Kirran

I speak Spanish, if that counts for anything! With a pretty Chilean flavour - got family there. Welcome!

De is a tricky one - I felt I had a good understanding of it, but it left. Looked at various explanations, but they were a bit scattered! What would you guys say De is? Thankyou!

Atman = Brahman? (if you're familiar with the terms...)

Thankyou! I think a lot of it is based on "I've got mine!" - but I'm rather more of the "From each...to each..." school.

I hear the Remain campaign is well-organised - you'll have to switch sides My father has somehow managed to become a prominent figure in the Remain campaign in his area - he's gonna be interviewed by CNN International!

Who would decide what is illegal? Also, last year my mother got breast cancer. She had a mammectomy, went through chemo and radiotherapy, and is now OK. Didn't spend a penny. What would happen to people who didn't have the money to have paid for that? Leave them to it?

How would healthcare work? How would prisons work? How would the government be funded? How would it be elected or chosen? It'd be fair to say I am anarchist also - but these things still have to covered in a stateless or near-stateless society.

Well, fair enough. Sadly, this isn't the kind of stuff you can translate easily into partisan political stances.

Who do you have time for?

Again: not monolithic. The left includes Noam Chomsky, Leo Tolstoy, Gandhi and Nicola Sturgeon. Just as the right includes Mussolini, David Cameron, Nigel Farage and David Duke.

Thanks for the responses everyone. This had cleared it up pretty well for me. Old River, your explanation was especially nice. Well, OK! But I suppose I meant the use of the term - I don't think it's meant to be advocating what's sensible, just pointing out the concept. It's the saving that is the dharmic action, not the admittedly foolish way of trying to go about it

Well, that's there as an element, certainly. But I don't understand it to define the modern left. When you say "we", which group do you refer to?

Quoting properly got confusing, so I'm gonna just do it like this: r.e. whether things would be better were we "solidly dominated by socialist rule" - thoroughly depends on the nature of the socialism. It isn't homogenous. I'd rather you'd be a bit more civil about it, as well - you may think my opinions are invalid, but you could keep it to yourself. r.e. it being a start - I don't think so, really. I think we're better off staying in, where we can be a part of reform. r.e. Cambridge - I'm not from Cambridge, and am just here temporarily, so I can't comment too accurately on that.

If you guys think Obama's a socialist, and that the SNP are socialist extremists, you're sure lucky I'm not in power anywhere In fact all our major political clusters in the modern West are solidly dominated by the objective right wing, and towards the authoritarian side rather than the libertarian too. Neo-liberalism and free market economics are what's causing the problem, and that won't change with us leaving the EU. I grew up in the UK's most Europhile county

Hmm, OK, this is making sense to me. I have been beginning to renege on my opinion that Brahman and Dao are different. A beautiful analogy, by the way. Really captures it.

Well then, allow me to relate a brief story: "A sage, seated beside the Ganges, notices a scorpion that has fallen into the water. He reaches down and rescues it, only to be stung. Some time later he looks down and sees the scorpion thrashing about in the water again. Once more he reaches down to rescue it, and once more he is stung. A bystander, observing all this, exclaims, “Holy one, why do you keep doing that? Don’t you see that the wretched creature will only sting you in return?” “Of course,” the sage replied. “It is the dharma of a scorpion to sting. But it is the dharma of a human being to save.” Does dharma, as advertised here, relate to your understanding of De? Thankyou for your response Michael Yeah, virtue didn't seem quite right, somehow - what does it mean to be the action of Dao? If Dao is not static?

Interesting! Thanks Marblehead. Are you at all familiar with the concept of 'dharma'? I am picking up a great many parallels, and they may even be the same thing.

Sivaya Subramuniyaswami is the name of the person referred to here as Gurudeva, in case people think that was just random.

Sivaya Subramuniyaswami was someone who never had one guru, one teacher, one tradition - he basically found his way to Self-Realisation by a combination of willpower and fortuitous meetings with a variety of teachers (catalysts, he termed them), but was in particular based in his early teachers, esp. Mother Christney. The traditions they adhered to, and that he was therefore grounded in, were Christian esoteric traditions. Notably, Rosicrucianism. As a result of all this, the path he travelled, and the way in which he taught others to follow him, was very much grounded in a kind of esoteric mysticism. When he was a sadhaka, he needed that complexity, that esoterica. So he then attracts those students who also need that. This doesn't mean it's needed for everyone, or that everyone's way to nirvikalpa samadhi needs that. It may be that on other routes that absolute balance comes in your attaining to nirvikalpa samadhi.

I'm not entirely sure how one can say it's a dead-end, exactly. Nirvikalpa samadhi isn't so much an experience as the only possible non-experience. There is no separation left. No duality. It's not like you're just gonna go live in nirvikalpa samadhi, and it's not exactly that you are doing work while in it. But it is the understanding coming from it, and the grounding of that in yourself, which takes you places. Not necessary. But going into nirvikalpa samadhi and then integrating it into yourself is one of the ways to attain enlightenment. There are others, too, certainly. In my understanding, of course.

Greetings, all! I’m Kirran. I live in the UK (grew up in Wales, now live in England) and am basically an Advaita Vedantin (nondual Hindu philosophy that I imagine many of you have heard about). On a census form, I tick ‘Hindu’ under the religion section! But I think Daoism is really lovely. I’d like to learn from y’all. Be nice to speak to you all.

Thanks Marblehead! One can't really speak in nondualist structures My beliefs have nothing at all really in common with some Hindu philosophies. And a great deal with others. Practice, similar. I am certainly more similar to forms of Daoism in both respects than to forms of Hinduism such as Gaudiya Vaishnavaism! Thankyou for the welcome. I'll settle in, I am sure.