Taomeow

Not only that but Gen8 is missing altogether and Zhen3 appears twice instead.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are-hundreds-of-harvard-students-studying-ancient-chinese-philosophy/280356/

Like I said, I have some hopes for magic. It would have to influence the moral values of the rulers (or otherwise affect the rulers) in order to trickle down to the subjects. I am aware of two such examples in history, so my hope is not entirely unrealistic. One is Qiu Chuji, aka Changchun, the founder of the Dragon Gate sect of taoism, interacting with Genghis Khan, on latter's invitation (which could not be refused). Genghis got curious about what taoism is all about, and Changchun had a bit of a reputation by then of being the guy to ask. The interactions resulted in Genghis possibly converting to taoism (opinions of researchers vary, some say he definitely did, some say indefinitely), in any event he ceased and desisted from that point on and lost interest in further conquests and stopped taking lives. The second example is Rasputin's influence on the Russian royal family at the turn of the 20th century. Incidentally, the guy who murdered him, Prince Felix Yusupov, was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, and the secret society he belonged to was at war with the one Rasputin learned from for centuries. Rasputin predicted (in a letter to the tsarina that survived to this day) that if he gets killed by his enemies, the country will be drowned in blood. He was, and it was. Perhaps the new course at Harvard is a manifestation of a minor victory in the war raging in the magical realms. Perhaps it's that one swallow that does not the spring make. Perhaps it is what I said it is -- a nice try.

Far as I can tell, this is based on the work of Johnson F. Yan, Ph.D. -- "DNA and the I Ching." This book, which I loaned to a friend a few years ago who proceeded to lose it (with friends like these, who needs enemies, eh?), spells it out and is a very enlightening read far as I remember (alas, never had a chance to re-read it, and it's not "light" -- hardcore genetics and biochemistry, and a bunch of very profound insights into the I Ching.)

Well, don't get me wrong, I actually like it when they teach something sensible instead of not. The same institution used to teach things like "scientific proof of superiority/inferiority of races" out in the open (not that it isn't taught behind closed doors anymore), so classical Chinese ethics is an improvement, a nice paint job. I'm not against those at all. But I would start hoping for any meaningful change for the better only if members of Harvard's secret societies -- Final Clubs -- the Porcellian, The Delphic Club, Owl Club, Fly Club, Fox Club, Spee Club and the Harvard Lodge took that course and took it to heart. Especially if they were joined by Yale's Skull And Bones members. Unless that happens... sigh. Shifts in society's moral values are predicated on shifts in power structure -- if moral values are tweaked with but the power structure behind the tweaking does not change, they are only paint layer deep and stop there and can't go deeper. IMHO of course. (Laozi was of the same opinion though.)

NotVoid, yes, terms are seldom right or wrong -- they are just labels. Concepts, however, can be, don't you think? 99% of what passes for feng shui in the West was derived from one school, Black Hat Buddhist, invented by "professor" Lin Yun some 30 or 40 years ago and popularized in the books of his followers. (Members of the actual buddhist Black Hat Sect deny having anything to do with this school.) This one pretty much took over Western FS landscape -- and in the passages you cited I thought I recognized its flavor. I mean, the mistakes were not minor nor merely a terminological difference. But please don't take my word for it. Any landform/compass practitioner knows that landform/compass means Luoshu and luopan. If neither is used, it's not any of the schools of feng shui for the living. As for mountains interpreted in terms of the phases of qi, they are, of course, of the Metal phase primarily, that's in their Heavenly Stem, and that's their Wuxing attribution -- Earth produces Metal and Metal produces Water, mountains are Earth's children and Water's parents. While what the author cites as associations with other phases is the type of qi this formative one of "all" mountains meets when interacting with a particular Earthly Branch which supplies additional "flavor." So a pointed mountain is, technically, Metal with Fire, rolling hills may be Metal with Water, and so on. Landform analysis makes a note of but is not limited to visual impressions of shapes -- there's usually a need to look beyond and through appearances, like in that taoist story about a master who called the emperor's favorite white mare a "magnificent black stallion," because he could see what that horse really was inside, in its spirit.

This is incorrect. Don't know who the author is but he or she appears to have skimmed some terms off the surface of feng shui without real understanding of what it's all about. "Stars" of Hetu are not constellations, they are not material stars, they are the nine fundamental patterns of qi in the universe (both abstract and concrete forces of creation) expressed as numbers. They aren't and can't be used in yang feng shui because Hetu is a yin diagram, of Xiantian, Earlier Heaven, a static perfectly balanced world before (or after) manifestations. Feng shui for the living is based, just like I said before, on Luoshu, whose stars are also numbers and are known and used as Flying or Floating stars, because they, well, move -- they encode patterns of movement of qi in the world of manifestations, the world of the living. To do feng shui, one has, among other things, to learn to "fly" or "float" the stars in order to determine which heavenly qi is coming in where at a given moment. ( I can do it on my fingers.) The players superimposed on Luoshu in yang feng shui are the bagua and the wuxing. Together they cover a lot of territory... The Five Animals are just metaphoric expressions of some of the wuxing dynamics in their interplay with the bagua. And so on... If you are looking for a good beginner source, I always recommend the second edition of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Feng Shui by Elizabeth Moran and Val Biktashev, edited by Joseph Yu.

In any event this is the word I hear from my teacher every week.

The ability to maim and kill comes rather early in the acquisition of a martial art. Control over your ability is a more refined skill. When I used to do TKD, I heard from several practitioners how they hurt an opponent (in RL fights) more than they intended to, and in one case, had to face legal complications on top of remorse, even though that unfortunate knee was smashed in self-defense. Taijiquan taught correctly, i.e. with a very strong fighting focus (the way my teacher teaches it unless the students explicitly don't want to know how a gracious move can be used lethally -- in which case they will never have full control, since lethality is an aspect of the move's full range, and control of its full range implies knowing this part... you can't control what you are not aware of) -- so, TJQ emphasizes this control to the greatest extent, to the depth of your marrow, to the core of your values. YOU decide how you will use it. A master will use it to exactly match the situation, not more, not less. A time to heal and a time to kill, so to speak. Interestingly, I used to know a taoist nun who stopped healing people after she healed someone's broken leg and, a couple of months later, witnessed him kick a homeless person with that very leg. So, there's no absolutes, healing can hurt and killing can heal, mastery is in discerning the imperatives of the moment and having full control over one's full range of faculties. In this regard, I don't see how a form will fly out the window in a real-life situation -- I think it's the opposite, it will shine when tested against the very circumstances it was created to control and handle to begin with... provided the form itself is real and perfect to begin with. You can't improve on perfection. If you can't use your MA in real life and need to invent something else on the go, look for a different teacher...

Power is locked behind a door that a search for power does not have the key to. The search for power can provide a lock pick, you can open the door but you can never be the master of this door, you can't open or close it at will if all you have is a lock pick. You can open it but then you're at the mercy of all the powers behind, some of which will be infinitely greater than you've bargained for and infinitely less obedient to your will than you hoped for. (I mean a generic you, not you personally.) The key to power was shown to me by the Mother of the Universe. The inscription on the key reads, "Do Not Abuse Power." Whoever has this key has unlimited power. If you haven't found it, you can't get power from a legitimate source, only from a breaking-and-entering, with the law (the law of the universe) on your ass. Not recommended. Look for the key. If you grasp that key, the door will open and close as you wish, power is your oyster. This is power the hard way, but power any other way is bogus and transient and never really yours.

Actually the terms kanyu/feng shui are interchangeable to an extent, but feng shui is a more inclusive one, since it refers to both yang feng shu based on the Houtian (Luoshu) diagram and concerned with dwellings for the living, and yin feng shui based on the Xiantian (Hetu) diagram and the arrangement of dwellings for the dead. Book of Burial is used for yin feng shui practices. Kanyu is a term usually in reference to yang feng shui, far as I know. Yin feng shui practitioners are almost nonexistent in the West, but in many parts of Asia, a family typically spends ten times as much on yin feng shui for the deceased as on yang feng shui for the living. This has to do with the ideas of continuity of one's life into the lives of posterity, which are affected profoundly by what happened to the ancestors in general and how/where they were buried in particular. So yin feng shui endeavors to take care not so much of the people who died as of their living and yet-unborn descendants. It is a futuristic science, and a very complex one at that.

Om nom nom nom nom... In the lagoon, a heron keeps preaching to frogs.

As my once-guru used to say, just because there's a problem doesn't mean there's a solution. What's the solution to the irreversible? What we've done (or as I suspect, what someone else has done by sticking their hands inside us and puppet-manipulating us) may not be redeemable. We've been here two million years. Scale it down so each million equals one day, we've been here for 48 hours, of which the first 47 we survived by being good to each other, and in the last hour all of a sudden started screwing each other over, and in the last minute of the last hour, everything and everybody else, e.g. destroying 50% of all forests on this planet. One minute -- that's our industrial revolution in our overall history, and that's death to 50% of everything that kept us alive and well in the duration of all the countless "minutes" that went before. What will happen in the next minute?.. You've asked a pessimist... I have some hopes for magic.

Thank you, Songtsan!

In all likelihood at the foot of it, since only my father climbed to the top, my mother waited for him down below. Yin and yang.

Thanks for posting! My father climbed this mountain nine months before I was born. I have pictures in the family album...

I know people who know him personally, while I myself don't. I know that the people I know are trustworthy, and they assert he is not. Hence my question -- I'd be curious to hear from master Jiang what kind of association he has with master Jiang.

I would respectfully ask, 1. In the first video, why does he hold one hand underneath the pile of pine needles so no one can really see what it's doing? 2. What is David Verdesi doing in the second video?

And we find ourselves named Franz Ferdinand, en route to Saraevo.

I think you answered this with your own next post. Questioning one's life is common, living it differently as a result of this questioning is rare and requires more energy investment than listening to a lecture and picking up a few tips. Living it differently does not mean holding the door for someone and smiling instead of scowling -- that's basic politeness, a worthwhile pursuit but nothing deeply transforming. I'll give you an example of Classical Chinese Ethics I've observed in real life in people who follow its precepts. E.g., a Chinese friend of mine who lives his life according to that code, having been raised with it. A few years ago, his 80-year-old mom got sick in Taiwan. Simultaneously he discovered that his wife is not only cheating but preparing the legal ground behind his back for taking everything from him. Simultaneously one of his kids hit teenage years and got involved with a bad crowd, failing school, doing drugs, and expressing nothing but hatred toward her family, you know this SADFUCK (standard American drill for universally conforming kids), right? Simultaneously his old dog got partially paralyzed. Simultaneously his business was hit hard with recession and after years of working his ass off and earning good money, he started losing everything at a disturbing rate. Simultaneously a horse he rescued as part of his ongoing self-imposed mission to save doomed horses (racing horses either injured and no longer fit to race or just no longer profitable or of interest to owners, abandoned and on the road to slaughter)... well, enough said, right? A major all around life crisis. What did he do? For months, he was flying to Taiwan and back every two weeks to be with his mom in the hospital; cut his losses and bailed out of his business to be a full time dad in between; refused to "put to sleep" the sick dog and tended to him as any other family member (they don't put them to sleep, you know, right? They kill them? But the public prefers kindergarten level emotional involvement -- so they call it put to sleep when they execute an animal they don't feel like taking care of because it got hard all of a sudden, just like a four-year-old would sooth herself that the dog is fine, they just put him to sleep...); and, figuring out his wife was planning to rob him blind and move on to another guy, quietly took care of the legal matters, decided to be generous to the max and give her as much as he could afford without victimizing himself and the kids in the process, overcoming bitterness and betrayal and meticulously avoiding any actions that would be about vengeance. The horse, in the meantime, was paying him back for his kindness in saving her life by being the only friend who never let him down at that point, and the only one he would tell all his troubles to. Everyone else kept seeing a calm, smiling face... That's what I meant by "nice try." If those Harvard kids proceed to live the ethics they're learning... you reckon they will?.. Or they will come out of it with that smiling face to show the world but nothing behind it except the usual?..

Taomeow is a member of the TTB forum. Barack Obama is the current president of the USA. Love is a feeling induced by oxytocin, a neurohypophysial hormone secreted by the posterior pituitary gland.

Nothing left but dust with nanobots sprayed over pyramids and slaves.

Every time you get distracted by celebrity drama, a banker gets away with killing a kitten.