Taomeow

I couldn't help myself. I went to the I Ching to ask this: "A member of the forum divines: 'What would the I Ching give back to you if you were to attack it intellectually?' Please give me an image." HEXAGRAM 33-- RETREAT Other titles: The Symbol of Retirement, Yielding, Withdrawal, Retiring, Strategic Withdrawal, Inaccessibility, Disassociation from Inferior Forces. Judgment Legge: Retreat means successful progress. Advantage comes from firm correctness and attention to details. Wilhelm/Baynes: Retreat . Success. In what is small, perseverance furthers. Blofeld: Yielding. Success! Persistence in small things wins advantage. Liu: Retreat. Success. To persist in small matters is of benefit. Ritsema/Sabbadini: Retiring, Growing. The small: Harvesting Trial. [This hexagram describes your situation in terms of conflict and consequent seclusion. It emphasizes that withdrawing from the affairs at hand to conceal yourself in obscurity is the adequate way to handle it.] And so on. The changing lines I got with this (not quoting them here) I interpreted as a general consensus that it would be a very useful undertaking for the great person, but perilous if attempted by learned idiots.

First memorable time: in my early teens, in Lithuania. The restaurant was some kind of spacious log house in the middle of a forest (the town was interesting in that you could get deep into the woods that looked every bit like pristine wilderness and then abruptly walk right out in the middle of a city street -- and vice versa). It had honey-colored artistic benches and tables roughly cut out of massive slabs of wood and then polished smooth, many of them located outside. Beyond rustic, and before anyone else did such things for furniture. The main dish we ordered they called carbonnade but it wasn't a stew (unlike the French version), it was more like "buzhenina," a very thick cut of baked/grilled pork with herbs and spices, and the side dishes were very creative though I don't remember what they were. It was the most impressive piece of meat, tender and juicy and smelling of smoked perfection. For beverages they had assorted homemade things, cider etc., served in clay jars, not just apple but sour cherry and blackcurrant and the like. Some were non-alcoholic but there also was a blackcurrant liqueur, and my parents let me have some. It was very strong and hit me hard, but I had to conceal my condition so that my parents don't get this idea that I can't hold my liquor. Everything was so dizzyingly amazing, authentic, there was a feel and a taste of something eternal, unadulterated about every detail -- the environment, the food, the delicious liqueur offered to a (barely) teenage girl with no qualms (let her figure out if she can handle it, and how much of it, prohibitions accomplish either nothing in the best case scenario, or else its rebellious opposite in the worst one.)

I wanted to see the original because I couldn't figure out how it became known that the guy chanced upon the kill carcass and what he was thinking if he wound up eaten by a tiger. Couldn't have been telling the story from inside the tiger's belly, could he?.. So, no such story as the one you narrated was found in Russian, and the closest one, about the tiger getting inside a hunters' winter hut, was the one I posted. In any event, when I tried to do this search in English Google offered four million three hundred thousand results for "Russian guy eaten by a tiger shark" instead. Rejoicing and gloating many of them. Which reminded me of the only case of a man getting eaten by a shark here in San Diego, a few years ago. No public gloating then, media coverage was only local and only compassionate, but I had to wonder... the unfortunate guy was a veterinarian and one of those who pioneered the "catch and release" program in conjunction with spaying and neutering all captured cats. I had this crazy thought that the cats may have complained to the shark... There was this one cat I often met in the remote areas of the beach, he had owners who live in a house high above on a bluff whence a long private staircase descends to the beach. That cat was always using the staircase to go down to the beach and often took a stroll by my side as I was doing my walking qigong. He was the only cat on the beach I've ever seen, and a regular at that. And very smart, so I was thinking, he might have been the one in communication with the shark.

Not folk, classical. Created at the time when tigers roamed vast unmolested habitats, it had no impact on their population for thousands of years. Habitat loss, of course. And then a lot of wildlife trafficking. The uber wealthy (chiefly in the US and Europe) keep live tigers and whole collections thereof as a status symbol (in reality, a sign of the general morbid degeneracy of their ilk.) There's far more tigers in private captivity than in the wild. According to The Guardian, there's 10,000 privately owned tigers in the US, and there's thousand in Europe too. In the Czech republic, there's tiger farms where they are dismembered for pelts (used for rugs by the aforementioned degenerate class etc..)

Here's the original story (translated by Google): "In the Nanai district of the Khabarovsk Territory, the Red Book Amur tiger attacked hunters. The predator had to be killed. This was told by the deputy of the local village council Andrey Dyachkov, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday, February 14. 'The tiger entered the winter hut through the window and attacked one of the hunters. The second hunter reacted instantly by jumping over the tiger, grabbed his gun and neutralized the predator. The wounded hunter was taken to the first-aid post with lacerations and blood loss. 'The tiger looked skinny and, accordingly, hungry,' the deputy’s agency quotes. The incident happened 60 km from the nearest settlement. According to the regional Ministry of Health, the victim is 19 years old. After the attack of the predator, the young man stayed in the taiga for two days and lost a lot of blood. On Monday, the young man was taken to intensive care. According to doctors, the victim is in a serious but stable condition, they plan to transfer him to the regional center for treatment." Amur tigers are the biggest felines in existence, 660 lb, and from the nose to the tip of the tail, 10 feet long. I've seen an Amur tiger up close when I was a kid, in the Kiev zoo. Couldn't believe my eyes -- it was so humongous, out of this world huge. Broke my heart, it was pacing incessantly in a small cage, literally a few steps wall to wall, horrible. I only went to a zoo one more time in a lifetime, in San Diego. Here the tigers have a very large enclosure imitating natural landscape, but but but...

No one told me. Tiger day... I went to check on the state of the tiger in 2023. Here it is: India - 2,967 Russia – 751 Indonesia – 371 Nepal – 355 Thailand – 149 Malaysia – 120 Bangladesh -106 Bhutan – 103 China – 55 Myanmar – 22 The countries where the tiger population has been increasing in the recent years: Russia, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China. It has been steeply decreasing in Malaysia. In Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam they practically went extinct. So, about 4,500 tigers left in the world. There were 100,000 accounted for in 1900. I don't have the earlier numbers.

On March 11, 889 CE, 17-year-old Emperor Uda of Japan wrote: "On the 6th Day of the 2nd Month of the First Year of the Kampo era. Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat. It arrived by boat as a gift to the late Emperor, received from the hands of Minamoto-no Kuwashi. The color of the fur is peerless. None could find the words to describe it, although one said it was reminiscent of the deepest ink. It has an air about it, similar to Kanno. Its length is 5 sun, and its height is 6 sun. I affixed a bow about its neck, but it did not remain for long. In rebellion, it narrows its eyes and extends its needles. It shows its back. When it lies down, it curls in a circle like a coin. You cannot see its feet. It's as if it were circular Bi disk. When it stands, its cry expresses profound loneliness, like a black dragon floating above the clouds. By nature, it likes to stalk birds. It lowers its head and works its tail. It can extend its spine to raise its height by at least 2 sun. Its color allows it to disappear at night. I am convinced it is superior to all other cats."

I do not care which language I'm misunderstood in, or by whom. -- Marina Tsvetaeva　

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. -- (attributed to) Eleanor Roosevelt (who may have been quoting someone else.)

You may be right, but I have a most unpopular response: sheesh, I honestly don't remember. I came across the Four Arrows in the latest novel by one of my favorite contemporary authors, who is interesting among other things in that he tackles, drags into his plots, or otherwise pays homage to, Buddhism in nearly all of his books. His earlier ones did it in a somewhat missionary fashion, sort of like Buddhism 101 for those who don't have the foggiest, while his later ones run a spectrum from rather iconoclastic to a tad preachy to mind-blowingly insightful toward that subject. So one of his protagonists was talking about, actually, the Four Arrows of Buddhism (I changed the name of the phenomenon in my post out of deference to our resident buddhists), and then busted out the Fifth... but I forget what it was. That protagonist was very eloquent and quite verbose. Meow.

Also don't forget the The Four Ignoble Arrows, which sources preoccupied with the Four Noble Truths prefer not to tackle. To wit, Suffering; suffering through practice aimed at ending Suffering; suffering from inadequacy feelings over the suffering through practice not ending Suffering; and suffering over attachment to inadequacy feelings over the suffering through practice not ending Suffering. The most advanced practitioners who survive the wounds of the Four Ignoble Arrows are hit with the Fifth and Ultimate Ignoble Arrow.

Afraid none of the above is anywhere near my repertoire, so I'd choose some unpopular act I actually know how to perform. E.g. play a beginner level erhu, provide a no-holds-barred feng shui analysis of the premises, hit a dim mak point with a Thousand Eyes Bodhi Seed, stuff like that.

In any event, now that they have Project Blue Beam, no amount of footage or even personally witnessing an alien creature or a whole invasion of such creatures is going to convince me that it's the real McCoy. Unless they use the code phrase which I won't reveal, which the real McCoy gave me so that when the fake ones show up I can tell the difference.

If that guy in the apron was really you, I'd love to perform an unpopular act.

In my childhood in a "backward" country, that's how kids used to find out about who other kids were: "Who is she/he friends with?" was the question when someone's name was brought up and someone else didn't know that person. Once the circle of friends was named, the understanding of who they're dealing with in that person would start shaping up immediately. Even today, I'm in touch with some of the people I went to kindergarten and elementary school with, some of whom stayed put right where I first met them while others are all over the globe by now. Not that we have much in common today except for the memories of the days/years long gone, but we all like to reminisce about those times on occasion -- and when someone asks, "remember how such and such did this and that?" the response often is, "no, I can't place that girl/boy -- who were they friends with?" So then you name the friends -- and the person in question is often immediately identified. "Ah... that's right, now I remember her/him." And other memories jump on the bandwagon and start unfolding. I love it. There's something genuine in those exchanges.

My best guess would be, that was part of culture to them. I suspect (and, no one will believe me and I can't provide any proof but I also, on some level, remember) that they modeled their culture on nature/tao, and that's how nature/tao keep records -- memory is the most sacred thing there is to them, memory embodied -- genealogical information is internal, DNA and stuff, and it's kept, all of it. In the human world where there's language, oral transmissions are perhaps the epigenetic part of this internalized memory, though who's to say other life forms don't have languages of this "cultural" kind we simply don't understand? Among domestic cats, more than half are unable to catch mice if they were separated from mom too early, instincts alone don't cut it. If they were raised by mother cat, pretty much all of them later know how to hunt, regardless of whether they had live demos. So maybe mother cat tells them somehow? "You are a cat, and if you see such and such creature, that's prey, and it's edible. That's our legacy. Your ancestors lived like that for millions of years so you can too." Might be a stretch of course...

I didn't find the Yuandao, Wenzi and Laozi cynical. Nor the taoist concept of "eating bitter" (吃苦 - chi ku). Of course there's always plenty of more popular opinions, derived from Hollywood et al. And here's a version of that "spoonful of sugar" I find a whole lot less cynical than the original, and a whole lot more accurate.

Taoist magic is very different from qigong/TCM. Maoshan, in its turn, is very different from other types of taoist magic. I wouldn't be surprised if the advice was to drink hard liquor before the practice, as some shamans do, or animal blood, or a psychedelic brew. Perhaps cool water after practice has to do with the temperature of the spirits invoked, which may overheat the body, which may need a cooling-down. Or perhaps it's a red flag. I'm only familiar with Jason Read's offerings via a book of his, so I don't know for sure. But I wouldn't dismiss him on the basis of this one statement alone, I would need more evidence of un-authenticity.

Unpopular answer (my and Laozi's): Tao in the human world has been destroyed. To expound on this opinion, here's another unpopular one: Writing and keeping written records was part of the process of destruction. Once people started learning with one half of the brain instead of the whole brain, and with their minds separately from their bodies, half of their humanity was lost. (The rest was lost to other developments of the past 12,000 years or so.) Oral transmission used to be a way for people to know who they are and what the world is. At the time of the first contact with "civilized" people, six-year-olds from a hunter-gatherer tribe could recite their genealogical tree (their own, not some conquerers' or religious leaders' or celebrities') fifty generations back. What people memorized and used for problem solving was always up close and personal, and their minds were at no time overloaded to the gills with things they can't control, can't substantiate experientially, and have no use for whatsoever. As a result, their bodyminds worked very differently from modern minds + bodies at all times and for all purposes, and the world of spirits didn't have too many obstacles to overcome communicating with them -- which is the real meaning of "spirituality." Modern minds need books because the real natural ways to gain competence in the human world have been lost. Everything we have access to is second, third, a hundredth best. Not having access to that, in our world, means abject poverty -- whether in body, mind, or spirit. It's either simulacra or nothing at all, our choice.

I was responding to your post from Tuesday -- you only mentioned the engine in the one you posted in response to my response.

I don't remember how convincing or not Lazar's story was, it's been years since I heard it. It's just that debunkers are usually so not credible -- not talking about the present parties to the conversation of course -- but I've a long standing beef with card-carrying "debunkers," most are veritable scum on closer inspection -- all those "fact checkers" who have been caught outright lying, slandering anyone or anything sufficiently non-mainstream, falsifying stuff and pulling 'proof' outta their sold-out asses time after time, never retracting what they had "debunked" even after it quietly (or even loudly) made a nonchalant journey from "false" "conspiracy theories" to "mainstream" "everybody knows" "new scientific evidence" -- and as for not trusting the establishment -- I applaud you for that but there was no way to tell since you cited "records show" which is another term for "establishment asserts" as proof of Lazar's fakery. I don't know one way or the other if his story is true or fake, all I know is, what you offered ain't no proof of the latter, is all.

I guess his credibility would have been corroborated if the official record clearly stated his job description exactly the way he himself described it: "Worked at a top-secret military base, S-4, near Papoose Lake. Responsibilities: reverse-engineering crashed alien flying saucers." But even in the absence of such official corroboration we all should remember, at all times and for all purposes, the first and most sacred commandment: "Never trust a whistleblower. Always trust the establishment." And for those who learn visually better than verbally, there's always reliable charts that spell it all out.

By the way, I own this icon, and since we have St.George savvy folks here, maybe someone can tell me more about it? What I do know is that it is, in all likelihood, Armenian Apostolic (one of the oldest branches of Christianity, founded in the 1st century AD and the first one to become a state religion -- in 301 AD), authentic, created no later than the 19th century (painted on a thick oak board that was made using a technique that wasn't used later than that) -- and it has a boy in it instead of a maiden. I've been meaning to investigate it further for years but could never get around to it. All input welcome.

Nothing is easier these days than to become an expert on any issue -- all one has to do is make things up and call it "evidence suggests," just the way the dude you quoted did. Some of the most famous alien abduction stories have been reported by people who are not white and/or not living in the United States. E.g., Antônio Vilas Boas, a Brazilian farmer, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, former President of the Republic of Kalmykia (which is part of the Russian federation located in Europe; Kalmyks are ethnically Mongols, and the only people in Europe whose native religion is Buddhism); Robert Taylor, a forestry worker in Livingston, Scotland; Twelve children at Ariel School near Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, all of them black, who had a simultaneous experience; Billy Meier, a Swiss national (whom his Greek wife accused of faking his experiences after he left her, but who corroborated them while they were together -- the story is far from clear, except the part that he wasn't American) and so on.

I don't remember! It was sitting on my desktop screen as a picture I dragged there from somewhere. Makes me wonder why my cat is so vigilant about every little insect (are all of them really insects?..) she spots. Aside from bugs, flies, spiders etc., she occasionally seems to hunt, with extreme tenacity and focus, something entirely invisible to the human eye.