el_tortugo

Dear Bums, I'm looking for a good biography or discussion of the Buddha's (Siddhartha Gotama) life and wonder which is your favorite or which have you found to be helpful. Thank you.

I don't think it ultimately matters. It is as you mention, mostly for entertainment. That said I am looking deeper into the medical side of DNA and other testing. Also, my half sister also scored high in the Neanderthal DNA, so I know which parent that comes from.

I don't know much about this brother, but something about his movement and posture make me think he knows what he is doing. I wonder what his lineage or history is in these arts.

Any insight or experience around Thich Man Tue (Brother Insight) or other Plum Village related qigong?

What is your favorite Taoist podcast(s)? Not necessarily explicitly or overtly Taoist.

I often listen to podcasts while out walking. This recent one stood out and I've actually listened to it a few times over. I'd summarize it as "working with the mind as it is rather than get angry with it for not being something else." https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-ezra-klein-show-2/episode/best-of-this-conversation-will-change-how-you-think-about-thinking-89443380

Welcome to the Dao Bums! You can learn a lot by using the search function to search the forums for topics you are most interested in. If it doesn't exist yet start a new thread for it. Be well.

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live” ― Lin Yutang

Third sister coming soon!

The way this fellow describes "rewilding" sounds a lot like how one might put what Laozi talks about in the Tao Te Ching into practice: https://www.petermichaelbauer.com/the-rewilding-podcast-episode-1-introductions/

An entertaining and informative podcast introducing Taoism: https://primordialdaopresentdao.podbean.com/ "This is a long-form conversation style podcast about all-things Daoism. "Our conversations and interviews will discuss ancient and modern Daoist wisdom teachings, universal understandings, seasonal longevity and healing traditions, spiritual practices, relationship guidance and profound insights on walking an authentic and meaningful path - however, you choose to your walk it.

God Jul!

"The search for a spiritual path is born out of suffering. It does not start with lights and ecstasy, but with the hard tacks of pain, disappointment, and confusion. However, for suffering to give birth to a genuine spiritual search, it must amount to more than something passively received from without. It has to trigger an inner realization, a perception which pierces through the facile complacency of our usual encounter with the world to glimpse the insecurity perpetually gaping underfoot. When this insight dawns, even if only momentarily, it can precipitate a profound personal crisis. It overturns accustomed goals and values, mocks our routine preoccupations, leaves old enjoyments stubbornly unsatisfying." - Bhikkhu Bodhi

Cool! I don't have any leads, but learn Bagua while you are young.

I've answered these a few days ago in a different thread. I think the answers will change and deepen by the day, I think the fact that we are well into the second year now will color my answers to all of these. I like these questions and wonder if you have come across similar ones that we can add.

Daoist legacy seems to me to be connected to wu wei or wuji in that it would have to do with harmony with the Dao and be an intrinsic outcome of that kind of stillness.

"Anarchism means not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right, but anarchism as prefigured in early Taoist thought … its principal moral–practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories." -- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith has called the octopus the closest thing to an alien that we might encounter on Earth, and their bizarre anatomy speaks to this: An octopus' mind isn't concentrated in its head but spread throughout its body. Their tentacles are packed with neurons that endow each one with a hyperaware sense of touch, as well as the ability to smell and taste. Marine biologists have remarked that each tentacle sometimes seems like it has a mind of its own. Every octopus is a tactile thinker, constantly manipulating its surroundings with a body so soft it almost seems liquid." https://www.salon.com/2021/11/23/scientists-peered-into-octopus-brains--and-were-astonished-at-what-they-saw/

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"The body and its reactions to magical work will teach you more about magical power than any fancy grimoire can." - Josephine McCarthy

Have you encountered this kind of idea in Buddhism or Taoism?

It's a broad topic. I'd like to hear what you think about it and if you utilize it at all.