Michael Sternbach

Corpus delicti No offence.

You meant SYNERGIS? None taken.

You put those words into my mouth... Anyway: James Bond

(((Hugs)))

Okay, that's how I read this: The first reply (by the Patriarch's would-be successor) was not wrong, relatively speaking - that's why the Patriarch accepted it. However, Hui Neng went a step further by transcending the duality of there being a bright mirror and dust defiling it, as there was no self that needed to be purified in the first place. In other words, he spoke from an absolute perspective that sees and accepts things in their suchness, not from a relative one, as the zealous monk did. And there lies an analogy (and subtle irony) in the aspiring monk being portrayed as "best in class", while Hui Neng was nothing but an illiterate kitchen assistant... It is from narrations like this one that we see the closeness of Zen to Daoism (one of its roots). To put the story's message (the way I understand it) differently: While the clearing of false beliefs etc. is adequate and necessary during certain stages of the way, it is this insight into the very nature of the Self that ultimately cuts through and does away with all delusional assumptions.

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Since you are going chan/zen here, the answer to your question would actually be yes. Don't you know this story? The Patriarch expressed his satisfaction and had the poem painted on a wall in the monastery. Hui Neng asked someone to read it to him and knew immediately that its author in fact was not yet fully enlightened. He then asked someone to inscribe his own poem. The Patriarch now ordered this poem to be painted over, since obviously its author was not enlightened, but at the same time he had Hui Neng come to him in the middle of the night and passed on the insignia that would mark him as the rightful successor. He explained that the other monks, who already could not accept Hui Neng because he was an uneducated foreigner, would never allow him to stay in that monastery as its new leader and so it was important that he leave before he was killed.

Mind boggling

Well, a stationary observer would indeed see something or somebody as getting slower as they are approaching the speed of light, but I guess you could look at that as an expansion of time as well.

I suggest the following experiment: Pretend you are an extraterrestrian observer from a more advanced civilisation, watching the news just in order to understand the issues humanity is currently struggling with - detached, yet with compassion.

Act in accordance with the Dao. There are no cut-and-dried solutions. The learning process itself is part of the way - as your wisdom grows and you become more of a (Daoist) sage... It might be helpful to consult the Yijing whenever you are in doubt what way to take, and to seriously try to implement its advice. Consider it a way to support and facilitate access to your own intuition (which is essentially the Dao speaking to you). In my book, this is the most important teaching of the ancient Daoists - setting your rational mind at rest (sometimes) and learning to listen to that inner voice of yours.

Well said, Manitou. The philosophy that we are responsible not only for our own actions, but also for what happens to us, raises the question what level we are making some of our 'decisions' on, because, obviously, things can occur in our experience that we would find inacceptable on the level of the conscious mind. However, the conscious mind isn't always aware of the big picture, and it is on that level where we are aware of it, more accurately, part of it, that we 'decide on' or 'agree to' everything that happens.

Speeds faster than light are indeed known in modern physics, e.g., due to the tunnel effect and to space warping. The speed limit as given by Special Relativity still applies, however, there are a number of ways to circumvent it. Your comparison between Chuang Tzu and Einstein sounds interesting, however, I would need a better understanding of what Chuang Tzu said here in order to ascertain that they were actually talking about the same. According to Special Relativity, the faster you move, the more your time flow slows down relative to your environment. Reaching the speed of light (if it were possible), time would stop for you altogether. A massive object can't do that, though, because its mass would become infinite the moment it reached c, but a photon (a particle without rest mass) naturally travels at that speed and thus experiences no passage of time. I don't see the connection to Chuang Tzu right now, but it may be there.

Right. Yours as well as anything else's.

It's alright to work with the nature of things, but it's quite another issue to violate their nature.

There is an amazing theory regarding the origin of the Chinese Zodiac, presented over 100 years ago by the German historian Franz Boll in his classical work Sphaera. http://www.hellenisticastrology.com/critical%20editions/Boll-Sphaera.pdf (Yeah, I know, it's in German.) In my opinion, Boll's theory deserves much more attention than it seems to have received so far. But actually, "Chinese Zodiac" is somewhat of a misnomer here since, through history, it has spread to countries as diverse as Mongolia, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Tibet, Turkestan, Eastern Turkey, and Persia. Now, Boll calls to attention the ancient Dodekaoros, which was likewise a circle of twelve animals The earliest description we have of it is by Teucer the Babylonian (approximately 1st century AD). The twelve animals of the Babylonians and Egyptians were sections either of the celestial equator or the ecliptic. It is unclear whether they were named after actual star constellations in their vicinity, but in any case, they were considered to be co-rising with the common twelve signs of the Zodiac. They were used to designate the twelve double hours of the day that were widely used in the ancient world. Just like the twelve animals in China historically! It should also be mentioned that in Chinese Astrology, the twelve branches (equivalents to the twelve animals) are indeed thought of as divisions of the ecliptic. Boll gives the following correspondences between the familiar Occidental Zodiac, the Dodekaoros, and the Chinese Zodiac, including some alternative names depending on the country: Aries Cat Dog Taurus Dog Rooster (Bird) Gemini Snake Monkey Cancer Beetle Sheep (Goat) Leo Donkey Horse Virgo Lion Snake Libra Buck Dragon (Crocodile) Scorpio Bull Rabbit Sagittarius Hawk Tiger (Panther) Capricorn Monkey Ox Aquarius Ibis Mouse Pisces Crocodile Pig What is remarkable is the number of same or similar animals (despite their different order): Monkey - Monkey Crocodile - Dragon (Crocodile in Persia) Dog - Dog Snake - Snake Buck - Sheep (Goat in Thailand) Bull - Ox Lion - Tiger (Panther in Mongolia) Donkey - Horse Ibis - Rooster (Bird in Persia) That's nine out of twelve - coincidence? Franz Boll didn't think so. And neither does... Michael

Thanks! I found that article online: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1947PA.....55...62C Most of it is about the supposedly Chinese origin of the 27 to 28 nakshatras or Lunar Mansions in Indian Astrology. Later, the Arabs inherited their respective system from India. However, as the article mentions, a Babylonian origin of the nakshatras still can't be ruled out. The Indian zodiac per se is identical with the "Western" one, except it doesn't start from the vernal point, but deviates from it by the length of roughly one sign (the exact difference or ayanamsa depends on the particular school of Astrology you are looking at), in an attempt to be somewhat more in tune with the actual sidereal constellations. It is therefore called 'sidereal' (as opposed to the 'tropical' zodiac, i.e. season-based zodiac of Occidental Astrology), however, it was clearly adapted from Hellenistic Astrology, so it is of Babylonian origin as well. It is still in use today in contemporary Indian Astrology (also called Vedic Astrology and Jyotish). That said, the article also discusses the origin of the Chinese system of the twelve years (a.k.a. the cycle of Jupiter, the twelve animals, the Chinese zodiac) and concludes that it came from India:

I would appreciate it.

Yes. Please post the quotes in the original Chinese with at least three different, carefully referenced translations for each. Oh. I have heard that one before. Frugality and wishing to be left alone - yes, these are characteristics typical of Conservatives. But are they enough to put those sages on the political right? I still don't see any real evidence of that.

My earlier post implies exactly this. While we do have a say in what experiences we create or attract, it is not always a matter of free decision. For we tend to function in terms of conditioned responses (as you say). And yes, it is within our power to alter those - if we find access to the level of consciousness, on which we can 'reprogram' ourselves.

Agreed. Some left wingers lean towards Anarchism, but overall, they too rely heavily on laws and their enforcement. Not saying that Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu were left wingers - but what makes you think that they were Conservatives?

Interesting discussion - at least certain parts of it. It has been said that the right supports Anarchism. I don't agree, though it may look like that sometimes. But their preference is the police state, really. True Anarchists have little use for politics. At least in the ordinary sense. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu as right wingers? Gimme a break.

The non-belief in an afterlife in general (including reincarnation) is characteristic of people that buy into the reductionist-materialistic view which is, by and large, a result of the so-called Age of Enlightenment. According to this view, mind is little more than a function of matter. This is a reversal of the classical understanding, of course, in which the physical universe was born from spirit. Personally, this makes much more sense to me, for reasons too numerous to enlist here, with the most fundamental one perhaps being that I perceive myself as a spiritual being inhabiting a physical body rather than as existing as a consequence of the latter. Further, I don't exactly feel that I am around for the first time, and by the same token, I favour the theories that speak to a cyclically recurrent Universe. BTW, I no longer really see reincarnation as being at odds with the Judeo-Christian belief of an eternal afterlife in 'Heaven', as time is more or less a feature of the physical level of existence, and we may dwell in 'timeless' dimensions in between our earthly incarnations. I believe that in each physical incarnation, our spirit or soul seeks particular experiences and pursues certain goals. Once we have achieved all that, we may indeed move on to other levels of existence for good. And as I see no indications that those are limited in number, there may be no limits set to our evolution as well. Not that I would be in any kind of hurry to abandon physical existence though, as I find it rather enjoyable in so many ways - which is essentially the answer I gave to a Buddhist lecturer who objected to my self-determined spiritual path that it would require too many life-times. I think that covers my view on the topic, in a nutshell...

I think an important clarification is due. Taking responsibility for everything we experience has nothing to do with self-blame and guilt. What it means is simply to understand that the energies we carry around and radiate tend to attract certain things to us. Those energies are often the result of deep rooted beliefs and emotional traumas. Change at those levels is not always an easy matter. We may have plenty of issues that we are hardly even aware of. Although our external experience may provide us with clues - if we manage to avoid the blame and self-blame game. Valuable insight can only be gained from a more detached vantage point here. A useful analogy may be dream interpretation. There is a general understanding that what we experience in our dreams reflects the thoughts and emotions that live inside us, and may indeed help us understand what is happening on various levels of our psyche. Now the philosophy of personal responsibility implies that even the external reality of our waking hours is not as disconnected from us as it seems. Internal and external reality are closely interlinked. The observer is not truly separated from the observed. It has been suggested in this thread to practically explore this topic, starting with rather innocuous examples and working from there. That seems like a wise approach, generally speaking. Over time, a more comprehensive understanding may develop. I have heard that the Buddha had full comprehension of this, and I assume that this is true for other Avatars as well. Again, I would like to emphasize that this topic is not exclusively a Buddhist or Dzogchen teaching, and would be relevant only to the practitioners of the latter. Although Dzogchen's particular approach sounds interesting and I am curious to learn more about it. The psychotherapist I used to collaborate with back in the 90's was employing the model of an 'external stage' paralleling an 'internal stage'. This was at the very core of the method of psychodrama that he had developed. He often said: "As inside, so outside". And he had a way of applying this concept quite playfully (!) even to situations of grave suffering, in ways that his clients did not find flippant or respectless, but sensible and helpful. Again, I appreciate that this valuable topic has been brought up eventually. In fact, I once thought of starting a thread on this theme myself, but could not find an anchor that seemed suitable for TDB at the time. Little was I aware of the role it plays in Tibetan Buddhism until now.