Taomeow

Witch, I am honored pink. Do stick around! Will google what you suggest in a moment. Did I ever mention to you that I found some indirect confirmation for your dietary credo in an unexpected source? Been reading an old Latin American novel and came across an assertion that there's a kind of fresh-water dolphin in the Amazon whose fat is used by local folks as a remedy for any and all sexual difficulties -- a dangerous animal all around because that fat if ODed on can cause men and women to become permanently sex-minded to the point of insanity.

Most delightful!

No, it gets complicated only if I fail to do this. If I don't, everything is a breeze. Just happens the way it should, problem free. I have never had my flight delayed, e.g., and I don't know anyone else who can say it. Have never been late to anything important because of traffic, and I don't know anyone else in Southern CA who can say it. And so on.

Happy birthday, Laoshu! :-) It's today where you are, Ian, as well as in China, but it was yesterday where I am, in CA, that's because the Chinese New Year is celebrated beginning on the first day of the first Lunar month of the Chinese year and the first Lunar day comes sooner to the West than to the East -- unlike the sun, the moon moves in the opposite direction. So this has to be phased in when determining what kind of a day we're having -- I usually check the solar-lunar calendar converter. Remember the San Niang (inauspicious days) thread of way back when? These days are the 3rd, 7th, 13th, 18th, 22nd and 27th days of every LUNAR month. I try to keep track. Everything has a tendency to get scheduled on these days, they act like some cosmic traps. And everything undertaken on these days goes not quite smoothly, or outright haywire. After collecting enough info from friends and family to convince me that it's not all in my head, I try to schedule nothing of any consequence for those dates if I can help it.

And countless other situations... Here's an example: a few years ago, my elderly parents went on vacation to South America, and it so happened that the day they were supposed to leave, the country they were visiting decided to undertake a military coup, their first one in twenty-five years. The previous one was pretty bloody. The one my parents got themselves into proved short-lived and the government regained control within three days and it was over before it made the news, but while it was going on no one knew what kind of a ride they're in for. Thousands of foreign tourists were stranded at the airport, with all commercial flights canceled, the troops parading menacingly all around, garbled explanations in a language my parents don't understand making things not much easier. Thirty minutes after the official announcement of the coup, however, they were the only foreign tourists leaving the country, on a charter plane making their way to some obscure Caribbean island whence they made it to Florida and then home to New York. Solving a crunch before anyone has explained to you how it's "supposed" to be solved -- we learned that well, right, FF? Yeah, and for the record: I followed the "hurrah" genre in my response to Pietro with an ulterior motive to illustrate how a phenomenon discussed in another thread, Zheng, can be applied to any situation. It was a zheng entry, I aligned my expression with the already-present (Pietro's) stylistic form. Another (better) example of zheng workings on this board is the Haiku Chain thread. And, I am not only the farthest thing from a homophobe any gay man or woman can hope to meet outside of their own sexual preference pool but I've kicked some ass (verbally) for those who are. Using the word "gay" in an alchemical context where yang-yang interactions are described instead of the alchemically correct yin-yang dynamics when talking a technicality of cultivation was a joke, a funny one I was hoping, not an offensive one. The very reason I can say something like that is that I don't think twice because I don't care that much. However, if a gay guy/gal is being an ass, his or her being gay is not enough exemption in and of itself from being perceived as such in his or her human capacity, not his or her sexual-preference capacity.

White Tiger (cool name, but you can tell I'm partial to feline-referenced names... by the way, do you know what it signifies in taoism? A very rich image, but it's usually White Tigress in the classics, female, the yang side of true yin, the dangerous side of yin, the aspects of yin men secretly fear and women secretly derive their strength from... In the alchemical process, it's the mating of Tigress and Dragon, unlike in most translations where they seem to be both male and therefore engage, inadvertently or intentionally, in a gay version of the alchemical process. And then someone practices that and expects to conceive the Immortal Fetus... as impossible in a gay internal-alchemical process as it is impossible in ordinary gay sex to conceive an ordinary human one. Just and aside -- but again down the same alley: it's useful to get the fundamentals straight... pun unintentional) -- why I want to learn about taoism preferably from taoists? Because taoism is impossible to understand from the outside looking in. Whatever they see when looking at it like that, no matter in how much detail, isn't it. Taoism is, while I'm on sexual metaphors, not unlike sex -- an expert who has read all the scientific, medical, erotic, etc. literature, has seen all the pictures, artistic to pornographic, rented all the X rated videos, knows what every position is called in Kama Sutra, and can write volumes about sex but is himself or herself celibate wouldn't be my choice of sexual partner if I didn't know what sex is and wanted to find out. Taoism is exactly like that, far as I've been able to discern.

Great. Now, by virtue of some mysterious reverse psychology process, I'm stuck with a Mondrianesque Wuxing sculpture in my mind's eye. Thanks a lot!

MSG is readily available in Asian markets here in the US, openly labeled as such, and sold in huge bags -- dirt cheap. So you would have to deal with honest and straightforward competitors in this particular niche, not scamsters, if you decided to sell it. Salt heated up to high temperatures, FYI, is not only a reputable staple of TCM since before the Yellow Emperor (whose Classic spells out its properties) but is known and used as such in Japanese traditional medicine, in Korean traditional medicine, and in Russian folk medicine, to name only the ones I happen to know. If it's a scam, it's at least two thousand years old, so you might be a bit late again. If it isn't, then its properties are best understood from studying medical texts of the traditions I have mentioned. We are not in Kansas with this, Toto, not in Western biochemistry but in taoist biophysics. The Japanese recipe for fried sea salt as an alternative to a dentist's drill I've tried personally (you fry it with eggplant calix, burn both to cinders, apply the powder to what the dentist said would set me off 1,5 grand, bite into freezer-solid Haagen Dazs with that tooth a week later and spend the money on a Cancun vacation instead. Which is the main reason cheap and efficient ancient remedies are presented to the public as scams these days -- consistently.)

Yeah, sounds cool, I'd try it if there's somewhere to get it. I usually buy Black Salt (if you have a well-stocked Indian grocery nearby, they usually have it). It is actually pink when dry, but dissolves into a cloudy black, like "smoke in the water." It occurs naturally in one place only if I remember correctly. It has a strong smell of boiled eggs (due to its high content of sulfur) but that disappears in cooking, and instead the flavor of the dishes you use it in becomes richer. The Indian grocer who used to teach me folk Ayurveda every time I paid a visit asserted that one can't digest bean dishes properly if any other kind of salt is used, but I know for a fact that pork is a good substitute, since beans and pork both have harmful lectins that inactivate each other in cooking. But of course they don't eat that much (if any) pork in India, so it might be true where he comes from. He used to tell me far-out stuff about the intricacies of Indian foods -- things you never read in books on Ayurveda, "family transmissions." Much of what he taught me I tried and found magical... although the bitter melon cooked to his specs was the biggest culinary disaster ever.

I'm still not sure I could fit it over my cat mask in 6 seconds -- if at all. Let's take it to PM, I'm afraid we are boring the rest of the bums reminescing like that...

Glad to make sense, Mythmaker! -- you're right, it's all obvious and in fact it was meant to be obvious -- "the way of Heaven is easy and the way of Earth is simple" -- it's only when one starts, not from the start but from some "next step," "bigger-better more advanced" place, any which random place where complexity is already rampant, that confusion arises. That's why I go basics basics basics -- if you start from the fundamental and go step by step, each step is like that, simple and easy. Then you look back at the territory you've covered and whoa, ten thousand things! But they are all like that -- one, two, three, clear. Next step...

Smile yes, and I've used what your lil' smiley is using too...

Nope, it's you who assumes too much. I was taught how to handle firearms by professionals, two years in high school, four years in college, and I respond to intent before I respond to motion, i.e. much faster than the fastest thug. As for "talking tough" -- you have no idea the kind of tough I've been through, you suburban tough guy... The world is bigger and tougher than Massachussets, I can assure you. I've lived on three continents and have handled situations that you can't imagine happening in real life at all, because you've never seen this kind of life, this side of life. And your main battle, which I have every respect for, is something I see every day and help people win. I wouldn't be talking to you at all if you hadn't softened my heart with that story. You are very indiscriminate in your choice of enemies, but who am I to blow against the wind? It's only yourself you're hurting. Shrug.

Nice take on the Wuxing, Craig. And your teacher is very wise! Yes, each phase has all five within it, just like a child has all his/her parents and grandparents and ancestors within, as well as all his/her own future children! That, in addition to each phase having a yin aspect and a yang aspect, so Yin Water may well come close to Metal while Yang Water might start manifesting some aspects of Wood behavior -- at the very outer margins of each process the distinctions start to blur... so you can stab someone with an icicle, hit them in the head with an ice cube -- that's Yin Water behaving indistinguishably from Metal for some purposes... Absolutely! Happened to me more than once. Anything can work as a catalyst if the inner process is destined to happen. But it doesn't mean it "never matters" what the catalyst is, what the process is. It's just that in "some cases," whatever you practice, you start unfolding -- long as you practice. I suspect that's the case with Drew. He is passionate and patient, extremely expansive in his search (I could bet his primary Phase is Wood and his second best represented one is Fire), he's bound to incorporate whatever he encounters into his own system and transform it into "an aspect of Drew" rather than what it used to be in the original, maybe not even knowing that that's what he did. I'm not unlike that too, so I understand... But whatever he got from Luk is his own merit, it could have been anyone, anything else and the outcome would be similar.

True. Some fear others, others fear themselves. Laozi, Ch.15: a sage is "cautious and fearful like a guest." Or take the cautious and fearful me (not a sage, no). If someone in RL threatened to beat me up, the way I've seen our mutual friend whose name with two Ps I've encountered before in a similar context, was eager and self-reportedly able to do to more people online than my memory is equipped to retain, I'm afraid I'd be reluctant to trust my martial skill, with only a few years of training. I'm afraid if anyone attacked me physically for the purpose of proving whatever point, I would just shoot them. Just to be on the safe side, you know. Ah, Buddy. Let's be friends. You don't know what you're missing.

Hurrah also for those who reserve their real name for friends to whom it is given freely, to whom it is music, hurrah for those who don't let the insatiable trolls feed off the qi of their beautiful real name and suck it dry, and move on to the next, always hungry for the real, never satisfied till someone else's reality is denied, always denying their hunger for blood, never satiated -- hurrah for those who don't feed them their beautiful real names. Hurrah as well for those who hide their beautiful faces, for the I Ching tells them, CONCEAL YOUR LIGHT, and they obey. Hurrah for those who don't spend their online time looking in the mirror, because the Master said there's three most powerful things in the world: gold, sword, mirror -- hurrah for those who throw out gold and pearls and diamonds without measure, without counting, to those who come like the spring benefitting all beings, and for those who bring the sword designed by the ancient sage in the image of MiaoTao, the mysterious border between yin and yang, between wuji and taiji, between being and non-being. It is a sword like a blade of grass, a sword like a surgical scalpel, it is the sword that made Confucius famous as a swordsman before he shielded it to seek a different kind of fame, that of a peace maker. Hurrah for those who know the power of the mirror and never let the gui look from behind their back into the mirror image of their faces lest the faceless ones steal their face and use the stolen eyes as a doorway into the mysteries of someone else's soul which the immortal ancestor Lu said must be guarded at all times, therefore even if you send your mirror image on an astral journey, you must leave guardian spirits around your body and send guardian spirits on the journey with you. Hurrah for those whose avatars have been appointed as guardian spirits around their bodies, souls, and good names. Hurrah for everybody who is anybody, hurrah for everybody who is nobody, no hurrah only for those who think they are everybody, that everybody should be like them, that everybody should think like them, that everybody should look like them, that everybody should be served them on a platter the way a lobster is served to a customer at a seafood restaurant. And most certainly no hurrah for the evil one for an eternity beyond eternity.

Craig, thanks for trusting my judgment -- I'll do my best, but I have to warn you (and others) that my reading list is very biased -- e.g., I wouldn't have much to contribute to a list of books by researchers of taoism who are not taoists themselves (or at least proficient practitioners of certain taoists arts and sciences. With some exceptions, of course.) Another problem. Some of the taoist literature I've read has been translated into Russian but not into English; or maybe it was translated into both but I never found out if an English version exists for something I read in Russian. I might take a guess and try to do a Pinyin rendition of a Cyrillic version of a Chinese title but whether it's going to be legible and recognizable is anyone's guess. Anyway, I'll try to try. To your question about earth in the center: "earth" is a name used for at least three distinctly different fundamental taoist systems, and while the systems are interdependent and inter-penetrating, the terms they use to designate certain phenomena are not interchangeable. In other words, it's not the same kind of earth that we see in the bagua, in the Nine Palaces, and in the Wuxing system. Taoist "earth" is not unlike any good old English term that happens to have multiple meanings and can only be clearly understood from the context: e.g., "my energy expenditures are low in this apartment" may mean I'm a couch potato or it may mean I don't pay much for electricity. It's the overall context that makes these two meanings quite impossible to mistake one for the other. Well, Luc does everything in his power to make one confuse different kinds of "earth" and mistake one for the other. Earth is in the center in the immobile Nine Palaces of Xian Tian. Since immobilizing everything that moves is one of Luc's ideas of cultivation, he resorts to a sleight-of-hand trick and sneaks into this central immobile place an altogether different earth from the Wuxing system. To make it easier to believe he calls what he's juggling into a place where they don't belong the "five elements," whereas in reality they are "five stages of change" or "five phases of transformation" or "five types of Hou Tian qi" -- i.e. phenomena/manifestations impossible to either centralize, arrange hierarchically, or immobilize by default. In Wuxing, earth is NOT in the center, it is in the cycle, the cycle that can't do without it being part of it, a cycle that falls apart if you place ANYTHING in its center. Luc however goes ahead and pretends it is -- which destroys the whole dynamics and makes it, indeed, "mysterious" and "incomprehensible to mere mortals" whereas in reality it is fairly obvious and beautifully meaningful -- if left unmolested. Luc causes the Wuxing cycle to fall apart in his rendition and consequently winds up with high-flown garbage like "One vitality first divides in two, the positive and negative which, by taking fixed positions, then beget the five elements, each in a different location. Hence the element of earth causes that of metal to develop, that of wood to prosper, that of water to stop and that of fire to cease." I can't even begin telling you how wrong this is and on how many levels. I'll get back to the Eva Wong question later, gotta go... thanks for lending me your ear!

Thanks, Brian, for bringing it up, and Sean, for bringing it forth! Nice indeed. As for "aligned": "can't be defined, can be described" -- here's a few examples (out of an infinity of possible ones) that it immediately brought to mind. In a truly beautiful place, by the seaside overlooking some mountains in the distance, I once saw a mass of clouds build a landscape in the sky that replicated the shape of the mountains below in uncanny detail, including man-made details (a tall tower, some houses...) -- just like in that poem whose only line surviving in my memory goes, "the shape of the mountains reveals the shape of the wind." Or, in this case, the shape of the mountains determined the shape of the wind. The wind aligned itself to the mountains, themselves an outcome of having aligned to some ancient wind... Things (and creatures) create each other by noticing each other (by whatever means at their disposal -- sight, touch, chemical analysis -- by the tongue or the roots -- sound, color, vibration, electrical discharge, just "being there" as a whole...) -- and aligning to each other naturally. Whatever can't, or "doesn't want to," is off, misaligned, dislocated... Manhattan always looked crystalline to me from a distance -- very much like some mass of natural (strangely enough) crystals pushing upward, growing in a pattern of regular irregularity, order within variability, that one sees in natural mineral formations. It was with great satisfaction that I found out that it rests on a foundation of hard basalt rock -- I sort of figured that it grew the way it did propelled by an aligning force from below, unbeknownst to the human minds and hands building it under its influence. (Other cities that started building skyscraper landscapes all over the world then aligned themselves with this one I think -- because of its upward-pushing/condensing strong metal-fire yang power derived from its foundation.) My teacher says, "like those wooden name tablets they place on the altar in traditional Chinese homes when a relative dies -- upright, aligned with the earth below and heaven above, connecting them -- that's the posture of taiji."

Mal, sorry for "cheating" -- now are you trying to impose karmic penalties by making it necessary for me to BUY another book before I can discuss it? and an expensive one to boot? Practice-oriented is good, I'm a card-carrying pragmatist myself... but... it's like that old parable: if you're hungry and someone gives you a fish, you're getting one meal. If you're hungry and someone teaches you how to fish, you're getting dozens, hundreds, thousands of meals -- even though the teacher didn't actually give you anything to eat right on the spot. So... any one specific taoist practice is one fish. Knowing taoist fundamentals is knowing how to fish.

Wait for your return "we," the extra syllable Mal refused to count. (Sorry, couldn't resist! )

You will be missed! Darkness is the mother of all things (including of light the father, of course), so please send her my filial regards!

Go, Giants, go!!!!! And as they used to say in the mother-of-all-stadiums when a gladiator filleted a buddy of his today only to get snacked on by a tiger tomorrow, Sic transit gloria mundi... (Don't tell me "buddy" is taken, Mr. Webster was there first and he says it isn't.)

Did I sound like that? Keep in mind that this medium distorts the tone of voice. No, I'm not driven by snobbery here, rather by its diametrical opposite -- I long for peers who are no better, no worse, not "superior" and not "inferior," just peers -- to talk taoist talk with, because they are in drastically short supply (have always been -- did you know that there's 20 million people in the world who designate themselves as taoists vs. 3.2 BILLION who designate themselves as Catholics?..) Taoists are in the minority everywhere they turn up (except for some enclaves in Asia where they tend to speak no English and, the closer to the "basics of taoism" you get, the greater the chance they don't even have an internet connection. The Four Tigers, e.g., the current world-famous Chen lineage holders, grew up so poor none of them could afford a bicycle. And people who taught them -- old people still doing Chen style taiji in Chen village the taoist way -- still have never seen a youtube video... but I'm told when they saw a live demo of how it's done "here and now," they wept. True story.) So the reason I want "others" to know what I know (which isn't much, really, just a tad more than "nothing at all") is, you could say, egotistical: I simply want those "others" to exist. It can get lonely sitting alone at Fu Xi's feet, having no one to share the thrill of mystery with. I'm not a hermit, so I'm looking for tao-ing peers, is all. As for usability for practice -- that's exactly why I say "basics, basics, basics" together with my other mantra -- "practice, practice, practice." Practice is deficient without the basics -- not my opinion, Immortal Lu and Immortal Ch'ang's opinion (that's another book I would suggest, by the way, for grasping the alchemical basics -- but later...) I say deficient, they actually say perilous, consequences can be the opposite of what a cultivator is after -- not just the opposite, the kind of "not-what-I-hoped-for" that is hard to imagine until you're there. So... what would I recommend? Basics, basics, basics. This is the only way to know what to trust, who to trust. The fundamentals of reality as revealed by taoist basics. Grasp them and you "roam the root of heaven and earth" and don't really have to take anyone's word for anything -- you are it. The word and the practice. You ask you, and that's how you know. That's what "basics" of taoism can do for you. For anyone patient enough to spend enough time with them. Basics, in their own turn, are deficient without practice. The separation into stuff for the body and stuff for the mind is not a taoist modus operandi at all. They go hand in hand, bodymind in bodymind, and sometimes grasping the basics illuminates your practice, and other times practice itself reveals the basics to you -- it's all one snake. but if you want specific practice/meditation recommendations, that's not a book club topic in my humble opinion -- I submit it's not in any book, it's in the posture, and I wrote about it in the Full Lotus thread. For what it's worth.

Thanks, Mythmaker! Xuesheng, my thinking is along the same lines: start with the basics. Eva Wong's intro is pretty good, I would really be happy if "everyone" read at least that before arguing "about" taoism. However, for the more "advanced" (I don't mean spiritually advanced or anything like that, it's not a pissing contest, I mean advanced in their studies of taoist documents and concurrent practice of taoist arts) folks it may be a tad remedial... But then, we would have to phase in the fact that there's wildly different levels of "proficiency" represented here -- moreover, there's people with selective "pockets of expertize" who truly know what they're talking about provided they talk about that one subject... but then when someone extends this rightfully earned sense of competence in one area to "all things taoist" or, worse, to "all things and all people in the world..." ... ...so what I'm driving at is, a book of taoist basics can give "everyone" an idea of how far from "knowing it all" they really are. So, yes, Eva Wong's intro could be a good start. Although I was thinking more along the lines of the "basic basics" -- the I Ching in close conjunction with Ta Chuan, e.g... but that might be difficult to do anything about in a month (even Confucius lamented, at the end of his rather fulfilled life of accomplishment and recognition, that he didn't have another fifty years to dedicate exclusively to the study of the I Ching.) So I think I'm going in the direction of a bit of a "self-education course" here rather than just a book club. I.e., something as easy as Eva Wong's intro to taoism could be a "book of the month," but Ta Chuan would be a "prerequisite," Yuan Dao would be another one, Wen-tzu, another one, Sun Tzu, another one... and so on. Not "prerequisite" in the sense that it's "required reading" but in the sense, if you haven't read that, consider doing so on the side, just to keep taoist discussions above the "common denominator opinions of an average Western-educated bloke" based on nothing taoist at all. So that we don't have to deal with the level of mis-informedness that causes someone to announce (e.g.) that Sun Tzu "is not a taoist text" or that Magical Taoism or Mystical Taoism or Divinational taoism or Devotional Taoism schools ("only" the heart and soul of the whole enchilada) are hogwash, or some such. An elementary taoist education as a new year's resolution (I mean Chinese new year, there's still time), how's that?.. So I would definitely avoid starting with an "advanced" alchemical text, whether genuine or bogus. You know, in kindergarten everybody read Dr. Seuss, not Shakespeare. Yet when it comes down to another culture's greatest spiritual, intellectual, scientific, cognitive accomplishments, people tend to think they can skip Dr. Seuss and move on to Shakespeare right away. And then not even that -- they think they can watch a youtube clip of a students' drama club doing Shakespeare and bingo, they're experts on Shakespeare. So I say, let's start with Dr. Seuss... take it from there.