Taomeow

I read the book. The review is not a review but part of a smear campaign. And overwhelmingly real reviews by actual readers are raves -- look it up on Amazon. If you read the book, you would know why Lierre Keith earned the honor of being smeared with rabbit shit. She steps on so many toes on every page -- not just vegetarian, sheeple toes, predatory capitalism's toes, you name it, she got their number. The complacent and the deranged will be equally disturbed -- and the former will promptly retreat into denial, away from the disturbance, while the latter will attack most viciously. For shame.

All right. It's on loan to a friend (an ex vegetarian -- another one I'm personally responsible for ex-ing! -- I will stand before the tianzun with this merit or sin to my name, converting scores of vegetarians -- though no one with your track record of 40 years -- but I'm not planning on teaching this young dog my old tricks, just on sharing a noteworthy perspective, as a special treat...) When my friend gives it back, I'll send it your way -- PM me where, please.

What can I offer you in return for reading the book? Name your price. If we strike a deal and you do read the book, go back to what you wrote and tell me what it is exactly that she didn't know about vegetarianism that she should have known to fare better. Also, what it is that makes people who have a belief system that seems to work for them assume that anything that does not confirm this belief in real life is the outcome of someone doing something wrong when trying to apply this belief system to their life and failing to thrive. Successful vegetarians believe they are successful because they are doing it right, and those who are not successful are not successful because they are doing it wrong. I think the book has the answer to this too. I wonder if you would be open to the idea that some people are cut out for it -- one percent would be my guess --- but then, there's a guy who ate his car, he's in the Guinness book of records I think, in any event you can look him up. Took him a few years -- three? -- he ground parts of his car into fine powder and gradually ate it, all of it. A Chevy I think. Apparently with no immediate ill effects. So, just because you can be a vegetarian, and he can be a caritarian doesn't prove much at all about what I ought to be eating. Really.

This Is Not A Test. The book does not single out vegetarians -- it is written for humans. But it is vegetarianism that offers one false solution to a myriad real problems that is the launching pad for the author's superb presentation, simply because this is the platform she knows best from her personal experience.

The belief that tomatoes are not only inedible but deadly lasted for 300 years. A cook hired by opposition tried to murder one of the presidents by secretly adding tomato juice to his food. In Russia in the 17th century, imperial order to plant potatoes resulted in massive peasant uprisings. In different parts of Europe, potatoes took from 200 to 300 years to gain acceptance. Asians still mostly don't eat them. In India and Pakistan during famines in the second half of the 20th century, people took to the streets protesting relief they got from the international organizations in the form of wheat and wheat flour. "Give us rice and stop poisoning us." In the Caucasus mountains, I gathered prime boletus mushrooms which the locals don't eat. They don't eat any mushrooms, period. Most things people believe about food are fads and have been for a long time. That's because we've all been displaced. If you grow up eating foods of your natural habitat that nourished your successfully reproducing ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years, you are not likely to make stupid mistakes. And just because a fad lasts -- for 40 years or for 400 years or for 4000 -- does not make it any less a fad. We were already displaced from our natural habitat 10 to 15 thousand years ago, so everything we've been doing since then was done by the fool's method of trial and error. There's no experts on nutrition, there's only shades of ignorance. A darker shade results in annoying and occasionally insulting preaching and/or dire repercussions for one's health and the health of those who get enlisted. A lighter shade is easier on self and others. But there's no experts, really. Human nutrition is the single most complex issue on earth -- and so far a botched job.

Rara, welcome back to the race of obligatory omnivores, also known as the human race. Don't damn yourself for the fad diet -- it does indeed work for 1% of the population but they are the ones making 20% of claims about it (the other 80% originate with special interest groups -- notably mega corporations commissioning social engineering for the masses), so don't blame yourself for having been seduced by the sirens -- they have trillions of dollars of which they can and do allocate enough to seducing you. And now a book recommendation so you don't fall for the next one: The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability, by Lierre Keith It's one of those rare and precious books that can make you cry -- not because the author, a vegan for 20 years, tears at your heart's strings with graphic descriptions of what she did to her body and mind (there's scarcely two pages dedicated to that lamentable story) but because it gives you a glimpse into the truth, and nothing about the truth can be discovered by droning the infomercials emanating from this or that special interest. And the truth will set you nourished. As it would us all if it wasn't so well hidden. Good luck.

"Still starts with one step," socks jammed between foot and shoe smirk to each other.

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Your mind, your rules. http://naturalsociety.com/lab-tests-mcdonalds-devastates-gut-health-in-10-days/ http://www.healthandbeautypages.com/health-benefits-of-caviar/

Not in "anything" -- only in goal-oriented pursuits. Process-oriented pursuits are about what the arrow sees and feels on her skin and what music it makes while in flight, not about where it's aiming. It's not single-minded, it's multiversal. Of course target practice brings home more beef. But an arrow that enjoys the journey rather than pursues the destination has more fun. Masters are actually like both arrows simultaneously. As for too much information being a distraction, this is the area of application of free will and willpower. Overconsuming information is like overeating. Choose your diet -- cheat a bit -- but don't eat any which junk, and your mind will remain a lean mean killer machine amidst amorphous masses of brain cells that eat information (mostly infomercials, in this day and age -- prepackaged nonfood for thought) indiscriminately. Such a diet also sharpens its ability to tell shit from candy, Big Mac from caviar...

Imagine a great architect commissioned by someone very benevolent and infinitely wealthy to build schools all over the world -- spacious, safe, beautiful, environmentally sound. Imagine this architect was trained to do that, but not to teach children. Ask him to talk to the first-graders in one of the schools he built. He may not even have the common language with them, not intellectually, not emotionally, he may love children but have no idea how to communicate this love other than by doing what he's good at -- building schools for them. Let teachers who are good at it talk to the children -- and let the architect just create the best space for this talking to be happening. Some of the higher beings posting or not posting on the internet are not doing their main work with the words they type or don't type. They are doing it by helping a pattern emerge which will be conductive to children and teachers talking to each other in a way that will make learning and healthy development possible. TTB is one recipient of this benevolence from higher beings. There's more, many more. And there's places on the internet -- many, too many -- where they don't come, and those places grow backwards and sideways like toenails into inflamed flesh, and are eventually surgically removed. You only know higher beings have visited a place on the internet by the fruits of their involvement -- which means most people won't know they've been there. Some of these higher beings will be good lecturers on the podium too, but their main task is to make sure the podium itself doesn't collapse, and the seats the children take in the audience are not falling apart under them, and the floors don't cave in and the lighting is not fluorescent and the heating and ventilation are flawless and the flow of qi along the clean and crisp lines of the rooms is smooth and the feng shui is good. Then, once their work is done, it's up to the children to not deface the walls and not break the furniture and not beat each other up -- the architect has moved on. That kind of a deal.

The jellyfish have no brain at all -- and they've been around for 600 million years. Makes you wonder if we chose the right evolutionary adaptation... if that's what we did. Might be karmic punishment for the smart-ass jellyfish, to be reincarnated as a human, with a brain -- and a job.

In all countries of the European Union, the minimum paid vacation is 4 weeks by law. In some it's 6 weeks, and in some, 8. In this country, vacations are stressful and often meaningless because they are too short. When you have a month (at least), you find that you manage to live two lives every year -- the 11/12th of it is your ordinary life, and then 1/12th is your extraordinary life. Compare this to what people get with one or two weeks: jetlag -- rush rush enjoyment -- hasty "cultural exposure" -- frenetic shopping -- blow through museums and spas like a hurricane -- like you're on schedule -- well you are -- hurry up, relax! -- relax dammit, time to go home! -- jetlag -- the cold contracted on the plane -- you need a month to recover from your vacation now, because it was so stressful, but you ain't gonna get it. Back on the chain gang. I distinctly remember that everybody was a better person for at least two or three months prior to a month-long vacation -- people do need hope in their lives -- and then a subtly or not-so-subtly changed person for a while after. Usually for the better.

Have you ever seen "The Legend of 1900?" One of my favorite movies. About the tao of music born and raised on a cruise ship...

Songtsan, my daughter did what you're proposing last year. She joined a group of good samaritans and went to Mexico to spend a few days building a house for a poor family. It was a traditional rural family, grandparents and parents and kids all living in one tiny one-room house, so this group built another, bigger one next to it, giving the family an opportunity to still stay together but also have some room and privacy -- the parents with kids moved into the new one, the grandparents stayed in theirs. My daughter was very excited and very happy after this trip. The problem I see is that these gestures, while certainly noble and useful and able to make a difference in someone's life, create the illusion of addressing social problems in one's spare time, and are every bit as hedonistic for the mind as taking a physically self-indulgent vacation is for the body. So, I'm not sure one is better than the other, or worse. Vacations are good. Doing something real for the people, community, the world while you're not vacationing is better. If you work for a corporation -- as most do in the final analysis -- your labor gets to become a brick in the wall of social injustice, and not taking a vacation just supplies an extra brick, don't you think?

Trying to start a revolution in bed.

I think they're good, from the descriptions, but I've never tried one.

And since it's probably not possible technically (although I'm not the one to know what is and isn't possible technically), let's agree to use it as such -- as though the button is named "Noteworthy." I've noticed that the most "liked" content is often (though of course not always) the most non-controversial kind. Collect a bunch of benevolent, nice, mild platitudes in a post and nobody will have a problem "Liking" the post. But talk about something controversial or difficult or sad, and that button might make you feel "unliked" on top of being sad. This occurred to me when a member (whom I thank for the thought) commented on a post in my most difficult and tragic thread ever (the one in my PPD, about war) saying that it's impossible to react to something like this by "Liking" it. Well, of course i don't want it liked, I want it hated -- not what I write, of course, but what I write about there. I'm sure others have felt that way on occasion too -- they want to say something, but they wind up frustrated because what they say looks and feels as something "disliked," just because that darn button is not applicable. I occasionally (often) use it simply to mean "I've read what you wrote -- acknowledged," and then other times to mean "I like what you wrote," and then, "I don't like what you wrote but I like the idea of discussing what you brought up," and so on. It is my impression that some folks use it like that too, but most just wait for something to "like" or not. I feel this button sort of flattens the range of our emotional and mental responses. I don't react with a black-and-white like/no like to "everything" in real life -- why should I be robotized and simplified like that in my spontaneous online reactions? Or you in yours?.. So, let's use it as the "Noteworthy" button, or even "My awareness visited this place" button. And if the post was read but awareness said "shouldn't have bothered with this one," then don't use it. No one will be upset over this non-use though because this kind of non-use will be indistinguishable from "I haven't read this one, can't read them all, who can? -- but we'll meet again elsewhere perhaps and then I'll "Noteworthy" something you wrote?" How's that -- like/no like?

Prisons are being increasingly privatized and prisoners used as cheap labor source, on top of the government subsidizing those facilities most generously (with our tax dollars that land in private pockets). The US incarcerates a much greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. It's not about punishing criminals -- more and more behaviors are criminalized toward the goal of creating a bigger and bigger source of income for those who are close to this particular trough. Among other things, this erodes people's ability to form a moral character, since whatever is criminalized arbitrarily does not resonate with our innate sense of right and wrong, so we have to come up with convoluted justifications for our laws in order to remain law-abiding citizens. Of course good old fear helps too, if the law is set up just so that we risk breaking it every time we feel like doing anything spontaneous, independent, or unsanctioned, we eventually learn to stop doing pretty much everything except what we are told to do. Not out of any solid moral foundation of compassion, benevolence, and common social sense -- but out of fear. We are either terrorized into obedience or we have nothing to obey to. Even amoebas don't have it this harsh. They can at least tell right from wrong by perceiving pain as pain and pleasure as pleasure, which causes them to seek what's good for them and avoid what's bad for them. Our wires are too crossed even for this.

Sounds like my cat.

Yoda is sorely missed, but he won't come back... If he did, I'd ask him to bring back Mak Tin Si. ShaktiMama assigned to Deci could produce such alchemical fireworks that I would have to quit my Abstaining From Grains diet and hit popcorn. She of the "I will tear off your head and shit down your neck" immortal quote more than a match for "I will cut you to pieces if you don't bow to me, and if you do bow I will despise you, though there's no you and no me except when I feel like putting you down, dear" or whatever the gist of that enlightened teaching was.

Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Our current understanding of what "technology" is owes its existence to a cultural meme artificially implanted into the collective psychology, displacing everyone's chance for a solid classical education in far more advanced technologies, of which magic is a prominent one. This invasive implant -- "technology means something of artificial origins" -- sits on the collective mind like a saddle on a cow, but we haven't noticed yet how ill-fitting this contraption is because it's very new. The idea to denounce magic as part of mass public reeducaton is only 140-150 years old, made in Germany, a feat of social engineering second to none. However, for two million years prior to the fact, we always used this technology -- universally imposed ignorance in its methods and capabilities is a ridiculously recent and wholly unnaturally created phenomenon. Time will tell how well we do without. Considering the ruling elites never stopped using it, not for a second, one can view the disappearance of magical knowledge from circulation on a lower social level as yet another example of the continuous redistribution of wealth, power and privilege, magic being reserved for the wealthy, powerful and privileged to an even greater extent than private jets, private islands, and privately owned armies. In other words, it's technological inequality created artificially, like any other. A couple of quick book recommendations on the subject --by Peter Levenda: Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult Sinister Forces--The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft

Forgot to add. Some people shouldn't start with a sitting practice at all. I'm a believer in the way it was traditionally taught when they trained future masters beginning at the age of 6-8. Lots and lots of moving routines, progressively more challenging, to prepare the body. A sitting routine added only a few years later. Advanced internal work -- only a few years after that. Resist the impulses from the quickie-mart culture. I want enlightenment yesterday kind of impulses. Consumerist spirituality.

Physical, mental, emotional, metaphysical. OK, to elaborate: Physical -- it is held that the blockages and toxicities and in some traditions even karma can be released through extreme and painful physical effort (provided the body is not subjected to artificial distortions and incorrect usage, I can't stress it enough. This pain must come from within -- the stored pain, not the pain of doing something physical excessively or unphysiologically.) In a sitting practice, e.g., it is the pain that is experienced in full lotus with your eyes closed and your meditative focus (whatever it is -- wuwei, breath, alchemical work, whatever) unwavering. If you sit with your eyes open and your awareness on outer pursuits, you will not feel it, lotus can be fully external, a physical endeavor brought into a comfort zone without making a dent in cultivation, by sheer physical habituation of the muscles. But combine it with closed eyes and deep unwavering, un-wandering intent, and it is inevitable sooner or later. With practice you hit "later" more and more, and for cultivation to take place, you have to push past this point. Someday it may become completely painless if you sit like that for the rest of your life. This will signify that you don't need to sit anymore, oddly enough. Painless sitting is relaxation. It is not cultivation. This is the simple truth of gongfu. Not to say that relaxation is not useful -- it is very, very useful in our overstrung times and mores -- but it cultivates nothing, it's routine maintenance, is all. Mental -- there will be doubts, there will be distractions, inertia, self-doubt, teacher-doubt, practice-doubt, more inertia, boredom, self-deprecation, fears of your inadequacy, of the practice's inadequacy, I'm wasting my time, I am not getting what I was after, I'd rather skip today, I'm tired, sleepy, hungry, I have better things to do, you get the picture -- an inner strife to overcome. If there isn't any, it's worse -- it means one is numb and disconnected and knows not his or her own mind at all. So he or she is doing this too soon. Mental pain is not a beginner thing. Beginners (including all the perennial beginners) are usually cocky. Emotional -- this can hit with the "dark night of the soul." No master worth his or her salt has ever avoided this (and no shaman I should add, it's pretty universal, to be wounded and feel the wound completely in order to know how to heal -- if you were whole from the start, you have nothing to cultivate). Overcome and persevere -- that's gongfu. Numb out and suppress -- that's failure. Metaphysical -- all of the above, but not personal. Extended to all living creatures but experienced as your own. Don't numb out is the task, don't crumble, don't rationalize away, don't intellectualize away, don't philosophize away. Become the relief is the way.