narveen

why turnips? i can think of only one reason. turnips are in the ground. he looks pretty sound physically and appropriately acting his age. its unnerving watching old people act inappropriately. for example, paul mccartney singing "when i'm 64" at 70. or the prancing rolling stones which a uk paper said, "the opening act was like watching the living dead". i must admit they are in great shape (no fat). perhaps rock and roll is better than ba duan jin?

i understand. but that is you and people who share your conviction. if all 30 something share my conviction, longevity will have a point.

the cut-off at 45 is in consideration of two things: the body's condition, and my destiny in life. if i have no destiny at all, then i would even want to check out now. there are more than enough people alive and i don't want to take up space for no reason. until i know for sure, i have an obligation to wait for a mandate from heaven. being wise and happy is not the point. having a meaningful existence is. a meaningless existence, to me, is the karma of a muffin moocher.

we all want to live forever with no thought of the body. each of us is like a cowboy riding a horse. we want to keep riding inconsiderately and never once look at and consider the condition of the horse. do you know that 70% of americans are on prescription drugs for various ailments? what do you use for money? are you going to eat everybody's muffin till you reach 150? your body may not cooperate and start dragging its feet once it's past 70. it will give excuses for not going on by having macular degeneration, loss of hearing, oestoporosis, and arthritis. how will you do ba duan jin then?

isn't caring about money part of the job? finance is a tough sector to be in. isn't this why they are a miserable lot?

what do you use for money? if you were thrown out of your apartment, then you must have not paid the rent.

i believe you. you don’t come across as a moocher. and i am happy for you. chances of making it in life - even to your situation - is slim to none. true but i plan not to die old. i don’t want to be a tim tebow sitting on the bench doing nothing. when it dawns on me that tao heaven has nothing in store for me and it’s past half-time, i’m going to tell coach, “f*ck it. i’m outa here.” yeah, i read about that old guy in his ninetines sitting in his chair with his shotgun waiting for those punks breaking into his basement to come up. and when they did...his aim was deadly. i have a healthy respect for guns and don’t like them after a first-time out to a shooting range in wisconsin. the gunshop owner was impressed that, as a first-timer, my shots were on target and the grouping were remarkably tight. i was a natural. in all that time on the range, half my attention was on the lethal power being unleashed by me and the other shooters with each whack! whack! whack! of our handguns. i was relieved to get out of there before some dumbshit carelessly let off a whack! in my direction and say ”sorry” as i watch blood flowing out of my belly like some friggin’ cia operative in benghazi. just to let you know that you have not been pissin' in the wind, there are many things you have posted that are worth arguing about. they are captured in my files and waiting for me to lock and reload.

i am sorry you feel that way. i need to be more sensitive to your feelings. there some pretty tough guys around here and my style is geared to conversing with them. please keep me informed and allow me to clarify any statements you find offensive and allow me to address the problems they create. i am not aware of propagating anything. please point my conclusions out. for your information, my spiritual path is about throwing conclusions out until there is none. i have been calling out other people's conclusions that i once held and debating them. i am extremely interested in the outcome of those debates. the buddha got to zero conclusions by the time he was 36. i am 35 and time is running out for me. all that perceived harshness on my part is not directed at anyone, it comes from my sense of desperation to resolve issues. i don't intend to live past 45 and will push the button then even if i don't get to zero.

i am not supporting the government. i am debating your reason for supporting snowdon. correct. this is a downside of democracy. if the dumb majority doesn’t act, the wise minority has to stuff it in. chalk this up as one cause for snowdon’s action. snowdon won’t stuff it in and the wise minority sees him as a hero because they know the dumb majority won’t act and needs saving. am i getting this right? snowdon showed you and the minority of wise guys who are slick in the mind and quick on your feet unlike the dumb majority who are sheep. welcome to the world, my friend. you weren’t born yesterday, you said. if you want a better world, drop dead. this is the way we humans are - liars, one and all. i lie, you lie, everybody lies. chalk this up as another cause for snowdon’s action. on hindsight, that is your judgment. my judgment is that america before 9/11 was a free and safe country and everyone wanted to come to america. (people still do.) back then, once past immigration (federal government), you could disappear from the radar screen, get a license, buy a car, find work and live the good life in any state in the union. and americans were a trusting gracious lot who accept everyone and would show anyone no matter what gender, race or creed how to fly an airplane. 9/11 changed all that. now, no one of any description can board a flight from anywhere in the world to the us without clearance. all airlines comply with us security requirements or they don’t fly to us ports-of-call. even americans don’t have that easy passage and the “welcome home” anymore when they get back from abroad. now that the problem has become homegrown, the noose has to tighten around everyone for the sake of all. snowdon is not terrorising you and your minority. it all depends on which side you are on. i just don't like cheats, that's all. if you are doing it the wrong way, you can't be doing the right thing. i don't believe in robin hoods. no, i haven’t. on the contrary, i think the system we are living in is a grave problem. i don’t like it anymore than you do. where we part ways is the approach to dealing with the problem. if all this reading of the tao te ching didn’t open my eyes to how people play dirty in the name of the tao, i would pay no heed to principles and jump on the snowdon bandwagon with you. it’s good that you talked to your political representatives even though you know the system doesn’t work for you. i am curious about what they said to you. seems that way. true. even in its shoddy shape now, america is still the best place on the planet. even the loveliest places in europe, don’t do it for me. there is no energy there in their cities. and for natural beauty, the Chinese don’t call america “beautiful kingdom” for no small reason. we have it all including the likes of snowdon. can you imagine a russian or chinese whistle blower let alone one allowed to scamper all over the globe without being neutralized within 24 hours? i think hollywood is responsible for shaping our perception of snowdon as a hero. he is coming across as jason bourne, the victim of operation treadstone. unlike you, i know when i am watching a movie and when it's real life. is the situation really that bad, for you personally in your neck of the woods? you still get to enjoy your coffee and your smokes and work on your pretty neighbour’s swimming pool and feel great being alive at 72 in your flower garden. that’s something to celebrate. i will right now pour myself a glass of wine and drink to your happiness. i may even come down your way with my guns and we can go shoot some ducks in the everglades. what do you say, pardner? cheer up. if things get real bad we can always move up to canada. it's almost as good as the usa.

if your spiritual consciousness is that lofty, you would be aware that the misery of old age is a personal thing. it is MY opinion that one of the causes of MY misery in old age is MY ugliness. you have a problem with that?

it's not ok. you need to sort your mind out. if you are not with us, you are against us. americans need to pull together. if the government is indeed messing up, we the people need to kick the administration's ass and do it PROPERLY. snowdon's behavior is unamerican. his modus operandi is not different than that of those cowardly hijackers who took down the twin towers killing innocent people without warning or care. it's cowardly to blindside your opponent or stab people in the back. americans do not do this. this is not acceptable. get in touch with your congressman and senator. you don't put up with bullshit, you said. then do something and raise hell. as clint eastwood said, the government works for you. do you really think the fbi or cia will take you out? you are not living in russia or china or nigeria.

not wanting a long life is a shitty attitude? it’s easy for you to say. not everyone in the world has either your fortunate situation or your appetite for punishment. you can bet your sweet ass that i’m too weak to handle a raw deal. who needs a body that grows old. i really dislike old age even if i have all the good stuff like wealth and glory. i have an aversion for old people – not them personally but their situation which i cannot avoid unless i hit the wall and go out in a blaze at 35 in the Daytona 500. looks like we have an argument here that should go to general discussion. would you like to step outside, tough guy? how about a thread called “longevity – good or bad”?

i don’t believe his employers lied to him. his employers, if i am to find fault with them, was sloppy in screening him as a suitable hire. based on information i have from watching the news, snowdon practically walked into the job right off the street and had access to sensitive information. ok, so he had a record of being in the military, worked for the CIA and previous service with the NSA, but they were all short stints here and there and no evidence of steady dedicated service to his country. not by my reckoning. with such a shoddy hiring policy in place, i am surprised that the KGB and the Chinese have not already planted moles in the nsa. so, what we have in snowdon is the wrong guy in the right place to pull down uncle sam’s pants. whatever snowdon’s stated job description was, it was not the forming of moral judgments on the data system he was working on. when he realized the potential of the system, his response was telling. it wasn’t about changing america because even a fool knows it can’t be done on an impulse. it was also not about protecting fellow americans. it’s has become fashionable these days to shame and pull down governments. snowdon’s caper, to my mind, is not different from jane fonda’s in vietnam. and she is still paying for it. i suppose, as an activist, snowdon felt that he had a moral obligation to follow his own conscience and break rank with his government. he should but according to the rules of american society. by acting the way he did – without regard to terms of his employment and rule of law – he essentially and unilaterally revoked his membership in american society and turned rogue. a rogue bee is not part of the hive, a hero is. snowdon is driven by disaffection for the government. one needs to be objective in assessing his motives. as such, i would not take his view that the us is a police state with a KGB-style apparatus placing the us population in a national stockade for political control. building the data storage system, like the atom bomb project, is a national security undertaking. the manhattan project was top secret. the nsa data center in Utah is not, and americans with snowdon’s activist sentiments have been publicising and railing against it in the public media for years. but americans don’t care because they trust their government. like the manhattan project, the nsa data gathering system is designed by american scientists. you don’t think those guys – most likely upstanding mature people with wife and kids and love the american life - would be alarmed and blew the whistle then if they were recruited to build a monstrous apparatus with evil intent against the american people? you are not delusional. snowdon and his ilk are. like i said, one needs to be objective and, above all, realistic. social systems are what they are but it is we who have built them. long before snowdon, the unabomber was raising the alarm publishing his manifesto and setting off bombs to get attention from americans to deal with the evil system. no one called him a hero and he is still rotting in jail without parole. and now that his vision of this monstrous system has become reality, how come no one is campaigning for a presidential pardon for Ted Kaczynski? a social system is what it is. if you want to protect it and manage it for all the digits of society, you need the technology to identify and track everyone of them. you like goggle search to find stuff all over the world. the nsa also like the same capability to find any errant digit in the national mix in a second after hitting “enter”! the only way to stay invisible is go amish – don’t use any phone, be jobless, use only cash and live close to the ground. the evil is not the government. the evil is our way of life,as defined by the system – namely, us.

understandings are doctrinal commands that cannot change but can only be discarded and replaced by a new understanding. an example of an understanding is the knowledge, currently held, of human existence: we are apes, inhabiting earth, a round planet circling the sun in the solar system. do you see this understanding changing when you are presented new knowledge? mindset cannot change. in a free society culture evolves as people die and a new generation hardwired with a new understanding populate society. to modernize china, mao hurried this process with his brutal cultural revolution. in ancient china, emperors didn’t wait to realize their visions. heads were chopped off en masse to remove obstruction to a better china. this is called extrapolation. a conclusion based on speculation and not fact. it is like concluding that if you can walk 3 miles an hour, you will arrive in shanghai in time for Christmas if you start today from florida. i am not factoring in the possibilities of you eaten up by sharks, blown off-course by typhoons and that you may not be able to walk across the pacific ocean. scientists are that way - presumptious. science writers, out to titillate, are worse. and you are god’s creation whether you like it or not. there are enough eye-witnesses to miracles at lourdes attesting to the power of the virgin mary. i understand your disillusionment with christianity (or whatever), but why trade one faith for another (science) and not just chuck all religious beliefs? you believe that chimp have a different consciousness? what is the nature of that difference? let’s make this clearer and compare the consciousness of a newly-born baby chimp and a newly-born human chimp. can you tell any difference based on your observation of their behavorial responses? would you apply your basis (of functional capability) for class division between humans and chimps to class division among humans as well? the social caste system of india is like the classification of animals into separate species. are these not different forms of bigotry? the specie difference you see is based on arbitrary, biased and unjust criteria. the establishment of this method of differentiation had no input from chimps. walking on two legs and use of language may be significant to you but not to chimps. are these capabilities not excuses for the practice of discrimination against chimps? are your reasons self-serving? just because there are reasons for the practice of racism don’t mean they are right. in this case, it is not another human that is being discriminated against. it is another animal. but you found the myths of science and you embraced them hook, line and sinker. i am not another ape just as you are not another christian. what happened to freedom of religion? doesn’t each have the right to choose his faith? you choose to be an ape just as another choose to be a creature of god. proselytism, which is the act to convert others to your belief, serves to garner support for an ideology. truth requires no support. the story of man as told by science is fantastic enough even if we remove that part about an alien with superpowers from planet krypton. i can’t show you my theory until you can put yours aside, suspend your belief in science, and take an unbiased look at what i have to show you. there is no room for two theories in one mind. only one operating system can run a computer at a time. get it?

one man's meat is another poison. wishing me a long life is placing a curse on me. if i could either live a long, uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young, i wish for the latter. it's not about the glory. a life that is pointless is painful to endure; especially, in a dangerous world trapped in a body vulnerable to injury, disease and aging. i would like to argue about anything we don't agree on with regard to matters that have to do with living a sane life as you see it. i have launched an attack on your position on snowdon in a thread under general discussion. another argument i want is on being an ape, also in general discussion. this will avoid messing up textual study threads which will be picked up should the arguments head back here to sort out your view on the tao te ching.

like i said in our discussion in textual studies subforum for chapter 45, there is not just one reality but as many realities as there are individuals. therefore, there are many americas: one for you, one for snowdon, one for the us (official position), and one for china (official position). this is how i see it and it is my reality. your america, unfortunately, is no longer one america but many americas, each at odds with another. once upon a time, there was only one (predominant) america: john wayne’s america, the america of good traditional values. not anymore. thanks to splitists - the atheists, the multi-culturalists, the racists (of all shades of color), the activists (all kinds) - today’s america is splintered into many parts torn from the one the world knew, the one that was the good guy against the bad guys of the world. i think it is not a matter of america rising again, america hasn’t fallen yet, not this time, not now. it is still number one by a long shot. the sad thing is that i could never have imagined that a day would come when the world would applaud the other side and laugh at america and actually feel better about the presidents of russia and china than it would about the president of the united states. and i do not support what snowden did. my reason is based on the fact that he acted dishonourably and cheated on his pomise to his employers and betrayed the trust given to him. and what is your reason for supporting snowden? what lies? they could be your unrealistic expectations.

talking to you is like talking to my grandpa. tough old stubborn geezer. he lived alone for many years after grandma died. he refused to be shunted into a nursing home and didn't quite care if none of the family came around. but they did; the womenfolk, mostly; to clean up his kitchen and spruce up the place. none of the menfolk would come by on account of his orneriness, his open disdain. none, except me. i never once visited with grandpa out of concern for his well-being or a sense of duty to check in on the old coot. i did it when i was in town for the usual inane holiday family gatherings which were never held at grandpa's place. the womenfolk would just bring him food like offerings to lord ganesh for taipusam and devali. do you know that lord ganesh is the deity with the elephant head and four arms holding out a different thing in each hand? every visit with grandpa was like a tussle between prince arjuna (namely me) and lord krishna (namely, you know who) except that, in our situation, arjuna wasn’t looking for counsel on the battlefield of life and krishna wasn’t imparting wisdom. like i said, talking to him was like talking to you. still, i must have taken away something from the old man every visit. and he must have gotten something from me; otherwise, those long rambling conversations with him wouldn’t have been there. but they were there, a whole collection – like all 18 chapters of the gita - that punctuated the last fifteen years of his life. if i could handle that old fella, you should be a cake-walk. and i wish you a long life, chinese style, in japanese: “banzai!”

you mean your philosophy, don’t you? it’s like your dinner of food choices which your desire has selected from a buffet table crammed with dishes of various philosophical fares - a scoop of Darwin stew here, a piece of dao dumpling there, some Nietzsche pickles - all of which you had picked up to pile onto your plate as you walked through life. if you say so, pal. lin’s chapter 15 is no good. so, you live cautiously (but you are pretty sure of yourself), conduct yourself like a courteous guest (but you have a short temper), yielding like melting ice (but you won’t back down no matter what), simple like uncarved wood (i give you that), open like a valley (that too).... by the way, why do you want to be sagelike? you kidding me? he would be from a culture that inculcated a respect for elders and had a tradition of ancestral worship based on honoring high values handed down through the ages.... from who? a monkey? the chinese mind takes life differently. it doesn’t mess around with identity. their butterfly is not a bug of western science. it has metaphorical significance as all life forms have in pointing to innate spiritual qualities of material phenomena. at the mundane level, the chinese will play any game you want. i understand. are the first roots of your philosophy created by you? can you operate without any philosophy cooked up by other people? not yielding as melting snow? you are thick as multi-year pack ice that could crush the hull of an artic icebreaker. not me, pal. i’d rather be a jehowah witness. just as you are not into religion, i am not into science fiction. when i was a kid, i wore a superman costume with cape and believed i was superman. it drew a lot of chuckles from grown-ups. and they thought that was funny. these days, there are grown-ups, like you, believing that they are apes. now, that is really funny. i love talking about philosophy too; especially with you.

how does this relate to the tao te ching? is it a product of good intentions?

What is that premise, as you understand it?

Prove what? the stream of consciousness is reality. the ghost is part of reality because you saw it. someone else may see the buddha or a dog with six legs. that too would be part of reality. a schizophrenic experience - and there are many - is part of reality. the point is, what has a thing - be it the buddha, six-legged dog, or ghost - in reality, the stream of consciousness, got to do with practical living of life? at the very instant of seeing the snake, that very perception was the verification. and you react to that reality by jumping away. it may have been a mistaken perception inaccurately verified but it was real to you and you responded appropriately. ok, so the ghost was not an illusion. it was real and you have critically verified that as so. i don't reject your experience as a hallucination. neither would i reject someone else's admission of a six-legged dog as real. both you and that someone must live with your ghost and dog respectively. if a guy is thrashing about in a fit in my presence. the catholic priest critically verifies and perceives that as a possession by demons. that is a reality that causes him to perform an exorcism. a medical doctor may critically verify that as epilepsy. that too is a reality that causes the doctor to treat the condition accordingly. i see the guy thrashing about, unable to verify anything and don't have a clue. that is my reality that would cause me to watch in puzzlement ok, that is a reality which is causing you to refute my statements. i could because it is recorded in your opening post of this thread. let's say, i did not read your words the way you intended them to express. as such, your clarification is accepted and i withdraw my statements.

if he doesn't know, why is he a venerable zen master? what is he venerated for? this zen story is designed to lower the bar to give a passing grade for conmen posing as zen masters. even i know what happens after the body dies.

this is sad, man. if you don't watch it, life for you will head downhill from here on in.

like what? what are the basic concepts that shape your reality today existed two thousand years ago? how about a round planet earth circling the sun? 398 years ago Galileo was jailed for life as a heretic for trying to reshape reality from that of a fixed, flat, immovable, non-rotating earth. how about the concept that you are an ape and your ancestors were apes? Darwin came up with this idea 154 years ago. Who do you think Chuang Tzu would regard as crazy? Darwin or the Pope who believed we descended from Adam and Eve? do you hold any reality-shaping concepts that existed in china two thousand years ago? let’s be clear about this. all the above lessons learned came from the study of Hendrick’s translation and not the work of the composer of chapter 45. right? therefore, you are like an art student learning from an art dealer’s perception of willem de kooning’s reality that inspired his abstract expressionism of woman. i mean, those paintings of women with three breasts and five eyes? of course, we must. just watch your step.