Taomeow

Your source is mistaken or mine -- or else they both used it and neither is mistaken -- what's yours? Mine is Alternative Medicine journal circa 2003, the quote was used in an article about the treatment of leukemia in China with a combo of Western chemo and TCM herbs (and medicinal toxins like arsenic, a compound of realgar, a TCM staple for "fighting poison with poison.") A Chinese Western/TCM doctor showed it to me, one Raymond Chang, MD, in NYC, and commented on the whole issue extensively.

Seadog, it might surprise you that you are on the same page with Mao Zedong, who decreed exactly this approach to medicine using exactly this reasoning. The famous Mao quote that made modern Chinese medicine a non-committed affair it is today goes, "We don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat as long as he catches mice." One problem with this approach is, if our biomechanical fundamentalism is the "white cat," and our politics of science are in the paws of other fat white cats, they invariably make sure that the goal of our medicine is to provide mice for the cat who catches them, to feed the cat and make him fatter and fatter, rather than to protect the population from the mice. That's why the number of diseases, which was more or less a constant number for thousands of years, doubles every decade in the PDR. We invent more and more mice to keep the white cat busy. We supply new kinds of mice to keep him happy. If the cat was efficient at its task, surely there would be fewer and fewer mice, not more and more? Yeah, but efficient for whom, one might ask. With fewer "mice," chronic diseases, the population would be healthier, but the white cat would starve?.. So why not design medicine around the appetite of the cat, the way ours is designed, and why not design science around providing more and more mice to catch, the way ours is designed? In the meantime, the black cat, the traditionalist of real medicine, who is still as great at catching traditional non-GM mice as he's ever been, sees that he's lean as ever while the white cat is growing fatter and fatter, and so he abandons his ways and starts imitating the white cat, quietly promoting the "give us more mice!" scientific agenda. So now we might have two cats who catch mice the modern way -- and a belief that we're fine and lucky to have both. In reality, we have neither. THEY have US.

I think your wife and kids are lucky! -- and making sure wife and kids are fine means your kids' wives and husbands and kids stand a better chance of being fine, and the impact of what you do as a family man or woman keeps spreading wider and wider... And that's a daily 24/7 "practice," the don-t-let-them-down practice that can't be matched by any other in its efficiency for self and its impact on humanity. Only one objection -- that's cultural, not personal. Watching a baby coming out has been taboo for men in all cultures since the dawn of time and till it was introduced here-now for reasons I don't want to go into so as not to start swearing. All healthy animals hide in a dark, quiet place in order to give birth. We the domesticated ones don't know better because we ourselves weren't born the right way. The doctor who delivered my twins was a woman, but she was the wrong kind -- screaming, pushy, bossy, noisy, meddling... all kinds of wrong. And she didn't let me squat, which is something my body was begging me to do. Well, at least there were no drugs of any kind, epidurals, all that deadening horror. It was, of course, extremely painful, but the beauty of feeling it instead of not feeling it is, once it's over, it's gone -- only an hour later, I could retrieve no memory of the pain, it was nowhere in me anymore, even though I went through it fully conscious. "Felt" means processed, processed means released. "Not felt" means unprocessed, unprocessed means stuck. Anyway... Giving a natural birth to my son and daughter changed me on the spot into someone whom I instantly found way, way more interesting than who I was before. I've done many practices since, but nothing has ever come close. I don't think the numbed-out women hooked to IVs quite know what the process is about. I mean, they do get the child at the other end of the unfeeling ordeal, but they don't get to learn much about their bodies, their bodyminds, or any of the things that a woman can't really learn any other way. No practice is as closely monitored by tao herself, as guided by her, as embraced by her as this one. This takes you right where tao's at, causes you to merge with her and know her mind.

They are the goals of online taoism. The goals of taoism in reality are, first and foremost, different for different schools and sects of taoism, but even in the ones most heavily influenced by buddhism (like Celestial Teachers or Complete Reality) no one is after emptiness/nothingness as the goal. It is used as a tool -- I use it in taiji (well, trying to, learning to), because meditating on nothingness makes "somethingness" happen spontaneously and effortlessly. So, as a detour on the journey, not as a destination, emptiness/nothingness are used in taoism -- well, taoism is pragmatic to the core (remember the "Chinese are not spiritual" bit?), and will use what's out there, all of it -- wuji is out there (and in here too) so why not use it? -- but any goals it formulates make sense to a man and a woman, albeit a man and a woman who can use the tool of emptiness due to cultivation -- and not to some empty noncreature of nothingness. E.g., the Triple Treasure -- Perfection, Nondecay, Immortality. This is accepted by many sects of taoism as the goal -- and it never says anywhere that you have to be nothing to be that.

Don't know about the freebies, but there's a book -- The Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality: The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu, translated by Eva Wong. I love it. It's 14.95 in paperback.

Welcome home -- have a safe and enjoyable trip! I'm sure you know about stretching throughout the flight and drinking plenty of water -- I always do yoga in the isle on a long flight, this and water and vitamin C and a yin diet the day before and fasting on the flight and a yin diet the next day nip jet lag in the bud.

Well, I didn't use the word "superior," I described the difference as I see it. That's "difference," not "superiority." However, you're the second person in this thread to hear the "superior" message where the "difference" message is clearly stated and exactly this word, "different," is repeatedly used. Any idea why?.. To reiterate: yes, I do believe taoism is different. So do masters I trust. So do researchers with a clue. As for your betting I have no clue of the diverse systems of Indian philosophy, you're gonna lose the bet. I started my pursuit of knowledge in this area many, many years ago, both theoretically (reading most source books and the voluminous History of World Religions) and empirically (meditation, yoga, applied Ayurveda, which I studied in some depth and have used and still use on occasion; and the guidance of a monk). So I do have a clue. If anything, I am slightly partial to Hinduism, which I find philosophically rewarding and whose medical system fascinates me almost as much as the Chinese/taoist one, the latter being, if anything, simpler and more user-friendly, not "superior," which is why I use it more than Ayurveda. But buddhism... when I say it's anti-human, is there anything you know to disprove it that I don't? You're supposed to be born human as punishment for having had attachments, desires, and so on. If you're born, it means you're in trouble, it means something is already wrong with you, and for you. If this isn't anti-human, what is?.. I didn't make it up, my friend. Merely noticed. As for the rest... I, not being a buddhist, have every intention of having "attachments" and "detachments" as I see fit, and I am attached to taoism, and detached from all Indo-European religions, most sciences, and definitely all claims of their "equality." Christianity doesn't equal Islam, much less taoism. Neither does buddhism. This, again, is not a statement of superiority, but a statement of a clearly perceived difference and a clearly made personal choice. Hope you (and mikaelz... shoot, I think I'm misspelling this, sorry) can find it in your hearts to stop having a problem with that. Lin's frequent statements of buddhism's superiority vis a vis taoism, by the way, don't bother me. I never have a problem with people attacking ideas, whether I see them as right or wrong -- I do have a problem with people attacking people though, in response to a statement of a different bunch of ideas. Lin is exemplary in this respect. We don't even see our respective toes eye to eye I don't think, but he has never called me names, "fundamentalist" or what have you, and that's why I don't have to worry that what he believes makes little sense to me and what I believe, to him. So what? Long as he's not trying to kick me -- the way you do -- why not let him call taoism late for dinner?..

It has been my experience that while some fingers do point to the same moon, others -- most in fact -- point up the pointer's asshole. Discerning between fingers and what it is exactly they're pointing at is therefore a worthy pursuit AFAIK. A "fundamentalist" is someone who tells you, "my way is the only right way for YOU, and if you don't follow me, you're in trouble, and it proves you're an ego-driven ignoramus, blah blah," and NOT someone who says, "my way is the right way for ME, so don't tell me to follow yours, I'm not interested, thank you."

Well, my definition of a "science" is not too broad (and I'll give it in a moment ) but when I apply it to our modern science, or what has been defined as "science" in the past one hundred years or so, I have to come to the same conclusion as Linus Pauling of two Nobel prizes, who said that our modern medicine is not a science. The definition he would apply to anything that would warrant viewing this anything as a "science" I apply too, and that's when it transpires that taoism is a science, a good definition can clarify what it is we're looking at. No, it's not the "universal search for truth" or anything like that. It's not a collection of "facts" (it's a fact that this collection is revised continuously and whatever was a "scientific fact" ceases to be so in the face of a new "scientific fact" that proves the former one "fiction" -- used to be half of our "scientific facts" being thrown out every fifteen years, but now it's faster -- the more of them we collect, the more they contradict each other, so "scientific facts" are being thrown out by scientists about as fast as new "scientific facts" are being introduced. The balance therefore is zilch. But that's not what I'm talking about.) Neither is technology -- any technology -- any proof that what has gone into making it tick is a "science" -- consider cellular metabolism, a precise technology of mother nature, more complex than anything created by man and infinitely more proven and efficient on this planet, working without any scientific claims at all... if something works, it works, but it doesn't make it a science. What makes a science a science is its ability to be congruent with its own postulated theory no matter what aspect of reality we apply it to, to not contradict its own premises no matter what process or event or phenomenon we investigate. Now let's see. Our quantum physics is in a chronic crisis which it calls "the search for a unified theory," to give the crisis a nicer-sounding name, as though the difficulty is only temporary and the promise of truth is just around the corner. Our astrophysics keeps shooting itself in the foot because, being creationist (like the religion that went before), it postulates a beginning and an age to our universe, and then keeps changing the date because, well, thirty years ago they lived happily with an 8-billion-year-old universe -- till they discovered 18-billion-year-old matter in some of its stars, so they decided on a compromise figure of a 15-billion-year-old universe -- does it make any sense to you? And what will happen when they are slapped with a "new scientific fact?.." But of course our life sciences take the cake. Have you ever heard of an MD who has studied biophysics in med school? No? Neither have I -- and yet we ARE biophysical creatures, but we are studied and manipulated only in terms of chemistry, i.e. scientific approach to our being is at all times commensurate with what the scientist had a chance to learn for the multiple choice exam, and we can't be tackled in a way that will overstep these boundaries -- that would be unscientific, right?.. to operate in the territory of the scientist's personal ignorance -- that's our definition of unscientific. And what about reconciling our biology with our cosmology? Our linguistics with our ethnobotany? Our thermodynamics with our psychology? Our forensic sciences with our agriculture? In other words, our science as a whole doesn't have a unified theory that would connect one science to the next to the next to the next in a non-contradictory manner -- or at all, for that matter. And according to Linus Pauling, that's not a science if it doesn't have an underlying conceptual unity, it's a mere collection of dubious facts (that keeps being revised) and monkey-see-monkey-do technological prowess here and there, is all. A science of medicine, e.g., he asserted, would start out by defining what health is. Ours doesn't. It can't, because to define health, it would need the very unified theory it's lacking. So it just doesn't. Its definition of health is "doctor knows best," is the best it can do. Is it scientific to you? It isn't to me -- or to Linus Pauling. And this is where taoism shines as a science that meets this very criterion beautifully. Taoism postulates a unifying theory, a few simple axioms -- change, cyclic nature of change, yin-yang, qi, Wuxing, ganying. These it then applies to its all investigations, theoretical and empirical alike -- cosmology, biology, social dynamics, agriculture, anatomy and physiology, psychology and technology, geography and geomancy, you name it -- and no matter where they go with it, it holds up, it doesn't contradict itself, it doesn't have to ignore its own conclusions drawn in the course of some other investigation in order to remain operational. It is what we don't have: a science of reality, not of fragments, shards, snippets thereof that we have. And because no matter what fragment we might choose to examine, if we apply taoist basics they are not powerless, ever, to tackle it, I believe taoism is THE science. So my definition is, a science is an interface between our world and our knowledge that doesn't fail no matter where it is placed. So by this definition, taoism is the only science today. Not "trying to be," not "not as good as," not even "as good as" what we've been told is science, but "the only one." Funny, huh?..

Zoroastrianism (the religion of ancient Persia) postulates a world based on a duality of spirit and matter which is the reverse of what we're used to. In their cosmology, matter is the absolute good, and spirit is the source of all things evil. The material world is called Truth; the spiritual world is called The Lie. Interestingly, all beings, including their supreme deity, have free will to choose one or the other. The almighty of their pantheon, upon some pondering, chooses Truth; while his evil twin, the spiritual one, chooses The Lie. Smart guys, those ancient Persians! Another bit of trivia: native religions of Africa all share a belief in reincarnation, but rather than trying to snuff out the process and quit reincarnating, they hold that the dead eagerly await an opportunity to come again to the warm material world of feeling, and are delighted when given a chance. Some Pacific Islanders expect to become members of the white race when they die, because their word for "ghost" is "white man." Another: "Whoever said the Chinese are spiritual is a liar." -- Lin Yutang (the translator of Zhuangzi, etc., author, inventor of the Chinese typewriter) Longevity is not overrated though I don't think. A good life should last and last. It's a not-so-good one that might warrant termination with extreme prejudice -- the way they would like to terminate it in all those next-world- or next-dimension- or some other bigger-better-reality-based belief systems derived from having failed to master the art of living in this-here one.

It's very different from all Indo-European modalities, including buddhism, and it's very similar to all shamanic/pagan modalities, in that it is not paternalistic, hierarchical, creationist, or escapist. I could tackle each postulate separately, or I could present the practical outcome. The former would be a long digression, so I'll limit myself to the latter. The practical outcome is that Chinese civilization's main accomplishment (give or take a couple centuries of externally fabricated meddling that muddied the waters for a while here and there -- but six thousand years is six thousand years, what's a couple centuries?.. even if they happen to be now?.. this, too, shal pass...) -- its main accomplishment has been mastering the art of living and deriving enjoyment from life: nature, health, family, friendships, food, work, play, the arts, the sciences, humanity. It is humane, human-affirming. It is about life, not about afterlife, it is about "yes" to being human, not "no." That's the conceptual difference that, to me, makes all the difference in the world, despite whatever similarities in whatever approaches, practices, even conclusions. Similarities are skin-deep, the core of taoism is humane, and the core of Indo-European modalities is anti-human. Makes one wonder who really originated this and what exactly for. That they've succeeded in teaching people to despise and deny the human life as a prerequisite for venturing into things "spiritual" is doubtless. But not all people. Not the hardened, incorrigible, other-influences-deflecting taoists anyway.

...almost as strange indeed as modern physicists using such officially scientific terms for the behavior of some particles as "strangeness" and "charm" (I kid you not), or describing "strings" (which don't seem to be any more visible than "dragons") as "made essentially of a kind of bubble gum" (I kid you not again), or using any number of made-up words that don't mean anything until they are invented as labels for some phenomena we need to name "something" -- phenomena, furthermore, of which most are not observable at all, whose existence is theorized only on the basis of their impact on something scientists CAN observe ("neutrinos" are not observable, only their behavior is, to an extent); while others are not only not observable, but not even discernible in their effects and are pure speculation on top of being named a made-up name ("quarks"). Taoism is different from the rest of them all in that it is, first and foremost, a science. Don't let "strange names" for "strange phenomena" which "may or may not exist" fool you. It is a science of the superior kind, the one that doesn't take the observer out of the phenomena observed, thereby avoiding a false postulate of "objectivity" our own science rests on -- as though the scientist isn't there, doesn't matter, doesn't skew the outcome, interpretation, application of phenomena under observation by his or her being smack in the middle of them. The extent of unreality that allows for our science to have some auxiliary universe on the side, unaccounted for, where all the scientists purportedly go so as to objectify themselves, take themselves out of the universe they are observing so as to draw 'objective' conclusions about it, is mind-boggling. Taoist sciences were never make-believe to this extent, never played this let's-pretend-I'm-not-here game our own scientific games are based on. They never attempted any science that is only true to the extent the scientist himself doesn't count as part of what's going on. It is for a very good reason that Niels Bohr chose the taiji symbol for his coat-of-arms when he was knighted.

You mean wuji, right? rather than wu wei?

There's two very different sects of taoism both called Maoshan. Both are lineage based; neither one denies the shamanic roots of taoism (if there's anything ALL taoist schools and sects agree on, it's the origins of taoism and its founder -- Fu Xi the shaman-king). However, one of them is a spiritual/philosophical/religious/devotional practice, influential in its moral authority; while the other one is a magical/sorcery sect, quite secretive and also influential but concerned with pragmatic rather than moral issues. If someone asked me what Maoshan Magical is in its essence -- well no one did but here goes anyway -- I wouldn't think twice calling it "refined shamanism," "a shamanic tradition of a civilized (as opposed to tribal) society." It is shamanic to the core, it's just that it also incorporates methods derived from the sheer antiquity of Chinese civilization which was already a world of extensive written communication and scholarly pursuits at the time when it was ruled by shaman-kings, shapeshifter-emperors and dragon court-advisers.

OK, so we're turning all scientific on the spirit world! Let's go: tryptophan > serotonin > melatonin > pinoline > 5-MeO-DMT > DMT Please note that supplementing directly with oral melatonin won't do it -- the body has to convert just the right amount of the goodies at every metabolic step and much prefers to deal with precursors, not the straight-up substances -- it doesn't like to be dictated how much of what to handle "right now," out of the blue, just because the mind decided to give it something to deal with right now. The body likes to make those decisions itself, based on information it has that the neocortex doesn't. So of course if you take DMT straight up you're going to trip your brains out, but if you set up the ideal metabolic conditions for your body to go along with your practice (that's the right practice, the right light-darkness stimulation, the right herbs and foods to go with same, and the right invocations), the body will let the mind open itself to spiritual visitations just to the extent it's safe and beneficial, no more. Dietary sources of tryptophan: chocolate, meat, fish, turkey, dairy, oats, bananas, dates, peanuts. Dietary aid to spiritual visions: no grains high in protein (like modern GM ones) but low in tryptophan, since eliminating them minimizes competition for absorption from other amino acids. Meat and veggies, or fish and veggies, is it. Chocolate for dessert, nothing wrong with that. The original taoist (non-buddhist-influenced) diet conductive to spiritual visions is "Abstaining from Grains."

What they want depends on who they are, just like with people. Most Chinese spirits are hungry ghosts who want, well, attention. Many are cold and want energy. None are considered manifestations of your own mind except for the ones that are, i.e. your subtle bodies, your double, etc.. Except for the past one hundred years, no one ever doubted their existence quite independent of what we think of them or of anything else. I see no reason to fall for the latest cultural fad that consists in denying the existence of spirits -- but then, I'm seldom impressed by anything at all thought up in the past one hundred years, the most murderous in human history. Based on the deeds, I don't trust the words, put it this way. Some spirits are vengeful and hold a grudge -- these are usually your neglected ancestors, unless you did something to antagonize any unrelated ones. The latter hope to be offered food and drink when you eat. These can be invited to live in your home (an ancestors' altar is set up for the purpose) provided you don't forget to feed them. Most people who lived throughout civilized history have been hungry, physically hungry and/or emotionally unfulfilled, that's why most spirits are hungry. Spirits accept bribes, unless they are after revenge, and will come or go on request if offered money (you have to burn it to turn it into spirit money). Most people who lived on earth in civilized times have been poor, that's why most spirits still want money.

In the Chinese tradition, according to Michael Saso, lay people took every precaution to avoid communicating one-on-one with spirits, even benevolent ones, and viewed any intrusion of spirits as a problem to be dealt with by professionals -- typically taoist priests trained in exorcism. A Maoshan sorcerer, on the other hand (that's Maoshan Magical, not Maoshan Mystical -- different sects) will routinely work with spirits, and not necessarily just the benevolent ones -- but he will always expel all the spirits, both benevolent and evil, at the end of the ritual. There's special procedures for closing the door behind them and making sure no one escapes or sticks around. So even sorcerers who deal with spirits professionally make sure that they don't spill over into everyday life. In classical feng shui, certain things are done a certain way toward the same goal -- i.e. arranged just so that entities from other, non-human realms don't feel welcome. There's a belief, e.g., that evil spirits travel in a straight line -- which is why there's never a straight-line walkway leading to a traditional home, and usually an L-turn to the entrance door designed to "lose" any sha' spirits that might have been following you. Personally, I would abandon any practice that attracts any spirits unless I've specifically invited them.

Yin fire? Like smoldering coals? Fire personalities are as diverse and variegated as the rest of them. A pious spiritual type, e.g., is a fire type, not just a hot-headed warrior. A good computer programmer, a theoretical scientist, a poet -- ditto. A warm, centered Fire personality might produce an excellent cook (who will truly shine with her spicy dishes and cook superb Indian). A well-balanced Fire is not aggressive, but he or she is still Fire in many, many manifestations, which are really fun to discern. My favorite thing to do is to look at "who's talking" and "who's walking" in terms of Wuxing. With practice, it becomes absolutely obvious.

Most methods out there are Fire methods. If they are about "ascending" -- wherever you or your subtle manifestations and/or energies are invited to ascend -- be it from the base of the spine to the crown chakra, from earth to heaven, from the body to the out-of-body, from material to non-material, from life-centered to spirit-centered, from Mother Nature to Father in Heaven, 'spirit in the sky,' 'light,' 'enlightement,' etc., they are all Fire methods. They predominate because of the nature of current civilization, a Fire-Metal phase affair largely inherited from the Babylonian sun worship practices. (Which, in their turn, seem to originate with someone or something cold-blooded for whom sun worship is a biological necessity.) In any event, all Indo-European religions are in this category, and nearly all their associated practices. All upward-pointing hierarchical developments, all pyramid arrangements with some summit aimed for up there at the top -- thousands of names, same essence.

Oh, I'm in total agreement here. The only thing that bothers me is the ratio of well-intentioned ignorance, honest mistakes, vs. the amount of intentional, and secret, poisoning of the well. Something can always be done with the former -- after all, every one of us here didn't know what a "lineage" is at some point in the past, and its value became clear (and not to everybody at that, obviously) when just one little pocket of ignorance was gradually filled by knowledge -- for some at least -- so a hopelessly confused "newager" may still see the light provided he or she is an honest seeker. However, the second scenario, the intentional poisoning of the well, I find infinitely more bothersome. Call me paranoid but I sometimes think even garden-variety non-mainstream-interest forums like this one are being monitored by a couple of paid disruptors (designed after the spirit and agenda of folks like Steve Barrett of Quackwatch who is a paid employee of a pharmaceutical advertizing agency in NYC, behind the facade of "just sharing his very own skeptical opinions"). Too often I've seen a discussion that could get somewhere meaningful and help one or two or more well-intentioned but ignorant folks to start taking steps in the direction of a bit less ignorance meticulously derailed by this or that ad hominem attack and degenerating into the usual squabble, making damn sure that any and all ideas that might have been shared and explored further are rendered stillborn from inception. Just way too many times to be utterly convinced it's just individuals doing this out of their "honest skeptical beliefs," with no ulterior motives... I hope I'm wrong, I hope intolerance of certain mindsets is just an idiosyncratic quirk for some, not their job description. Besides, I am genuinely interested in finding out whether Kunlun is a lineage practice, because, well, because if it is, I would maybe check it out, and if it isn't, I wouldn't, is all. So I wanted this question answered but I didn't want to offend anyone who believes lineage is not that important. It is all-important for me, but not everybody is me, and I can live with that.

Well, here's someone with no assumptions, zilch. I know nothing about Kunlun except what the I Ching told me (and she told me not to tell anyway) -- but as a general approach, no matter what practice I would undertake, I would want to know the lineage, first thing I would want to know. If it has no discernible lineage, if it's a mix-and-match practice (which is what the majority of practices out there are today), I call it a new age practice. It's not a slur name, by the way, unlike what it has been made into by the feds who infiltrated the freedom movement way back in the flower-power days in order to derail it and make it into something ridiculous and unworthy of any respect (or so I'm told by people who were part of it... I wasn't, so I have no first hand knowledge, but I find it highly believable coming from highly trustworthy individuals) -- --where was I? -- oh yeah, so, unlike the ridiculous version eventually sold to the public and bought both by its paid enemies, unpaid adversaries, and ignorant enthusiasts alike -- unlike this, the original new age, as explained to me once by one of its founding mothers, Marilyn Ferguson (there you have a lineage! ) in her funky, unreal, huge new-agey home complete with an ancient Native American bruja living in the trailer in the back yard, a tiny, shiver-down-your-spine, dark, piercingly present anachronism of a lady who spoke no English, communicated with no one, and was always up to something no one could understand; and, back to the description of the house, complete with a life-sized Buddha statue seated in front of the grand piano, hands on keys, and a three-story-high fireplace and so on -- as she explained to me, many moons ago, new age at its inception simply meant "find what you can of the traditions destroyed by our dear forefathers, try to revive it to the best of your ability, with a close eye on the modern developments and the future" -- so in this sense, all a "new age practice" means is, "a practice with no discernible traditional lineage." Is all. So in this sense, may I ask the knowledgeable folks: is Kunlun a lineage practice or a New Age one?

or vice versa -- depending on the too much/not enough overall accounting of your energies. I am in favor of going with the Wuxing analysis and determining which phases are auspicious for a given individual and which ones are not. Feeling attraction to a certain phase is not only no guarantee it's good for you, it might be the opposite -- as in my case, e.g.: I am attracted to Fire and attract Fire easily -- and it's because my predominant phase is Wood. Now if Fire was my deficiency, and Wood or Water my excess, no harm done, it's all good, right? but I don't have a Wood excess -- I have a Fire excess and a Water deficiency. So being attracted to Fire (which is natural and inevitable for Wood) doesn't mean it's good for me -- in fact, it's absolutely detrimental, it would "burn up my Wood" too fast if encouraged in any way. Instead, I absolutely need Water practices and other Water choices (foods, colors, occupations, residences, people... and of course overall lifestyle). So before deciding which one to go with, I would definitely encourage an individual to obtain a qualified analysis of his or her Wuxing status, and take it from there. Likes and dislikes can be quite deceptive -- it is a well-known fact that people get cravings to foods they are allergic to, get addicted to chemical substances that make them feel good "now" only to be their undoing "a bit later," and so on. In fact, if you're too easily pulled into a particular type of practice, it might mean you are encouraging the phase that is already in excess, which is easy precisely because it's in excess. It's deficiencies that are difficult to get going about remedying and replenishing...

Nice thread -- everyone is making sense! even when saying different/opposite things... This might be the free-will test we're here for, methinks (I'm a believer in Chinese astrology's breakdown of fate into 40% written-in-the-stars, can't-change-if-you-try stuff, 40% free will, 20% pure chance even gods don't control... there's something a tad quantum-mechanical about this picture, no? ). How much of what's going on to obey so as not to make unnecessary waves, not to swim against the current, not to disturb the status quo -- and how much of it to resist, oppose, try to change, dissent about, do something about?.. Figuring out which part is "of the harmony" and which, "of the human free will applied poorly" would be the first step in determining one's own level of compliance. Blanket compliance is not wuwei, at least not to taoist sages many of whom were rebels! "You killed a king?" they asked, and the Zhou people replied, "No, we executed a tyrant." Meaning, the king was no longer king because he wasn't acting as one, he was acting out of totalitarian cruelty, and this took his "mandate from heaven" away from him in the eyes of the sage, so it was no longer "going against heaven's will" to battle him and kill him, it WAS heaven's mandate of the moment and the situation. I'm all for following the rules of harmony, but I wouldn't assume that "any" rules currently in existence are of harmony -- and if they aren't then harmony lies in changing them. What do you think?

Dear Little1, I am in full agreement -- except your No.1, 2 and 3 would be my No.2, 3 and 4. And the Number One? I believe in one's obligation to one's children that must take precedence over any other. I believe in giving them the kind of love no one else in the world has any right to claim, not in heaven, not on earth. I think they are the only valid receptacle for sacrifice, devotion, unconditional "yes" to everything they are. (No, I'm not giving you a recipe for creating "spoiled brats" -- love has never, ever spoiled anyone, its unreal substitutes, in the absence of the real thing, is what generates "spoiled brats." This -- and 32 injected assaults on the immune and neurological and endocrine system by age 2.) My children are entitled to absolutely everything I have to give and more -- everybody else please prove to me (the generic me) you're worthy of my taking away from me and giving to you. I'm supposed to love someone who's done nothing to deserve it yet? I'm game -- provided this someone is my child. Everybody else, please initiate, reciprocate -- or beat it. (Disapproving tsk, tsk from the Buddhist side of the field... yeah, I hear you. I still don't love the child abuser, and never will -- and I could mention a few other types I don't love, feel under no obligation to please or accommodate, and never will.) This understanding, about the biggest obligation having to be directed towards the weakest, most dependent -- the child -- rather than the powerful who you have no power and control over -- is missing from the collective consciousness and the collective unconscious of all civilized societies, which makes me think civilization, at the core of what it's for, is an acting-out of this one make-or-break omission of the human experience, a big toy for an emotionally frustrated child who can never grow up because the real thing never was, so he'll have to play with toys -- for a few thousand years... This, too, shall pass...