Taomeow

Thanks, Greenchild. The I Ching can be arranged in a linear graph too. If you use the so-called "Secret Arrangement" based on the number of yin vs. yang lines in each hexagram (i.e. 6 yang, 6 yin, 5 yang - 1 yin, 4 yang - 2 yin, 3 yang - 3 yin, 4 yin - 2 yang, 5 yin - 1 yang), hexagrams arranged in accordance with this criterion form a sine wave that grows smaller and faster and hits the bottom in the end -- much like McKenna's version, even though you do not attribute any dates to the coordinates. There's many ways to skin a... hmmm... nevermind, I'm not all that fond of this particular saying. There's many ways to juggle eleven dimensions suspected by modern physicists, and even more ways to juggle the somewhat greater number discerned by taoist scientists (of which to date I understand only 13 ). Time is holographic to be sure, and a nonlinear mandala is a good metaphor... but linear vectors do occur locally... And another thing... If people who are truly convinced that we are the microcosm to the macrocosm of reality expect time to prove them right, they must phase in local mortality somehow. I.e. either assume that worlds are as mortal as humans, or that humans are as immortal as the universe, but not both simultaneously?.. Imagine the ancient Maya timekeeper as the counterpart of a modern engineer who says, based on all the data available and his best understanding of what it means, "this plane can fly for eighteen years and then it will fall apart," or an MD who tells the patient, "you have six months to live before your liver fails" -- only, in the case of the timekeeper, someone looking at greater chunks of time... and a larger-sized "patient." Since they were obsessed with timekeeping for a couple thousand years and time, or rather space-time, was their main area of scientific explorations (exactly the way it was the case with taoist scientists), it is not altogether impossible that they may have collected and understood enough data to be able to make such a prediction. On the other hand, the engineer may be off by a year or two or even twenty, and the doctor, by a month or two or even sixty years... reality is about twenty percent stochastic, so even gods don't know for sure. Thank god.

I've sworn off giving online healing advice to humans (this can gobble up one's life if not kept in check), but dog cataracts is a different story. Here's a few things you could do: flaxseed drops in the eyes at bedtime (and nap time too); make sure it's fresh and kept refrigerated at all times; if he'll let you, blow powdered sugar in his eyes once or twice daily (don't buy prepackaged stuff because it always contains cornstarch, you need pure refined white sugar, grind it finely in a coffee grinder); L-carnosine eye drops; raw meat and raw liver diet; glutathione orally. Good luck!

As usual, taoist symbolism is polyphonic, and in a polyphony a=b doesn't work, defining one thing by saying it is another thing ("John is a dentist," "tao is emptiness," "tao is fullness," "John is a husband of Mary's") doesn't cut it... much to our cultural chagrin. I always like to quote my taijiquan teacher on this -- he would explain a move by reminding us, "nothing Chinese is ever straightforward!" That's because "straightforward" is the straight line of yang, and taoist arts are about the curved lines of yin. Linear knowledge is the domain of the left brain, and "those who speak" use the left brain hemisphere, the predominantly yang one in charge of the language. The yin, right half of the brain, doesn't understand language, "doesn't speak" -- it understands images instead, recognizes patterns, analyzes nonlinear information and arrives at nonlinear conclusions that cannot be expressed by linear methods of spoken languages. "Knowledge" Laozi doesn't want to be full of is this step-by-step linear logical straight-line a=b kind of knowledge, the yang kind. "Muddled" non-knowledge is the right brain kind, it is not ignorance, it is understanding by different means, nonlinear, non-full -- you can fill something up with "items," items of knowledge, and clutter the brain with these ad infinitum, the bigger the pile, the more useless the clutter of knowledge items, the harder it is to actually put to any good use... Or you can keep the mind in a state where empty and full are sides of the same nonlinear coin -- and things are grasped out of this empty fullness in their entirety... the way yin-mother gives birth to a baby in its entirety, not one body part at a time, not a hand today, a liver on Tuesday, a heart at doctor's discretion... nope, the linear yang way doesn't work to create wholeness, only to cut it into pieces -- now a surgeon would use the linear scalpel and a linear explanation, but the scalpel can only separate parts, not unite them. The "muddled" way is the unification way -- the straightforward way is the separation way. Laozi's opinion is that we the people have too much of the separation ways (of which spoken language is one) and not enough of the unification ways. His work is about possible/desirable attitudes to cultivate so as to correct this. Like most tao-minded classics, and like most things Chinese in general, Laozi is first and foremost (gasp) pragmatic.

Um... I'm always right, the first time, the last time, and in between. You seem to have quite misread who I meant, or who Laozi meant for that matter. It's not the "bumbling idiot" he was talking about, nor I. Having chosen a screen name like yours, you seem to have been in the vicinity of the right track at some point though. Gold is heavy and gold is light. As for "proper places," I rely on taoist classics to determine what these are for taoist sages. "Heaven is high, the earth is low; according to this, proper places in society are established." -- Ta Chuan. Note that "high" and "low" don't mean "superior" and "inferior," "better" and "worse." They mean what they mean: proper. Foundation below, roof on top. Proper places. Yin the foundation, yang the outer shell. Proper understanding. I also rely on the opinions of my live taoist teachers. Lastly, on my own best judgment. What about you? Who's your authority? As for politeness of sages -- Laozi's opinion in Chapter 15; mine, withheld.

No, but I don't remember what happened, a UFO must have abducted whatever I wrote and/or me and deleted both the post and my memory of the event. Sorry. Did you actually read Landscapes of Time? Are you sure he picked the date? My memory, as the above illustrates, is not one hundred percent reliable. I have nothing for or against the date, I'm just looking at the evidence from all angles available. McKenna, one such "angle," happens to have used two super-reliable sources possessing extensive credible expertise on the nature of reality, sources that were never learned from by most people who argue about the matter here or elsewhere: the I Ching and ayahuaska. Which is why his take is something I will phase in when examining the evidence, as opposed to "I don't believe it because if it was true CNN would have told me" kind of evidence.

The meaning of any individual chapters in TTC are best understood from the context of the whole work: it is tao-like in this respect -- a fractal of meanings whose any which line reflects the meaning of the larger context. The larger context is yin-yang, the operational basics of taoism. TTC is aimed at restoring the balance of yin-yang in the human world, which has gone off kilter. This is the meaning of the whole, and this is what's holographically reflected in this particular piece. All people favor yang, I alone favor yin, that's what he means by showing images of yang activities engaged in by people in the world and his own yin inactivity he opposes to that -- inactivity fertile with creativity, wisdom, serenity, but "muddled" and non-transparent, not for show, not for consumption, not for external applications. Other lines in the same work keep echoing this sentiment ("know the male but keep the female," "know the white but cherish the black," etc), and other works attributed to Laozi (particularly the Wen-tzu, which is supposed to be his oral teachings recorded by a student, and is to TTC what a novel is to a sonnet) get in greater detail but stick to the same principle -- "a sage has energy but doesn't squander it, has spirit but doesn't exploit it." I.e. it's not "anti-yang," it's anti-antiyin in its whole scope, which is the "correct and firm" stance to take against the pre-existing yin-yang imbalance in society. So one could imagine an illiterate, uneducated, non-flashy, not at all left-brain bright, humble person viewed as a person of value rather than of useless dull stupidity, restored by Laozi to her proper place -- a noble and necessary half of tao's yin-yang equation.

..

IMO the original and the best is Solaris by Stanislaw Lem (neither the AWFUL movie of a few years ago based on it, nor the '70s Tarkovsky version do it any justice). This one hardly has any "action," it's subtle, philosophical, slowly unfolding, slowly dawning on you, and translated from Polish. Problem of "self" is urgent and material for its protagonists, because they're interacting with a planet, Solaris, whose evolution, whatever it was, has resulted in the whole planet becoming one single intelligent being. A superintelligent superbeing, to be precise. People trying to establish contact with this being wind up blasting it with harsh radiation in order to elicit a reaction, because Solaris is unresponsive to their efforts until they do, even though it seems to be studying them, with detached interest of a brilliant but autisitic scientist catalogizing a new species of gnats. Once the gnats bite it though... Solaris takes a closer look, and reacts by showing people what it had found within their psyche that they really need to establish a contact with. It makes visible and material (to all!) the very parts of their "self" they'd been hiding from, running from, trying to disown, trying to kill... So every protagonist is horrified or embarrassed or otherwise devastated because the hidden, secret parts of their "self" are now sitting next to them, lying in bed with them, making friends and enemies in the outside world, and revealing -- revealing -- everything people would rather die than reveal. So people wind up killing these manifestations of their deepest darkest "self" again and again, and Solaris just makes them from scratch again and again... a "face it till you get it" kind of contact is finally established, to every protagonist's horror...

Regarding cytokines: some viruses (and some blood-based cancers) reprogram the immune system to flood the blood with cytokines -- it's not an overreaction of a normal healthy immune system, it's a mechanism used by the pathogen so as to keep the immune system busy fighting ghosts instead of the actual invader, itself. This mechanism is absolutely impossible to turn off until the virus (or the cancer) is destroyed, because the bastards multiply so fast. There's many, many herbs I know that are effective cytokine suppressors -- New Chapter has put a dozen or so of these in a single herbal formula, Zyflamed, available at HFSs (costing an arm and a leg though... I prefer loose herbs in bulk). However, all of these are useful in prolonged chronic inflammatory conditions with overproduction of cytokines going on routinely due to actual immune system "jumpiness" (usually created by vaccinations and aggravated by multiple exposures to hundreds of thousands of unnatural substances) -- and not at all in an acute scenario. So the whole argument re the 1918 flu preferentially killing the young and healthy because their immune systems overreacted wouldn't make much sense to a good virologist. An alternative explanation -- that it was a designer virus customized specifically to kill the young and healthy, i.e. soldiers, the target population of the period, will of course be laughed off by "coincidence theorists." However, the current swine flu hasn't infected a single pig before miraculously appearing in humans, and is a combination of three viruses from three different species (human, avian, porcine) from three different continents. What are the odds of a virus of this kind occurring naturally?..

Scent sent everywhere... You've touched the untouchable. You've disturbed a skunk.

Anyone read Terence McKenna's "Landscapes of Time?" He used the original, King Wen's sequence of the I Ching hexagrams (different from the Zhouyi in common circulation, the one with all the commentaries. King Wen's sequence is seldom used because there's no commentaries, but quite workable with if you've studied taoist fundamentals, and not impossible to find if you're persistent and/or lucky -- I for one have it) -- so, OK, McKenna used it to create a computer program he called TimeWave Zero, which allowed him to map the waveform cyclic pattern of time -- or should I say the pattern of tao ("the way of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return" -- so tao-in-motion is space-time in the classic Einstein-Minkovski sense) onto the timeline of world events. The resulting graph showed highs and lows that coincided with events of human history with uncanny precision -- the lows fell smack onto the years of plagues, wars, famines, etc., and the highs, onto enlightened, creative, peaceful moments). The graph looks more or less regular (with faster oscillations though due to what McKenna calls "introduction of novelty" and the Duke of Zhou called simply "yi") -- till the line plunges down to a low point never before encountered anywhere on the graph circa our nearest future, and then fizzles out into infinity in exactly 2012. McKenna didn't predict the end of the world or the beginning of a new world based on this outcome, an unexpected one for him (since he got the 2012 date from the program, rather than wrote a program to justify a pre-conceived date). Instead, he surmised that "novelty," in whatever shape or form it is introduced into the world, will reach such magnitude by that point that the world as we know it will be unable to sustain itself and flip over into something else. What kind of "something else?.." When I asked the I Ching herself a couple of years ago, she told me to mind my own business. At that time I interpreted it as being dissuaded from idle speculation, but by now I understand her response very differently. The events, should they unfold -- and unfold they will, I'm no stranger to detecting "yi" in the environment myself for that matter, and it's off the charts and climbing -- the events, whatever they may be, may well be interactive. And if they are, it means they will notice what kind of a consciousness "minding my own business" produces. So, as usual, the I Ching gave me the best response of all responses possible in a probabilistic universe.

The tune? "Silent Night" will work! Quiet sun... Where's my gun... Read the Bible And the Koran... Quiet sun, Like a silent gun, Sleep in heaven in peace...

it matters little that haikus must show not tell to taobum poets

Are we following the FDA in removing the distinction between "drugs" and "sacred plants?" If we are, we're not merely talking apples and oranges -- we're equating apples and Agent Orange. Drugs serve the purpose of exploitation. Sacred plants, the purpose of liberation. Orwell's Big Brother made everyone learn by heart that "war is peace, ignorance is strength" -- but he forgot to mention "exploitation is liberation." Lucky us -- the FDA just went ahead and corrected his mistake, so now everybody knows that sacred plants are drugs. So now we lump together things made in labs and things made by gods and obediently believe they're the same thing. Brilliant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oun9nCG9qPM...feature=related

when looking for advice ____________________________look within when giving advice ____________________________put yourself in the shoes of the one you're giving advice to when in a fight____________________________conserve energy when fighting more than one person ___________________________be a diamond, don't let them make a dent when choosing a teacher ________________________________make sure you're not looking for mom and dad subs if you meet someone and fall in love ____________________________smile back at the gods when you have nothing to do _________________________do nothing when you feel life is testing you ________________________consult the I Ching, and obey if she tells you to consult a psychiatrist when you have to do something that you are afraid of _______________________keep your spine straight when people don;t agree with the way you live ________________________lose their number

"The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality: The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu," translated by Eva Wong. "Chung said: 'The ghost immortal is the lowest class of immortal. Ghost immortals are beings who have attained immortality in the realm of the dead. Their spirit is dim and they have neither name nor title. Although they are not forced to be reborn, they are not able to enter the Peng-lai lands of immortality. They wander about in limbo between the realms of the living and the dead, and their existence comes to an end if they chose to be reborn into the human realm.' 'People become ghost immortals when they try to cultivate but do not understand the Tao. Wanting to make fast progress, they take shortcuts in their training. As a result, their bodies are as brittle as dry wood and their minds are as dead as cold ashes. Hoping to keep the spirit within, they hold on to their intention. Thus, when they enter stillness, only the yin spirit is liberated. As a result, they become ghosts with no spirit; they cannot become immortals of pure yang. Because the yin spirit does not dissipate after they die, they are called ghost immortals. Although these beings are classified as immortals, they are really ghosts with no substance. Practitioners who claim to be Buddhist and who practice incorrectly the techniques of quiet sitting usually end up as this type of immortal.'"

I was in the jungle my first day and what do you know, a tarantula as big as my palm (well, almost) shows up in my cabin and promptly crawls under a hiking boot (which was lying on the side). I sit and watch the boot for a minute or so, paralyzed into inaction by the biggest bug problem ever by far. Then a local woman walks in, speaks not a word, holds a thermos in her hands. I try to explain what's going on, she understands no English. I show her a pantomime, impersonating myself, the tarantula, the boot, and -- to the best of my ability -- Buddha. Amazingly, she understands, and leaves with nods of reassurance: "wait." In another minute, she comes back, with a local man who speaks no English either. I show him the pantomime. He carefully lifts the side of the boot, nods, puts it back on the tarantula, and jumps on top of it. Stomps his feet a few times. There. Lifts the boot again, retrieves the dead monster, smiles, nods, throws it out, leaves. I'm thinking, THIS I could do myself. I thought... well, nevermind what I thought. The mysterious part being that the local woman had no business in my cabin as it turned out, was carrying the thermos for someone else and refused to share with me any of its contents (coffee, for which I asked explicitly), and had no idea how and why she wound up walking in on me and the tarantula at the critical moment. She looked perplexed, as though she'd just woken up. Shrugged, smiled, left. Was it tarantula's death wish that brought the woman there? My guardian angel? The man's karma?.. Mystery of mysteries!

Rings very true.

cmm

It is still manufactured commercially in Eastern Europe, under generic names Vipraxin, Viprosal, etc. (from "viper" whose venom, in very small concentrations, is used to make it -- it's a nonspecific stimulator of the peripheral nervous system and as such helps with the illnesses you've mentioned, as well as other degenerative diseases, as well as with peripheral circulation problems, as well as flexibility and sports performance in healthy people). It is many times more efficient than all the OTC remedies combined, and many times safer than the strong painkillers and steroids made available to patients by doctors and to doctors by pharmaceutical companies to suppress the symptoms and drive the disease deeper (the only "treatment" available from this "reputable source"). I have a tube and use it sometimes to facilitate all manner of stretching routines -- it works great with yoga. A dedicated snake oil consumer, I am. The origin of the remedy is TCM, by the way. The origins of its ridicule and refutation, pharmaceutical competition. (All non-patentable remedies have been character-assassinated in a similar manner. This includes everything people had in their medical arsenal throughout their evolutionary history minus the past one hundred years when medicine has been eliminated and substituted by the big disease business.) It's always interesting to trace the history of our beliefs to their source and to the the money/power motives behind the source, don't you think?..

"My Country And My People" was written by a bright Chinese scholar educated extensively first in China and then in the West and therefore capable of bridging the two cultures and explaining one of them to the other from the insider's perspective. It was written with no preference to any one practice, with astute observations of the way they were actually practiced in China and of their real-life rather than "prescribed" attitudes toward each other. It was helpful for me to see an unbiased point of view, without any sacred cows whatsoever. The main attitude of the book is deep love for the people that doesn't turn into cloying piety toward any one school, sect, religion, custom, or tradition. It is a deeply humanistic book, which is why Buddhists and Confucians and Taoists in it are seen as human first and foremost, as Chinese humans importantly too, and described accordingly. Lack of reverence that occasionally mutually occurs between them is seen as is, without any judgments as to it being good or bad. I stand by my book recommendation (if you can find it, it might be rare -- mine is a first edition from a used books store.)

A bow to you, Little1! And a meow to you, Tiger.

Um... no, not really. I don't attack people and despise those who do. I attack ideas. The example of attacking ideas is my above entry attacking the idea that people practicing Magical Taoism are crazy. I don't like this idea, see. I find it erroneous, and insulting to taoism and taoists who are called gullible and crazy for practicing authentic taoist practices. This kind of an attack. Whereas you attack people personally -- me personally -- by accusing me of whatever it is you've been accusing me of -- unjustly, as in the above example -- in your posts and PMs over the years. I suspect the reason for your wrath is my failure, more often than not, to respond to them. I occasionally don't respond because I don't have the time or the attention span, and occasionally, because I've no interest in discussing my personal failings with anyone into this particular kind of discussion who isn't me and hasn't been invited by me to do so. I'm really sorry but that's the way it's going to be in the future too, so I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.