It’s Willie Wednesday again at DogCanyon. While ACL Fest goers were slip-sliding away, Willie was joined this weekend at Farm Aid in St. Louis by Neil Young, Dave Matthews, Wilco, Promise of the Real and more. Farm Aid has now raised over $35 million for America’s family farmers, and Willie and his team have been tireless advocates for supporting the families who feed us. You can learn a lot, make a donation and watch a great feed of the show at www.FarmAid.org. As I write this blog, I’m listening to Neil Young sing a gorgeous version of “Sail Away”.
While you’re listening, you can read below about the L.A. Premiere of One Peace at a Time… PLUS… another installment from The Tao of Willie, the book I wrote with Willie that continues to give me a lot of guidance in life.
If you’re in Southern California on Wed, October 21, don’t miss seeing Willie, Steve Chu, Muhammad Yunus, Helene Gayle of CARE and more in the L.A. Premiere of my new feature doc, One Peace at a Time. The film looks at the possibility of providing basic rights – water, nutrition, healthcare, nutrition and a peaceful and sustainable world – to every child. I filmed in 20 countries for almost three years, and despite all the amazing people I spoke with along the way, Willie comes close to stealing the movie in a single game of chess. One thing he said that echoes loudly was about our ability to do the right thing in a world that needs a world of right things.
“We already know what to do,” Willie told me. “Right and wrong is not that hard. It’s what we choose to do.”
Willie’s on the road on 10/21, but lots of Nobelity Project/Willie friends are coming to support the screening. A partial list includes Matthew McConnaughey and Camila Alves, Dennis Quaid and Billy Bob Thornton. $100 tickets are online at www.nobelity.org and support the Nobelity Project’s education work, including our building Mahiga Hope High School in Kenya.
Our supporters will also notice the all new Nobelity.org site with great info and tons of video. Still fine-tuning but, big thanks to Patrick Nolan for a job well done!
Now, here’s… Willie!
from The Tao of Willie
By Willie Nelson and Turk Pipkin
What is gooder than God?
More evil than the devil?
The rich need it
The poor have it
And if you eat it you will die?
– a riddle
Before I give you the answer to that “gooder than God” riddle, we need to consider one important question: “What the *#*@! is a Tao?”
I thought you’d never ask.
The Tao — pronounced “Tao” or “Dao” depending on how hip you want to sound — is a philosophy of life based on a Chinese text called the Tao Te Cheng, or “The Way and Its Power.”
The Tao Te Cheng is the work of several writers who were inspired by the teachings of a guy named Lao Tzu who lived about six hundred years before Christ. But the ideas behind the Tao are older still, and were very likely derived from some of man’s oldest teachings.
Like all of life, the Tao is an eternal mystery, and has so much meaning that it may be easier to say what it is not.
The Tao is NOT a religion.
It has no gods, and could be as helpful to a Christian or a Jew as to a druid who worships trees, a narcissist who worships himself, or a record executive who worships money. Truthfully, the record exec is probably the person who most needs the Tao.
Once you know what the Tao is not, then everything else is the Tao.
The Tao is the biggest thing there is.
The Tao connects the personal with the universal. It is the link between you and other people. It is the link between you and the natural world, the link between you and the universe. The Tao is the link between you and yourself.
And that ain’t all. The Tao is a way of life, a science and an art. It is the natural order, and it is a path that leads to peace and freedom. The Tao is the deepest well of the purist water, but you cannot see it or hear it, touch it or taste it, but you also cannot use it up.
The general idea is that if you live your life in accordance with your own essential nature, then your life will be empowered by the Tao.
When Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true,” he was dipping into the Tao… or into some really good snuff.
The opposite of the Tao would be to live your life in defiance of your original nature, in which case your chances of finding tranquility are pretty much shot to shit.
If you live according to the Tao, you live in accordance with the natural world, with other people and yourself.
If you live in opposition to the Tao, your life will unfold in opposition to the natural word, to other people and to yourself.
The choice is up to you.
If you read this guide distilled from my view of life, love and laughter, then find yourself wanting more, you will have missed the essence of the Tao, which relies not in wanting more, but in needing less.
“To know you have enough,” says the Tao, “is to be truly rich.”
Like any good philosophy, the Tao is a search for knowledge.
Where do you get this knowledge? When I was a kid, sometimes a feller would be reluctant to say where he’d gotten something — like say, a ‘borrowed’ horse — so he’d say he got it “from the getting place.”
But what about my riddle? What is gooder than God and more evil than the devil, that the rich need and the poor have, and if you eat it you will die?
The answer, of course, is “nothing.”
Love you, Willie. Congrats on another great Farm Aid concert! Hope to see some DogCanyon readers at the L.A. Premiere of One Peace at a Time. If you’re not watching Farm Aid already, here it is:
http://www.farmaid.org/site/c.qlI5IhNVJsE/b.5456909/k.390B/2009_Webcast.htm
Glenn –
Is that the Randy Newman “Sail Away”?
I’d like to have heard that.
Sadly, I wasn’t there. Turk?
Is that the Randy Newman “Sail Away”?
Damn, like to have heard that.
Don’t have to be there – I think it’s the second song on the streaming video from the concert, which you can watch at farmaid.org. Lyric’s to Neil’s song:
As long as we can sail away.
There’ll be wind in the canyon
Moon on the rise
As long as we can sail away.
Hey, what happened to Willie Wednesdays?
See also.