeo-Christian idea that "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he." The Chinese character can be written two ways according to Benjamin Hoff; one way combines the characters for both "upright" and "heart." "The second way adds the character for 'left-foot,'" Te, or virtue in action.

Why even mention this? Primarily because some new age freaks want to make these ideas mean something other than what they are. These ideas do not deny reality or claim that our thoughts create our reality – that somehow our minds conjure matter. This continual fascination with "best-case scenarios," "positive thinking," and "creative visualization" is becoming a serious obstacle to sensible people. WE NEED OUR EYORES!!! Someone needed to say, "Maybe they won't greet us as liberators." Somebody needed to explore the worst-case.

OK, apart from my gratuitous jab at the administration, the point is that we can't simply "think" our future into existence – we must interact with our REAL environment. We need to DO. We are in Iraq; we need to finish the job. Remember the Goddess Nike? "Just do it." Again, why even mention this? OPRAH WINFREY is why even mentioning this seems prudent. John Gravois of Slate Magazine has a must read article at the previous link. Slate is soliciting anecdotal accounts of when negative thinking, "a healthy dose of pessimism," or envisioning the worst has helped you. Let's send these to Oprah via Slate to illustrate just how dangerous "The Secret" is, and as a result, take steps to prevent the same kind of errant nonsense associated with Christian Scientists refusing medical attention for themselves and their children. Like trying to convince the liberal left, it is extremely difficult to use facts to elicit change in people who deny reality, and "The Secret" advocates essentially that – reality bites, think it away.

Mmmm, maybe I've gone too far… nahhhh.