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Tales from the Dao 道的传说
Looking Up 向上看
My personal practice these days consists, in a
large part, in something I call Looking Up. By Look‐
ing Up I mean, number one, to physically look up. It
is amazing how often we travel down the road or
even across our yard or across the street, all the
while looking straight ahead, if not down at our
feet. When we look up, we see the blue, blue sky
above us, with the bright shards of sunlight flowing
down to us. Or else we see the great billowing
clouds, all full of the promise of rain to make all
things on our planet grow and flourish. Or else we
might see the rain itself, falling down into our open
eyes and perhaps, open mouth. Or, we might see
the tops of the trees swaying slowly in the breeze,
reaching into the sky, connecting from their deeply
entrenched roots down in the great yin of mother
earth and then stretching up higher and higher into
the great yang of the heavens.
It is just a wonderful practice to notice what we
don’t usually see when we are walking or driving
along. The tops of old buildings in many cities are
covered with wonderful designs. Even just the sight
of the rooftops of the buildings around us, as they
blend in with the line of the sky behind them can be
beautiful. We might see birds swooping around in
the tops of the trees or on the rooftops or even on
the tops of electrical lines.
by Solala Towler
And, of course, as with all real practices, we can
take it a step further and use the concept of looking
up in our own lives. It is often when we become ob‐
sessed or distraught by the small details of our lives
that we lose the big picture. If we can, in our mo‐
ments of stress or depression, we need to take a
look up to become more aware of our lives in all
their grandeur. When we are looking at a more objec‐
tive view from on high we can see how each little
moment comes together to form the amazing and
beautiful mosaic of our lives. And while it is true that
many of these moments contain lots of pain and suf‐
fering, we can also get a grander view if we only
practice looking up.
(Continued on page 42)
December, 2011 Yang-Sheng (Nurturing Life) 41