d4rr3n

The true you resides in your heart and leaves your body like a snake sheds its skin at death. These bodies are like puppets and our true self is the unseen puppet master.

The human brain consists of two hemispheres one hemisphere is commonly referred as masculine (left) whilst the other is feminine (right). We could replace masculine and feminine with yang and yin, therefore the human mind operates in a state of taichi. This brain is not capable of non dualistic thought since it is itself dualistic in nature however there is that central channel that yogis keep talking about which is beyond dualism and may allow us to directly experience things which are not dualistic. The no-thing (Dao) is beyond dualism and therefore our only hope of directly preserving it lies in the use of this central channel and the various chakras (which are also non dualistic)

We are all made from star dust, not just us but our planets too. Hydrogen gas first formed stars and through the fusion of hydrogen gas all the heavier elements were produced and given off as star dust. Clouds of this dust was attracted, pulled together by gravity and formed solid planets. Hydrogen then was the start of all matter but where did this hydrogen come from? Space is not empty, is filled with an energy called alternately vacuum energy, dark energy, quantum field fluctuations etc We know matter appears and disappears into this energy field all the time so it would seam this is the no-thing or if you prefer the all-thing since anything can be made from it. Was this all-thing created from the nothing? Perhaps but we can never become that, our maximum ability is one step removed from the nothing, the breath of the universe, the no-thing. Tao is often compared to water in ancient text and when you think about it the no-thing fits this description but how could the nothing fit that description, it cant in my view. Perhaps the cosmic day starts with the nothing giving birth to the no-thing/all-thing but I think the process by which this would occur is beyond our capability’s to understand. If we attempt it we start talking about paradoxes such as movement of nothing or patterns, shapes and forms in nothing. Maybe the no-thing and the nothing were both created at the same time from a third principle unknowable to us. Motion might ultimatly be the result of the interaction of the nothing with the no-thing....your brain in knots yet

3bob, I was refering to the cosmic days and cosmic nights, the cosmic night (pralaya) where everything is destroyed, dissolved into the nothingness. "The puranic view asserts that the universe is created, destroyed, and re-created in an eternally repetitive series of cycles. In Hindu cosmology, a universe endures for about 4,320,000,000 years (one day of Brahma, the creator or kalpa) and is then destroyed by fire or water elements. At this point, Brahma rests for one night, just as long as the day. This process, named pralaya (literally especial dissolution in Sanskrit, commonly translated as Cataclysm), repeats for 100 Brahma years (311 Trillion, 40 Billion Human Years) that represents Brahma's lifespan. Brahma is regarded as a manifestation of Brahman as the creator. In current occurrence of Universe, we are believed to be in the 51st year of the present Brahma and so about 156 trillion years have elapsed since He was born as Brahma. After Brahma's "death", it is necessary that another 100 Brahma years (311 Trillion, 40 Billion Years) pass until a new Brahma is born and the whole creation begins anew. This process is repeated again and again, forever." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_cosmology

My personal reason to resolve if the dao spoken of by Taoists was nothing or no-thing is connected with the big bang but also with Vedic philosophy. In Vedic philosophy they call the big bang a day of Brahmin whilst they call the big crunch a night of Brahmin. When people talk about wanting to reach this nothing I naturally thought to myself why would anyone want to do that! to destroy themselves by passing their spirit into the void, to be dissolved into nothingness. I then thought to myself no this cant be what the Taoists are talking about, they must be talking about uniting their spirit with the no-thing which is ultimately the spirit of the universe (basically uniting the spirit of the macrocosm with the spirit of the microcosm). If possible a human would then attain a state of cosmic consciousness or enlightenment. Obviously I would rather set my ultimate goal as reaching a state of cosmic consciousness and not dissolution and destruction into nothingness Kajenx, this is for you

NotVoid, I believe you can use your logic up to a point but it cannot be used in actually realising the tao itself so we don’t say tao has this quality or that quality or this characteristics or that. But logic can get us up to a point and we can say things like: Tao exists Is non dualistic Contains all possibility’s/quality’s Is everything Passed this we cannot go with our rational mind as the actual realisation of that thing is beyond it. Above I am talking about tao as being “no-thing”. If however your concept of tao is the "nothing" then there is literally nothing to be said, we cant even use the word “it” because it implies it is a thing which would not be true, ultimately it is futile to attempt describing nothing because there is nothing to be described or said. If you read my post about the carrot though you will see I came to the conclusion that a human can reach the no-thing but never the nothing. In actual fact this nothing may not even exist in our universe since even empty space is a thing (can be warped and talked about as the fabric of space etc) High being better then low can only refer to martial application in a grappling situation, the low uproots the high. Same with soft and yielding overcoming hard and stiff or emptiness swallowing up fullness ie moving out of the way of a strike. .

The difference is that no-thing is a thing whilst nothing isn’t even a thing or to put it more scientifically no-thing is energy whilst nothing is......well nothing

It is also foolish to talk about motion of nothing, is it not? Motion canot exist without somthing to move!

I was just at the gym and was thinking about how john chang said a human can never become wuji and the following occurred to me. Lets say I gave you a carrot and said chop it up, chop it up until it becomes nothing. Soon you will find it don’t matter how fine you chop it up it will never reach the state of nothingness. If you were to reduce it to molecules, then atoms, then subatomic particles you are still left with something and we must conclude that “something” can never become nothing. BUT, on the other hand if you got it passed the subatomic stage and kept going finally you would eventually reach the “no-thing” the substance from which all things are made from. I concluded therefore that a human which is obviously a “thing” can never become a nothing but it can through reaching to higher and higher states become the “no-thing” so at least in my mind I think john chang is right, yet I have indeed heard Taoists talking about reaching the dao yet it is clear from their description that their dao is the void of nothing thus they are talking about reaching something that perhaps cant be reached, not to mention why you would want to become nothing, that wouldn’t be much of an achievement "In our school man can never become like this. Human beings those who can complete Level Four, that is to say stay at t’ai chi all the way up to Level Seventy Two. We are never at wu-chi. Perhaps in other lineages, like the Mao-shan Pai or the Wutang-Pai, they have discovered a method to accomplish this, but I do not know of it, nor have I ever witnessed it. In any case, we in the Mo-Pai do not use it." Magnus of Java

Hello all, found this forum whilst reading up on mo-pai and related subjects. Couldent figure out why I could not post or comment in other forums. looking forward to chatting and exchanging knowledge!

thank you guys!