Taoist Texts

Oh, I was not intending to take the conversation into post-modern academia politics, multi-culti and globalist propaganda. The above were just remarks on the cuffs for my own gratification but fully on topic i shall say. Whoever is interested can just follow the money: government or corporate sponsorship ---> universities and foundations ---> grants and tenures --> the product ordered by the sponsors. And whoever believes that there is a pure science unaffected by the money. ...Well....ignorance is bliss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

I know that there were not. When people think of contacts say along the great silk road they imagine a Sindbad type of a merchant on dry land who would hoist his bundles of silk and china on a camel in Harbin showing up two years later on the appian road weary from the trip but carrying his Philosophy and Astronomy and Buddhism with him. That never happened, the trade routes were a long string of merchants and markets with goods changing hands many times before reaching the destination. Nobody would go all the way for obvious reasons. The age of exploration was driven by the need to cut out the excessive middlemen. Yes, that's why there were different and extremely xenophobic civilizations, and not one big marketplace for goods or ideas. But wait a second, who on earth would like you to believe that the globe was one big marketplace since time immemorial? Moreover, who on earth would like you to believe that the Europeans produced nothing of their own and were buying goods or ideas from Asia since time immemorial? Could it be the same tricksters who would like the globe be one big marketplace now? Could it be the same tricksters who would like the Europeans to produce nothing of their own and buy goods or ideas from Asia? Duuh. But how could they achieve that? After all it is so natural for a local to go to the local farmers market for produce, to the local tailor for clothes, to the local automaker for a car, to amuse himself with local plays, sports, news and movies . So how? By rewriting the history that's how.

yes. thats what i do it for, for illustration. i post it for my own reference, please do not mind me. of course not, its all in good fun. hey what does your nick mean?

Merci. Very illuminating. The major drawback of this study is that it might have been more successful had Kuzminski further developed his comparative approach in a more thorough manner without making unnecessary historical claims that could not be adequately supported and developed in the space of this book. His characterization of Pyrrhonism rests almost exclusively on late Greek sources such as Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus and depends upon the acceptance of Pyrrho as the originator of Pyrrhonism and not just its nominal founder. The same goes for Kuzminski’s treatment of the question of historical diffusion. To a certain extent, Kuzminski exculpates himself from this charge by reminding his readers on several occasions that the scenario he is presenting is only a plausible one. His choice of the word ‘reinvented’ in his subtitle to describe the Greek adoption of Buddhist philosophy is deliberately intended to avoid the more ambitious claim of direct transmission (p. 5). However, this appears to be an attempt to justify the suggestion of a historical relationship while excusing the lack of more substantial textual evidence. Despite the relatively few focused treatments on this topic, Kuzminski is also not particularly thorough. He briefly mentions Thomas McEvilley’s work on this topic but neither addresses nor refutes his counter-thesis that the primary direction of diffusion was from Greece to India. Reviewed by M. Jason Reddoch University of Cincinnati

i do. all the time.

Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων was the West, and after it fell the modern history started. The dark ages were recast as a 1000 years of darkness interspersed only by the pyres of inquisition and an occasional glimmer of culture from the enlightened Islamic east. I read somewhere that this picture of the dark ages is a myth invented in the early modern times for ideological purposes. hmm gotta look into this sequence a certain Mr Kipling would disagree it could. if it was. but it never did.. the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope.

for me personally this turns out to be a very educative thread. Thank you Aithrobates. so who owes what to whom?

Thanks i probably would read it if it falls into my lap but otherwise to me this author is highly unappealing. Back in 1950s it has become fashionable to bash the Europeans. Which is this guy's bread and butter apparently You see, the Europeans were stupid so they could not possibly on their own get a group of students and profs together and call it 'a college', they had to borrow it from the Arabs. Also everybody else never reasoned logically before Buddhists invented the recursive argument which the stupid Europeans got to use. Like i said it is' lets bash the Europeans' galore, this is not science.

from the link above Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described asGymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.[6] Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of śramanic, possibly Buddhist, thought: "Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention. ... Nothing is in itself more this than that"[7] Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts: "That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. ... That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief".[8] So is this Lao-zi's point of view? Or Buddha's? I would say neither.

Men find Ways to persuade themselves, to believe any Absurdity, to submit to any Prostitution, rather than forego their Wishes and Desires. Their Reasons become at last an eloquent Advocate on the Side of their Passions, and [they] bring themselves to believe that black is white, that Vice is Virtue, that Folly is Wisdom and Eternity a Moment.

I for one would be curious to know what are the exact similarities between this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang-Lao and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milinda_Panha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

yes. for there is no peace for the wicked. Unfulfilled desires are the very fabric of the human condition. Is a non-celibate person person living his life in contentment? No, his life is one of a permanent sexual hunger. Thats why sex sells in advertisement. right on the money. thats what separates real practitioners from the fake ones. the real ones contain their desires, the fakers rationalize them.

yeah

Folk etymology, pseudo-etymology,[1] or reanalysis is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one.[2][3][4][5][6][7] Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation (since one or more of the morphemes making them up, like sam-, which meant "semi-", has become obscure) are reanalyzed in a more or less semantically plausible way, yielding, in these examples, sparrow grass and sandblind.[8] The term folk etymology, a loan translation from the 19th-century academic German Volksetymologie,[9] is a technical one in philology and historical linguistics, referring to thechange of form in the word itself, not to any actual explicit popular analysis.[8]

I have not read this exact book but i have read the original. The author mainly keeps missing the point wildly, like e.g on the link above she pontificates for an entire page on the 'taming the dragon' without ever mentioning that it specifically refers to the physical elimination of the menses. ...her own guesswork notwithstanding the translation per se is more or less palatable, so it could be a useful read all in all.

The mechanism is that the spirit is not mature enough to survive on its own or not mature enough to find his way to the body which then dies being left spirit-less.

Hi;) you start with a wrong premise assuming that whats going on in the seminars is the real thing. It is not. Seminars are mind games and fantasy conventions conducted for profit by the seminar sellers and attended for ego-tickling by the seminar hoppers. Of course no one dies (or gets any real results) at the seminars. No one boldly goes nowhere at a Star Trek convention either. The short answer is yes. The chinese take on the matter can be read about here.

Hey) the book has been translated in full by Yanshina back in 1977 so i will just type up her version 25 大荒南經: The canon of the great southern wasteland The emperor Yao、the emperor Ku、the emperor Shun are buried there on Mount Yue。There are kauri shells ，spiritual beasts liyu、juju owls、eagles、buzzards、yanwei snakes、the Meat-eating Men、black bears、brown bears、tigers、leopards；there is a red tree with purple branches，green flowers，black fruit。The Elongated Mountain is there。

He is the spiritual person from whom Zhang Boduan received all or a part of his method. Nothing else is known about him. Also, there is a god , The Lord of the East, one variant of whose name is the same,

I have read both Cleary and the original Liu. Liu wrote the original in code and Cleary, not understanding the code mangled it beyond recognition too. But they say that there is something to learn from any book so i would recommend it if you keep in mind that it is a mistranslated, coded, alchemical message (not neidan!) , moreover it is not about Yijing or divinitation per se.

hmmm...no. According to Eskildsen this quote belongs not to Qiu but to some anonymous commentator (page 94) Also what is described on that page above is not an exercise nor a method in our sense of the words but rather a record of of two individuals turning into dragons and other two jumping from a tower.

of course it is. the core of Yijing its guas were first invented and used to prognosticate for war expeditions and bloody sacrifice to ancestors. They were used by the tribal kings and specialist divinators cum king's advisor. which and who of these are daoist in any respect?

its quite like saying that the electric bulb dates back to the iron age because it was then that glass and iron were first produced. But i understand what you are saying, thanks.

I dont know what has Yijing to do with daoism at all but thats just me;) why? sure. they were invented by this gentleman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-style_t'ai_chi_ch'uan in this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Chinese-Art-Tai-Chuan/dp/0850303877 there is a reason for that;)

Traditional theory is that humans devolve rather than evolve. On gua i remember reading somewhere that first jiaguwen (divination bone inscriptions) used chinese digits like 六 and 九 and switched to solid and broken lines much later. That would make guas and Yijing younger than traditionally thought, its just one of the oldest received piece of writing , the origin of which is beyond the observable timeline. Cant find the link thou.