Aithrobates

Socialism doest not work because people lose their time talking about it. Organize.

Thanks for the precision. "Karma" after all is related to all those indo-iranian words in -kar- which mean "to work, to do", to the greek "ergos", and the germanic word whe have in english as "work". It's basic meaning is down to earth. Have you read the link I provided : http://www.swamij.com/yoga-nidra.htm ? Is this good material according to you ? And what about the famous Satyananda Saraswati's book ? Is it about what were're talking, or is it the less advanced version I read about here and there: relaxation and guided meditation ?

People sharing his views, like Uzdavinys. Ustinova in "Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind" works with his view that Parmenides had underworld practices, with Apollo not as the beautifull sun god, but as an underworld denizen, etc...

I have to agree. Platonism represented a shift from Pyrhagorism, in the intellectual direction. The equation [ Pythagorism : Platonism :: Daoism : Confucianism ] is interesting. I don't know if it has an historical value, but it illustrates the fact in both civilisation a more intellectual current coexisted with a more mystical one. The difference being that platonism was born as a very divergent school of pythagorism, the same can't be said of confucianism and daoism. But this apply only to platonism proper, as scholars make the distinctions beetwin original, sometimes middle, and neo platonism. All modern labels that the ancient never used. They see the so called neo-plantonists as diverging from the true tradition, while all they did was using both Plato and older traditions, that anyway where the very traditions he claimed and changed. In the end, the last of them both Platonicians and Pythagoreans saw the books of Plato as some kind of introductions to the real deal, that was in the Chaldean Oracles ... What you say about scholars rejecting Kingsley because they worship Plato is mostly true. Still I've read some good books where the authors took his work honnestly into account. One last thing. Why is "solar" related to patriarchy ? Is it and idosyncratic concept of yours ? Or is it an old good à la Robert Graves and the like theory, where Lunar religions are in equalitarian, even matriarchal, Goddess based cultures, while Solar cults denote patriarchy ?

Well that's what I'm talking about. I do not mean any moral or religous stuff by using the word karma, just plain old causality. Here's my definition of karma: When you use senses and thoughts to pass judgments, you make distinctions, you imprint on yourself the notions that some thing are good and that you must get them, some other bad, and that you should avoid them. So you program yourself for the way you'll be thinking of and reacting to those things, by doing that you create a filter through which you'll experience things in the future, and so reinforce the imprint. That's how you cling to things and create a vicious circle of causality. Of course this is far more complex than this illustrations that relies on duality (good or bad for you). Multiply the phenomena, add more dimentions to it, and you get and idea of how it works in the context of the multiplicity of apparences. You can work with your senses and thoughts to take them just as they are, and avoid creating imprints, even the one stating that the state of counciousness you have while doing that is good and the mundade one is bad But it is way more efficient when you have the experience of Deep Sleep where you do not have any object to pass a judgment on.

Thanks. When I was a teen I had that inspiration to practice any kind of meditation while lying down. I was even persuaded that it was what was prescribed, only to re-read my sources and to found it was not... I built for myself some kind of practice that was: focusing on the secret, heart, and eyebrow chakras while (not) falling asleep. It resulted in lucid dreams that - as I was versed in traditional witchcraft in those days - I called trips to the Fairy Underworld. And one day I crossed the whole Fairy Realm in found myself in some kind of Void in the other side. I've been doing things like that for more than 15 years. So I think in my old strange way I'm good at that. Is it possible that I'm kind of karmically determined for that practice ? Or something ?

Saying that a whole spiritual tradition appeared out of the blue under proto-Buddhism influence is one thing... like there was nothing in China before, no cosmology, no shamanism, etc... It would be stupid to affirm that, and I think this is not what Beckwith says. Saying that out of its already very old traditions China produced its very own version of what was happening in NE India and Central Asia, and that it happened to be formally known as Dao ( = /darma/ ? ) since is another thing.... I think that is the question this hypothesis ask. Saying that "Daoism" is older than what have been formally called Daoism makes a lot of sense, as we can see the continuity with older practices, and that adding a new name did not change much. I totally agree with that. But from a purely historical point of view when was the term coined ? When did this tradition became refered as "Daoism", Dao Jiao ? Do we know that ? If we have a trace of this name (or another expression containing "Dao") being applied to the teaching before the 4th century, with our without etymology the discussion is closed.

Yeah but according to the book I posted the earliest form were mostly or only stillness. If it is true we should look for that form in Greece, as looking for medieval forms more oriented towards movements would be anachronic. But that's only if it is true...

I've seen argument here and there discussing the possibility of an equivalent to yoga in ancient greece. I don't have the references in mind right now. But as far as I remember none of them were very deep. The problem is that - according to some shcolars - the oldest forms of yoga were based on stillness, so if you look for some descriptions of various movements and postures in antiquity you wont find them neither in greece or india. Here's a work about early yoga involving stillness : http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/The%20Two%20Traditions%20of%20Meditation%20in%20Ancient%20India_Bronkhorst.pdf Depending on how one interprets Parmenides it is very likely that he can be seen as very incomptible with Buddism. People have been making Olp P to say all kind of things. Have you got a link or another reference on that interpretation ? You catched my curiosity ^^ My personal standpoint is that studying the text in the greek puts you mind upside down so much that compared to that drinking a whole bottle of vodka while on amanitas seems a smooth ride. But sadly academia has no room for such heroic a statement...

For sure the fact the long range commercial exchange existed since millemniums can be used to justify the current state of capitalism, that many people like to define as "globalized". History as justification is a classic element of politician rhetotic. But from there to imagine that the whole thing has ben invented to manipulate the masses... you're going too far. I'm not sure we can really discuss if, instead of showing me historical illustrations of your view, you just say that all of mine come out of some complot to rewrite history. Last time I've seen capitalists trying to prove they were right they were using police or army againts the people, or firing unionists. Not saying "But... the Tokharians lived in Inner Asia and they had an european material culture, so Eurasia allways was a big whole. We're working for global economy... What we're doing is natural."

Thanks for the reference about his position on Chinese. I find him very "original" when it comes to linguistics. He says somewhere that Avestan is not an iranian language but an iranicized indian one. I think he may be the only one claiming that. So no more Sino-tibetan as Chinese is now IE ? And no more Indo-Iranian, as Avestan is not iranian so its similarities with Sankrit do not mean anymore that Old Indian and Old Iranian were close ?

Here's what he says: Modern Standard Chinese dào form Early Middle Chinese *daw2 form Old Chinese *dawᴚ The ending in *ᴚ would signify that *dawᴚ is Late Old Chinese from Old Chinese *dawᴚa Which could be a metathesis of *daᴚwa As *m and *w alternate in Old Chinese we have *daᴚwa ~ *daᴚma : /darma/ Now whe need a Bum with a very good knowledge of Chinese, to says what he/she thinks about that.

To be more accurate: The author argues that the word Dharma would have been prononced *Darma in ancient chinese and that the normal evolution of this word in mordern chinese is Dao. He never implied that the two words were etymologycally related. But that the sounds of sanskrit Dharma would shift to Dao via the inherent mechanisms of sound changes in chinese language evolution. In a nutshell: And same thing for Gautama > Kao Tan, prononced Lao Tan because of an alternate spelling.

He's one of my favourite, for sure. Needless to say that I found the idea for my nick and avatar in one of his books. Indeed. I see plenty of other flaws in this work. I think the general idea is good, but many things bother me here and there. Like you said he does not take the similarities with greeks philosophers into account. The basis of his work is that Central Asia was very influencial (I agree with that) - and that Buddhism came to India from C.A. scythian traditions. Why not working with the idea that other people in greece were influenced by Scythians, a statement that has been made many times. So there is no contradiction in saying the Pyrrho is both related to other greeks, and to scythian derived indian proto-Buddhists, if they are all depend on a common source, that is iranian influence. The problem is that he does not speak of iranian influenced philosophers after Anacharsis and before Pyrrho. Some italian scholar (I forgot his name) described Pyrrho as some kind of Eleatic, and I can't help but seeing the compatibilty of Pyrrho with Parmenides and Gorgias. Heraclitus too is not far, according to Marcel Conche's work. And McEvilley wrote on the compatibility of Heraclitus and Buddhism. Another problem is his references to Zoroastrism, which are at the minimum, while he argues that Buddhism was born as a reaction to the dominant Zoroastrism of the Achemenid empire. I expected more flesh here to support this strong hypothesis. Perhaps he does not elaborate here because he thinks the reader will refer to "Empires of the Silk Road" where he exposes more fully his views on iranian religions ? And there is that Daosim thing that was the reason of this topic. What to think of this linguistic theory about Dao = Dharma and Lao Tan = Gautama ? The author has a good philosophical intuition, but he wrote an history book. Nonetheless it is a very stimulating read and if I find it problematic, it is in a good way, because I made me aksing a lot of interesting questions.

Ok ^^ It's ancient greek, something like "Skywalker". As a reference to the links the mediterranean had with the East. As of course we generally have this name from the East, like in Dakini. And as it was a nick given to Abaris, an Easterner that went from the heart of Asia to meet Pythagoras. The avatar is Apollo riding a griffon, griffons in greek lore are from Central Asia.

it could. if it was. but it never did.. >it was by that center that it will travel reach the others. the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope. So you think that before colonization there was no contacts, and that Europe, India and China were isolated systems ? That is the standard view. An evolutionnist view. That only recently this contacts where made possible because Europeans were the first to have the travelling means and the liguistic skills to conduct such expeditions. That before it was impossible to travel that far, and unlikely that people would learn new languages. Of course to think that you have to think that nothing ever happens in the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. No great empires, not commercial roads, no brillant civilisation, no important philosophies. Nothing to connect East and West. So you have to wait untill the modern times to see Europeans crossing the void and connect directly to India or China...

I'm allways confused when people are citing other's people book reviews in a topic... I just don't get what it means. In general, or in that case. Do you post that in order to add some material as an illustration for the topic, like when you copy/past relevant bits and pieces of Wiki ? In that case at least compile different reviews with pro an con. Or do you think that a negative review proves that the book is bad, and so that we should think, in that case, that whole idea about Pyrrho and India is false ? Because I'm sure there are positive reviews out there... I've read McEvilley, and know his thesis on greco-indian philosophical similarities. I find there are a lot of flaws in it. I'm sure you can find negative reviews about McEvilley as well... When I post the reference of book, it's to say "This one speaks about this topic, it could be intresting", I'm just sharing, NOT saying "Hey! This works prove what I'm saying is true. Read it and you'll see I'm right". So there is no need to find a had oc way (a negative review, some article, etc... ) to show the book is false, in order to prove a point. It may be the way other posters work, trying to win, to prove that theirs views are the best. But that's not what I'm doing.

Indeed Plotinus was translated to arabic, but under the name of Aristotle, and was widely known in the islamic world. That's a tricky question ^^ Greek wisdow was lost the the medieval West. It was reintroduced via alchemy, in a new form via authors like Avicenna and Averrhoes, and more massively so when the Byzanthines took the original ancient greek texts to North Italy. So some islamic authors nourrished medieval European philosophy, but they were themselves dependant on platonism, which has his roots in pythagorism, which owns a lot to Persia and Central Asia... We're talking about millemniums of civilisations interracting with each other. So the important thing is to see that East and West are one, and that all the traditions related. But having a precise historical view of how it happens... What can be said is that Central Asia, as it stands in the middle of Eurasia played a major role. Because if something was inventend in that center it could spread from there to the "peripheries" (Europe, NE, India, China). And if it was invented in one of the periphery, it was by that center that it will travel reach the others.

I'm perfectly aware that at some point the abuses of eurocentrism lead to an equally abusive "euro bashing" as you call it. But Having read a bit of his work I dont think it's the case with this one. I've not read W. o.t. C. , but fail to see how saying that something was invented somewhere is bashing elsewhere. That the influence of Avicenna spread to Europe too is a well established fact, not a provocative theory. Same thing for the presence of Buddhism in Central Asia way before Islam, and the influence it left. And same thing for the cultural importance of the iranian part of C.A. (Khorasan) during the Middle Ages. So the basic ingredients of the recipe do seem OK to me. That being said I don't work for him, so I'm not trying to persuade you to read his books BTW. If you want a book on Pyrrho & Buddhism that is not by Beckwith, there's always: http://www.indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/131

I can't answer that... I was just saying the the world that this hypothesis existed. If I had read the book seriously, like a second of third time, with all the notes, and had a firm opinion on its view I could argue. If you want to dive into that topic... read the book... So that I'll have someone to talk about it ^^ As always those wiki pages are a good starting point. But they generally abstract classic if not outdated theories, so it's not exactly the good material to criticize a just published, state of the art academic research, which precisely tries to challange those older views. Anyway the Dao-Protobuddhism link is not even the core of the book, it is just one of the elements that (if true) helps proving the main point of the author. That is: "Buddhism" in its oldest manifestations was very different that what we came to know as Buddhism. So in a sense Pyrrhonism is not Buddhism, not if by "Buddhism" we think of the classic "layers" we know form the Pali and Chinese canon. But there are older "layers": the traditions which gave birth to Buddhism "proper", as we know it, and perhaps nourrished other traditions as well.

His greek sources are not Greco-Buddhism which flourished later in the Bactrian Kingdom. There are the accounts of Alexander's visit to India, Magasthenes' Indica, and Pyrrho.

Well in that case the author is not saying that Shakyamuni actually came to China, but that his teaching did, and so that the caracter Lao Tan was invented to express that. And he is clearly angainst the hypothesis of collective consciousness. He thinks that iranan peoples, both on the iranian (Mede/Persian) empires and the scythian domain where in a good position to connect Near East, India and China. So that it's no wonder if similar ideas appears at the same time if remote places. It's just that there are people to carry them. Well in that case it is not folk ethymology, not at all, the author is working out of linguistic theories, not out of some traditionnal etymologies. It's (perhaps good, perhaps false or misguided) scientific etymology. For the reader who wonders what is the difference, here's an illustration: Near a village I know there's a place called "Pechafilou". Folks in the village are well aware that in the local dialect "pech" is a hill, but they believe "filou" to be the french word for trickster. And that there used to be tricksters, thieves, etc... on that hill. That's folk etymology. The historian on the other hand knows that the medieval lord of that hill was Lord Fillon, and that in the modern language the final -n is lost, the -ll- is depalatized in -l-, and the o closed to an "oo" ( ) that in french spelling is "ou'. So Fillon > Filou. That's scientific etymology. Yep that's a weak point in that argumentation. The author seems to write that Daoism started with DDJ. He sould be more nuanced and say that (perhaps, in that hypothesis) at some point Daoism integrated this "Early Buddism" thing. And even took its formal name from there. But the Dao that can be named is not... The linguistic passage in the book almost gave me a headache. I know nothing about chinese linguistics, and how you're supposed to reconstruct the old pronunciation from the modern one. Of course I know nothing about how a sanskrit or prakrit word was pronnounced in old chinese. A headache I tell you...

Yeah, you're right let's not fork the discussion. There will be plenty of opportunities to talk about that on dedicated topics. The question is not why saying that Sleep and Death are similar. That is so obvious that I did not even bother mentioning that. I think everyone sees it The question is why Sleep and Death are associated with the opposition of Truth and Lie ? The Greek parallel is close. Xvfana is the strict equivalent of Hypnos, two form of a common IE word, Yema and Thanatos both mean "Death", so "hypnos thanatos" = "yema xvafna". It's a good clue. We have some material about Hypnos and Thanatos, including cosmologic considerations that cross the path of the Avesta, Bundahishn, Upanishads, Ayurveda, Norse and Celtic mythologies, Babylonian datas too, etc... When I say that I do not know where it leads us, I just mean that I'm not sure yet, and won't submit a conclusion too early. I have pages of notes on that single gatha. So I was just sharing the pointers I'm working with, as I'm in no position to affirm this or that... yet But as it as to do with cosmology we're not to far for cosmogenesis and the Primeval Waters...

First, about Tiamat. She's in a dyad with Apsû. He is fresh water and she is salt water. Salt water as it burns when you try to drink it is considered fiery in many mythological contexts. So we are talking about a paradoxical Androgynous Fire-Water, a "level" beyond dualities (and our concepts about dualities) Dharmakaya if you like, or the mysterious pre-Heaven Qian-Kun unity. Is had nothing to do with non-order or darkness. It is dark and messy only to the Mind that can not make sense of it because it is beyond it. In fact "Chaos" is not even chaotic. In Hediods it's some kind of gap, but without a border because nothing else exists. Nothing to do with a messy dark soup of non-order. As for the two Minds in Zoroaster... Sadly, this is a classic exemple of how hard the Gathas are hard to traduce. In the Yasht 30 - the text about the choice about Truth and Falsehood - it is said that one is better than the other, no reference to our beloved opposition of good and evil. If you look at the first line of Yasht 30.3: aṯ tā mainyū paouruyēyā yə̄mā xvafnā asrvātəm Things get worse as the two Minds are not only Twins (yə̄mā) but also - and you'll never find that in a traduction - they are Sleeps (xvafnā) ! So what the fuck ? Xvafna closest equivalent is sanskrit svapna (sleep, dream), then greek hypnos (sleep), and latin somnus (sleep, but somnum is dream). So whe have two kind of sleep or two kind of dream ? Don't scratch you head too much on that as it gets even worse. Because yə̄mā in this dialect of avestic, or yima in the other, are just old good Yama in sanskrit, that is "twin", but also the God of Death. So the two Minds are Twins and Sleep and Death. What the fucking fuck !? But in greek mythology Hypnos (Sleep) is the twin of Thanatos (Death)... So I don't really know where this leads us. But it seems that we touch to something too old for our modern Mind to make sens of. Like the pre-creation state it is too paradoxical to understand.

According to Ayurveda cannabis has to be used mixed with other plants balance its negative effects. Vacha (calamus root) is one of them. I love calamus, BTW Try searching "Ayurveda cannabis calamus" and you'll find the full list. Maybe CTM has something similar ?