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What are the first principles of reason? What are the first principles of Ethics? How are emotions a result of reason? And what are the first principles of the reasoning that leads to emotions?

Based on my knowledge of nutritional science, it is not the perfect health diet.

I think that both the need for intellectual/analytical processes and scepticism towards such processes belongs in both fieldds. For spiritual development we need intellectual and analytical processes, and for therapeutic processes we need scepticism of the intellect. In fact i think that the intellect and the scepsis of the intellect is one of the most important combinations to have in life in general. In a sense it is rekated to the combination of scepticism and openeness which is also think is very important in life in general. And in a sense i agree that there is a therapeutic work tends to lean towards one end and spiritual work tends to lean towards the other, but i have to say i prefere both when they are similar to eachother.

Me neither, just wanted to get the facts right. Raw food is good, but not in excess as with everything. The idea of eating very much fruit and superfood is not a good idea in general in my view. They are very high in many micronutrients and that is a reason in itself to avoid eating them in excess, many micronutrients are dangerous to get too much of. A lot of people don't realise this. As an example: Antioxidants are very popular now but it's actualy very dangerous to have to much antioxidants in your bloodstream. Yes you do need them there but they occour naturally if we eat proper food, and it's actually unclear if intake of them in your food actually does any good for you. It might be very good for you on a theorethical level considering that they can reduce oxidative stress, but not when taken in excess. Oxidative stress is of very dangerous for us, but we don't fully understand the process and how antioxidants interact in the body is not fully understood either, even though they should to a certain degree reduce free radicals we also know the some antioxidants can also act as pro-oxidants. Not to mention that some are known to be poisnous. And besides that oxidation is an important part of some biochemical processes and as such we actually need free radicals, so even on a theoretical level antioxidants are protentially dangeours if taken in excess (besides being poisonous and sometimes pro-oxidative)

I have very little experience with Sticks and Batons but they hurts a lot if you get hit in not so dangerous places, and are potentially very dangerous if you hit some voulnerable places. I imagine a steel pipe would be even worse. I have no reall experience with brass knuckels, but i've heard they can do som serious damage. As for the discussion of sticks vs knife, knives are really dangerous both to wield and to face, i would much prefere to wield a stick, even against another knife. You can attack the knife hand, the head or other vital parts easier with the stick and try to keep a distance much easier, while still having the chance to take an opportunity to close in if needed. Knives are scary. A caveat is that I don't have very much expereince with knives.

First of all i have to say that suffering is not a perfect translation of Dukkha and seeing it as equivalent with the english word suffering is problematic in understanding Dukkha and the four noble truths which are rather central concepts of buddhism. Dukkha is not an easy word to translate, but we may use words such as suffering or misery as well as stress, difficulties, unease and dissatisfaction. And in general in Buddhism the view of life is not pessimistic, it is not a view that life is inherently filled with suffering. The four noble truths are more about the acknowledgement of our negative emotions and to understand where they come from, so that we can better understand ourselves and develop ourself to the affect of not having to suffer anymore. This has alredy been explained to some extent in the thread but i wanted to point it out in my post because it is important to understand. And in general i don't think buddhism has a negative view of life, instead it has a positive view of life. It explain all negativities as something we have constructed ourself, something which is not inherently natural if you so will. And it show us a path to overcome this. There are many ways to interprete the vinegar tasters in this regard, one is that buddha was a realist and simply described the taste of vinegar, another one is that the comparison is in favor of daoism and disregards buddhist teachings. It's a complex allegory if we start to analyse it. Daoism is not a tradition that lacks a goal or that is not focused on practices to attain "enlightenment", to attain ziran takes a lot of hard work for a very long time with much determination. In these regards i find Buddhism and Daoism very similar, even some of the practices are very similar, but there are of course differences both philosophically and in the practices and views of those practices. Does it work? Well as you said there are enligthened daoists and there are enlightened buddhist so it seems both path works, but does on really know whether it works before one has walked the path oneself? As for the discussion about therapy that arose in this thread, i have to ask what is therapy? Is not self-development similar to thearpy in a self? And is guidance towards enlightenement somewhat similar to therapy? And can not these models of understanding of the psyche be used for therapeutic reasons aswell as self-development? TCM is more or less therapy mostly based on daoist ideas, and there is a lot of research into buddhist psychology as a form of therapy in the west. So where does on draw the line between therapy and self-development? I guess my view is that it's all on the same scale, buddhism and daoism both can take you from severe depression to enlightenment with their methods of development of the psyche.

This is not really scientifically proven, it has for instance been shown that black tea (which is high in oxalate) actually decreases the chances of calcium oxalate kidney stones. Furthermore even though one eats nutrient with high content of oxalate it will only make up for a small amount of oxalate in the body there is usualy quite a lot of oxalte in the body (naturaly). But yes, oxalate is poisonous in high amounts but in general one doesn't have to fear this unless one has a medical condition which requires a low oxalate diet. The funny thing about spinach is that it contains a lot of calcium aswell, but it's not bioative, probable because of the oxalte but that is unclear. Kale on the other hand is rather low on oxalate and has much calcium, it's a good source for calcium.

Actually yes, because i doubt the ontology of the self, but i do not doubt existance. Could you please provide quantifiable and objective evidence of your existance, so that we can build an experiment in which we can test whether it will continue after your death. Awareness is initself a metaphysical question and not a scientific question, and there is no objective quantifiable evidence of awareness that we can use to prove that it ceases after death. Something that has not been proven in the first place can not simple been assumed not existing under certain conditions. In fact nothing can be assumed not existing under certain conditions unless we can test it in the first place.

There is no proof of councious awareness with the body either, so thus we are not aware and councious while alive either. Furthermore it is not acceptable to use the absence of evidece to assert the evidence of absence unless there is a reliable theory to test with a null result.

If you are so bound by evidence, where is the evidence that we have no loss, no sadness and no remorese when we are dead? There is no conclusive objective evidence of experiencing those things in life, we rely on empirical knowledge of them. And as for what happes to experiences and awareness after death we have no knowledge. To state that there is no loss, no sadness and no remorse in death has no basis in evidence is therefore probelamtic since we can't even objectively measure those phenomena in living entities to build an experiemnt which could produce a null result to conclude that it is likely that such things do not exist after death. Awareness is simply not well research by science, there has been some research on neurological connections to the expereince of awareness, but the phenomena still eludes scientific proof.

I guess my favourite legumes are: french puy lentils, beluga lentils, mung beans and chickpeas & green peas. But I eat other kinds aswell. You can do so much with them. One thing I haven't tried yet but what to try is to make tofu out of chickpeas instead of soy, I found a recipy on the internet. Tofu is also nice, if we count that. And considering that I would have to count soy as a favourite in a sense aswell I eat a lot of Soy.

Legumes of many kinds, root vegetables, rice.

I have to agree with this, the best way is to actualy practice and experiment for yourself. Not only is it the best way to actually know something for sure, but it's also fully adapted to you. There might be consititutional differences that applies to you, or there might be certain aspects of your life and experiences that changes how meditation will work for you. My grandmaster in Tajiquan had a standard response for all my questions during a time when i was even less experienced in it, it was "Just do it".

In general I have found that continuity and quality matters more than time spent on meditation. So i focus on doing it on a regular basis and for as long as feels right at the moment, how long i meditate varies from time to time in accord to how i feel at the time. But i try to meditate even when there is resistance even if i just do it for a short time that time. Sometimes though there might be a barrier that i have to push through but i've become increasingly better with understanding that and thus "pushing" through it. However one should still not need to force anything. As always there's a balance.

As an acupuncturist, in general there is no problem with donating blood. It will obviously effect your Xue and in some cases it should be avoided but if you feel fine there should not be much of a problem. Bloodletting has been practiced, and it makes sense in certain aspects of traditional chinese medicine to actually use as a remedy, but i would rather use some other method in such cases. Certain western studies have shown that (in general) people that donate blood are healthier than people that don't donate blood. And while i do actually think there might be benefits with donating blood aside from the good deed i have to say that i am sceptical to making any sort of conclusions from those studies. Mostly only healthy people are allowed to donate blood, and that in itself will lead to such statistical distributions.

Introductions of oneself is never easy, i'll try to be concise and factual. My practice in Taijiquan is a central part of my life today, as is my study in Daoism. Other than that i am interested in Buddhism, philosophy in general and sci-fi. I also practice Traditional Chinese Medicin professionaly but not full time, i also run my own company in IT. (I was very interested in computers when i was younger; now i ma not as interested) I have alwasy been rather philosophical, I started out with western philosophy as a child and in my teens I discovered eastern philosophy, since then I have been especially interested in Daoism and Buddhism. I am currently based in Sweden (where i was born and raised) but travel as much as I m able to.