Formless Tao

I don't really know if there's any other way to think about it, really. If you want to apply morality and ethics to human existence, you enter into such a gray area that you can technically justify anything for something else, depending on your perspective. "Crime" is most certainly a uniquely human concept, so there is plenty of subjectivity to it in the first place. Still, killing is killing, regardless of reasons. You can argue, and you can win a court case, but you'll still have to live with having killed someone. If it was to defend yourself, so be it. If it was to defend someone else, so be it. If it was for mere convenience, so be it. However you justify it, killing is killing. Is it right or wrong? Who knows, my role is not the judge. As far as I'm aware, there is no just war, so that would make any act of war a crime.

Unlearner, very well said. I couldn't have put it better myself.

Well, Godwin's law is inevitable I wouldn't consider myself Anti-American, although I do believe that some actions of the US government have been immoral, I have nothing at all against average Americans. The invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, would have been horrific. That much is undoubted, it would have been the largest undertaking of the Western Allies by far, making D-Day look like a sideshow and only being matched by the gigantic Soviet operations in the Eastern Front. For that reason I can see how some would think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. However, the only problem is that, regardless of Operation Downfall, what was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was still horrific, and an attack upon civilians. That's a war crime. At the Nuremberg trials, Goering was sentenced to death for "The mass destruction of European cities" in his Luftwaffe campaigns. It is quite a biting hypocrisy that the US government had been doing the same thing in Japan, yet were lauded as heroes for it. Quite simply, the ends do not justify the means.

I watched a documentary on the U.S bombing of Japan about a month ago and it was horrific, like all war is. Especially the aftermath and real footage of the Japanese who managed to luckily survive.

Saying that though what the Japanese did in China (Nanjing) was absolutely shocking. The photos I saw in a book called 'The Rape of Nanjing' was disgraceful to say the least, torture, rape and killing. Some of the worst committed on women, children and pregnant women with their unborn children.

I've been to Pol Pots killing fields and S21 torture school in Cambodia and that was very errie, sad, depressing and shocking.

Also been to the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam where the Vietnamese first fought the French and then the Viet Cong fought the U.S, with great effectiveness using their gruesome boobie traps.

Also been to East Timor and witnessed real photos taken by Indonesian Army/militia on what they did to the East Timorese people. Again shocking.

As Silent thunder said 'all war is a crime.'

We can look at war on an individual personal level or on a grand country scale.

One mans enemy, is another mans hero

One mans hero, is another mans enemy.

At the end of the day war is war. It doesn't matter who commits it, it is always a crime against humanity.

My small opinion. Peace

I think that you'll see a major terrorist attack on the USA that will precipitate greater involvement in the Middle East, which will eventually lead to conflict with Russia and China. It will most likely be prolonged and detracted, until one side or the other begins to lose and decides a nuclear deterrent is necessary. Neither side will back down and nukes will be launched, the devastation will send the majority of the world back into the dark ages, with society only existing in isolated places. In another twenty or thirty years one of the countries unaligned will make a play for one of the devastated countries and it will all start over. I'm not very optimistic about the future. Even if we don't destroy ourselves through war, we'll still have to face global warming which will decimate the world food supply, causing increased conflict between countries, just so their people can eat. America is pretty much doomed in all outlooks. If we don't starve, then the conservative right wing will move towards an attempted takeover of the country. The secular corporate interests will fight this, but I have a feeling that the people's support will be on the conservative side. In that scenario millions will probably die from tactical nukes and chemical weapons used against the "rebel terrorists". I really don't see any peaceful resolution to the world state of affairs and almost all signs lead to the USA's demise as a major force. We'll see in twenty years if I'm wrong. Aaron

Very interesting Aaron. Thanks

Why put off the most important things till you've run out of time?

Taomeow its a hypothetical question so that it may spill out the most important advise or life lesson from the respondents mind.

Im interested to hear what others on TTB would have to say...

You may or may not get much traffic here, as there is already a book thread in that sub-category of General Discussion.

Cheers I am.

Mods, should we maybe move this thread to general discussion?

Thanks

Internal > External

Hi sonofthegods would you like to elaborate?

Thanks

Imagine clocks and watches have not yet been invented today. The world will be a very different place. I think a more disorderly place where we would still be checking the position of the sun and the moon to know what part of the day we are at.

Time or should I say watches and clocks are really all about human convenience and making life more orderly in my opinion.

I believe its a blessing when a person recommends, lends, gives or brings to our attention a great book.

A great book has the power to change our thinking, our actions and our path in life.

I read somewhere that change starts in the mind with our thinking. So reading a great book can help with this change.

But,

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply.

Willing is not enough, we must do."

Bruce Lee

Here is my list,

Enjoy and feel free to share your own.

READ and recommend:

The Bible

The case for christ

The case for the creator

The case for faith

The case for the real Jesus

The shack

The purpose driven life

Operation world

The five love languages

The bible code

The bible code 2 : the countdown

The bible code 3 : Saving the world

The 5 people you meet in heaven

The tao of jeet kune do

The art of expressing the human body

Tao teh ching

The analects of confucius

Chuang-tzu

Wen-tzu

The book of leadership and strategy

Sex, health and long life

The art of war

The japanese art of war

The dali lamas book of wisdom

The prophet

The magus of java

1421

1434

Life of pi

The bourne identity

The bourne supremacy

The bourne ultimatum

Opening the dragon gate

Brotherhood of warriors

Israel a history

Mud, sweat and tears

The da vinci code

Angels and demons

Deception point

Digital fortress

The lost symbol

The alchemist

Manuscript found in accra

The great chiefs

The idiots guide to meditation

The idiots guide to yoga

Bought but not yet read;

The book of 5 rings

The complete karma sutra

Bhagavad gita

I ching : the book of changes

The fifth mountain

The pilgrimage

"As you think, so shall you become."

"The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits."

"What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become."

"The possession of anything begins in the mind."

Bruce Lee

Please share any recommendations

If you had only one day to live, what advice or life lesson would you give your daughter/son or loved one?

Assuming that you know you are going to die.

Mine would be in no particular order;

1) The golden rule. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

2) Masleows hierarchy of needs

3)

If you live in the past, you wil be depressed.

If you live in the future, you will be anxious.

If you live in the present, you will be at peace.

Any constructive thoughts on the above?

In my opinion time is an illusion. Time is used as a tool which enables people to check point A to point B. When you keep checking the time it always seems to go so slowly. When you dont check the time it seems to go so quickly.

Live in the present moment, the now...

Any constructive thoughts on the above?

Talk about Jekyll & Hyde...

Id like to say this.

 

Im not a student of Jim he was a good friend of mine. We would talk on the phone for hours.

 

Jim was not a bad guy.

 

What I see and what I don't like is there has been no condolences from the eastern mo pai students or Naziri.

 

Also what I don't like is no one who really had some ability healed Jim.

 

The thing that really sickens me about all of this is that the people who come here thinks this is just all a game.

 

Right now I got nothing for the mo pai. I mean how many bodies have to pile up before the honor of a school is lost?

 

The problem is people don't think deep enough.

 

Jim knew John for about 20yrs and John is an acupuncturist and still Jim died of health problems.

I agree. I have not seen yet any love or care shared from Mr Chang or his family.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone..."

Dear Ones, it happened again. I was in a very vivid dream and I wake up, I try to remember everything went blank. From one second to another. How come? I dont have Altzheimer so I demand to be able to remember them. Maybe you are also already aware of the fact that what we call our "dreams" is basicly just our bodily consciousness disconnecting from our body and being in one of our other bodies. For many this is the astral body. For few this goes even more deeper. You can put effort into consciously falling asleep. This requires you to have an insane focus and from what I have read not many people can do this. Regardless it is truely something special which I personally want to achieve in the near future. But this requires some excess amount of energy in our system. Meaning one has to have a propper lifestyle of cultivating energy and not blowing it away during the day, falling asleep totally tired and exhausted. Light food in the evening and early nights are best for doing so. Now, whenever I can I also put effort into remembering what happened during my body fell asleep. But like written in the first line this does not (yet) happen very often and I get a little frustrated. The curiosity of understanding this part of our reality is so strong that it lets me quickly get over my lack of rememberance. Shall we put effort into remembering our "dreams"? If so, why? What benefit is there? And why do we have in general such a hard time remembering what happened? Does this happen purposely or is this yet another lazy attitude what we had mastered in our childhood? Curious, let me know what I obviously dont know. All the best!

 

 

I find I rarely dream with my usual optimal 7.5 hours of sleep unless im stressed or excited.

When I sleep for more than 7.5 hours I usually dream. The more I sleep ie 10 hours the more likely I will dream.

I have also found through trial and error that if I sleep say 7.5 hours and then wake up and then go back to sleep for another couple of hours I always dream.

The most realistic dream I had recently was after I had been doing some night Yoga and meditation I was completely relaxed and went to bed.

In my dream I could see myself lying on the bed, so I tried to reach my hand down from near the ceiling to touch my head that was sleeping. As I got closer to touching my sleeping head I had a feeling/thought not to touch my head otherwise if I did I would not wake up from my sleep ie die. So I pulled my hand back and didnt touch my sleeping head. I knew that I was dreaming in my dream, but when I woke up I remembered it straight away and it felt so real.

The reason I couldn't touch my sleeping head in my dream because I would die seems to be connected with what I had previously heard my mother say about dreams that if you die in your dream it means that in real life you have died. For some reason the touching of my sleeping head reminded me of what I heard about dieing in my dream and it confused my dreaming mind/consciousness.

After thinking about it now I wish I had of touched my head from the third person view that I had while dreaming just to see what, if anything would have happened.

My experiences

Peace

" A light that burns twice as bright, burns for half as long."

Till today, there are still staunch believers who argues that he is in fact still alive, in permanent retreat somewhere in the mountains of China. They are of the firm stance that the body in the coffin was in fact a dummy, or some dude who happened to have died around that time and bore a slight resemblance to Bruce. These folks say that Bruce Lee became 'enlightened', and no longer wished to be 'in the world' of materialism. I dunno... maybe they are right, maybe not, who can say for sure? Stranger things have happened.

There are countless rumors on internet forums about how Bruce Lee died."We should be more interested in how Bruce lived." Linda Lee Cadwell

My previous teacher told me he was cursed while in Indonesia

The official account of how Bruce Lee died is that he took a type of pain killer for a head ache, which caused an allergic or bad reaction reaction in him and he died of cerebral edema (brain inflammation). Some people close to him at that time such as Chuck Norris have confirmed this account is correct, although Chuck Norris said the brain inflammation was actually caused by a bad reaction between pain killers Bruce was taking for his back pain and the pain medication he took for his head ache. I think that doctors at the time couildn't say for certain what caused the bad reaction, but cerebral edema/brain inflammation is reported to have been the cause of death.For example see this video for Chuck Norris's account (He starts talking about this at about 4:05):

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The man virtually single handedly, gave the HK Chinese back their pride / respect.They couldn't / wouldn't understand how a superfit guy in his early 30's, who many considered their hero, could die from taking a migraine tablet (equlgesic, I think, from memory).The actress Betty Ting Pei's (?) career amongst others, never recovered. Sure the guy was a bit wild in his youth and had a temper.But he was also a martial artist with fantastic ability.He was never still, always training or reading, or both at once.His books make interesting reading.Not so much the innovator, as some might think.As a lot of his sayings and techniques were borrowed from elsewhere.But the way he put stuff together was what made him really special IMO. Don't know anything about his cultivation stuff.But sincerely hope that his family aren't adversely affected by all the theories that have been circulating since 1973.

People ask, if everything is part of a plan, or if "all is as it should be," then what about free-will. Doesn't that take away our free-will? One way to look at it is that our WILL determines our CHOICE, but choice DOES NOT determine our will. Everyone is always "choicelessly" doing their own will, which happens to be the will of God/Tao/love/All That Is, however you wanna put it. We have free-will, but we DO NOT have "choice". Btw, I got the idea that we don't have choice from ACIM, where it says that the concept of choice is "not of God," and that while choice is an illusion, it nevertheless has meaning and value IN THIS WORLD.

"Everything is forseen, but freedom of action is granted."

The Talmud

Usually, brutal violence works in this kind of situations

 

Violence will save a friendship long before passive aggressive resentment and bitter silence will. Really. Be very direct and upfront with your friend, even to the point of having a physical fight. Do not let any bruised feelings smolder beneath the surface...release them. Only enemies and strangers hide the truth from each other and wait...so if you do that, your friend will feel like you're acting weird...not like a friend anymore. Air these things out. Sometimes men need to fight each other to grow in friendship and respect for each other as men...you will laugh about it later.

"To win without fighting is best." Sun Tzu

I would not deal with the friend. I would act on your feelings before you lose her to your friend.

"Knowing is not enough, we must do." Bruce Lee

My 2 cents from a person who has been in the same situation and won...

Great article from Julian Assange in this mornings The Age paper and online regarding his views on Syria.

http://m.theage.com.au/comment/war-wont-serve-australias-cause-20130830-2swb2.html

Australia is voting next Saturday on our prime minister and Julian Assanges' Wikileaks Party is one of the options we can choose...

Julian Assange for Prime Minister of Australia? haha

" I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Everything is forseen, but freedom of action is granted. "

THE TALMUD

The book "The Bible Code" written by Michael Drosnin in 1997. Pg. 134-135 states

" "Armageddon" is encoded in the bible with the name of Syria's leader, Hafez Asad. In fact, the name of the actual site of the long prophesised Final Battle appears with his name in a single skip sequence; "Armageddon, Asad Holocaust. " " Syria is encoded with "World War." It is the country that stands out, because it is not expected. "Russia" "China" and "USA" all also appear with "World War." But they are the three superpowers most likely to be involved. "Syria" is the surprise. "

"But if Armageddon is real, it may begin the way it is prophesied in the plain text of the bible. The last book of the New Testament predicts a final war of unprecedented fury: "Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations in the four quarters of the Earth, Gog and Magog , to gather them together to battle"

Pg 136 states. " No one knows where the ancient "Gog and Magog" were located. But the original prophecy of the Final Battle, told in Ezekiel, is that Israel will be invaded from the North: " You will come from your place in the far north, you and many nations with you, a great horde, a mighty army" The only modern enemy north of Israel is Syria. "Syria is encoded in Ezekiel, starting in the verse that predicts the invasion. Syria's allies are named " Persia" and "Phut" countries that are now Iran and Libya. The plain text of Ezekiel predicts a terrible battle between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations, " a great slaughter on the mountains of Israel. " According to the Bible code, that is how World War III might begin - with an atomic attack on Jerusalem, followed by an Invasion of Israel."

This first book in the series of three Bible Codes was written in 1997.

Coincidence or something more...?

http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/iran-thousands-of-missiles-to-rain-on-israel/ Iran: 'Thousands of missiles' to rain on Israel Threatens massive strike if military action launched on Syria

Iran attack Israel? Haha

The Samson Option...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Samson_option

Hi Formless Tao. I love your quote by Bruce Lee. I used to take Tae Kwon Do, and I love that book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Effortlessness is a key concept for me, personally, especially when it comes to meditation. J. Krishnamurti said, "All effort to meditate is the denial of meditation." I like to sit down and just BE, without trying at all. Anyway, ntmu and I look forward to reading your posts. Roger

Hi Roger,

Yes one of many favourite quotes of mine from Bruce Lee.

I used to train in Wing Chun and Jeet Kune Do, but I preferred the flow of JKD.

Bruce Lee and the Tao of Jeet Kune Do started me on my philosophical journey that I love so much. It was my first taste of Taoism, Buddhism and other philosophical concepts and ways

Cheers, FT

Hi FT,believe that the rules have been altered a couple of times since you joined. Whilst some established members casually used to check the Lobby now and then & welcome new members, occasionally people were "missed" and once they'd fallen off the first page, they were easily overlooked. Profuse Apologies. It is now our intention to check / before approving new members & then welcome each & every one to the Tao Bums. With a gentle reminder regarding the "pinned" posts. Basher

Hi Basher,

Yes it sounds like a much better idea...

Cheers

Hi Chang,

The misunderstanding has been understood, thanks to bubbles.

My humblest apologies.

Thanks for the welcome.

In my opinion, in future, I believe it may be more beneficial to welcome someone to this forum when they actually arrive so that it doesn't cause any future misunderstandings.

My 2 cents...

The rules have been read also more than once

Thanks again for the welcome.

Peace,

Formless Tao

Hi Chang

Please see below.

FT