Taomeow

We had at least one excellent mod who volunteered, but he was a long-time valuable contributor in good standing before he volunteered to mod. This may be an adjusted criterion -- volunteers are fine but not just any volunteers.

Hello fellow bums, I will now be a simple alley cat around here, not a mod anymore. Been quite a stretch, and from a very involved and active mod life I gradually found my participation in this capacity dwindling -- busy, and perhaps the qi of this particular mode of functioning has grown old. I'm getting more involved in some of my practices, among other things, in particular dedicating extra time to taiji (since I've started learning the second routine of the Old Frame of Chen, Cannonfist, and that's no joke -- my complacency being settled in my first routine ways is over, now they have me jump though flaming hoops and do all kinds of tricks and I need to focus. ) See you all around the forums.

This is lovely, of course. Many ways to do it. I have always (before taoism et al) preferred walks in nature to other moving activities (I won't jog, e.g., have never seen the inside of a gym, etc., but I can climb a pretty challenging tree if I'm looking to expand the range of moving activities and will do it gladly anytime). But a focal point of the walk adds a special dimension and brings it closer to meditation. In the "old country" (and in the new one whenever/wherever I could) I used to "meditate" on edible mushrooms like that, or wild strawberries, or bilberries. (Of course it ain't no buddhist non-grasping meditation, there was plenty of grasping. ) But maintaining your unwavering awareness which you freely choose where to direct and what to withhold from (which is what meditation is, everything else is tools toward mastering this control of one's awareness -- posture, breath, ideology...) -- that was being trained in a most natural, most primal fashion by the activity. I think meditation may have originated right there, hunting-gathering demands exactly the awareness skills that amount to meditation skills. Which is also why they seem to awaken in natural settings better than in artificial ones even all those hundreds of thousands years later.

... nevermind

Oh, OK. Thank you for the sources. I collect books on "superstitions" because I believe many of them are rooted in ancient sciences of subtle energies rather than in our ancestors' imagination, but not all of them. The way I try to determine which superstitions are just that and which ones are likely to be information is twofold: 1. For non-taoist sources, I look to cross-cultural repetitions. If they say exactly the same thing about the subtle effects exerted by certain plants (medicinal, poisonous, or "it depends"), or cats or birds, etc., in Western Africa and South America and Lithuania and England, I will most certainly take it as proof. If a superstition is merely local (e.g. concerning entities that hang out around abandoned Japanese shinto shrines) or I can trace it to the biases and indoctrinations of a society producing it (e.g. the belief of some Muslim peoples that a woman must not cook pilaf or even look at it when it's cooking or it will be ruined), I ignore it. 2. For taoist sources, I go with the ones that are (or appear to me to be) consistent with the basic taoist sciences, which I've been studying for years (some of them empirically, not just theoretically) and therefore have a bit of a handle on. As for possessions and assorted energies that can enter certain objects in our environment, there's an assortment of classical FS methods to avoid that, e.g. the non-placement of any objects on the Killer Lines. This part is from Xuan Kong feng shui and will blanket-cover many adverse possibilities -- plants, pets, objects, anything. So instead of trying to figure out the "small FS" of any object, one may want to work with the larger FS of its access to energies. If it's not on a Killer Line and nothing else in the house is, it will be much harder for adverse energies to come from the depth of the earth, perhaps impossible. So, I use a luopan for this kind of blanket-protection. There can be many little things that can go wrong if the environment is overall inviting to things going wrong. The people in your example, as soon as they get rid of one possession might contract another if they don't address the source of the possibility itself. So, thanks for reminding me -- I'll check with my lupoan where my rubber plant is standing and if perchance it is on a Killer Line, I'll just move it a few compass degrees, rather than outdoors. I've been many times to an apartment in NYC where the bathroom is located straight opposite the entrance door (all the incoming qi going promptly into the toilet), and sure enough, they have many types of plants that have an adverse reputation and are supposed to feed off human energy. Which they might be doing because the plants are thriving while the people in the apartment are not. But if you removed these plants, there would be something else. The layout of the apartment is "qi gets wasted here" and that's the blueprint for the overall pattern of events. Plants, pets, decorations or furniture -- these are all effects, not the cause. Of course if one goes deeper into this, the very choice of an apartment with this layout is an effect of a larger cause. As well as the "I don't believe in this BS" stance...

I got the rubber plant from Joseph Yu if I'm not mistaken -- where does your "it is recommended" originate? Trump my source and I'll kick my beautiful living-room-dwelling rubber plant outdoors!

It depends on the type of the plant. There's a few houseplants that release oxygen at night instead of during the day. There's also houseplants that readily absorb toxins from the air (released by wood treated with assorted chemicals, carpeting, mattresses and bedding routinely saturated with fire retardants which cause cognitive difficulties up to mental retardation in children, among other things, etc. etc. -- modern homes are rather toxic.) There's ones that absorb smoke (still I wouldn't recommend smoking in your bedroom.) Off the top of my head, ficus and rubber plant are used in bedrooms in traditional FS, but you can research for more -- there's not a whole lot of them, perhaps a dozen, that tolerate indoor living and are bedroom compatible.

I see. Incidentally, the whole "culture," for thousands of years, revolves around something weird, the idea that the hymen must tear and there's got to be pain and bleeding. Tells one something about... um, everything. In reality, all it takes for it to stretch instead of tear is love that removes the tension. In a normal scenario, it doesn't tear even in labor. Did any of you guys/gals know that?.. Talk about conditioning...

We were in love. It was fantastic. If anyone here is a virgin, I strongly recommend not cheating yourself out of one of life's greatest gifts to a human being -- the experience of being initiated into sex by love, and by nothing less.

Nah, this was involuntary. I know I wrote this before, but I was not finished with my cup of coffee (love for coffee not a choice either -- has to do with my dopaminergic wiring) and decided I might write about that free willie thingie once more while I'm drinking my higher-power-imposed coffee. I know my limitations. Knowing them is a free choice, incidentally. Part of the "know thyself" choice of awareness applications.

Taoist sciences have solved the problem of free will for me. It's not an all-or-nothing deal. It's a 60-40 deal. 60% of your destiny is not under control of your free will. Of these, 40% is "written in the stars," and another 20% is in the realm of the unknown (no enlightened beings, no gods, and not even tao herself control that -- chance is a force of nature, and when it strikes, it moves even the tao, as in the arising of Houtian from a chance impulse from Zhen.) Then the remaining 40% is the field of application of your free will. Most people don't use it to the full extent, so it shrinks further. The field of application of free will, when expanded to the full 40%, is huge. But many people lead robotic lives where no more than one-tenth of that potential is utilized. Like all functions, it withers if not practiced, and is mastered when you deliberately work on it. Little things add up if you start practicing free will deliberately. In my family, e.g., if someone had a headache, they told the rest of the family. If it persisted, they told it persistently. Like, every few minutes. Realizing that this one little thing is one of thousands I would be doing involuntarily if I do it (because it's family conditioning to make it known and drag attention toward oneself with this bit of information), I decided -- freely chose -- to refrain. I decided that if I get a headache I'll keep it to myself. The unexpected outcome is that I pretty much don't get headaches at all, knock on wood. Free will is something that starts expanding into neighboring functions when stimulated, looks like.

Here's what I take into FS consideration (one can get very deep into that or keep it very shallow, with many in-betweens.) Ming gua (personal trigram) orientation. This is the single most important FS factor to consider (if we start inside, that is... of course the orientation of the whole house and the outer landscape features will take precedence, but few people these days start out with getting the larger FS right if they aren't Donald Trump). We all fall into 2 major personal trigram categories, East or West, and for the East group there's four auspicious directions (out of the 8 of the bagua) which, for the West group, are not, and vice versa. E.g., mine are West, Northwest, Southwest, Northeast. Of these, my ideal sleeping direction is Northeast, i.e. with the top of my head pointing in that direction when I'm lying in bed. Not doable in my bedroom, alas. So three remain to choose from (and none of them are North or South or East, mind you, so the "generic" advice of this nature doesn't apply.) Protection against sha' qi. This includes not lining up your head with your toilet (wherever it may be) -- if unavoidable, put some large rocks in between (in front of the toilet), they will break up the sha' of this unlucky feature, at least to an extent. (I believe the expression "shit for brains" came into existence simultaneously with indoor toilets -- the flow of the shit qi into one's head may be what's responsible, at least partially.) No visible mirrors in the bedroom -- qi bounces back and forth between the mirror and whatever it reflects and never settles. My mirrors are in the bathroom and on the inside of a wardrobe door. No lining up your head with the door or the window. Vis a vis the door you must be sleeping in the position from which you can see it unobstructed, otherwise your unconscious mind will be on partial alert throughout the night (it knows that it can't know if someone -- a stranger, an up-to-no-good stranger! -- is coming in while you're sleeping, so it won't relax completely). For the same reason, the bed must not be too high or too low (the unconscious mind reads both positions as insecure.) No tall pieces of furniture at the foot of the bed or anywhere in that direction. This is from the Five Animals rule. You have Snake in the center -- that's where you want to be -- Tiger to the right, Dragon to the left, Turtle in the back, Phoenix in front, and the arrangement of any room follows these rules by imitating these "animals" (types of qi actually) with pieces of furniture "shaping" your room's qi a certain way. So, your Dragon must be higher than your Tiger, your Turtle must be sturdy (that's the headboard in the case of the bedroom -- it has to be solid), and your Phoenix -- that's your dream-body, and it has to be either something very light or nothing at all in that direction, so that your Phoenix has an unobstructed passage to fly into dreaming. It flies out forward and up, sometimes with great impatience (like certain caged birds would the moment you open the cage), and if there's a tall piece of furniture in its way, it can bump into that. (Not terrible for an adult, merely dream-thwarting... but a child with this kind of bedroom arrangement is almost guaranteed to break an arm at some point.) Other sha' avoidance considerations -- overhead beams (must be covered, their qi chops down like a cleaver and the health of any body part under such a beam may suffer), and if you have vaulted ceilings... well, if it was me and I had vaulted ceilings, I'd move. So, FS of the bedroom (like any other) starts with avoiding or neutralizing problems, and then it proceeds to enhancing auspicious qi. I would definitely start with phase 1, and then it's all fun and games.

The cloth covering the taoist altar is traditionally yellow, to symbolize Earth. You basically want to replicate the triple realm setting -- heaven, earth, humanity -- so your altar is the yellow square, your deities are raised above its level (ideally above your head too) to their geometrically correct celestial position, and you yourself, when performing the ceremony, are the stand-off for humanity in the middle.

Thank you, Creation, that was awesome. Broadened my understanding. I already knew it has always been the case with authentic taoist literature, which makes a lot of sense if one considers proto-taoist shamanic origins of the tradition. The messenger always took a back seat to the message, with a few exceptions we venerate as the whales of the lore simply because history has made these names available but not others. One of my first teachers never had a computer, I am not aware of her reading any books (doesn't mean she didn't of course), and her name is never going to be known -- unless I do something with what she gave me. (Not ready. ) And then I'd have to put my name to that unless I am allowed and encouraged to reference the lineage. Which I'm not. Quite a conundrum.

Thanks for explaining this to me so succinctly. Now to my original inquiry. (Shanlung, I'd be much obliged if you let me talk with Walker about it now, I'm finally getting the conversation I've been looking for, d'accord?..) Walker, according to one of my favorite interpreters of Taoist culture to Western minds, D.C. Lau, the notion of "plagiarism" is a particularly grey zone when we're dealing with taoism-related writings. Repeating what others wrote before you, often verbatim, has generally been seen as a sign of both veneration and continuation of the tradition, rather than stealing which Western copyright laws in service of protecting money (in most cases, the money of the monied) have criminalized. (I have an artist friend who believes these laws themselves are criminal, and artistic creations must belong to everybody, communal property so to speak, because the whole society is indirectly responsible for creating a creator, and he or she must give back freely -- authorship and ego and money considerations only matter in an artificial "stars system" elevating and propping the appointed dominant baboons Hollywood style. I argued with her, but I thought now may be a good time to bring up this view, somewhat extreme but not entirely without merit.) In particular, D.C. Lau gives numerous examples where TTC either directly quotes the Yuandao (without the attribution) or rephrases it a bit, borrows the imagery, appropriates whole concepts and ideas, etc. etc.. What I was after in my initial inquiry is somewhat broader than condemning or exculpating Deng, which is certainly not my place to do since I had neither the time nor the inclination to dedicate a chunk of time to studying the incriminating evidence. (Nor am I in the habit of taking someone else's guilty verdict to heart without a personal investigation, so I have no opinion one way or the other in this particular case. And consequently never expressed one, contrary to a participant's puzzling belief.) So, did he hurt somebody, is that what happened? Is that what I missed? Did he wind up getting some money that by law should have gone to someone else? I thought he just pulled a Kumare... ... but did he actually put his hand in Blofeld's pocket or something?..

You have a vivid imagination, my friend. I was referring to the time-honored genre of literary mystification, hoping to discuss its interesting and noteworthy points of distinction... e.g. some researchers and critics assert that even the use of a pseudonym constitutes a literary mystification, then of course all those thousands of books written in the traditional style of the author publishing a manuscript that was left by a purported late friend or ancestor, or found buried amidst some ancient ruins, or translated from some other language, etc.. I've read hundreds of books of this nature, so I thought it may be fun to determine when, how and why the genre might offend instead of being seen as a legitimate continuation of a very well-established literary tradition. Perhaps when the written material appears so realistic that people "fall for it?.." But should we hold it against a creator if his creations turn out convincing enough to be mistaken for reality?.. That sort of thing. That's what I thought we'd be talking about when I posted my questions. You, alas, chose to make a scene instead (the genre you resorted to for the purpose is known as "ad hominem," or put in more modern terms, "flaming"). Um... Shrug...

Didn't notice any jumping on my part. What I did notice was that Deng's book got me interested in taoism many years ago when I didn't know what that was. Where I grew up most people still don't. He may be laughing on the way to the bank for all I know (this sort of thing seldom makes one stinking rich though), but the way you react to opinions not even in disagreement with yours but offering a somewhat different perspective does make me laugh.

A bit too much unwarranted inference. I am a comparative linguistics major. I had to study "literary mystifications" for term papers. I was reminded of that period many moons ago by the discussion. Please do not appoint "heroes" for me on my behalf just because I see facets of an issue that you may not be looking at. Oh, and I have had my taoist altar for years, don't need to build one to a writer's specs, I have taoist teachers. Thank you for your understanding.

So, was Dante a fraud when he described his adventures in hell? Was Cyrano de Bergerac a fraud when he published his account of his travels to the Moon, including the means of propelling himself there and the states and empires established there? Was Prosper Merimee, better known as the creator of Carmen, a fraud when he made up gathering Western Slavic folklore and published his own tales as the original lore? Was Samuel Clemens a fraud writing as Mark Twain? Was Charles Dodgson a fraud writing as Lewis Carroll? Was Li Er a fraud writing as Laozi?..

Her name is Qin Ling, and she is excellent, but she lives in Beijing. She does conduct seminars in Germany.

Or of their absence.

Everything electrical is primarily Fire. The internet is Fire with Wood -- i.e. fire that gets a lot of nourishment (Wood is the Mother phase of Fire) and therefore keeps growing and spreading like wildfire. (A wildfire is a classic natural example of Fire with Wood). Of course Fire kills Wood as it feeds off it. Which is why a lot of the internet is Dead Wood. If you have a Wood deficiency, the internet is not going to fix that. I have a surplus of Fire, and try to use the internet sparingly, because it most definitely burns Wood, have you noticed the eyestrain, e.g.? -- that's an assault on the Liver (which is of the Wood phase and whose meridians open into the eyes).

Thank you for the interesting article, Mark. the practice of zazen that Shunryu Suzuki referred to when he said: "only zazen can sit zazen!" or that Kobun Chino Otogawa referred to when he said: "you know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around." LOL, I had this conversation this morning: "Was it your boss who called just now?" "Yes." "Um... I though I heard you tell him that he's losing it?.." "You heard right." "Weren't you going to be all zen with him?" "I was." "So what happened?" "The zen that wouldn't zen."

In other words, "as long as the wolf does not have his historian, the hunter will always be the hero."

Have fun! Do you have experience with other versions, SB? I was some ten years into the I Ching before I could deal with this one. Aside from the introduction, It explains absolutely nothing!