Taomeow

What is it?

Sushi at Ichiro's -- before that something sounding also Japanese but actually Finnish, Geisha chocolates and before that, a 16-hour fast (midnight till 4 p.m.) because I knew those chocolates were coming.

From daybreak's radiance light your pipe, and brew midnight in your coffee pot.

Interesting and synchronistic, believe it or not, that you should get this idea to back-to-the-future the presidential candidates. Well, there's no doubt that Marty is the time traveler!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGXHHOPXEQ

"And semen have ticks?" No, of course not. It's seamen. They have seamen ticks.

The Compassionate Fool by Norman Cameron My enemy had bidden me as guest. His table all set out with wine and cake, His ordered chairs, he to beguile me dressed So neatly, moved my pity for his sake. I knew it was an ambush, but could not Leave him to eat his cake up by himself And put his unused glasses on the shelf. I made pretence of falling in his plot, And trembled when in his anxiety He bared it too absurdly to my view. And even as he stabbed me through and through I pitied him for his small strategy.

I am the punishment of god. If you haven't deserved it, god wouldn't send you such a horrible punishment. ~~Temüjin Genghis Khan

Thank you for the invitation to interpretation. Here's mine. (15 years of I Ching experience. ) You got an auspicious reading, but the question you asked was formulated in such a way that you can't use it in any pragmatic fashion. You essentially asked how you would feel (or fare) if you were an entrepreneur. The I Ching told you you would feel good. This does not answer the "how do I get there" question that's really on your mind -- you already know what you want, what you don't know is how to act toward getting what you want. If I were in your shoes, here's how I'd ask the question: "I divine my best course of action toward becoming an entrepreneur. Please give me an image." Also, when getting a changing line (or lines), you need to consider it your main answer. The resulting new hexagram is the most likely outcome of taking the course indicated by the changing line(s).

Thank you, Gatito! Good luck with your version!

Not in Enoch's book what that dweeb Charles Dawkins wrote: "You are a robot."

A Burnt Ship Out of a fired ship, which by no way But drowning could be rescued from the flame, Some men leap’d forth, and ever as they came Near the foes’ ships, did by their shot decay; So all were lost, which in the ship were found, They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drowned. -- John Donne

LOL, it wasn't even about the munchies, it was specifically about the banana. After several more attempts to find the banana I wanted, I quit eating them for a few years, then I sort of made a deal with them, I'll eat a banana when my sensory memory sleeps, I won't when it's awake. To be fair, the same goes for apples, strawberries, grapes... pretty much all fruit. And the rest of edibles. With the exception of things totally absent from my previous life's sensory memory -- lobster, oysters, avocados. No frame of reference, so I am never disappointed with these.

I saw several different varieties of wild bananas in the rain forest in the Amazon. Didn't eat any though, I was going through shamanic ceremonies and all my senses were altered, and an absolute aversion to all things sweet was part of it. Hummingbirds thrive on them though. A ripe banana falls on its own wide leaf and starts oozing and fermenting and turning into an alcoholic beverage. Hummingbirds flock to the spot and get wasted and then dance in the air chaotically like the proverbial drunken sailors, and look like handfuls of gemstones thrown into the sky, falling back down, thrown upward again. Totally bananas. Thelearner, the non-bland bananas I remember as a rare treat in the old country came from somewhere unaffected by that man-made Panama disease (all diseases of all monocultures are man-made, in nature there's no way they can eliminate a whole species, not in a hundred million years. Mass epidemics are one of the blessings of civilization, all of them.) I don't know where they came from, but they tasted like paradise up until I moved to the US, and that bland banana you're talking about was one of the biggest cultural shocks. Not because it's one of the biggest but because I was bent on having a banana first thing upon arrival, so it was one of the first.

I'm back in the USSR... You don't know how lucky you are, boys... 3bob: bananas can be frozen, absolutely. Trader Joe's sells frozen bananas dipped in chocolate. They turn into ice cream of sorts when frozen. Different but not bad at all. I used to actually make banana ice cream at home by simply putting a frozen banana (peeled in advance and sealed in a ziploc bag before going to the freezer to freeze) through a monster device I have in my kitchen. Bananas are not a perfect food. Too sweet. Spike your blood sugar as readily as a piece of cake. If that's not a concern, or if someone needs to gain some weight, then they are OK. For better or for worse, I'm old enough to remember what they tasted like before they started messing with them, genetically modifying them, applying zillions of tons of chemicals, growing them on mineral depleted soils, ripening them by gassing them, etc.. Long ago, far away. And they were very very rare then and there. But you could kill for a real banana then and there, it was worth it. Or even get married for it. Then and there, I met this guy, we started talking about all sorts of things, including food, and I said I loved bananas. No one sold bananas anywhere to anyone at the time. But the next day the guy showed up at my door with a bunch of bananas. I don't know who he had to kill for them. I knew I was getting bribed. It worked. It's not for nothing that they didn't allow women to eat bananas in Hawaii. We lose all control... over a real banana of course, not a GM/gassed one.

Moment of your own Native Americans called "beings walk in skins."

"And some nice spice too," the queen asked Columbus, "and coffee, tobacco..."

I've encountered practitioners like that, accomplished hard MA folks who take on taiji. From what I've seen (and pushed hands with), I believe it's extremely difficult to combine the two, more so than either one by itself, you do like a challenge, don't you? I also came from TKD, but not a whole lot of it. The first thing I had to do was unlearn all of it . It's much harder (not just physically but conceptually, first and foremost) to unlearn for someone who has invested a lot into acquiring it though. I do know a formidable taiji player who used to be a Western style wrestler. Forty years of taiji later, all that remains from that earlier art is killer qinna that is distinctly flavored with wrestling holds, but the rest is pure taiji, very high level, excellent kung fu!

It's individual and unique to the person. The important thing is, they are your weak spots, and strengthening yourself in this particular area may mean gaining or losing something, physical, mental, spiritual, or even financial. I wasn't strong enough when I started, so for me, it was about gaining physical strength at that point. A few guys coming from hard MA, on the other hand, were physically very strong but completely unable to yield, to get out of the competitive mindset, to "invest in loss" -- and in taiji it means your strength is "borrowed" or "hijacked" by the more skillful opponent and used against you. So they had to work on something entirely else in the course of their gongfu -- kung fu -- acquisition. I started out, the way the teacher put it years ago, "too flexible," I thought it's about the body and was surprised that it was referred to as a problem -- no, it was about the mind. Too flexible. Too adaptable. That's a difficult spot to work on because basically that's what is required of you in taiji -- but then you have to also know how to stand your ground, protect your space, and not adapt obligingly in each and every situation but make it necessary for the opponent to adapt to you. In other words, you need will, you can't be a doormat in MA! -- but you need to be humble too!-- otherwise you're overboard with your confidence and physically it will translate into hardness and forcefulness and a skilled opponent will immediately use this against you. And so on... There's a lot actually... mercifully no one person has "all" the countless possible weak spots all at once.

The soft arts are also mastered via hard work and self-imposed great difficulty, just of a different nature. Some of it is physical -- e.g. masters of old used to do Single Whip under the table and stand like that for the longest time -- it does not leave cuts and bruises on the outside, but try a very low stance for a very long time and you'll be begging to be clubbed on the head instead! Calligraphy masters suspended a string from the ceiling and tied their elbow to its end, to teach their forearm to be perfectly horizontal as they write. (I don't have a string from the ceiling, but just minding this alignment is really hard work -- and the mind works harder not letting this arm tense up, stiffen, go numb.) But then this calligraphy-trained hand can put down the brush and take the sword, and "effortlessness arrived at via great effort" will be wielding it. And a lot of difficulty is involved in mastering and controlling your own "everything," including things that are not your strong suit -- persistence, discipline, full awareness at all times, not getting dragged by your thoughts and ideas away from your intent, keeping the mind and the body together as one unit, and a lot more. I remember being surprised and then shocked when I discovered that in taiji, the hardest thing to master is my own mind. I was a very experienced meditator and my emotions were a "know thyself" bonanza, but taiji revealed all the weak spots, hard to notice until they are in the way of your progress, and then hard to overcome -- the easy ones are already gone, and your tasks in mastering your mind and your intent get progressively more difficult. So, "soft" does not mean "flaccid," "fluffy," or "merciful to the practitioner." Soft art, harsh taskmaker...

Yes. And nothing illustrates the difference between the two better than their approach to martial arts. Buddhist practices aim at transforming the body so it feels nothing -- martial skill relies on this insensitivity -- Iron Palm, Iron Shirt, Iron Crotch, Golden Bell, sandbags to hit till the hand is one callus, pummeling iron pellets, hitting the body with logs, iron rods, iron beaters, hitting the head against hard objects or breaking hard objects on the head, every inch of the body is made hard, tough, able to withstand and oppose great force and feel nothing. Your enemy is then up against a formidable force that is only stoppable by greater force, not by pain, fear, or any other human feelings. An enemy who has figured it out will have to engage greater and greater force to defeat you. Whereas taoist practices aim at transforming the body so it feels everything -- martial skill relies on this sensitivity, you learn to "know thyself" rather than "change thyself" -- but this knowing is what changes you, feeling "everything" is tapping into your human potential which can't be discovered unless you train yourself to feel more, more, more -- and this increased sensitivity reveals others to you, you learn to feel the opponent's every strength and weakness -- feel his "design" so precisely and in such great detail that to disassemble it you only need to punch a "shut down" key, push a "delete" button, touch the screwdriver to that one crucial screw and the whole back panel falls out. You don't need to smash that machine with an iron rod to make it stop. Your opponent is up against no force at all, instead he is attacking an infinitely receptive and perceptive withdrawal of force --- so the only way he can defeat you is by not using his own. But how can he defeat you if he is not using his force against you?.. An enemy who has figured it out stops attacking.

I've seen it. It's pretty good.

Right! I might have said "third meaning is kung fu the martial art" since it is used in this sense too, but more so by people knowledgeable about "martial styles" which of course practitioners of internal styles are even reluctant to lump together with wushu because of the sports, "for competitions" or "for show" (rather than for personal spiritual cultivation) connotations of the latter. In fact, among "real" taiji practitioners, a remark "this is wushu" in reference to their performance is a put-down. Now then, kung fu the martial art is not incorrect either, it's just a more narrow specialized distinction, as in, "the art of Shaolin is kung fu and the art of Wudangshan is taiji." It is a grey zone actually, since some "researchers" may deny a sharp demarcation line between internal and external arts. However those who have practiced both know the difference one hundred percent.

Two meanings which a Chinese speaker would discern from the context. Kung fu the martial art. And kung fu the cultivated skill aiming for, leading to, or accomplishing perfection, impeccability, at any task undertaken. In this sense it always involves conscious and persistent effort whose outcome is effortlessness; often it implies great difficulties voluntarily self-imposed and successfully overcome. "Excellent kung fu!" is the kind of praise, in this second sense, that may refer to a philosophical syllogism, a culinary creation, a painting, or someone's moral character, or even an apt joke. Or any martial art besides kung fu for that matter.

It's all right. Hillary will tell all once elected. She's been hinting and hinting... and of course she lies every time her lips move, but the choice of the subject of this particular lie is noteworthy. https://www.rt.com/usa/327924-clinton-aliens-visited-earth/