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The Sensorium

Some Fun from My Taoworld!
Please Share Your Own...

 
The Sensorium is a tentative translation of the Chinese term huntun. Taoists are engulfed by their world. We swim in a sensorium, our brains and senses delight in a cascade of information, a media sea, both mental and physical, and now, most importantly electrical....sensory, in all aspects, a la Daoist Yang Chu. (Also see Warning.)


Lichen on Stone Wall, near to Baggy Point


 
 
 
 
 
 On the cliff at Charmouth, Dorset
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sunlight and Water
 
 
The Five P-Words of the Yijing come to mind :  people, passion. position, penetration and possession. Our sensory world includes all of these.  People are all human-kind (ren    is fundamental).  Passion is of course qi-breath-energy   .  Without this we would not be alive.  Position is li It is where we stand and also propriety, ruler and minister, father and son, guest and host, etc.  Penetration is stimulus and response - at the heart of the Yijing.  Can be described by tong -  通  or better, gan-ying -  interaction.  Read Hexagram 61 Inner Truth on the Marsh Crane.  Lastly possession  yu  .  Here we get to the heart of it.  Of course not to possess is to possess.  'The more you make, the greater the love you take' (The Beatles).  Read Hexagram 14 Great Possession.  We all seek possession - it is our fleshly need.

 
The Dragon About to Fly 
 
 
 
 

Our immersion in this sea of experience and sensation - a deeply physical appreciation of our world. Natural sounds, food, music, sex, gardening, walking, swimming, sport, movies, the list is endless.  You may want to include a few suggestions of your own!


Philosophy

The important thing is to be comfortable as we swim through the sensory world.  This was a central tenet of my friend and teacher, master and Taoist sage Gia-fu Feng.  The huntun may be loosely translated  as 'chaos' (both Chinese characters contain the water radicals) - but for the Taoist, for the individual - which we are - the crux is 'order'.   Now chew on that for a while...

More on Gia-fu later.  See Wikipedia link Gia-fu Feng.
Chaos  -     Order
 Order  - Chaos

Wittgenstein, the greatest philosopher of the 20th century said (in his Tractatus):  "the boundaries of myself are the boundaries of my world".  Great saying. Shame he never read Lao Tzu.

Also the great Neoconfucian thinker Wang Yangming (1472 – 1529) believed that World and Mind were one.  In this way Confucianism and Buddhism blended into a workable, neatly honed institution in late Ming China.

Mind    -   World
 World  -   Mind
Now what about other minds?!

Well then you have what we might delicately call the 'contact boundary', an idea derived from Gestalt Therapy.  When I have time I'll load up my Visionary Politics.  A steamy work from my early twenties focusing on the Eight Principles of contact, confluence, artist, therapist, mind, body, movement and stillness.  Stillness of course opens the door out of the Sensorium.





Moor Road

 

 

 

Welsh Mountain Forests 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Photosynthesis - our great mother...






Mountain View - Roc Vieux



This is the sensorium, we bathe in it - the physicality of our existence.  Basically the sensorium can embrace three things:  immediate people, weather and environment, and food.

We won't mention food/diet/cookery - too much already on the web;  as to people - they are the great unknown, in the meeting of bodies and minds we have that formidable thingy (encounter) in which social, moral and sexual worlds are born - which leaves us with weather, nature and the environment.



Swiss Valley












Exmoor Wood







    April Primula


Bush Rose
  
 A stony path. a day of cold,
 In the mountains...with a friend