Taomeow

Poetguy, thanks for your thoughts and for your kind words. As a general policy, I stay away from any and all scholars of taoism who are not lineage taoists. Some who are piss me off too. "Power" is absolutely correct, THAT's the cat's meow of talismanic magic. Well... if you are going to get into that... brace yourself. Power is the single most complex issue in existence. No, strike that. Power is what existence is derived from, hinged on, shaped by... TTC translated correctly, as "The Way and its Power" or "The Way of Power," is accepted as one of the foremost taoist classics by all taoist sects and schools precisely because it concerns itself primarily with that, with Power. (Funny how many western translators and readers spectacularly succeed in not even noticing!) So we're pretty much back to the basics, to square one... Taoism is the study and practice of Power, its natural manifestations, its applications in the human world, and the dire consequences of its abuse. That, in a nutshell, is all it is. That, in a nutshell, is all there is...

Thank you, Jane!

The Innuits, Chukchi, and other native peoples living in the vicinity of the arctic circle traditionally ate 95% meat and fish, 5% everything else. They had no degenerative disease whatsoever before they adopted Western eating. Mongols, still one of the healthiest populations on earth, eat mostly animal products, and dried/preserved meats (minus nitrites and other chemical preservatives, which are indeed the devil in the commercial preserved meats) are an off season staple. Sattvic, rajic and tamasic foods do not correspond to yin-yang distinctions because they are set categories while yin-yang is a dynamic interaction, and foods can only be "more yin" or "more yang" in comparison to other foods, nothing is yin or yang by itself, and nothing is yin-yang balanced for purposes of being itself any more than something else -- provided it's not diseased. Yin-yang imbalances within self (whether a human self or a cucumber self) are encountered only in abnormal conditions, while something being "more yin" or "more yang" makes sense only in comparisons with something else. E.g., mango is more yang than a cucumber, but far less yang than a steak. (The inversion of yin-yang in relation to food properties is the legacy of macrobiotic anti-yin gurus who went out of the way to saddle all foods they don't like with yin properties, and to do this they had to completely ignore the true TCM findings about their yin-yang affiliations.) What grows below the ground compared to what grows up in a tree is generally more yin. Energy-wise, root vegetables are packed with yin energies, which provide things like "grounding," "stability of character and health," and the rest of those yummy yin goodies. However, which ones to preferentially eat, the more yin ones or the more yang ones, would best be determined by what one needs to support, yin energies or yang energies. In Ayurvedic terms translated into TCM terms, a vatta-pitta needs more yin foods, a pitta-kapha needs more yang foods, etc. Sorry to disagree on every count, but... Food is important, misunderstanding food is misunderstanding self, the world, and tao herself.

Moderator's note: I gather Sri Nisargadatta is a Hindu, not a Buddhist then? Perhaps a Moslem? Maybe a sufi mystic? Beats me. What's so funny about someone not into any of the above and trying to discuss taoist sources not knowing who the heck he is? I don't know who he is either. "Spare you my ignorance" I can't, I don't know who he is, but I can assure you that "spare me your ignorance" is entirely without merit and barely within insult policy margins that are stretching under its pressure. Please try to talk to people instead of belittling them for not being into your thing. -- Sword of tao sheathed

Moderator's note: We've discussed "hijacking threads" recently and have come to the conclusion that this constitutes a violation of our policy. We got reports with complaints re your entry. Ergo: Please open a separate Buddhist thread to promulgate "true Buddhist mastery." DO NOT hijack a taoist thread. -- Sword of tao sheathed

Thank you! As for "translations" of taoist concepts into Western cognitive paradigm, I think it's legit and useful and I do it too, all the time, and get a kick out of finding the "right expression." It's far more challenging than looking things up in a dictionary... it often means letting a rather holographic idea that might need volumes to be expressed in "our" terms crystallize out of a complex taoist thought succinctly expressed sometimes in one word. We don't have this one word in many, many, many cases, we must do the leg work to "get it," not just substitute the word that's close to our western-molded understanding. Trouble begins when things are not merely lost but purposefully eliminated in such endeavors. If we're dealing with a mere lack of introspection on a different (vastly different) cognitive paradigm's terms, which is of course a pretty darn difficult kind of introspection, we start getting into circulation handy shortcuts like "qi is electricity," "qi is magnetism," "qi is energy," "qi is prana," "jing is sperm," "gui are psychological," all that annoying jazz. But when we write volumes to PROVE that every taoist discourse over thousands of years simply missed out on what we the bigger-better kind were told in seventh grade... or in college for that matter... and apply everything we derived from OUR education to re-educate them... to explain away all their ideas and practices by the fact that they didn't get OUR schooling, or they would know better... This is cultural imperialism. That's not what you and I are doing though. I remember, years ago, "getting" just one TCM concept in Western terms -- just because I happened to know the Western area well enough so suddenly I had a precise match... the concept of "yin fluids" -- that happens to correspond to "hypothalamo-pituitary-pineal axis interacting with reproductive and urinary systems and all their organs and functions in a complex pattern of hormonal cascades and feedback loops." I was pretty excited when I saw the whole Western system that would require a dynamic dialog between such Western disciplines as neuroscience, endocrinology, urology, gynecology and whatever the term for male-ology that eludes me at the moment, to come together in a clear picture of what "yin fluids" stands for in TCM. It was just a first instance, and therefore memorable... More came later, but these "perfect matches" don't come by virtue of "direct translations" by any means, much less by explaining things away with the first idea that happens to be handy to a western-schooled mind. So that's why I am ticked off when taoist concepts are westernized mindlessly and spayed/neutered in the process... But that's not what you and me are up to!

OK, you've got a point. I didn't expect YOU to be one of THEM anyway.

Hmm... Intent is real, magic is not? Intent works, ritual is just for show? Intent is omnipotent, know-how passed down through generations empty banter? Intent is so obedient that one can make it "stronger" at will, keep cranking it up till it works -- but harmonizing the vibrations of the artist's blood with those of her ink is superfluous? Intent is enough, anyone can do it -- taoist sects promulgating cultivation as the only medium in which intent is focused, empowered, debugged so it works every time exactly the way you have specified are all sadly deluded? Um... these are all they've got by way of magical taoist sects. Talismanic being the foremost one. If we are going to talk talismanic magic, is it enough to just cross out everything its creators and practitioners say it is and substitute our own thing? -- whatever WE happen to believe at the moment?.. There was a recent thread where people were sharing their expertise as to how to make a tasty stew, per Mal's request. Lots of good input there. Technicalities and ingredients all the way... so why didn't anyone suggest to Mal, "just intend it?" Because it's harder to make a stew with sheer intent than an active magical talisman?.. Nope. It isn't. Intent is where you START making a stew. Not the end product. Ditto a magical talisman...

You are onto something, Hardyg. A number of years ago, when I started working on myself and getting rid of all the "energy outsourcing I hadn't approved of" and "free riders on my life force I hand't invited," one of the first things that happened naturally, not as an outcome of any "decision," was that I STOPPED laughing at lame jokes of people I found unpleasant; I stopped smiling "politely" in situations where you're expected to regardless of whether you're feeling pleasure (my smile is a spontaneous indicator of the fact that I'm experiencing pleasure, not a sign that I'm willing to abuse my facial muscles into a surface imitation of a feeling that is the opposite of the one I feel inside). It was all about energy conservation. Energy is not so much "stolen" as "squandered" in acts and/or non-acts that are contingent for their performance or suppression on discrepancies between what the mind thinks, what the heart feels, and what the body is doing. This is a tremendous abyss into which most of our energy disappears on a daily basis. Why is it so energy-consuming to run these discrepancies?.. The difference between running with the wind and running against a brick wall is, energetically speaking, the difference between expressing externally exactly what you feel vs. expressing externally what you are expected/encouraged/blackmailed/threatened/shamed into feeling. Imagine the wind as blowing inside you, if you run with it you just float effortlessly... Now imagine the brick wall you're forced to run into also inside you... you have to put on a show of running (with someone else's wind) while inside, you're beating yourself into a bloody pulp in order to "run" where you're told/expected to/conditioned to. Which process expends more energy?..

Congee, in my experience.

Oh, this sounds like a cool story to write! Well, yes, what Johnson et al are doing with traditional Chinese modalities is something I call cultural imperialism... ugh. You are likely to get nothing but this from any books available to the general public, I'm afraid. The perspective of Michael Strickmann ("they" actually believed, meaning "but I don't"?) will also remove all magic from the material under scrutiny and leave you with barren technicalities. It's like writings about sex by celibate monks and nuns... The actual process of making a talisman -- well, there's a lot of preliminary work. You need to make special inks. The ingredients are arcane. You have to make them yourself, and consecrate them, which means you have to have access to a functional taoist altar, consecrated and protected. So you can start researching from there -- you may not find all the information in one place, but you may find bits and pieces here and there and put it all together like a jigsaw puzzle. The strongest talismans are maoshan; research that. It's not going to be out in the open, you will, again, have to rely on bits and pieces and your power of integration. Also, if you're really committed to the task, take up one of the maoshan practices -- e.g., kunlun is available to the public, it's not about teaching how to write a talisman, but things a practitioner needs to know tend to get revealed to him/her down the road... Personal experience? Um, a goddess grabs your hand, rainbow snakes flash out of your fingers, she zaps you with a lightning and pours a waterfall on your head, then tells you, now YOU do it, like that, and while she's holding your hand you know how, so you do it, like that.

Oh, OK, I just didn't want to start from the very basics, these being available elsewhere, but since you're familiar with the subject... Well, what are you interested in -- obtaining talismans for certain purposes, or learning how to write them yourself? If the former, I don't know who to recommend, there was one participant on the forum who sells them, Mak Tin Si, but I have my reservations, although there's other people here who spoke highly of his "energy." He has a forum somewhere out there, you can look him up. "Talismanic water" you asked about is obtained by burning an active talisman, mixing the ashes with water, and either sprinkling, spraying, adding to bath water, drinking, or otherwise using it externally or internally. No one is ready to write a talisman who hasn't practiced calligraphy for a rather long period of time. It has to be practiced the taoist way, as a deep meditation, not as a mechanical endeavor. But the sheer technique is also something to work on for a long time before your qi can saturate your brush... Needless to say your qi has to be developed as you go too. It's a long haul. The magical part, the applications, consecrations, fasts, prayers, intent manipulation, etc., is something you will discover either beforehand, in the process, or after you've mastered the techniques -- if it was meant to be. To be ready to write a talisman is far more difficult than to be ready to write a bestseller. Do you have pretty good handwriting, steady and strong and graceful? A sure, unshaking hand? If you ever shot a gun, were you really really great at hitting the mark? These are some indirect indicators that you might succeed someday if you take up the practice.

Read an intro in Eva Wong's "Shambala Guide to Taoism," then come back with more questions if they arise.

I bet you've been told this by either one of the macrobiotics gurus or any number of their disciples. They have this thing against the nightshades, including eggplant... too bad nightshades didn't originate in Japan, so an aggressively popularized Japanocentric-vegetarian nutritional protocol simply HAD to smear them! If these "macrobiotic" "nutritionists" didn't keep turning alcoholics, diabetics, wife abusers, cancer victims and committers of near-infanticide (Michio Kushi's toddler grandson was rushed to an emergency room when he was dying of a "mysterious illness" -- as it turned out, vitamin B12 deficiency of life-threatening magnitude!), I would have more use for their nutritional wisdom. But if I'm wrong and the source of your advice is an ancient hag who lives in a fragrant garden, doesn't know how to use a can opener, and has bewitched you with her cooking, I'm all ears! In the "old country," I did indeed subject eggplants to all kinds of pre-treatments, usually baking and then leaving under a heavy weight overnight to get rid of the bitter juice, but I found this to be completely unnecessary when I deal with the US eggplants -- they don't have that bitterness, for whatever reason (and they are not as strong-tasting overall.)

No, it's a stew, as per your request, and yet you don't need stock/water at all for this recipe -- your bed of onions will liquefy in a slow cooker (or on very low if/when you get your gas) and turn itself into a juicy medium in which everything else will shine. This is a Russian classic, and I've discovered empirically that Russian classics done properly (not as denigrated by the syndicated media which portrays us eating either unglamorously, something like boiled cabbage, or mafia style, something like caviar by the spoonful) are usually a huge hit with Ango-Saxons, Chinese, and even French. As for eggplant, in this particular stew you treat it as just another vegetable, no special approach. I love cooking with eggplant -- in a meat-veggie stew, it is likely to become the bits and pieces most hunted for.

Yeah, apparently -- I didn't know that, but looks like I've pinpointed it as such by now with a little help from my TTB friends. (God, I love learning things I didn't know! I don't mean stupid things like who fought what battle when or who was elected where or who scored or who cheated on whom... I mean things that matter, things that can change my life! This one can! Sometimes I have to wait for years and years between the episodes... today is my lucky day... That's what happens to you if you start reading at 3, cooking at 8, dating at... nevermind, this one is nobody's business... -- you miss out on all the fun of learning from your peers!) Are you familiar with this spice? What would you use it for? In Xian, it was all over vegetable dishes, so I don't know what it's going to do to meat and potatoes... cookies and cream... sushi and sashimi... tacos and burritos... but I intend to find out. If anyone has a recipe, consider this a sub-thread of Mal's thread and please enlighten!

Nice! I'll look for it at the local Asian market. The wiki article cites a dozen or more names under which it can be encountered -- it is not known enough in the US to have an established name. Here's a quote from the wiki article which can give one an idea why this spice is like no other: "According to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, second edition, p 429 (...) "they produce a strange tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue). Sanshools appear to act on several different kinds of nerve endings at once to induce sensitivity to touch and cold in nerves that are ordinarily nonsensitive. So theoretically may cause a kind of general neurological confusion. " Which is why I could never really figure it out while eating dishes prepared with it beyond the fact that it gives you a mild electroshock. Well, OK, now I get it. Iron palm technique, huh? Yeah, makes sense... a Thunder spice would be my first choice too if I wanted to temper Iron!

You're right!! Thanks, now I know what I'm looking for. (Thanks for the nice try, CowTao... I wish it was as simple as star anise... but I'm no stranger to spices and have used every single one available in the US and dozens from elsewhere... unless it's something not available in either the US, Europe, India, or Middle East, I know it. ) I'll try to shop for Mala online... maybe someone somewhere carries it.

When I'm inspired (not every day of course), I try to use the same principles in cooking that guide my overall taoist pursuits -- yin-yang, wuxing, ganying. The simplest way to start cooking alchemically is by meditating on the energies of the ingredients you're going to use. No, there's an even simpler one -- go with the Five Tastes -- use all five in every dish, emphasizing the phase you want to support. For instance, a stew for someone who needs more Fire would be generously spiced up with cayenne, chili, etc., but it will include onions and garlic for Metal, lemon for Wood, parsley for Water, prunes for Earth... In China I had some dishes with a "numbing spice" which actually slightly paralyzes your tongue as you eat. I can't figure out what that's for except that taoist ways (which influenced Chinese cooking for thousands of years) do incorporate some bizarre weirdness just for the hell of it... I loved that spice, by the way...

I don't play Craps, but if I did, I would resort to taoist talismanic magic and perform the Five Ghosts Transfer Wealth ceremony. I hope this will help your co-workers understand that being a taoist doesn't mean being deprived and all out of luck vis a vis supernatural aid in gambling.

A noble taoist enterprise! Cooking is alchemy, both external and internal (and ultimately opening one's wisdom eye to the superficiality of the distinction). I'll give you an idea of a simple stew that's not going to fail if you don't burn or oversalt it, but I won't give you precise amounts of ingredients because they don't matter -- just use what's handy. One word of caution though: I'm opposed to the electric crock-pots big time. The flavor is destroyed, everything winds up tasting the same. And there's ample evidence that it's not very healthy to cook with electricity, so if you have a gas stove, I'd use that. If you don't, pray to the taoist gods to send you one someday. In any event, invest in a good stovetop clay pot. Traditional Chinese ones are great. Once you have that, make your stew on a bed of onions, with no water. Cut the onions into large chunks and layer the bottom of the pot with same. One large onion per every one pound of meat. Add a T of butter or ghee or coconut oil or sesame oil. Any meat that's handy goes on top, with salt, black pepper, and any spices and herbs you fancy. Then keep filling the pot with cut vegetables -- potatoes and eggplant are a must, everything else is optional. (Except don't combine beets with eggplant, ever.) Throw in a few prunes, they will make a difference. Something sour must be in there too -- tomatoes, or squeeze out a lemon, or both (but then you might want to add a t of sugar if you use both.) Cover, put on the lowest low, and forget all about it for some 2 hours. If you see no way around a crock pot, then forget all about it for however long it goes.

I've been studying all kinds of ancient symbols which interest me very much... got a little library on the subject in the process of accumulation. "The three-pronged pitchfork of a demon" is, believe it or not, derived from the early fishing implement and is a very ancient symbol of power and authority in human symbolic circulation for at least 75,000 years. The way the power it symbolizes is used depends on who uses it and what for. In Hinduism it is the symbol of the god Shiva. In Shiva's hands it represents the three phases of time, past, present, and future. It has its own mudra, the trishulahastra. In the hands of Poseidon or Neptune, it is used to control the seas. It is therefore the alchemical symbol for Water. But since its prongs resemble flames, it is also a Fire symbol. It stands for thunderbolts and lightning and as such is carried by many sky gods too -- e.g., Thor or Wotan of Norse mythology. If the three prongs are of even length, it is a secret symbol of the cross of Christianity. Wiccans evoke its earliest association with the Goddess and consider the three prongs to represent the Triple Goddess -- virgin, mother, crone. Now Satan uses it to harry souls in hell, of course, but it's not the trident's primary or only function... it just happens to be that versatile. Like a computer... one can write something good or something evil using the same keyboard.

There's a way to talk so as to try to be understood, and then there's a way to talk so as to hint at having something bigger-better than others up one's sleeve. A way to say "I know what I know and I'm looking you in the eye and telling you what I know... or at least the part I know I can tell." And then there's a way to say "I know and you don't, na na na na na." I would very much like to hear your story told the way people tell things when they want to be understood. No guarantee you are dealing with an audience that is smart enough and sensitive enough to understand, of course... but we're all in the same boat in this regard. My approach is, I try to do my best and then leave the outcome to the gods. The ability to look people in the eye while talking to them is one of the taoist markers of being on the right track spiritually. I wonder if this can be accomplished with nine eyes.

In a word? Chinese. Marblehead, I liked your description very much. Steve f, form/vs. application, martial vs/non-martial, etc., are beginner's distinctions (so if anyone's teacher makes these distinctions, he or she is a beginner... often a long-term beginner). In the depth of taijiquan, way down the road... provided you haven't taken a wrong turn from the start... so I'm told... a fight is a form of meditation, spirituality is a form of battle, the form embodies the formless and the formless organizes itself into the form. I very much agree with you though that "biomechanical" and "mystical" are not a dichotomy at all.

Shamans of many cultures refer to all techniques used to enter altered states and thence alternative dimensions as their "horses" -- the meaning is close to "meditation," which (contrary to popular belief) is a "means of transportation," a method whereby you "get somewhere." Meditation is as valuable to the meditator as a horse is to a rider, but riding a horse "recreationally" vs. riding a horse because you have somewhere to go are different activities. Shamans don't ride horses recreationally. A shamanic "horse" is the method of meditation -- whether rhythmic drumming, spinning, not-doing, ingesting entheogens, "dreaming," fasting, singing... techniques are numerous, different shamans use different ones, the same shaman uses different ones for different purposes... but they all are thought of as "horses" (or occasionally other beasts of burden, sometimes jaguars, sometimes dragons, sometimes cranes...) used to teleport the spirit (and occasionally the body too) to other realms. A "windhorse" is a fast one. (There's a frog in the rain forest in Peru... a "windhorse" for hunters. Takes one elsewhere instantly. The "elsewhere" is not different from where you were a moment before, but you are a hundredfold faster, your eyesight is a hundred times more acute, your sense of smell, touch, hearing... everything amplified. So this "windhorse" takes YOU out of your ordinary body and transports you into an extraordinary version of your body, without interfering with your spirit or the dimension you are in. Just one example, out of thousands.)