Lena Maria Klingvall was born with uneven legs and without arms. With this condition, she has been able to accomplish much more than ordinary commonfolk — such as setting two Swedish swimming records, for example. (So that means she swims better than most of us that do have hands.)
Now at the age of 40, she has learned how to do almost everything without hands (including using chopsticks with almost as much finesse as an oriental), and she is quite possibly many times happier than any 10 random people on the street combined. Narrations in the 30-minute video are in Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles, and Lena herself speaks fluent English.
If you would like me to remove this video for legitimate reasons, please email me.
Birth. Life. Death. A meaningless cycle, really. But you can give life a meaning if you want to. From my standpoint, a life is only meaningful if you take the time to learn the essence of the universe and become “one” with it. It is the only way that your essence won’t be isolated from everything else when it becomes unchained from your physical body. It is only then that you can vanish from all existence and become the universe itself.
That put a really poetic twist on an actually very simple idea. Who are we as individuals? Nothing. We are simple manifestations of our surroundings. I don’t care what about us you think is “individual,” it ultimately came from somewhere around us. Our appearances, thoughts, ideas, bodies – they all came from our surroundings and lineage, be it our ancestors, food, or the simple reaction to outside stimuli. Therefore, in truth, there really is no “I” distinguishable from everything else. Individuality is an illusion – how can we break from that?
You might want me to start by explaining the motto at the top of the page. But I can’t start there, because it wouldn’t make sense to anyone, not without first discussing some fundamentals. What I can do is give some grammatical clues. Here’s the same thing again, ignoring grammatical capitalizations, where only proper nouns are capitalized:
real is Nothing
nothing is real
what’s real is what’s Not
Capitalized words include “Nothing” and “Not.” This site is based upon the idea of an “infinite zero.” ‘kay, enough of that for now — let’s move on.
What is this Dao that you hear about? 何謂道？ (For my spiel on my preference for “Dao” instead of “Taoism,” see the FAQs.) 老子 (Lao zi, also “Lao tze” or “Lao tse”) opens the 清靜經 (Qing jing jing) with:
大道無形，生育天地；
大道無情，運行日月；
大道無名，長養萬物。
吾不知其名，強名曰道。
The great Dao has no shape, yet gives birth and nourishes heaven and earth.
The great Dao has no emotion, yet moves all heavenly objects.
The great Dao has no name, yet cultivates all things.
I know not its name; I am forced to call it “Dao.”
and 道德經 (Dao de jing, Tao te ching) with the following:
道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。
The Dao that can be put into language is not the enduring and unchanging Dao.
The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name.
Dao is in everything. It is the universal Truth. A waterbottle works because it has its own Dao. A knife and fork can coordinate together on your plate because of the Dao they share. You need to use the bathroom every few hours because of an intrinsic reason behind the way your body works, Dao. Some of us are attracted to movies and TV shows because of a Dao behind it all. Continue reading ‘So what’s this whole Dao (道) thing?’
Quote of the moment
"Life is what you make of it, not what it makes of you." — unknown
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