Aithrobates

I wish there was more info available on the spiritual aspects of tea drinking. I remember reading on some random website stuff about seeing the five elements in the process. Water, the heat of fire to boil it, the wood of the tea itself, etc... But is it true..?

I think something really happened this night. Since this morning I feel strangely tired, something must be going on... Wait. No. It's just that I've been up very late to watch the moon. People are obscessed by the "End of the Word" because they feel that our civilisation is indeed at its end. But, it will not end in some near prophetic future. It already came to an end. Prolly diring a genocide or a world war.

The historic tablet is never labeled "of Thoth" but of "Hermes Trimegistus". I don't think anyone during the Renaissance was aware that Hermes was an interpretatio graeca of Thoth. And in the Corpus Hermeticum Tat and Hermes are different persons. That's the first time I hear of this modern work. It's confusing, indeed.

Yes, exactly. It's a foundation stone of alchemy so elements shared with other brand of alchemy appear. Perhaps we could read it an comment it in this thread ? Lets maybe start with the text in latin, as it was used during the Renaissance when it became so influencial ? (The older versions are in Arabic, and before that Greek is plausible). This is pretty simple latin. I think even without any latin training someone who knows a romance language can read it. The latin version and traductions are available everywhere, like on the wiki page for "Emerald Tablet"

For ages people talked about being from another world manifesting, among other things, as luminous phenomenas, visiting our world, abducting humans... They called it fairies, or by any other cultural name. Now that the collective representation of the universe we live in has shifted, we see the "other world" as what is beyond planet earth, and the beings frorm this other world as inhabitants from the other planets. One day in several centuries people may belive that our vision of the universe was totally false, and that what we percieved as other systems are in fact something else. They will have another boundary, another threeshold beyond which lies the familliar universe, and will give a new name for those being, a new name and a new representation for their home.

Yes. It is about how animals are raised, how plants are grown. And so that is more of a collective political problem thant an ethic individual one. After all food industry is that, an industry, like all the others. Construction workers die all the times of accidents, proportionally they die more than soldiers. Should we go living in the forest, avoid buldings to avoid that ? The true question is what to do about it ? Assume that we can nothing ? Build our own homes (but again how are the construction materials are produced ? is not this wood out of a rare tree, etc... its endless...) ? Join or support the union that protects the workers ? So the problem is not specific to food. It's about how our industries, food, construction, or whaterver, are managed. I'm not trying to propose a solution here: socialism, small scale units of productions, non-corporate non-governemental captitalism, etc... (Of course I have my own opinion, but that's not the point). I just want to put my finger on the fact that the way we produce everything is problematic and causes animal/human/environemental/... suffering. Even the network we are using right now to speak about this issue is fluelled by an insane amounts of energy. It need oil and coal to work, it generates pollution. Did you see those documentaries about whole mountains being destoyed in order to exploit the coal needed to feed the data centers ?

No society values milk so much as we westerners do. Look at the cultures that have a lot of milk, say because they are nomad pastoralist. They do not drink a lot of raw milk. They make cheese, butter, yoghurt, alcoholic beverages, etc... The bacteria transform the milk in something else that is OK for the human system. ( You can still have problems with the fat, like myself. I do not digest cow fat anymore, I barely eat the flesh of this animal, and too much (I mean really too much) cow cheese, or cream, will cause me troubles too. But I have no problem with other kind of cheese (goat, sheep). ) This shit about lots of milk being very good for you is just propaganda from the industry. Generations of kids eating their full of sugar cereals with milk for each breakfasts... I'm from Europe, so I dont know if those pictures we see in the US shows of milk given with meals at schools, but that does not sounds too good.

Yeah the foamy piss is strange... Many people just don't digest milk right. Maybe that's the case with you ? It is true that goat milk is easier on the system of most people. I've tried it for some time, it's better, but not good enough, so I gave up on raw milk. Personnaly I make ayran/doogh at home. I digest it without problem. Not the same taste, but you have your white milky beverage.

ISIS is quite autonomous now. And the US support Al-Nusra, that is Al-Qaida, like in the old days, against ISIS. But it's like choosing plague over cholera. So it basically the same.

The greek philisophy was very diversified. What you describes mostly fits the Athenians schools (the Academist, both Platonits and Skeptics, the Perpipatetics). But there was so much more... In a sense you're right because those Athenian varietes became quite the reference in the consciousness of the modern westerner, it is, sadly, the definition of greek philosophy. Anyway, greeks were not greek. They spoke greek but lived everywhere from Gaul to the Hindu Kush. The were Gauls, Sicilians, Egyptians, Persians, Bactrians, Indians...

- Peter Kingsley in Reality - David Abram in The Spell of the Sensuous As I have said in others post, I'm not a big fan of Aristotelician logic, that I see as the beginning of the end, a step on the way to our modern, dead, logic. But the difference between the classical logic of antiquity and the modern variety lies not in logic in itself. It lies in orality. In the times of Aristotle and Plato, the greek society still had a traditional and oral culture. Of course writting existed, but old traditions were still very present. And so the practice of logic was oral. In was a discipline you had to apply in a discussion among philosophers, so that you would not propose an unworthy argumentation. This way it was a pratice. Instead of following your impulsions and telling whatever you liked too, you had to ponder your words, to force the mind to act in a certain way. As insatisfactory as I personnaly judge it, Arsitotelician logic was still a way to limit the mind. But now logic has everything to do with being written. It's basically mathematical formulas on paper or screen. And you know the result of this: Because it is written and seems less transitory that the spoken words, we are tricked into believing that what we have before our eyes some kind of eternal rule. Something that has been proven, and can be held true forever. And so instead of the mind actively controlling itself, we get the mind passively being controlled by a set of artificial conclusions that it delude itself to be the truth. Now taken together classic and modern are alike because they focus more on the rules of logic themselves than on the premices - that have to be the perceptions. But they are also very different because the classic variety is a practice, while the modern one is an abstract way of proving abstract things. The kind of logic I defend is the one which starts with perceptions, taken as face value. Karl too, but he thinks that it is an integral part of Aristotelician logic, not me. We may differ only on labels. Or one of us may be wrong about Aristotle. I'll try, in my next posts, to stop talking about logic - I thing I've made my point already - and to go back to perceptions, distinctions and suffering.

Well it's getting us far from the root of all suffering (or not ?)... But I have allways looked at the sad history of the 19-20th with the eyes of an anti-capitalist. I think that local factions of capitalists were fighting each other, and so had to produce nationalist ideologies to support the claim to rule such or such country. Before that kings and noble were justifiying their rules by claiming divine right. Religion, not nationalism was the common ideology. People flet more Christian than Basque or Venetian, etc... The revival of Platonism since the Renaissance was then an attempt to "upgrade" christianism, and so was an universal project, not limited to a country. But with the advent of capitalist states, nation became the new reference. Everybody had to exalt its identity and so romantism, nationalism, racism, and so on.

ChiForce: Oops sorry for the confusion. I actually thought that you were referring to the content of the topic and to the posters talking about logic here. My bad. I'll have to sleep some hours before deciding if your post came too much out of the blue, and if it was not clear, or if I'm too tired... Providing that I feel like sleeping the second hypothesis seems likely. I never heard of this person but he inded looks hilarious. Marblehead: Yeah... Ego... but well it's just a forum. It can be annoying, but it's not really a bad thing. I have nobody to talk about such thing IRL. So it's better to disagree with you guys than not to talk about it at all. The fun thing being that my remark was totally out of context as we can see now...o_0

The "next Jesus Christ" ? As for my own posts: I'm not preaching. The topic of logic came in that thread, I just gave my view of it. That's all. I noted that there was a confusion here, modern, ancient, eastern and western logic not being separated, I just wanted to contribute on this subject. That's true. Philosophical fashion changed all the time, and so ? Does it change the fact that western logic is rooted in Aristotle. I don't understand your point. Who claimed in this thread that Plato and Aristotle where the main themes of the late 1900's ? Same thing. Who claimed here that logic would "save the world" ? Making us saying extravagant things so that you can prove us wrong by contesting those word we never wrote... I really enjoy this forum, but very often people will think that the discussion is a contest and try to bash you, make fun of what you're writting, like if we were trying to prove who is the smartest... It's annoying :/

If your talking about what most people now name "logic" now, I agree. 100% But again, that is now what I'm talking about. What was distorted in order to gave birth to that sick game was entirely another thing, very close to Eastern paradigms. It has been hidden when latter philosophers re-interpreted it according their own views.

What I've been trying to say is that true logic is not human constructed. That's why ancient greeks never claimed logic was a smart invention of their own, but a divine gift. Again "logic" as been confused with this intellectual game of positive knowledge, of paradigms held true, untill a shift will propose another one. You observe that there is both light an darkness in the world, and so that both light and darkness are aspects of Reality, and so that you must accepts that they are one, despites the fact that the mind finds it paradoxical. This is logic. But if you start claiming that light is good and dark bad, because you like the day better, and that there are dangerous animals roaming in the night... Then you are etablishing a systems based on human preference, and beliefs, that is constructed. That is not logic. Same thing if you're doing science and etablish an hypothetical system, say that the cycles of light and darkness are caused by the mouvements of spheres inside a geocentric universe. This become the truth and stays like that untill someone comes with an heliocentric model. That is not logic. Because it is as well based on belief, belief that you hypothesis is right, even if you can not verifiy it. The first case is based on perceptions only, on evident things, it does not call on human judgement, it just take nature as it comes. The two others includes judgement, distinctions, classifications, speculations about non evident things, etc... Human constructs. Of course the greeks abandonned this for the aristotelician approach, and so in the west we now call logic this kind of artificial, dead ,contructs. But Indian and Tibetan logic kept the old logical ways.

Please note that I never talked about formal logic. I was talking about the tetralemna and so obviouly evoking buddhist logic, and other related logics. Anyway it's a good point. Logic in our minds has been confused with that intellecutal game that is formal logic, a modern, western variety. It is a descendant of arsitotelician logic, and is based on the dilemna. You can read eveywhere about this dilmena, about this principle of noncontradiction, and you'll see that it is attributed to earlier philosophers, because we read them with the eyes of old good Arsitotle. Parmenides is specially held responsible for that. But if you read his fragments you'll see something else. Something very close to Buddhism and Vedanta. And something he's not personnally responsible for, as it was given to him, as it is, by a goddess.

Logic is not intellectualism. Logic exits to free us from illusions. With the good premices, that is taking perceptions as face value, and working from there. The mystical and the intellectual both dream about things that can not be perceived, and assume their are because he/she is inspired to think them (mysticism), or infers that its right to to think them (intellectualism). In both cases they work on non-evident things. This is not the way to be in the Now, because you dream of things that possibly were, are, or will be; instead of percieving perceptions, and so percieving how the mind works. It's easy to see that Rality has apparences, and that if we focus only on them we are deluded, because there is "something else" beyond, too. But it we chose to focus instead only on the "something", because we can feel or think it, we are equally deluded. We live only with one half of Reality. By direct use of the perceptions we can experience that 1) there are apparences, 2) they are illusory, so 3) there should be something else too, but 4) the apparences are still here. That's logic. Not the apparences, Not the truth beyond, not both, not neither. The only path left is what you'll call "Emptiness", because the mind needs a label. That is logic, but that is not something the mind can grasp intellectually. The mind wants distinctions, rules, dualities, it does not satisfy with the tetralemna. We think that the intellect is rational, but it is not, it hates logic, because it craves for dinstinctions, it is dying to know what to fear, and what to desire. So back to my points: distinctions Some people love the apparences, and fear the infigurable beyond, often because for them it represents void, darkness, death. But both mystic and intellectual persons feel safe with the beyond they believe they can figure, and try to avoid being deluded. But it is the nature of Reality to have deceiving apparences, so we have to be deluded, and just not feel good or bad about that.

I agree 100% with that. I would say that distinction (good/bad, any dualities) is the root of suffering, and the very process of making up a bad we can fear / a good we can fear loosing comes before the fear itself. But that is only an approach, and before/after is just another duality. So basically it is the same thing. I'm just not used to formulate it your way. Dinstinctions, dualities, craving for good, attachement, fearing bad, or fearing loosing good.. It's all the same process.

I understand what you mean about hierarchy. But I think the diagrams in themselves are just representations and do not carry this notion. Of course the passive position in the center, receiving all other influences, provoques this kind of interpretation, but we could very well put another element in the center to emphasize how it can take care of the energies from the four others. If we look at the circle (generation cycle) and star (control cycle) diagram, well it is a pentacle. But form where did the pentacle came from, before being a fancy esoteric neo-stuff symbol ? Here is an article: http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PP.html The author has a hypothesis about how elements should be associated with the five points. If he's true the pentagram is close to the circle diagram. Notice that the mesopotamian pentagram is associated with the five planets. Four representing the four directions and the last one (Venus) the vertical axis in the middle. So it correspond to the square diagram as well. Joel Signeur tells us about the symbol he uses to protect himself from entities: http://www.chineseshamanism.com/page7/page10/page10.html It is a square below a triangle below a circle. He explains that the square is the material world and the triangle a direction pointing to the circle, the spiritual world. He says that he found out this simbol by himself, only to find out later that is was used in Buddhism. But what is a pentacle if not a square (the four directions) plus a triangle for the vertical direction, and a circle around the pentagram ? So the square symbol with a middle and the star and circle shaped diagrams appears to be related. Variants. At least IMO ^^ The planet Venus in the center (that is Ishtar, Anahid) calls for the NE notion of "Mistress of the House" that is the notion of a femine element, passively receiving cosmic energies, but actively distributing them in the world. Suhrawardi gives this name to the Angel of Earth. If we read this like sociology, the Mistress seems to be some kind of projection of a sumissive housewife, passively doing her job in the center, the house. But the ancients did not have the same ideas about gender issues as we do. So it would anachronic to think so. And we should keep in mind that in many traditional societies women are really ruling the house, at the price of being globally excluded from outdoor (or out of village/fields) acitivities. To a society that has not even the shadow of a clue about feminism, this status means a kind of power that is complementary to the ones men own. So yes in a sense it is herarchical, but only if we are aware of patriarchy and his men over women hierarchy. In a society that is not aware of that, this symbol is not consciously hierachical, because gender differences are seen as natural and not as socially constructed. Of course a modern seeker that is aware of this issue may prefer to use the form of the diagram that as no risk of being interprered as a hierachy. But as symbols are just symbols, the hierachy is only in the intepreter's mind.

Interesting. I was not aware of that. Could you elaborate ? I was thinking that is was just a possible representation of the wuxing (The star shaped diagram being another one). In my mind it does not imply any kind of hierarchy: it's a reprensentation of the capacity that Soil has to contain all other forces (It has Metal in it, It absorbs Water, when Wood is burned by Fire the ashes go to the ground).

I've been asking myself the question of the how elementals sets from different cultures correspond to each other. I've came the (hypothetical) conclusion that the common point seemed to be something about 4 elements plus 1 other that is the space, the void, the "place", in which the other manifest. In Chinese term Soil is the ground for all others to manifest in. How does this correspond to the western Earth/Wind/Water/Fire+Ether ? Water and Fire are the same. As noted above Air matches more closely Wood. If Soil, as the manifestation locus, is not the western Earth, it leaves us with Metal = (Western) Earth. In the Japanese system we have Earth/Wind/Fire/Water+Void which is closer to the western set. And the Hindo-Tibetan Earth/Wind/Fire/Water/Space (Akasha) is too. The only difficulty is why Earth = Metal. Maybe because Earth in this context correspond to what is hard, solid. In Aristotelician terms Earth is cold and dry, which fits Metal. When Metal generates Water by condensation it is because of its coldness and of it's inability to be wet, which leaves the water to grow outside, instead of being absorbed inside it. In the Bundaheshn we have an iranian set of elements that is Earth/Wind/Water/Fire+Light. Another problem. Why in Empedocles (the first attestation elements in the West) is there only four elements ? Where is the fifth that exists in other traditions and will later appear in Aristotle ? You have to see that in this poem, there is no mention of "elements" (stocheia) they are refered as "roots" (rhyzomata). Now Hesiod says that Earth and Sea have their roots close to Tartarus. And we know from the study of greek cosmology that Heaven too joins with Earth and the Underword in the paradoxical place that is Tartarus. So it's possible that in that context Tartarus is the name of 5th element. Studying Empedoles, I've came to think that maybe there was a connections to the trigrams. Zeus(Heaven)-Hera(Earth) could correspond to pre-Heaven Qian-Kun, and Aidoneus(Fire)-Nestis(Water) to post-Heaven Li-Kan. We need a bit of numbers. As Aidoneus is Hades and Nestis his wife Persephone the two couples are... actual couples. If you look at the numerical values of the many name he uses for the "roots" you see that Heaven/Air is 9, Earth 1, Water three, Fire 12 which reduces to (1+2) three. http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/AGEDE/Isopsephia.html 9+1 = 10 => 1 So Zeus and Hera are mysteriously One, like Qian/Kun in pre-Heaven state Both Aidoneus Both Aidoneus and Nestis are 3, they are hard to discriminate, they are mixed (?) which would point to a similarity to Li/Kan, as they are kind of a mixed result, Qiand/Kun having exchanged their middle lines.

OK. I'll wait for your posts, and respond (if I feel I have something contructive to say) only when enough has been said, so that we have a real discussion not a chit chat. In the mean time I'll try to browse my books to provide more precise expositions and references. Note that the disagreement is perhaps not so deep. My english skills are limited so that I have a hard time writing long and nuanced argumentations. I was mainly expressing the fact there was no need to fight over Plato, like Innersound was starting to, as Plato is so much complicated to interpret. ( I fact I do not believe that there are no system at all in Plato's work, but that there are several systems , or several variations of a system. Plato exposes the doctrines of many of the traditions he knew about, mostly Pythagoreans ones (often first hand knowlege from initiates he actually spoke to). Where are the parts where he just exposed doctrines ? Where are the parts where he agrees with what he exposed - and that consitute his own system ? )

Plato's work are not a description of some kind of system we can reconstruct by reading his numerous dialogs. It was well known in the antiquity that they where some kind of introduction to the real teaching that was oral.,that the theories you got from there had to be left behind latter. In the end of antiquty, the (so called neo) platonist or pythagorist valued the writting of Plato exactly in the same way, and they believed that the true teaching was in the Chaldean Oracles. His work (like Aristotle's one) has the virtue to compile elements from many teachings that were available at the time. We can use it as some kind of encyclopedia. But in doing this you have to be cautious as he introduces interpretations, and true innovations (like the idea of One Soul, as opposed to the Two Souls that we find before him, which is a lot like Hun & Po). The intel provided can sometimes be very helpful in completing the fragmentary knowledge we have of other philosophers. But scholars tends to do the exact opposite, seing Plato and Aristotle as the most serious point of references, and interpreting other tradition in the light of the Athenians. So I don't think there is a reason to compete in order to show who as the best understanding of Plato. Those works, we are arguing about here are nothing more than textbooks. They are wonderfull pieces of litterature, even of humour. But the real teaching is not here. The real teaching lies in the fact the the teaching is not here. Earlier traditions had a stronger initiatory on/off nature. "Take this teaching in your face, it puts your vision of the world upside down. Now you that can see yourself as dead to your former vision of the world,be reborn as a one you knows !" Plato created a more progressive, and also more intellectual, way, a kind of middle ground that can be explored step by step before facing Reality. The dialogs are part of that, introductions to the doctrines, that make available the possibilty to think about the doctrine before (or without) doing the practices. If you want to know what "Platonism" is about read the Oracles, or the Avesta, or the Torah... or ... etc ... : " ... agreeing with Plato what the Brahmins, the Jews, the Mages, and the Egyptians, have etablished "

I use the parallel edtion from Prohyptikon Publishing. Chinese text and the classic Legge traduction. It's very cheap. The only thing I ask of a traduction is to help me understanding the orignal text. Legge's version is not allways good at that. But I cross read it using the ctext.org version, with the included dictionnary. This edition may not be the better but at least it's cheap and small, you cant take it everywhere with you. I enjoyed very much the David Hinton version of the Inner Chapters. He has a tradction of the TTC too, it should be good. BTW, I'm still looking for a good parallel edition of Chuang Tzu...