Taomeow

I actually participated in the abstract part of it by mistake, since AM's entry led me to the erroneous impression that I'm in the "random philosophy" thread, which I was participating in at the same time. I wouldn't have responded to that line of intellectual inquiry in this one if I hadn't made this mistake. That's because it is my firm conviction that religious ideology, whether Christian, Buddhist or Zoroastrian, has as much right to intrude on the subject of actual human experience as the humans having the experience will allow, encourage, or ask for. Without such invitation having been obtained, to proceed with any abstract ideas unrelated to this experience, however profound, is to insist that everybody oblige a hammer by promptly turning into a nail on cue.

Thanks for the beautiful illustration, Mark! And good luck with Genji, it's got many great moments but can get a bit tedious too. Still, it gave me a much better idea of the historic origins of many Japanese cultural traits which I could never quite comprehend before. Right now I'm reading The Beginning of Spring, by Penelope Fitzgerald. A British novel set in Moscow in 1913. Subtle and intriguing so far -- I just started -- and so far not ridiculously off unlike most books written about Russia by foreigners -- with the exception of proper names, which no English language author seems to be able to get right. I appreciate the difficulty, but am baffled by what they usually do. To wit, if the last name or the name of a street, e.g., is too long, as many Russian names might seem to those who don't discern the semantics of all those suffixes and prefixes and infixes intertwined with the already-long roots, they just throw out a syllable or two, or three or four, turning a meaningful name into garbage. Why not choose a shorter but correct word instead? -- they do exist in Russian, "cat" is "kot," mouse is "mysh'," well OK, "dog" is three syllables, "sobaka," but to compensate, "elephant" is just "slon!" What's to stop them from looking in the phone book (or wherever) for a short but linguistically feasible name for the protagonist or the street where she lives or the school she attends?.. But no, they have to go with a most challenging (for a foreign speaker) name that would, e.g., be immediately understood by a Russian speaker as "from a place or of a family named after a son of six cats and a mouse,"Shestikotomyshinskiy,"and then can't handle that many syllables and randomly shorten it to something they can, which however makes no sense whatsoever. And so on. So, there's enough of that in this novel, but not so much as to discourage me from reading altogether. Besides, the premise is interesting -- the main protagonist is a British guy born and raised in Moscow, to entrepreneur parents -- this rings many historic bells, since I come from a city founded by one of them in 1869.

Dusty, I have no use for junk science in mass circulation. Try the real thing. Start with all the scientific references appended here, e.g. -- as I did before arriving at my conclusions: http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Body-Mind-Beyond-Health/dp/1594774137/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441395589&sr=8-1&keywords=primal+body-primal+mind

Have you tried homemade sauerkraut?.. It's day and night compared to what you can get from a jar. My grandmother used to make it, and I can't figure out how, or the local cabbage is not the same, I tried and failed to replicate what she obtained, even though I watched her do it many times in my childhood and know the drill. But the excellent variety is still available at a Russian store where I buy it whenever I have a chance. I also go with kimchi from an Asian market for fermented vegetables these days. There's one variety without chemicals available, imported from Korea, and "alive," not pasteurized.

Ah yes, we do need "some" sugar but not refined sugar and not incessant starchy meals. In TCM, sugar is used as a drug it is -- e.g. for lung problems and some respiratory ailments, the dose is one teaspoon, usually. A can of soda contains a greater volume of sugar than the volume of liquid, it dissolves this well. I don't remember the exact count, but it's, like, closer to a hundred teaspoons. The "some" sugar we need is present even in a tomato, a carrot, a bunch of asparagus. In most commercially available fruit it is already excessive because they were selectively bred for high sugar content. (I know what real fruit tastes like and most commercial varieties taste like "too much sugar and not much else" to me.) So no one is going to be deprived going with no processed/refined sugar if they eat some nonstarchy vegetables. (The starchy ones are a grey zone -- strict paleo says no to those, but I found that I lose too much weight I don't need to lose if I keep it strict. That, on supermegahigh fat intake. Mainstream nutritional advice is beyond a joke.)

I didn't mean easy in terms of procuring and planning real meals -- this part takes a lot of ingenuity. I meant it's easy on the body if you do it this way, and cravings do disappear if you do it this way. I lived like that for 9 months, and spoke with many others who chose this method, it's easy on the body, hard on the mind which has to be used in the supermarket the way you would use it in the primeval forest -- 99% of all you see around you is NOT FOOD. I befriended the butchers at the local HFS toward getting fat trimmings for my cooking, and they would save some for me. I made bone broths out of marrow bones and kept a supply in the freezer, I had a jar of ghee and a jar of coconut oil on hand at all times, and something only Eastern Europeans eat -- raw pork back lard. And still it was a challenge to keep myself fed when you have committed to avoiding filler material, carbs, when the whole civilization runs on that. The cravings return as soon as you break this regimen, but if you don't they don't, it's that simple. I never drank any soda to begin with, and when you go cold turkey on carbs, after a while a piece of chocolate candy tastes like poison, jarring all your senses with excessive sugar -- I had to spit it out when I tried.

The easiest addiction in the world to drop. You are in the clear with no cravings within 24 hours if you go cold turkey on all carbs. The trick is to simultaneously include high amounts of high quality fat into your diet. You can go with coconut oil, butter or ghee or grass-fed organic animal fat. It will take your body one day to remember how to get energy from ketones instead of glucose. This is what it was meant to do, it's the primary metabolic route. To use sugar is a secondary emergency one it was trained to use instead, but if you drop that, it will revert back to normal. It will not lead to weight gain. Good luck.

It does sound important. "Underpants beard nobody." I'll watch the context based on your recommendation when I have a chance, thanks.

Klaatu seems to be related to a curse word in Jamaican Creole. Barada is the phonetic spelling of the Russian word for "beard." Nikto is the Russian for "nobody." What they are doing stringed together I have no idea -- have never seen that movie. Did I miss much?

Neither waves nor grains. We are patterns. A pattern is owned by its co--creator. I co-created my bedroom with the architect, the carpenter, the textile manufacturers and the carpet weavers. They made "things," I created a pattern out of these things -- "my bedroom." I co-created my body with nature and society, by maintaining a pattern of behaviors that gave it a particular weight, range of flexibility, haircut, temperature, rate of oxygen consumption, electromagnetic output, even a particular length of fingernails and things entirely indefinite yet distinct like "presence" and "vibe." Consequently I can walk into my bedroom and find the bed without turning the light on because I know where it is, and the reason I know is, I co-created this pattern of interactions between the body I co-created and the bedroom I co-created. The pattern is what I own. I own my own behavior. The rest of the universe owns its patterns to the extent it co-creates them. You can't claim a relationship with Jupiter if you didn't place your furniture so as to avoid "offending the Grand Duke" -- but if you practice feng shui and arranged your bedroom with an eye on the Jupiter, you created this relationship with him, this particular pattern. What I do is a pattern and I am the owner. Or, rather, the pattern I create is me, it does not matter at all if the atoms zipping in and out of this pattern by a billion every nanosecond are grains or waves and whether they reduce to nothingness in the great taoist equation "being comes from nonbeing, nonbeing returns to being" of which you seem to favor one half, the one that reduces to nothingness, while neglecting the second half which forever turns this nothingness into everythingness. They will still have to adjust to the pattern I created, and I, to the pattern they created. We are the king and queen of this castle.

Another "countries don't matter anymore" moment. "1984" was not a prophecy, it was a template. Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia are shaping themselves up for a perpetual war. First we have Oceania at war with Eurasia. Then we'll have Oceania at war with Eastasia. At times, Eastasia and Eurasia will be at war with each other. But Oceania will always be at war with one of them. That's the template. The leaked agreement shapes Oceania more distinctly -- Eurasia and Eastasia are still a work in progress, but Oceania is almost complete.

The idea of no rights is spot on. We are our body is correct too. However, there's nothing to own only in terms of "things." If we think of the world as processes, there is something to own. We own our own behavior. At least "normal" humans must. "The devil made me do it," "I was only following orders," "I have the mandate of Heaven," and all similar ways to disown one's own behavior and ascribe it to someone else pulling one's puppet strings is exceedingly widespread, but entirely abnormal. Although not necessarily untrue. One of the most painful losses a "civilized" human has sustained is the loss of 99% of behaviors to call one's own. I just interacted with a woman who sort of sneezed but suppressed it. Someone in her past whose puppet strings she has iinternalized as "who I am" had taught her that she can't quite sneeze in public, it's somehow not OK. When she was about to sneeze, she held her nose tightly and made this choking noise into her palm. She chose -- was somehow conditioned to choose -- a behavior that proclaims, "I can't let my body control itself. And since I am my body, it means I can't let myself control myself, I need an authority to authorize what my body does or does not do. I need a mommy and a daddy forever, I will never grow up to own my own behavior."

Yup, this is heavy duty.

True, but there's no equal ground to start from, I can tell you this as a bazi reader -- people are born into different situations, and for some, not to be in a bad situation is a matter of not doing anything assinine and the rest will take care of itself -- while for others it's a lifelong battle to bootstrap themselves from that situation and many of its subsequent resonances. One of my favorite Chinese parables is about rats a sage observed when in his travels he chanced upon a little town and went into the bakery to buy some steamed buns. While at it, he spotted a couple of the resident rats -- fat, calm, confident, with shiny healthy fur and bright, cheerful eyes. He ate his buns and then, just a block away, spotted the public outhouse and visited the premises too, observing a couple of rats there as well -- pathetically skinny, sickly, nervous, suspicious, with matted ugly fur and angry little eyes. The sage concluded that it was not the nature of two sets of rats that made them so different, but the nature of their environment. "Location, location, location." So, I never judge anyone who is in a bad situation as less skillful or accomplished than someone who managed to avoid a bad situation. One needs to know what prior situation the individual is coming from -- whether the current one is worse than what he or she had been dealing with in the past, better, or the same -- and whether this improvement or deterioration was due to his or her doing or the environment that overpowered the best actions or allowed the worst ones to have no consequences. A bakery is not an outhouse, and a rat born in the bakery can have a far better life situation -- but it's the rat escaping from the outhouse who is the master, even if he has to fight a few cats or even a pack of dogs on his way to the bakery -- and possibly beyond, because he has leaned how to advance out of a situation rather than avoid it. Of course if one places oneself in bad situations that wouldn't have been there if it wasn't for consistent poor choices, that's different. Step on the pitchfork once, get whacked in the head, bad luck. Step on it the second time, bad memory. Step on it the third time, bad habit.

Our teacher is beyond good, he is the best. But she has never shown him what she does when he is not around to watch. And she is sweetness incarnate with him, shy, bashful, humble... to tell him what she really does when he's not there might make one look as a sore loser -- I've seen her hurt huge muscular guys like that, people of twice her size and thrice her skill, and they never complained. She does have the art of war down pat -- she just wages a wrong war. A war she can never win because she has no idea who her real enemy is and attacks the stand-offs instead. I've chosen de-escalation and avoidance as a temporary step, I'm by far not the only one who knows she breaks the rules constantly, I just don't want to take the lead in trying to expose or correct that. Not my place. I'll do what I can to improve my own skill, is all, until the next encounter. I want to have the next encounter when I'm completely empty, so she falls into wuji when she touches me, the way I fell into wuji with a very very accomplished partner who was the first one to show me what real high level taiji sparring is like. But he had forty years of top level taiji by then. So I might not be ready in another year. But that's the plan for now.

Liminal, well, yes, a label is a shortcut to point toward what one generally means -- until it is experienced it is meaningless, after it is experienced it is more so. What label is chosen for what territory may be subject to debate. Of course it's not the territory, but then, the hands-on violence and how to deal with it realistically and prudently overlaps with the territory of that analysis only by a little sliver, so it doesn't really matter all that much. What matters is to understand the territory, not to label it. Then there's personal preferences, idiosyncratically higher or lower tolerance for certain human territory "types." Some people can't handle being around someone who is depressed, e.g.. Whatever their reaction, they don't enjoy this reaction and might avoid depressed individuals not necessarily because they are unable to feel compassion but because this compassion does not have the energy of changing things for the better for the sufferer while the sufferer's "aura" changes things for the worse for themselves. Some people can't handle someone else's happiness, they feel deprived and beholding someone who does not appear deprived triggers jealousy, envy, self-pity, what not. FB reported on many new cases of depression triggered by the sight of "friends" doing better than whoever is ruffled by that -- posting pictures of exotic travel and successful romance and what not, apparently some people are messed up by this happening to someone else. Then some people really cringe in the presence of physical violence, they will avoid it at all costs, not necessarily because they are cowards but because -- well, who knows what old traumas the sight might trigger? When I did TKD for a while, there was this one girl who was very good -- except in contact sparring. She would invariably burst into tears if someone landed a punch or a kick even though she was wearing protective gear and there was little if any physical pain. It was an emotional reaction to being hit. She couldn't handle it. So, in my case, it's borderlines. Sociopaths are easier because they are not as skilled and flexible in their manifestations, they are very predictable. Borderlines, while "overall" also very predictable, cultivate unpredictability in any given situation, they are very good at surprising you by being wonderful when you expect the worst and turning into monsters when you relax and drop your guard. One has to have spent a long time in the company of at least one to know this territory. I, unfortunately, did and do. It's not that I can't handle it, it's like you said -- not worth investing the energy into handling. I have better things to do.

Good question! Well, that's the thing. I didn't avoid her for nothing as I did until asked to give it a go by someone I didn't want to say no to. I genuinely believe that the woman in question has a mild mental illness, and have thought so for a while, long before the encounter. I can't cure her nor can anyone else because "borderline personality disorder" is a very gratifying one to have in our society, for those who can keep it within accepted margins and not lose control completely. In fact it is the type of abnormal human development that is promoted as better-than-normal. The ruthlessness, the manipulativeness, the ability to take advantage of any weakness spotted in anyone, and so on are promoted as values to us from countless sources and examples. None of it is taiji, but all of it is a social "success template" accepted and glorified. Yet what underlies it is a mental illness. Which society embraces as something better than normalcy. So, her reaction was to gloat, to look with red-faced, fast-breathing triumph of victory -- "I did it, I fooled you and hurt you when you were not looking, behold the glorious, victorious me!" I proceeded to push with her for another ten minutes or so, to better learn what she can and cannot do, investing in loss all the time, just to find out if it was accidental (to learn if, as Michael suggested, she was in the warrior mode and unconscious -- or in the borderline mode and unconscious -- or in the warrior mode and conscious of a murderous drive and acting on that -- which would make her crazy as a bat, since we weren't in a war situation -- and so on). The conclusions I drew were "borderline personality disorder," I knew it from observations and now I knew it through touch. In taoist terms, possessed by gui. Not her fault. The fault of society possessed by gui to have no help for such people and in fact maintain the illusion of this being normal by rewarding such behavior. Of course taiji may generate a miracle and another year or two from now she will be different. It happens, it's unrealistic to expect in every single case, but it does happen in some cases. But another year from now I will also be different. That's why I said earlier, to Liminal, that I don't know what I will do with the IOU. I really don't. My own reactions are in a flux, from no-taiji ones to some-taiji ones to better-taiji ones. One thing I don't do is dictate to my emerging taiji-mind what it "should" be like. I just watch it unfold. My sparring experience is that of a beginner, while my taiji experience is that of a -- well, it's a bit ahead of the sparring experience -- so I am very curious to learn how one will be catching up with the other. I'm catching up with myself, I've no one else to overcome or win against, this would give me nothing of what I want -- whereas I encountered a partner for whom it's everything. So, all in all, valuable lesson, but not as simple and clear-cut as one might assume who doesn't have either taiji or sparring experience. (Interesting that all the responses that have any relevance to the situation whatsoever came from folks who do have either or both. The ones who mistake a push-hands practice for the coach of a psychoanalyst are politely asked to head toward the latter and away from the former -- be an expert, by all means, but not on my taiji time if you can help it. )

Right, so we're in the choices territory -- that's the whole idea, I wanted to explore what other people would do with options available, and compare them to the choices I made. Thanks for your take. To elaborate -- the encounter was not in the teaching situation, it was an informal gathering just to practice this and that together. We planned a tea ceremony after that. So my real choice of the moment was between saying or doing something and marring the spirit of the ceremony ahead, or absorbing it as though it didn't happen and filing away the IOU. I chose the latter. Other people's mood was my main rationale for choosing this way. I knew I could handle it, I didn't have to make a production of it, but I didn't have to pretend to myself that I didn't fully grasp the situation. So I chose to let it slide, not out of any lack of righteous indignation or -- for a second -- blinding rage, immediately under control though -- but out of a conscious decision to not drag anyone else into these feelings, including the perpetrator. I actually feel I handled it quite well, but there's a part of me that remembers the times I would handle it differently... and it is frustrated not because of the incident, but because of nostalgia for the "untamed" someone I used to know -- someone I used to be. Someone who had far less wisdom, and far more freedom to express a lack thereof.

Yeah, theoretically and pop-psychologically plausible. In reality -- 1. Nope. The one and only reason I was practicing with this woman was that my taiji "older sister" who voluntarily offers some very welcome and valuable mentorship asked me to push with her. Her rationale was, I need to practice with a variety of partners, including difficult and dangerous ones, in order to get as much exposure to different styles, approaches and tricks as possible. I knew I didn't want to push with this one from just observing her taiji, much less after the very first physical contact -- the touch alone tells me (or any sufficiently experienced taiji practitioner) things about the partner/opponent Freud couldn't pull outta his BS-spewing ass in a million years. So, I didn't choose her, I just chose to do as my mentor/friend suggested. Can't even say her suggestion was completely wrong. I wouldn't have learned what I've learned otherwise. And I'm not complaining about the lesson, it was about something else -- to be addressed further below. 2. moot in the light of (1) 3. Nope, the opposite is the case -- my belief is that cheats lose always, honest players win always, regardless of what a given situation looks like to an external observer. It's also a very conscious belief, not an unconscious one. Cheating does a number on the cheater's psychophysiology I find worthy of pity or contempt, not bitterness. 4. moot in the light of (1). So, sorry if this disappoints but mine was not an "underlying issue" but something way simpler -- to wit, an underlying resolve to follow all things traditional in taiji, because for me this makes sense theoretically and works empirically. To do what your "older brother" or "older sister" in art tells you to do toward improving your art is traditional. The reason I brought up the difficulty of resolving inner conflicts compared to external ones is, I do believe there's not only me in the universe. Other people are perfectly capable of having inner conflicts and of acting the way they act as the outcome of their inner conflicts, not mine. To me they are not cardboard 2D receptacles for my "projections" and "mirroring" and all that jazz, they are real people, they have real inner conflicts and either a free will or an unconscious drive to express them. I find the opposite pop-psychological views reductionist ad absurdum at best, egocentric and oblivious at their worst manifestations which alas have become a cultural meme. The virulent meme notwithstanding, other people are not phantoms. I respect even the worst assholes more than to assume that all they can ever aspire to be is a projection of this or that unresolved conflict of mine. The difficulty lies in this case in my (or anyone's) lack of tools to solve someone else's inner conflicts for them -- but then, I never sought powers of this nature, nor ever will.

Yup, that was close to what I did. You're exactly right -- she gets hurt all the time, missing a week of practice here, two there due to, now a shoulder problem, now a knee -- so, I don't need to try teaching her anything physically, she has plenty of teachers, a couple of them with far better taiji than mine and a somewhat shorter fuse, so this base is covered. And I can't teach her anything in terms of "emotional wisdom" either -- not my circus, not my monkey. And I don't want her to do this to me ever again -- and she never will, I'll do everything it takes to not let her. Beginning with never having anything to do with her (not openly, I didn't even complain when she did that, I absorbed it and made zero noise about it), and yes, without making any dramatic announcements or even hinting that she will never again practice with me until I feel as angry as I was the second it happened -- and what I will do then is anyone's guess. She gave me an IOU. Whether I will ever cash it or not, I don't know myself. So it's better to never come into physical contact with her until I know.

However, internal conflicts are much more difficult to solve than external ones. Example. I was practicing push-hands with a very aggressive woman a couple of weeks ago. She only wants to win, always, for all purposes and in all circumstances -- well of course this is a sign that she feels like a loser inside, but so what -- she is strong as a horse and stubborn as a mule, and not fully external in her taiji at that -- her skill is 95% external but the 5% of internal accomplishments give her a very strong (albeit only vertical, fancy-free) root which she can reinforce with all her considerable li (muscular strength) and a bit of fajin (in the beginner, long jin stage). Not a difficult opponent for someone who has more of the internal goodies -- except she is also cunning and treacherous and very, very hostile under a mask of total friendliness and sweetness. She is the type who will always praise you to your face and try to win you over with thoughtful presents and sweet-talk you into friendship and stab you in the back the second an opportunity presents itself. So, we were practicing in the park, and someone else who needed my attention for a moment called me to say something, I stopped the practice and turned to the source of the distraction, naively expecting my partner to do likewise, like normal sparring partners do. Instead, she fajined into my shoulder, leaving a bruise the size of her iron palm. What do you reckon my options are at this point? I know everything about her internal conflicts, she's a borderline personality disorder -- so, I am curious to hear what it is I'm supposed to do with this knowledge. Seriously. What would you folks do in my shoes?

You may want to read on down the thread.

I was very tongue-in-cheek, what I meant was, it's NOT an option, it's religious brainwashing from more than one denomination. As for your idea to meet the yang of a punch in the face with yin so as to balance it out, it's much easier said than done -- you need to take up taiji or another internal (taoist in origin) MA to learn how. I can tell you that you would need to use, depending on the situation, peng -- ward off, lu -- roll back, liu -- split, etc. etc., but it is pretty useless without hands-on lessons of taiji applications. So, the answer to your question is, take up an internal MA and you will be prepared to meet a punch in the face without harming the opponent or letting him harm you. Would that work for you karma-wise?

Ah, this one. Many an ET will tell you that it's one of the most popular cookbooks in the universe. Chapter 1: "Serving Man To Your Family: Appetizers, Soups, Main Courses, Snacks." Chapter 2: "Serving Man To Your Guests: Casual Brunch, Business Lunch, Banquet" Chapter 3: didn't see that one yet, something to do with preparation tools and devices -- graters, grinders, tenderizers, mixers, etc..

Ah, why go to all that trouble when you can always do what you've always been told to do. Just turn the other cheek already and get it over with.