Taomeow
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Everything posted by Taomeow
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Um... I don't really have a good concise term for what I want to express when I say "Chinese taoists" for the sake of brevity. What I really mean is "taoists who are taoists according to the traditional standards of Chinese taoism." They can be Westerners too, provided they approach taoism in accordance with the traditional standards of Chinese taoism (rather than from the position of cultural, ideological, spiritual colonialism.) That's who I meant.
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Alas, I don't know. I tend to be pretty literal with taoist sources (I'm not a scholar, I'm a practitioner, so I only know thoroughly enough what I actually do, mostly), and if they say she's a goddess, she's a goddess to me, and as such is not negated by a big gap between documented appearances. But that's not an answer to your question (which I don't have), just an aside... Something indeed happened with shamanism in Chu... I suspect an alien intervention (as usual) -- which reminds me -- have you ever researched "Sons of Reflected Light," who the taoist tradition credits with "really" starting "it all?"
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All of them. Really. If they don't know it, taoists they may be, by some definitions that are seen, e.g., here on occasion... along the lines of, "whatever I believe a taoist is, that's what a taoist is, period. And if I can't define what a taoist is, then nobody can. And if anyone says he or she can, he or she is full of crap because I say so." And so on. But in reality, for a taoist not knowing about Fuxi's role (don't look to Wiki for that, OK?) as the founder of taoism is akin to a Christian not knowing that Christianity has something to do with Jesus Christ. Laozi wasn't even the first text included in the Taoist Canon. (That would be the I Ching, hands down my favorite.) His position in taoism is assured by all sects and schools recognizing him, however they don't all agree on his identity. Most consider him a deity. Some differentiate between his human aspect and his deified aspect. Others view him as the Great Mother herself, believe it or not. (In this version, he gives birth to himself.) And still others view him as a political philosopher, and his texts as a set of guidelines and admonitions for the ruler that have little or nothing to do with the commoner. (This latter view is the one I share to a great extent.) And still others view him as the encryptor of an alchemical text (true, true -- but you have to have learned taoist alchemy to appreciate this aspect of TTC, which the overwhelming majority of researchers and translators never did; the "you" is, as usual, generic); and practitioners of taoist martial arts know TTC for a superb guide aimed primarily at refining and focusing one's yi (chapter 15 which I already brought up is, to me, a step by step guide to correctly positioning one's intent when doing taiji -- but I do taiji, and would probably have a hard time proving this point to anyone who doesn't). All in all, it's a rich source, but not the first one, not the only one, and to many taoists into something else, not the most important one. (Although it's traditional to pay homage to Laozi even by those who don't have a lot of practical or theoretical use for his material. The government palace in China is still adorned with the portrait of Mao, but it doesn't mean all they do there these days is promulgate classical maoism...)
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Older than the stars... at least some of them. But he's not aging much... and his interest in things is as acute as ever. And I'm told he loves to party, which is why his birthday is usually celebrated in style. Today is the 9th day of the Chinese New Year. That's his birthday. A different date every year, but always the 9th day.
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Chinese taoists consider Fuxi the founder of taoism. (Why so many Westerners have come to believe it's Laozi is mystery of mysteries). The Yellow Emperor is of course taoist to the core -- to say nothing of Xi Wangmu, the Great Mother of the West, who taught him. And let's not forget the shaman-king Yu, King Wen and the Duke of Zhou.
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Stairway to heaven: seven syllables -- this line, seven stars -- Great Bear.
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It's all gone to pot... Led Zeppelin in my ear, a trip to Kashmir
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All right, here's something negative -- nah, make it a triple negative -- per your request. "It seems like you may have taken offense" is a careful (like in chapter 15 of TTC) way to ascribe a feeling to someone who isn't you -- like those Zhuangzi fish who he told his friend the latter didn't know that he didn't know that they were enjoying themselves because he (the friend) wasn't him (Zhuangzi). Are you assuming I don't know that you don't know what I feel? And here's a quadruple negative: I ain't telling nothin' to nobody, never, about "their" "path." I'm telling about mine. Only. Part of mine is noticing, on occasion, when it's criss-crossed by those of others, where some of those others are coming from. I don't see no reason to pretend I don't notice none, but I ain't no finger-pointer and whoever derives whatever from whatever I say I notice is never looking at my finger 'cause it ain't there. There.
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Oops... I was too late! Blinded by their greed, cops pursue Dunkin' Donuts while dawn donates blood
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1. I'm not even referring to this-here forum. I abandoned a few other forums before getting here. That's how I know. Here, I normally don't read the sections dedicated to book studies, with some occasional exceptions. So, no names to name. 2. No, it's a generic "you." I don't know you well yet but I've a feeling that my way of expressing myself might be creating unintended problems when I try to communicate my thoughts to you. 3. I ain't no new age positive-this and positive-thatter. On my path, I've been led to believe that being able to tell right from wrong is normal. If you have no reasons to suspect that "anyone's" path may, just may, be wrong... well, then we must be living in a perfect world and I'm entirely at fault for not having noticed.
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Yup... and there's also this spiritual/mystical initiation... How and why "that" realm chooses someone in "this one" to expose, nudge, or (occasionally) grab by the nape of the neck is mystery of mysteries. But that's pretty traditional too in terms of influence... I remember reading a book by a feng shui (? if I remember correctly) master, a Westerner with Chinese teachers, who asserted that when she first started learning FS, a clairvoyant /"sensitive" friend of hers came to visit who didn't know yet about her studies, who supposedly announced to her that there was a semitransparent (and invisible to others) old man, Chinese by the look of him, following her around, peeking at the papers on her desk, studying her bookshelves, or just sitting in the corner watching her with an air of benevolence. True or not, I couldn't tell of course... but I've had some weirdness of my own happen, more than once...
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1. You misunderstood me. I didn't say there's similarity. I said there's superficial similarity that can be found between TTC and any system a Westerner has already been indoctrinated in by the time of the encounter. This superficial similarity is further projected and intensified by a Western indoctrinated aficionado. It is not inherent, it is imposed. This, from my experience communicating with many TTC aficionados (whom I call laoists) both Western and not who read and discuss this book and go line by line and compare versions and comments and it all looks like biblical studies to me, or like cramming for an exam, or whatever. Familiar stomping techniques applied to an "other" stomping ground. 2. Anyone might just like and appreciate anything. I like and appreciate Voodoo practices and philosophy. If I stop right there instead of telling a practicing lineage Voodoo sorceress what her philosophy "really means," no harm in that. If instead I tell her that science disproves and Jesus disapproves and what-not... that there's a "scholarly consensus" on her lack of authenticity... that there's no "authoritative text" that confirms the credentials of Papa Legba or Erzulie or Baron Samedi... that I appreciate her philosophy but don't appreciate the opening up to spirit possessions or the killing of the black chicken... that red brick dust in her hands has no magical properties whatsoever as per a lab test our scientists performed on it.. that all her healings are placebo... and so on... catch my drift?.. What I think (and said many times on various occasions) is that it does not matter if you're a Westerner or a Chinese of today who has not been steeped in the taoist tradition anymore than you have. The Chinese may (or may not, depending on the upbringing) have a bit of a head-start due to some of the things taoist circulating in the bloodstream of the culture, but to genuinely appreciate the philosophy of taoism, reading a book, back and forth and up and down and diagonally as the case may be, is just not quite where it's at.
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Really cool question, thanks! I can explain the two parts separately because they are separate phenomena altogether, but I don't know if my explanation will satisfy... However: 1. My understanding of what is loosely referred to as "the west" is not limited to the so-called "developed" (ha!) countries -- rather, it encompasses the whole of Indo-European cognitive paradigm (often wrongfully reduced to and pointlessly discussed as "Abrahamic religions" -- it is nowhere near this limited though, it is inclusive of Buddhism and Hinduism and, most importantly, Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian traditions and their later derivations, including Western science). So, if this understanding of "the west" is applied, the appeal of TTC to the West is, firstly, the appeal of an exotic whiff of "otherness" (much like someone like me who grew up on meat and potatoes and borscht went crazy for sushi upon first exposure, and retained the love for their nutritious, delicious, aesthetically appealing "otherness" from then on). Secondly, much of this appeal is misguided -- it's like one of those Buddhist restaurants I've been to in China that serve tofu dishes prepared just so as to imitate meat. If you are going to not eat real meat, why eat fake meat?.. They sell "veggie burgers" and "soy dogs" here too... never made sense to me. So, much of TTC's appeal to the West is like that -- people dissatisfied with their own native paradigm (be it Christianity, atheism, or biomechanical fundamentalism, a term I use for the religion-like aspects of modern "scientific beliefs") look to abandon them and stumble upon something that seems like a veggie burger to them -- they are supposedly not eating "the body of Christ" anymore but deep down that's what they are most comfortable with, what they grew up on and are used to, what their system recognizes. So the appeal of TTC is that it can supply both -- the "otherness" some people are after and the "sameness" they are simultaneously after too, even though much of this "sameness" is only superficial, just like the likeness of soy to beef in a beef-alike soy product... but they focus their awareness on that superficial similarity and stay in the same place they've always been, cognitively and spiritually, but with some "new and improved" flavor to it, a whiff of Asia, a soy dog... 2. Religious Taoism -- well, that's separate, like I said... I will talk about that a bit later, gotta run...
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I go with D.C. Lau's take as to the authenticity and authorship of all works ascribed to Laozi. He does not believe TTC was a "pioneering" work; neither do I. Ancient Chinese culture being really big on tradition and repetition, it works on creating a masterpiece for a long time, through many, many contributors -- and it doesn't matter as much as people trained to look up to some definitive authority tend to believe who was the actual guy who finally penned it down: he is never the first, and never the only, even if it's his name that gets to get repeated from that point on. Pretty much everything in TTC is found in some earlier texts as well as the oral tradition. "In the human world, tao has been destroyed" is absolutely consistent with the overall gist of TTC, Wen-tzu and the earlier documents -- it does not contradict what they're trying to drive home at all -- in fact, it is the central axis around which all things taoist revolve. If it wasn't the case, why do things differently from the way "everybody" does them?.. Why not just glorify and petrify the status quo (like Confucianism) or announce it all an illusion and try to ignore it (like buddhism) or approach it as a well-deserved punishment for your sins (like Christianity) or take it upon yourself to dish out this punishment but call it a blessing (like communism, maoism, capitalism) and so on?.. Taoism is about restoring tao in the human world, not about assuming either that there's nothing wrong with the state of tao in the human world OR that nothing can (or should) be done about it. That was the main point of my post. A taoist is a realist and a pragmatist, not an idealist and not a nihilist. ' Oh, and Wiki ain't no authority on "authoritative" anything, what d'you reckon?.. Thomas Cleary has been criticized for his translations as consistently as the next guy, but the works he translated that happen to have different versions by assorted authors of varying degrees of academic good standing, which I had a chance to compare, left me convinced that "authoritative" is in the eye of the beholder. I think he takes some liberties with proprietary taoist terminology which I believe would be better off untranslated and extensively footnoted instead, but this is mostly a problem for a reader who is a beginner -- anyone familiar with a bunch of versions will have no trouble figuring out that "vitality, energy, spirit" are really "jing, qi, shen," and so on.
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In Wen-tzu (ignored by Western aficionados of Laozi who prefer to see him as a mild grandfatherly figure, something familiarity with Wen-tzu absolutely precludes); and my reference to predecessors -- that's the same words verbatim in Yuandao.
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Every country is a very confused country. (I've traveled quite a bit, both physically and mentally, both in the present times and the past.) China today is as taoist as the USA is constitutional (meaning not at all), but does it mean we should abandon taoist ideals or constitutional rights, on the basis of neither being practiced by the governments of these countries and by their obedient (or confused, struggling, disenfranchised, brainwashed, etc.) serfs?.. I think it is useful to remember that "in the human world, tao has been destroyed," according to Laozi (the wisest words he ever repeated after his tao-observant predecessors), and both denying this and emulating this is another definition of what a taoist does not participate in.
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Qigong exercise or massage for feet?
Taomeow replied to JustARandomPanda's topic in Daoist Discussion
Well, there's been lots of good advice here, to which I would like to add one of the Water Therapy classics: water treading. You fill your bathtub with cold water, enough to reach your ankles (increase the amount of water later, gradually) and energetically walk (holding on to a rail so as not to slip -- if you have one -- or placing a sticky rubber mat on the bottom). Do it for 1 to 5 minutes, every day, preferably twice daily. There's two techniques I know. One -- just walk energetically. The other one -- lift your legs very high, up to touching your chest with your knee. You can choose an in-between too. I do water-treading in the ocean April through November (god bless San Diego), but mine is a walking qigong which I do along the edge of the water, and it's usually for an hour. Another thing -- since I'm talking to a woman and many women torture their feet with all kinds of uncomfortable shoes, high heels, etc.. -- if you do, don't. This is the single biggest favor you can do your feet -- choose the best (and by the best I mean the best-fitting and most naturally shaped, not the "hottest") shoes and don't wear anything "marginally comfortable," only what's perfectly and absolutely comfortable. (I swear by Italian shoes -- their makers seem to know something about the foot-shoe interface no one else does, some secret...) -
On the internet, a cat is a cat, a cat is a cat, a cat!
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One word: taoism.
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Oh yeah, I hear what you're saying, and I believe you. No, I don't do that, it is avoided in my tradition (or at least the part I've been taught so far) except as a brief stop on a "route" leading elsewhere. Any practices that selectively activate the third eye (or rather the celestial eye, which in taoism is actually three spiritual organs with three distinct anatomical loci -- and they don't necessarily get activated all at once) as well as any other Fire practices are contraindicated for my type. (I didn't know it many moons ago, and at that time I did many vision-activating practices, including the candle gazing. Got myself in bad trouble...) So, next time mine opens, it will be hopefully against a backdrop of a better-prepared systemic whole.
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Oh yes. It proved one of the most difficult meditations I've ever attempted. I put it aside for a while and kept working on other things, this one is incredibly advanced, I mean, I'm no novice to meditation and alchemical work but this one is extraordinarily challenging... So, I am approaching it from the periphery... from the Big Dipper that rotates around it, gradually moving in closer and closer to Polaris, star by star... Has anyone got it down pat? Curious!
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@ Mark (and Livia Kohn): To break it down into three scholarly identifications is "taoist research," which is a meta-taoist pursuit, not a taoist one. Traditionally, a taoist is someone who does all three. And then some. I am a traditionalist, I seek to understand what a taoist was to taoists before "researchers" and "experts" (in other words, outsiders) and abide by that, to the extent I manage. From this perspective, I submit there's never been three branches -- taoism is integration, not fragmentation, of body-mind-spirit. The mind contemplates the philosophy of taoism or takes a wuwei break from contemplating anything; the body does qigong, taiji, takes in foods and herbs selected from the taoist perspective; the spirit guides the life, the actions, the choices of a taoist in every situation arising daily, and is guided by the tradition, by the immortals and deities of a lineage, by the teacher and master, by the inner voice of destiny, the voice of yin zhi, the voice of yi, the voices of nature, the voice of ganying, the voices of traditional taoist divination, the voice of tao... And so on. The only reason a "taoist" is hard to define is that anything that is not fragmented, not partial, is hard to define. Define an "egg?" A "universe?" A "taoist" is, ideally, as whole as that and therefore as difficult to pinpoint. It's much easier to tell what a taoist is not. A taoist is not a fragment. ANY fragment that does not encompass the whole, that leaves something out -- e.g. the body and its skill and its quest for healthy balance, or the intellectual mind and its skill and its quest for comprehension and its thrills of a discovery, a breakthrough, a creative idea, or the innate sense of beauty and tranquillity pitched against an equally innate sense of disharmony and struggle -- whatever leaves any of these things out defines what a taoist is not.
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Bao Pu!
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Hi Dynamictao, I remember you, have given thought to your work, am glad to see you here, and look forward to your contributions!
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Very much so.
