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Partridge Publishing Singapore - Myra Sampson Reeves

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68 pages

English

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In my previous book, Slow-Cooked Thoughts, I related how human life has taken an exacting toll on the planet, that the way to reverse this is to behave unselfishly towards all life forms and to share the earth’s resources fairly with them, rather than taking the largest piece of the cake, leaving them only the crumbs.
Tao-Tossed Thoughts also briefly refers to how an eighteen-acre land I bought thirty-eight years ago, and has been managed by a village society for the last twenty eight, becoming the first community managed conservation project in Sri Lanka.
Since then, there have been a series of devastating natural disasters, such as bush fires, floods, earthquakes etc., as we continue to despoil our naturally self-sustaining wealth.
In this book I delve into origins: of the universe; formation of planets; life on earth and its evolution echoing sometimes what was expounded clearly two thousand five hundred years ago.
Tao-Tossed Thoughts also includes a talk I gave, Lionel Wendt, Nucleus of the `43 Group, the first modern art movement in Sri Lank and a few photo essays, some of which shed light on these topics.

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Philosophy

Poetry

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Publié par	Partridge Publishing Singapore
Date de parution	21 septembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781543771367
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Tao-Tossed Thoughts

Articles, Speculations, A Talk, and Photo-Essays

Rohan de Soysa

Copyright © 2022 Rohan de Soysa . All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN
ISBN: 978-1-5437-7135-0 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-5437-7136-7 (e)

09/21/2022

Also by Rohan de Soysa
Supplement to the Sapumal Foundation Collection (2017)
Slow-Cooked Thoughts (2019 )
Photographic contributions to
Sri Lanka: An Island Civilisation (1977)
Masks and Mask Systems of Sri Lanka (1978)
Briefly by B evis
Sapumal Foundation Collection: A Select Catalogue (2009)
To my parents, Terence and Rukmini

CONTENTS
Illustrations
Foreword
Preface
Before There Was Anything at all and How Spirits Came to Be
The Great Conference of Spiritualised Energies
The Inaugural Conference of Materialised Spirit Energies
Beginnings
The Spiral of Life
Call of the Serpent Eagle
Nucleus Of The `43 Group
The Virus’s Tale
The Bacteria’s Tale
The Plant’s Tale
The Reptile’s Tale
…..Empty Phenomena Rolling On Depending On Conditions All…….
Trees versus Buildings
Bushfires
Seashore
The Eyes Have It
Homes
Our Home Since Independence
Moods of Madam Town Hall
Origin of the Caste System
Reflections on a Talk by Sadguru
Musings on Healthcare
The I Ching And The Tao Te Ching
Afterword
About The Author
Resources
References
ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover Illustration
Frontispiece 1. The Creation of Light and Matter 2. Yin/Yang Symbol 3. Electromagnetic Sine Wave Diagram 4. Spider Babies 5. A Bird at Its Nest 6. Cheetah and Cub 7. Grey Langur Monkey Grooming Its Baby 8. Purple Swamphen and Its Chick 9. Cow and Calf 10. Mother and Child 11. Elephant Showing Its Calf How to Grasp Grass 12. Serpent Eagle Having Breakfast 13. Serpent Eagle Soaring 14. Trees and Buildings Lining Up to Battle for Dominance 15. Drink Coasters Reflecting the Bushfires in Australia 16. Seashore 17. The Eyes Have It 18. Homes 19. Angel or Dragon? 20. Moods of Madam Town Hall 21. Young Duck in Swirling Water
FOREWORD
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T.S.Eliot “Little Gidding”
This new volume of reflections by Rohan de Soysa, a sequel to his Slow-Cooked Thoughts , is a heart-felt reflection on origins. In a collection diverse in style yet united in purpose, the lasting and intimate impact of origins on destination are explored, with a gentle cautionary style the strength of which is reflective and engaging. Indeed, the manner in which the work opens and gathers momentum may be described in the way the author tells us Lionel Wendt said an exhibition should open, “like a flower”. The result of this organic integrity in the ordering of the collection is to allow the work to unfold naturally and gracefully, its beauty and impact the greater for the very restraint by which it is characterised.
Rohan’s signature style of highly visual narration owes much, as in his first work, to his considerable experience, expertise and understanding of the fine arts, particularly painting and photography. The increased inclusion in the present work of photographs – even of photo-essays – punctuates this visual quality of the writing, illuminating and enlarging the narrative perspective through the direct evidence of the lens. A very moving effect of the photographic content of this volume is to allow the writer to step back a little and become guide rather than speaker, walking us through images that are then able to speak directly to us, inviting us into our own very personal relationship with each. There is a generosity of spirit in this approach to sharing knowledge that is profoundly moving and reminds us of the work’s role as a legacy to the three saplings for whom the work has principally been conceived.
The poignancy of this volume owes much to the poetic sensibility of its writer as a soul in tune with the natural world. Indeed, there is a freshness in its approach to our winged and four-legged friends that is reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s articulation of a pastoral for the new world: “Several of Nature’s people, I know and they know me/I feel for them a measure of cordiality”. The ancient tradition of the pastoral is presented in Tao-Tossed Thoughts in terms perfectly accessible to a contemporary audience.
This poetic quality, – a romantic sense of the fathomlessness of the world, which we apprehend and yet scarcely understand – sings through the photographs, especially those of animals in their natural habitat.
In photograph after photograph, particularly those of animals learning from their mothers, – and even more
profoundly, in those that show what they have learned, – we become aware of so much more than the physical outlines of the image. “Who has seen the wind?” asked Christina Rossetti, answering her own question,
“Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their leaves.
The wind is passing by”.
It is a considerable achievement of Tao-Tossed Thoughts that it makes nature and natural instincts and patterns visible to us in flashes of recognition the more intense and lasting for their very brevity.
Whether in lectures, discussions, tales, personal histories or photographs, Rohan takes us on a voyage of discovery about the world we live in, especially those aspects of it that may not be obvious to the naked eye. To do this he invites us to consider the value of an alteration of perspective, and the reality that we may learn and see things anew when we least expect to, particularly when we engage with others from a new vantage point. Indeed, in the volume’s very first piece, a human overhears an important communication quite by chance, having fallen asleep by the roots of the grandfather tree who is one of the chief animi of Tao-Tossed Thoughts. Since trees communicate via their roots, the narrator tells us, the human finds himself involuntarily eavesdropping in his sleep, on what the grandfather relates to his grandchildren.
This wonderful reworking of tradition, in this case that of being informed or taught through a dream is, I believe, quintessential of Rohan’s style, reminding us that inspiration may arrive at the most unlikely and unexpected times, as he relates in “Call of the Serpent Eagle”. It is my view that those of us who consider ourselves educators will do well to reflect closely on this beautiful metaphor for learning, demonstrating the importance of perspective, – in this case, tellingly, a perspective that bring us closer to Earth and all the lessons it has for us:
When the last of Earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning.
— T.S.Eliot, “Little Gidding”
Jill Macdonald
Colombo, Sri Lanka
July 2022
PREFACE
This is a sequel to my earlier book Slow-Cooked Thoughts . The three saplings, who had asked their grandfather tree how life came to Earth in that book and were told a tale by him, have now asked him another question, to which he has replied with another tale, in this book.
Running through Slow-Cooked Thoughts was a common thread of a right relationship with the world around us and all its life-forms, as the writer of the foreword observed.
I believe that all life-forms, whether viruses, whales or species in between are all intelligent, in the same way that a baby is potentially as intelligent as an adult, though that intelligence is still to mature and bloom. A young one’s development can sometimes be distorted by its surroundings and wrong inputs. All life forms display their intelligence by adapting to their respective environments. Very few species, bar one, are misguided enough to wreck the environment they live in, by over-exploiting or polluting it, for spurious, short-term, selfish gains.
In Tao-Tossed Thoughts I speculate on origins, of the universe, of individual lives, of movements connected with art and environment, and the enduring effect of those origins on each life and movement thereafter.
I am not an academic or a scholar, just someone interested in exploring basic truths and expressing them in an uncomplicated way, guided by what I see, read, and hear, filtered through my intuition. I have tried to “connect the dots” of what I found. As mentioned in Slow-Cooked Thoughts, I am more interested in general and universal ideas than in individual achievements, important though they be.
Our parents loved and cared for my late sister, Iranee, and me, without stifling their individuality or ours. I have tried to do likewise to my children, grandchildren, people and other life forms.
I warmly thank Jill McDonald for another excellent and appropriate Foreword, as she did for Slow-Cooked Thoughts