vonkrankenhaus

Some ideas: Thinking is a bodily process, so Health and Functionality are basic to this. First off, whole brain & functioning physical body is made of food. Food must be of the type that actually can make a thinking human being in a given environment. That means no industrial or commercialized foods, no GMO, no chemicals added in any way. Whole natural food. Not canned or packaged. Live in nature, maybe do a little farming or gardening. Avoid all vaccinations. Alzheimer's disease is induced in lab mice by injection of aluminum chloride - which is in most vaccines today. Some, like flu vaccine, have mercury, which is also a serious neurotoxin. Avoid fluoridated chlorinated municipal water. Brain toxins. Avoid all recent plastic products, commercially prepared wood, and anything else gassing off endocrine interrupting chemicals. Develop natural intelligence and intuition. This means no phones, no televisions or computers - no devices - just being active in nature and talking to people and animals, etc, and dealing with real events in the real physical world, not synthetic media simulations of a fake reality featuring lying actors, etc. Study everything. Pay attention and be aware. Get in big and bad trouble and danger and work your way out of it. This builds "Will", which is the basis of all thinking. -VonKrankenhaus

The "One" has, inherently and immediately upon existing, YinYang, or "Polarity" - an inside/outside, beginning/end, and so on. That is the "Two". We never see One object bifurcate into Two physical objects, so it isn't about that. It's YinYang. It's Polarity. One doesn't move. That's right. And it doesn't "split". The movement happens in YinYang, in Polarity. OF the One. Between the poles of any Polarity - between Up and Down, Beginning and End, etc. Movement between the poles of any polarity is Qi. Qi is Movement. Movement is Change. Change is Variation. The "10,000" or "myriad" Variations. -VonKrankenhaus

I had earlier written "Three is Movement between poles of any polarity, which is how things change." Heaven/Earth is a polarity. Think of all the movement between the poles of just this one polarity. Movement between the poles of any polarity is "Qi". Movement is change, and change is variation. -VonKrankenhaus

It is Movement. Energy. Qi. "One" is the appearance of some "Thing" from Nothing. Two is YinYang, or "Polarity" that the Thing will have inherently - existence/non-existence, inside/outside, etc. Three is Movement between poles of any polarity, which is how things change. Change causes all variations of things - big. little, old, young, etc. -VonKrankenhaus

In the last 3 years I have been reading many current books about Qigong and Neigong. I had never seen these before, and had not ever really looked for them. I only knew of Chinese books about this since the early 1970s. I have study and practice these for about 48 years. I learned in a traditional school setting. I did not find Damo Mitchell book posted above to be very comprehensive. Has basic mistakes too. I think even a free PDF of the Charles Luk book "Taoist Yoga", despite its own errors and omission, combine with maybe a few web sites about basic Taoist philosophy, might be more informative. Also Yang Jwing Ming "Root of Chinese Qigong" has some beginner information, but also some bad guesses about magnetism and electricity. -VonKrankenhaus

Exactly. And that's about it. And these are not Internal Cultivation manuals or collections of meditation techniques. They are something else, something that merely "uses" these, the concepts from them, in a general way. -VonKrankenhaus

Yes, this book details what I am writing. This is the application of some principles of Internal Cultivation to the socio-political endeavor of running a municipality. The older text is more Cultivation-oriented, the newer text is more Governance-oriented. Neither is strictly a "meditation manual" at all, and are not meant as sources of meditation "techniques". -VonKrankenhaus

These are not strictly Internal Cultivation or even purely philosophical texts. People seem to hear bamboo flutes when they are brought up in conversation, as if this is mystical religious writing, or something. They represent applications of some principles of these to governing a municipality. This is, to me, like looking for "esoteric" meditation techniques in manuals of a philosophy of conduct and government. -VonKrankenhaus

I would offer that if you draw the Early Heaven sequence on the ground and align it to the sky, and you stand inside it facing South, the rising Sun light in morning enters the left eye first, so that eye must be Yin, receptive, in what is considered the Yang side of the face, the "Father" side that is at the side of the rising Sun. - VonKrankenhaus

Everyday modern media is far more persuasive and pervasive than any man of the past. Disney alone is far more persuasive of far more people than Rasputin ever was. Such that most of what people believe is true today is taken as "true" without any facts to back any of it up. -VonKrankenhaus

Mantak Chia borrowed his stuff about spirals from macrobiotics. And macrobiotics borrowed them from Walter Russell and Teilhard de Chardin, etc. You can see this because the ideas appropriated from macrobiotics do not actually correspond with Chinese YinYang, and you will see contradictions between the borrowed stuff and the rest of the text. -VonKrankenhaus

And this: "The One was its appelation, The Void was its dwelling; Nonaction was its original constitution; Harmony was its use." I think this fits what I wrote. One is a thing, and can thus be named, and its existence creates the polarity it has with the Emptiness. One came from non-being and non-action. Therefore One must be a being and action. And this Polarity has the function of "harmony" of Movement, the TaiJi shows this, and to me it means that although One has YinYang, that One doesn't bifurcate or split into "Two" separate physical things, but rather exhibits the tendency of Polarity. This is the difference between holistic monism and materialistic dualism. The One HAS two aspects, but is not two things. It is always still One. And YinYang are not things. They simply mean "polarity". -VonKrankenhaus

In there, I saw you wrote: "In general, I do not subscribe to an "Absolute Nothingness" as nothing can emerge from it without there being a potential capacity to emerge... which means there is something other than Nothing there." I would say WuJi is "Without Polarity". This means no thing(s) are there for there to be any distinguishing feature from any other. "Potential" is like "imaginary". A rock on a cliff has "potential energy" if it falls. Otherwise, it may sit there for millions of years doing nothing at all. Something Yang must happen. Rock is very Yin and has no "potential" to move by itself. Nothing will still change, as change is the only constant. The only way for No-Thing to change is to become Some-Thing. The instant Some Thing appears, or "moves", that event instantly sets the polarity between the Thing and what the Thing arose from. Before that, there was no distinction, no Polarity to discern. The "potential" of that happening is just an idea, a projection. Because "It" happened. Not "potentially", but right here now. -VonKrankenhaus

My idea: "According with Dao (like saying "As It So Happens,,,"), from the Emptiness of Non-Polarity or "Nothing", Some One thing moved and thus existed, and thus established Polarity, or "YinYang". From Polarity and the movement between the poles of Polarity arise all the variations of things". TaiJi means something like "Supreme Polarity". Some say Ji is "Extremity", but that is another meaning of Polarity, because without Polarity there is no "extreme". It's only by contrast that we could say something is extreme. -VonKrankenhaus

I see) Thanks for the convo. Well, I am not "telling" people these things so much as asking what people think. So I appreciate disagreement, and quotes and references that disagree. So statement like: "Dao has no substance and no actions, yet all substances and actions happen according to Dao." I just want to see if anyone disagrees, and why, or just whatever people might think of it. -VonKrankenhaus

We can say that about all cyclic happenings. But even cycles are spirallic and change - precesssion of the equinoxes, for example, takes varying times. And even Earth rotation speed changes as we go through space, changing the length of a day somewhat. Many things are here that were not. You can say their "elements" were here and later combined, but at one point were not combined into a given "thing", and that "thing" did not exist. A human baby is a good example. Before conception, maybe elements were there, or somewhere, but that was not that thing we call "baby". Perhaps generically "baby" has happened before and will happen again, but not "that" baby. -VonKrankenhaus

Dao does not have a body, and does not have a function. Similarly, "Literacy" does not have a body, and does no functions of its own. It is a "way" without a "source -thing". It is not the "act" of "reading" - simply the "way" of reading. And not even of any particular language. And nothing is "made of" literacy, and nothing can "do" literacy. Same way Dao, but Dao is much more than just "literacy" (which is still "kinda" a thing, but not a physical thing) while including it and many other ways many other things happen and are. Dao is just a "Way" that "things" and the "functions" of those things happen, whenever they do, wherever they do. Dao has no substance and no actions, yet all substances and actions happen according to Dao. -VonKrankenhaus

A "way" is like the "way" to read. The way to read is not a physical thing. It has not back or front, up or down, etc. Dao is the way things happen, or "The Way it Goes"", which is also not a physical thing, but includes all things and all phenomena. -VonKrankenhaus

I have had many Chinese teachers. I'm not saying all of them would agree with what I am writing now, but I did grow up from childhood immersed in Chinese culture and philosophy, and underwent traditional Gongfu and medicine training, which I am still involved in decades later. Just tossing that out for background to what I am writing. -VonKrankenhaus

Seems to me that would be WuJi if anything and not Dao. In terms of "because", I would say that there is a "Way" things happen. Very few phenomena could be said to vary from what we see happening in general. Since this is implicated in ALL phenomena, this Way they happen is too huge for the human being to see in any ordinary manner, to immense and thus unfathomable to grasp. And at some point, all of the things we see had not happened yet. We see new phenomena every day that did not exist as they are today. These things arose from "Nothing", or "No Thing". The only way for "Nothing" to change, and change is a constant, is to become "Something". That "Some Thing" will exhibit Polarity, the first of these would be something like "Movement/Stasis" and "Being/Non-Being". TaiJi is obviously about Polarity. Just look at the various Tu of it. Qi then, would be Movement or "Change" between the poles of Polarities. Like thermodynamics, or elecricity, are exhibiting. Is that enough "Because"? Or am I still missing something? -VonKrankenhaus

Dao cannot be the "One" that arises due to Dao. Looking at Zhou Dunyi TaiJiTu, this "One" arises from WuJi, from "Non-Polarity" or "Emptiness" (No Things are there). "Infinity" cannot exhibit Polarity - it is already on Top and Bottom infinitely, and Left/Right - Infinity is already in both directions of any Polarity. Some Thing must "move" and thus define itself from the Emptiness, creating the "One" and thus Polarity" (YinYang) all at once. Zhou Dunyi says "Yang is Motion" and "Yin is Rest" at the arising of One, creating instantly "Polarity". One appears, and we see Polarity arise, as shown in TaiJiTu - in Zhou Dunyi Tu this is represented by trigrams for Fire and Water as a hexagram inside, or "of", the "One". So One Yin and One Yang - this is TaiJi, the "Supreme Polarity", and not "Dao". So yes, Dao can be "deep" in a figurative sense - Dao is The Way, the "manner" in which all of this happens. What do you think of this? What am I missing? -VonKrankenhaus

I am reading that. But Dao cannot be Qi. Qi is the movement between the poles of a polarity. Dao is "The Way", which is not material, and exhibits no physical polarities at all. Dao has no beginning/end, no top/bottom, etc. "One", which arises due to "The Way", IS material. One DOES have a top/bottom, beginning/end, and so forth. So I can see how "One" is a material "thing", and I can see how One will exhibit Qi. But I cannot see how Dao can be taken as a "thing" except by mistake or by playing language for socio-political reasons. Got anything else, additional sources dealing with this? I am curious. -VonKrankenhaus

Notice what kind of "thing" they say this is: "Formless", "reaching everywhere", "the Way or Course", etc. So, unlike any and every "thing" you can see or name. And notice stuff like this: "Heaven is great; Earth is great; and the (sage) king is also great." Which means this is not a philosophical treatise so much as a socio-political one. I would not look here for the best explanations of YinYang or Taoist cosmology, for example. And this "thing" has no form - so no up/down, inside/outside, etc. It is also infinite and already everywhere, which no other "thing" is. And this is a "thing" which is described as "the Way or Course". What other "way" is an actual "thing"? The way home isn't. The way to get along isn't. Maybe I am an idiot for disagreeing with Lao Tzu, but I do not think Tao is a "thing". Let me know what you think. -VonKrankenhaus

Dao is just the "Way". Like "The Way to Read". How much does "The Way to Read" weigh? Where is "The Way to Read" located? It doesn't, and isn't. Dao is like "The Way It Goes". So Dao is not a thing. Not a power. Not a force. Not a place or destination. Dao is not "producer" or "factory". It is not physical, not a thing, and cannot produce things. Yet every thing happens according to Dao, to "The Way Things Happen". The reason the Dao that you can speak of is not the real Dao is simply that Dao is not a thing, and can thus not really be named as a thing. Whatever "thing" you can know to talk about, that thing isn't Dao. Calling Dao "God" can be a mistake, depending on what "God" is supposed to be. If a person or thing of any kind is "God", then Dao is not that, not that kind of "God". -VonKrankenhaus

YinYang is just "Polarity" and Movement between the poles of any Polarity is "Qi". Tao is not a thing and thus is not a producer, not a force, not a location. Dao is just "The Way It Goes". The only constant is "Change". That's what we study. So the only way for "Nothing" to Change is to become "Something". Some "Thing" arises, and this One thing will HAVE polarity, or "YinYang" - a Being/Non-Being, beginning/End, Inside/Outside, etc. It is still One, but it HAS Two. Since Yin and Yang are not things themselves either, but are symbolic designators of Polarity, this is what is meant by "Not Two". One HAS Two - One doesn't "split" into Two things. One HAS two - Up/Down, Inside/Outside, etc. YinYang is "Two" that is "Not Two". Movement between the poles of these and other polarities is Qi, or "energy". So this Describes Dao, WuJi, TaiJi, "Not Two", and Qi. -VonKrankenhaus