Ron Hogan translates, transmutes perhaps, the first couple of lines of Chapter 2 of the Tao as follows, While the landscape, the geology, the views and the archaeology all contributed to the beauty of the journey, it is the people you meet who make it special. One of my favorite views was when i was just 215 metres from the shoreline, 214 metres up and 1 metre in. My final day involved walking along the Cliffs of Moher – truly awesome beauty. A rough sea as it turned out on the day – i had more than one reason to be thinking of Seasick Steve. Start small my father always advised me.Ī beautiful landscape of tiny fields, nestled houses, bare rocks and sea. I took the ferry from Doolin pier to Inis Oirr – the smallest of the three Aran Islands. In the words of Seasick Steve, “ I started out with Nothin and I still got most of it left”. Yes we have already established that i’m a slow starter and if it wasn’t for my mid-life crisis and a host of unpleasant events, i might never have gone anywhere – if that’s not a double negative. Life’s like that, including my first ever visit to the Aran Islands in Galway Bay. I walked about 125 km along the Burren Way, about 25 km per day, with a couple of detours along the route. Spiritual leaders have to be blabbermouths, Mitchell concludes and reminds us of the Buddhist metaphor, “ Their words are fingers pointing to the moon, if you watch the fingers, you can’t see the moon”. How could have been such a blabbermouth?” No way.” In one of my all-time favorite quotes, Mitchell then quotes Po Chu-i, a Chinese poet and comedian, who said, He reminds us, “ Describing the indescribable, teaching the unteachable, pointing the way to the Way – what does Lao-tzu think he is doing here? It can’t be done. In my last blog we ventured out along the Burren Way and considered the first Chapter of the Tao Te Ching, sometimes, in spite of all our procrastination, starting can be the easy bit – keeping going is the challenge.ĭescribing the Way, talking about the journey, always makes me think about Stephen Mitchell’s observation about the first verse of the Tao Te Ching. Just because a way is marked, it doesn’t mean that following it is necessary easy, or that progress can be rapid, or even regular.
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