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What would I bring? Something portable, renewable, clean yet amazing high tech. Bagua? Oh wait....

Absolutely... I am not particularly learned and definitely not wise; but if sages such as those of the OP and Daobums did not help I would know even less. And I am sure that they used words to help me along my way. So I take this paradoxical Wittgensteinian warning to not take Chuang Tzu's words too seriously but hope that a better sage will tell me to _which_ words I should attach my heart.

Memory is the gateway to this sort of imagination. You can directly search in your past for incidents in which the target emotion was present. With a little bit of success you can then engage your imagination more directly about what you wish to be experiencing. Cheers.

Far be it for me to speak for the Buddhists... my first image from your question was a reasonably saintly Buddhist carefully and peaceably considering how they wished to perceive the arriving situation while completely failing to act in the real world. Is the punch yang? I guess it depends on where the sun is.... sunny side and shady side and all of that. I am certain that a TCM practitioner can find an antidote if you wish to let it land. The part of the question that worries me is the idea that the oncoming fist represents karma. Even if you follow a buddhist line on this, their usual way of thinking about karma is that everything you perceive and the way you perceive it is a reflection of you. To focus on fists instead of the situation is exactly why people end up getting hit and hitting people in turn. Paying attention can generally avoid this sort of thing, and being clear about what you want makes those .5 s decisions much easier too. Does the fist need to represent something you caused? Certainly a deserve a good smack more often now then when I was young, yet I received them so much more often then... Life occasionally provides stimuli to act. No need to get hit more often then really necessary if you develop the skills! For the record, a number of years ago I walked into a lamppost. It hurt! My reactions caused me to hit it quite a few times within that first fraction of a second before I realized what was going on. Realization - I had probably spend a little too much time studying martial arts and not nearly enough watching what I was doing.....

Shanlung I am very sorry for your loss. I hope your happy memories help you along your way, and that the 66 hour weeks of the KSA leave you some ease for yourself.

Dear Ace, I will of course defer to zen-bear! My experience (and I do think there were are few comments buried somewhere in this thread!) is that eating and drinking seem to ground me quite quickly. So if one is feeling hungry or thirsty, there is no problem, go ahead and eat or drink. However, the energy continues to circulate and waiting longer before doing these things is not a bad deal. When I first started I found that I grounded with a bump if I waited less than 15 minutes. With a little more practice, it was 1/2 hour and so on. Now I really am in no rush but it has to fit within my day as well. Good luck

Not to disagree so much as just to provide a different point of view: I really haven't any clue if you have the sort of accomplishment that would characterize yourself in that state. On the other hand excessive contemplation has been said to lead to deficient spleen qi with a side order of stagnation. This does in turn lead to difficulties appropriately relating to people and onwards down the cycle. It is one of a set of situations I considered before writing the previous post; but finding that you are likely to be a sleep deprived new dad ups the odds a little. Getting yourself out of head into your body and working on something heart based seems worth a try. As always, best of luck.

Sure, and when I didn't get it right the first time ... a second chance came along in which there was no moonlight at all. What you put your attention on is a choice. Some choices support a perspective which doesn't facilitate value discriminations in self and other. If such a state and unhappiness coincide it becomes very hard to express anything positive. Now it is hard to maintain the exchanges of energy and interest that support our life..... and we get stuck for sure. These choices interleave the personal and the social. In my case, the traps were first and foremost to do with my memory and self-conception. I have also seen people achieve this having simply not treated parts of themselves well enough. Lack of compassion for self is an easy on-ramp to these states. Top few correctives: 1. Life in service - works great, takes time. There are always people in need, and needs in people. There is no real reason not to do what you can for others while you are on "hold". 2. Radical life transplant: although if you have already gone from England to Finland you probably have been working in this. 3. Paying as complete attention as one can to synchonicities. Everything you can perceive outside is also a reflection of you. So if you change your attentional structure to incorporate perception of ganying/ and even your basic changes of position you will find a remarkable improvement in interior states. Being an agent of synchronicity is even more fun. Finally, the marker of when I was getting better was actually the return of my sense of humour. Of course anything resembling advice from me should be taken for amusement purposes only: I fell into the abyss so hard I actually bounced when I hit bottom..... Best of luck!

Not to be too difficult here, but lots of cultural anthropologists, religious studies scholars... even Michael Shermer (I am not a fan) are capable of considering science and technology as a foundation myth in current societies. Even more so since so few people actually have scientific or technological skills and interests.

Campbell - The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion has some comments, but nothing too profound. There is no doubt about his views; consider the above links to be fairly mild. If you want a mythologist who addresses science, try Mircea Eliade. I would not do him the dishonour of trying a brief summary, as his ideas underlie much of what I find best in anthropology and volkerpsychologie. I can maybe help you with your question if I understand better your reason for asking it?

You probably won't like to much of my answer, but then it of course depends on your motivations. 1) Charitable donations lead to tax relief just about anywhere. 2) As per silent thunder/ soaring crane .... taxes support the good things your government provides. These are the public goods - and if you think carefully you may decide that you support them after all. 3) If you still want to reduce taxes to as maximize money in your hands then a) create a productive business; this will allow you to maximize tax deductions.... b: consider removing yourself from the social safety net. By working around residency and ownership you can legally avoid a large part of your tax load. e.g. http://alexdoulis.com Personally, taxes are a bargain for what I and my family receive.... when I thought about this I decided that most of my anti-tax sentiment was disapproval of what my government was doing. So I became a little more politically active .... Cheers.

I am certainly unqualified and too unaccomplished to have much of an opinion about the highest state of wu wei. However, I do have some opinions about the idea of "surrender" and "letting go". When I first read TTC and related texts I thought that I would relax, stop resisting life and go with the flow. Accordingly I can now blame the fact that I am old, fat and lazy more or less on Lao Tzu! When consulted, the I Ching later confirmed that I was an idiot! Actually going with the flow requires sensitivity that I didn't even recognize then and now strive for. It is very easy to translate ideas about surrender/worship into a passive inaction that corresponds to your unconsciously programmed attachments. If surrender and worship mean to be comfortable where you are, then you are going to go nowhere! Consider Krisha in the Bhagavad-Gita - you are going to play your part! Consider the Buddhist reflections on karma - what you will see (and try to surrender to...) is self-constructed. So consider the preferred daoist metaphor of "cultivation". If you want wu wei beyond what you can currently observe in your life, you may actually need to change. Me too!

Sorry to intrude. Just a quick question - do you have a different outcome when you focus on the two points without moving your attention slowly over the between? In my own attempts I find that moving attention slowly tends to lead to "internal wind" sensations rather than "qi". Simply plying a decent quality of attention anywhere in the area may be grounding you somewhat / balancing the way to relate to your body rather than the world. The difference between the effects of the attentional yoga I performed when trying your method on for size and what I get from sustained concentration at either location was large. Curious.

Although I would tend to agree with you it is probably strong to say that there is no link between the two at all. Think about one of the technologies we know best - fire. Observations of fire lead to theories about fire. More or less a moth to a flame. Now we have beautiful theories of fire that far exceed any technology involving a few sticks. The only ways of testing our more extreme ideas of fire involve webs of technologies that nobody understands either as components or systems... So one way of looking at this is that what most people think of as the technology falling out of science is equally pieces of conceptually polished reality which enable our theory habit. What about everyone who is certain that their theories are driving the process? They are either the sort of practioners who would rather do something interesting than to talk philosophy of science OR they have thought a little about the potential relationships between the contents of their head and the nature of reality. Especially the nature of imagination/reality. Back to the thread topic? QM has always bothered people because it allows some correct calculations while dissatisfying everyone who has thought about the very large variety of potential theories. Everyone from Solvay 1927 was very clear that the successes of QM were destroying cherished theories. With QCD there was improvement in the technological application of a method that literally corresponds to reality better than it does to our theories about it. But your use of the word theory may differ....

Well.... sort of. The philosophers critique this sort of thinking on a variety of grounds. A somewhat daoist response would be to note that the laboratory "isolation" of individual causes is actually MAXIMIZING the impact of whichever scientist does the research. If you think that who you are does not relate to the choice of controls you impose to generate an experiment, then you should be careful to compare and contrast the methods you have chosen to those used all around you in nature. Again though, this doesn't mean that experiments aren't really good learning opportunities. A well founded observation in an experiment may share something quite remarkable with the well founded observations attained during qigong; the common denominator rests in the ability to observe and think. Speaking about my colleagues more than my own work (tongue in cheek!) I will say that science in any flavour works better when we put in the effort to think clearly. Does science have answers for us? The good news is that it does offer a path to better answers then the ones we have. Cheers.

Science has given me a much better class of ignorance than I started with; rational thought is a lovely part of the mechanism for correcting mistaken beliefs. Occasionally it even helps me towards some knowledge. Why blame science for the madness of culture? Perhaps science cannot help one escape karma, and so asking materialistic (more to the point - "dead") questions takes you down the technological path. I am not sure, from a philosophical point of view, that a sage could not profitably engage in science. Other comment: 64 cases? Can the Tsez speak with the I Ching like it is a natural grammar?

Shanlung, I do very much appreciate your letting me know.

Thank you again for posting this. I am slowly brewing my way through your advice!

To return to the question: why Daoism? I come to Daoism to learn, not because I know. It would be entirely fair to say that all of my opinions about Buddhism and Daoism are, sadly, misinformed or misleading. This is because I have learned just a little, and practiced not enough. I appreciate the philosophical advantages of one set of metaphors over another, but would rather not argue on this basis! If one hasn't practiced enough ... metaphors are just that. Since both systems are rather large umbrellas, it is easy to lose the way while listening to those who have more conviction. And I would hope that adherents of either camp have conviction, as it is maybe easier to practice something that is believed and trusted. So I choose to follow my interests and curiosity. Daoist texts and teachers have been kind enough to provide some orientation and direction. I would hardly claim to be a Daoist on this basis! I am not religious, just lost. And if someone is kind enough to point out the Way? It would surely be a pity not to at least try to follow the directions given. I have certainly learned something from Buddhists as well. However when people tell me that they are all the same in the end, I am really not so sure. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam form a triad- there is a sense in which each is unbalanced on its own. Daoism sticks with people and so can be complete in itself. I will certainly have to learn quite a bit more before the "theory" that there is some underlying equivalence has any expression in my knowledge.... Cheers,

Hello, I have had a long standing interest in things Taoist. When younger I read the TTC and other classics - misunderstanding them thoroughly I leapt from the good advice of the sages all the way to becoming quite fat and lazy. Later I was able to reread them with a little more care and to discover that my qi gong practice was about neither... Now I am happy to say that I will visit here to obtain advice from those who have taken a little more care in their studies and might be willing to share.