Taomeow

Delighted to amuse, but can't really take the credit -- you've amused yourself, by pretending I said taoism is incompatible with beliefs. Which is a far cry from what I really said. Taoism may or may not include beliefs -- obviously, devotional or ceremonial taoism are rooted in beliefs (still without qualifying as "taoism" unless you engage in devotional practices yourself, with your physical actions rather than with ideas in your head, or in ceremonial rituals, ditto). Whereas my very own practice, scientific (magical) taoism, is rooted in "hypotheses," "empirical observations" and extensive "experimental work." In other words, it is more or less fact-based rather than faith-based. That's what I believe , but long as I don't limit what I do to "believing," I "qualify." However, "philosophical taoism" does not include "any" physical, body-inclusive practice, and anything that does not include such practice is not "taoism" of any denomination, believe it or not. If you said you're a "taoist" in China, you'd be asked which school or sect is the one your practice is based on. If you responded that you are a "philosophical taoist," you would perplex, or maybe amuse, but hardly be "believed." It has been diffuse common knowledge for at least a few thousand years in the place of taoism's origin that the very point of taoism is that it's a method, not a madness. I.e., you believe what you want to believe, but it is what you do or don't do that counts. (Again in sharp contrast to buddhism, where what you think is what counts.) By the way, does your posting in Chinese mean you read Chinese? If you do, would you kindly help me find out which word is used by Zhuangzi in the original that Pietro's quote (from Cleary? a buddhist?! an ordained buddhist monk!! with his very own buddhist ax to grind!!!) renders as "forgetting?"

No burden at all, and in fact a newbie with questions is a lot more refreshing than a newbie with answers, which is a more common deal ! I'll tackle what I can, perhaps others will chime in. "Sitting forgetting" is buddhist in its origins, to my knowledge. Some schools and sects of taoism have historically undergone a process of extensive cross-polination with buddhism and these have adapted some of the latter's techniques and ideas; while others have shielded themselves from such influences, and these are more likely to practice "standing remembering" than "sitting forgetting." E.g., there's lots of taoist meditation techniques aimed at getting one's body to remember how to function at an earlier stage of development -- for instance, fetal, or other-species, or even other-dimensional. A crucial taoist concept, jing, is understood (at a certain level of access) as collective cosmic memory, a kind of archived developmental history of the universe as it manifests through an individual. Working with jing (something done quite a lot in various taoist practices) is all about "remembering" rather than "forgetting." "Some taoists don't study internal alchemy?" Yes, internal-alchemical is a version of taoism that is major, and most schools and sects will incorporate the practice in some shape or form, but not all. For instance, divinational and devotional taoism can be practiced without internal-alchemical work. (There is no such thing as "philosophical taoism," by the way. Taoism is always a practice rather than merely a bunch of ideas and beliefs -- but not necessarily the practice of internal alchemy.) "Is wu wei the most important concept in taoism?" Not by any stretch of imagination. The most important concept in taoism is tao. Personally, I also think of "tao fa ziran" as the second most important one. It means, in loose translation, "tao patterns itself on itself," or "tao follows only itself," or "tao is self-similar," "tao is a fractal," "tao needs no creator," "tao is a copycat whose only role model is tao." "Is the taoist concept of emptiness the same as buddhist concept of emptiness?" No. Unlike in buddhism, in taoism, emptiness is neither a goal nor a destination, I'd say rather it's a tool to use... but this transpires in practice and doesn't really yield to words easily (if at all). Also sprach Taomeow.

Try Chapter 15. It describes a meditative state of being of the sage at all times, somewhat similar to what you might see in a high level taiji master. Stillness is an internal state, externally it manifests as interactive competence and precision. It's careful awareness of one's surroundings not thwarted by inner turmoil and therefore very clear and accurate. This clear awareness results in a kind of harmonious match between the sage and his or her surroundings -- either complete non-interference when interference would disturb the flow, or timely and precise action when that's what the flow warrants. The sage observes the flow and feels it at all times, so he or she can step into it as an organic part of it, not clashing, not making a splash -- moving when the flow moves, keeping still when stillness is what will harmonize with the medium. Meditation Lao Tzu style doesn't "impose" stillness on the flow, rather it matches stillness with stillness and motion with motion, at a high level of space-time sensitivity. "A sage follows the course of time by grabbing time by the tail and riding it" -- in Wen Tzu's rendition of Lao Tzu's oral teachings. The microcosimic orbit is a reflection of the structure of the universe on the micro level of the human system. The discovery is proto-taoist and predates Lao Tzu by at least four thousand years.

Organic poultry is fine, but I don't eat it every day, nor every week. (Even "organic" still means unnaturally fed chickens -- my grandmother had chickens and I know what a real chicken eats, and it's not corn on corn chased with corn! They eat, ahem, earthworms, which are abundant in a rich, rich soil enriched with nothing but the chicken's very own manure, and they'll be clawing and picking and pecking all day long. And then they get a handful of now wheat, now rye, now sorghum to complement their diet. And then when the time comes for one of them to say good-bye to it all and turn into "poultry," whatever you make out of it results in a bird of paradise, a heavenly angel with crispy wings -- and that's how you know what a real chicken tastes like. This, I could eat every day, but the commercial chicken excites me not, so I eat it maybe once every ten days.) I much prefer red meat. Of all red meats available, I favor lamb. Because it's not very popular in this country, there's not many (if any) lamb factory farms, and even ordinary (non-organic) varieties have a chance to have come from a grazing animal (of course pesticides and sh...t is another story, so I do try to get organic varieties.) Corn... I'd stay away from all corn and all its countless incarnations. For some of the most worthy of attention reasons why, I suggest this book: "The Omnivore's Dilemma," by Michael Pollan. Butter -- butter is great, but do make sure you buy organic (fats accumulate the bulk of the toxins an animal has been exposed to) or, better yet, try ghee (clarified butter)-- healthier, great for frying (unlike butter), the taste is more intense (so if you like the flavor of butter, you might enjoy the fact that ghee tastes about the same but stronger), and can keep indefinitely without refrigeration. You can get it at a HFS, or you can make your own if you have the time, it's fairly easy.

I don't remember if I posted it here, but here's a copy of my entry at Empirical Taoism a couple of months ago re my eating patterns: *** I'm quite a grazer, and never eat big portions of anything. I eat almost exclusively organic. On a typical day, my breakfast is two cups of very strong black coffee with some sugar, no milk, followed by a brunch of uncured organic bacon and eggs (it's a grounding health food if you're a Vata-Pitta) or buckwheat or congee or kicharee (a rice and beans dish) or a cup of kefir. Midday, I eat an assortment of fruit and berries and drink an occasional glass of vegatable juice. For dinner I will usually want a thick mushy soup winter time, or a colorful anything-goes salad summer time, followed by a meat or fish dish with vegetables, or rice pasta or something else Thai style made of rice noodles, or a curry or some such. I am a very good fusion cook if I say so myself, and can invent dishes falling back on all my expeirence with Russian, European, and Asian cuisine, and often do. I am very meticulous about preparation methods for my meals, always mindful of the "how," not just "what." E.g., you won't catch me steaming my veggies (yuck!) or ruminating them raw (double yuck!), I stir-fry them for as many minutes (usually two or three) as it takes for them to become brighter rather than duller -- the moment the color intensifies they're at the peak of their nutritional value. There's exceptions of course -- e.g., a much longer preparation time is needed for most mushrooms I love (not the tasteless button mushrooms of the supermarket) and an assortment of sauteed veggie dishes made with eggplant or squash or sweet peppers, Turkish or Greek or South European style. I try to vary and rotate my veggies a lot and keep using everything out there, there's few I don't use (rutabaga, jicama, and corn are out, everything else goes). I avoid all gluten-containing grains related to wheat (this includes oats). Bread I either bake using a mix of several gluten-free flours or substitite with Asian or Indian rice or garbanzo thingies. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but when I do feel like something sweet, it's usually chocolate ice cream, which I eat a whole can of to get it out of my system and then forget all about for a couple of months or more. With the exception of this and organic kefir, I don't eat any cow dairy products. I buy sheep and goat cheeses, my favorite one is Haloumi from Cyprus. I make herbal teas and decoctions regularly. I cook medicinal soups when necessary (with things like ginseng, deer antler, sea horses, angelica root, and so on.) I occasionally make fermented foods -- sauerkraut or kimchee -- and drinks (kombucha). I drink a glass or two of red wine here and there, not every day but perhaps every week (I tend to forget about the health benefits of wine, I should drink more, and more often.) If I eat out, nine times out of ten it will be Japanese. What else. I meticulously avoid all chemicals, preservatives, frankenfoods, and seldom use anything out of a can or a box or otherwise molested. For junk to munch on, e.g. movie popcorn substitutes, I fry sushi nori to a brittle crisp or buy obscure stuff from an Asian market -- Vietnamese or Indonesian, e.g., still blissfully backward enough to include no chemicals in their taro chips or walnut-date candy. I keep my diet high-fat, using high quality fats. The things I would change aren't up to me, of all the things the here-now can offer I'm making the best use as it is. If it was up to me, I'd have access to all those astonishing fruit and berries I used to have in season in Russia (gooseberries, black and red and white currants, sour cherries, real strawberries, real apricots, real plums, and so on). I would also prefer to live closer to a large Asian market and explore their astounding variety of live seafood more closely. In a perfect world, I'd have a bucket of caviar in my fridge at all times.

Yoda, it's what I feed my cat, not what I eat myself! Witch, you have chosen wisely if I say so myself! Thanks for trusting my judgment... and good luck! (I have to enclose a disclaimer re red apples and red onions and apple cider vinegar with honey: these are someone else's suggestions, not mine. I hardly ever eat red apples of any kind currently available, they're too sweet for me and too flavorless -- more like a wad of paper soaked in sugar water. Granny Smith is my only apple of choice on this continent -- these, when good, are pretty good, and I eat them almost every day. If I come across an inferior batch, I bake them, adding honey and cinnamon and butter and a handful of raisins and lycium berries and... or just bake them with no frills, baked apples are great, and baked pears, by the way, is a TCM food remedy for Lung qi problems, to which some varieties of hay fever do belong. I don't think red onions are special compared to the yellow ones -- except for a moderate dose of proanthocyanides -- you'll get way more of those from a glass of good red wine. Apple cider vinegar and honey are good but I mix them in a salad dressing, not in my drinking water. When I hear the word "alkalize," I grab one of my real books on nutrition --e.g., "Chinese Natural Cures," or "Russian Cuisine in Exile," or "A Taste of Japan," or some such -- and dance around shaking it over my head and laughing demoniacally.) And, Witch, I promise... if you you have the time to read this book -- The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug, by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer -- and, having read it, still refuse to drink coffee -- then I give up, but not before!

Full lotus all day!? I certainly am a big afficionado of full lotus meditation (in fact, I tend to think meditation is only available to bodyminds sittable in full lotus, if one can't assume this pose for meditation it means "relaxation" is what is being practiced, not "meditation") -- but all day? ??? On the physical level, it can ruin your knees in no time. On the spiritual level, according to Ancestor Lu (the immortal Lu Dongbin), it will accumulate so much yin that you might turn into a "hungry ghost" in the next world, seeking yang from the living. I vote for two hours tops, followed by a vigorous kidney massage and a hot yang meal.

This is cool, and it DID get published in scientific journals in Russia, of which at least one used to be top level (don't know what its current situation is though). The author of the article butchered one of the researchers' names beyond recognition so it's small wonder he couldn't find any references. Drew, I'm halfway through your dissertation. I've a feeling we need to talk someday...

Thank you, wonderful people. Whatever have I done to deserve this? ( It's a rhethorical question, please don't subject my hard-earned humility to more tests! )

You're welcome! and I apologize for a cursory/hasty response, I was just taking a break from something I normally never do (watching two movies in a row) and my mind was full of rats (Ratatoille) and spider pigs (The Simpsons Movie). I'll go with your steps in order now (didn't see your links before). Master Huang is right. If you go to the Circular I Ching, you can see the original trigrams as they first appear, in a sequence that corresponds to Fu Xi's arrangement. You can see how they naturally produce the 64 hexagrams. The latter can then be arranged in a linear fashion in a certain order -- King Wen's or the Duke of Zhou's (the latter, actually, is the one we all are familiar with, in China they sometimes call it simply the Zhouyi, "Zhou's Changes.") If you go to the link which is my signature, it will take you to a forum adorned with an image of the Circular I Ching in the upper left corner. Doctor Tan is right only if he's gay yet able to beget children. "From the Yang line we derive Greater Yang and Lesser Yang" and so on means he is bent on mixing yang with yang to produce yang, yin with yin to produce yin. That he has supporters simply means there's more people out there bent on "pure yang" or "pure yin" ideals. Of course no actual "children" are "produced" by such a family, whether sons or daughters, only imaginary ones. This imaginary happy gay family where two fathers give birth to a son is what Dr. Tan proposes, for reasons best known to himself. OK, gotta run, more later...

Harry, nice to see a question actually pertaining to taoist basics! Yes, there's sources that can spell it all out for you and prevent any further confusion regardless of which modern author says what and why. Go for the Ten Wings (commentaries to the I Ching), take it from there. The Shuo Gua and the Ta Chuan in particular are helpful. The best thing they can give you is a clear dynamic picture that is meaningful to you -- once that's in place, some seeming contradictions might dissolve while others will reveal themselves as either honest mistakes or the author's cluelessness or outright BS on a case by case basis. Part of the confusion may be due to the fact that there's two different arrangements of trigrams in a bagua -- the Earlier Heaven or Primal or Xian Tian arrangement, and the Later Heaven or Hou Tian arrangement. The bagua of Xian Tian reveals the structure of wuji -- and, among other things, helps it transpire that, contrary to popular belief, even "nothingness" and "formlessness" of (genuine) taoism is structured, instead of being represented by some indefinite, as Alan Watts put it, "amorphous void." The taoist "void" doesn't stop making sense on the human scale, to the human mind -- even when nothing at all is happening there. In the Xian Tian arrangement, the lowest line always determines the gender, and the sons are, counting the lines from bottom to top, yang-yin-yin (Gen), yang-yin-yang (Li), and yang-yang-yin (Tui), while the other three trigrams with mixed lines are daughters (and of course triple yang is father and triple yin is mother). Not so in the Hou Tian sequence, the Later Heaven we all currently communicate in, the bagua (and tao, and the world) set in motion, where only Gen and Sun haven't changed their original gender. So you would need to find out which arrangement which of the authors is using -- and why. E.g., in feng shui for the living, only the Hou Tian arrangement is used.

So today was a big day at the race track in my neck of woods, and my daughter talked me into checking it out and placing some bets on some horses and getting rich fast, or poor faster, whichever happens. I checked the auspiciousness of the day first -- found out it was inauspicious. Then I asked the I Ching. The I Ching gave me five (sic) changing lines, something I've never encountered before (and I talk to her almost every day). So it meant I had to take into consideration nearly two hexagrams (minus just one line out of twelve). As always is the case when there's too many lines to interpret, you get a conflicting reading with parts of it saying yes, go for it while other parts say don't even think about it. In ancient times, in such cases, they used the fourfold oracle -- the I Ching AND the tortoise shells AND "ask your people" AND "ask your heart." Then if three out of four said yes, it was a yes, and if three out of four said no, it was a no. (I shudder when I envision situations where two said yes and two said no...) Anyway, I've no tortoise shell divination tools, so I had to go with two out of three. I "asked my people." My son said no, don't go there. My daughter said, c'mon, let's go, let's go! So I asked my heart. My heart took the fifth. So I went. To be continued...

So... you choose women based on age, and consistently choose women who remain in about the same age group regardless of your own ? Did you ever try to check what that age might be vis a vis how old your mom was when you were 3? And if by any chance you do notice it matches, are you really sure anyone who notices it automatically qualifies as a "ballbuster?"

I definitely prefer younger men, but only because men my own age are way too old for me. If their biological age matches mine, I don't care what their "actual" age is, but too many people seem senile to me even in their teens... closed inflexible minds, rigid inflexible bodies... inability to learn new tricks... Here in southern CA you can't judge by the skin tone or the boobs (everyone is into keeping those in as good a condition as the budget and the plastic surgeon's skill will allow), but the light of a young, strong shen in the eyes, the spark of life in the easy spontaneity that is natural as breathing rather than a "cool" pose of a deeply unfree, non-spontaneous being, the wonderful play of an "alive" belly when one walks, to say nothing of lovemaking (can't get THAT from a plastic surgeon -- or from a gym for that matter), the killer pheromones... this is usually gone fairly fast. Or was never there to begin with, in which case youth doesn't help much, beyond the outermost layer. But whoever has that and can keep that, is young at pretty much any age, and attractive too. The pitfalls of going for an older woman? The non-relating to the real person she is, and instead unconsciously projecting "mom" onto her and expecting her to be a "new improved" version of your mother. ("Older men who go for younger women" as a credo, as a rule to follow rather than a random individual occurrence, are almost invariably looking for mom aged what she was aged when they were two or three -- as that's their real emotional age no matter what their biological or intellectual age is.) If you're sure it's not what it's about, it can be healthy and strong. Good luck!

I have no command of Western astrological terminology, so I've no idea what a transit or a trine are about, but if what you mean is whether Chinese astrology can account for fluctuations of patterns of planetary qi on an hourly basis, then, yes, of course, it can and it does. The system I use, Zi Wei Tu Su, takes into account the position of fifty stars altogether, is very complex, and I really haven't had the time to do it properly in the past four years or so, but there's almanacs available that have already done much of the dirty work for you, so you can find out which hour of which day will indeed give you a gambling edge. If I were gambling on a regular basis, I'd make sure I know, and wouldn't use a commercial almanac either -- even the more precise ones are not precise enough to turn gambling into a steady paying job. There's days, months, years, or even twenty- or sixty-year cycles when the best that can happen to you is that you might cut your losses. A fluctuation occurring within a paricular lucky hour won't ultimately make a difference. In general, the influence of larger cycles is greater at all times than that of the smaller ones, and Chinese Sexagenary cycle (of sixty years) is going to call the shots vis a vis a year's qi, and the year will bow to that rather than to a particular lunar month, and an hour in a day, to a lunar month, and so on. Smaller and more generalized cycles (like the popular "Twelve Animals" thingie for astrological amusement of the masses, or like Western "natal charts" and "horoscopes") are useless to take into account in the grand scheme of things unless the grand scheme of things is understood. Western astrology is a jigsaw puzzle with many, many key pieces missing, while Chinese astrology is a jigsaw puzzle with way too many pieces (nothing is missing)... so one has to have the time and patience to use it for a very detailed, very accurate picture. But knowing there's a "hand" that, on a given day, scrambles them all no matter what you do might be enough information for that particular day -- you don't need to gather the picture to be scrambled, just know it WILL be scrambled no matter what it looks like.

Now you know how I felt. My daughter used to have a part-time job at the race track walking the horses (that's how they "exercise" -- being walked in a circle for a few hours every day). So obviously she knows a lot more about the whole deal than I do. She read up on the horse I picked and said, oh no, this is a sure loser. Look at the odds! It has never won anything. The odds against this horse were forty to one. She said, go with something else, look at the horses' and jockeys' records, in general but also, especially, their performance this week. Look at the odds. Don't bet on the "sure winner," that's how all the suckers lose their money, pick a horse with odds in the 3-5 range. Make sure the horse is not too old, and not too young. The ones bred in Brazil and Italy do a bit better on average than the ones bred in Kentucky, all other things being equal. And don't bet on just one horse to win, pick another to "place" and another to "show," maximize your chances. And so on. I go, no, I can't make a good decision this way, this is a good balancing approach for someone who has pondered the whole scope of information for a while and got a feel for the whole deal, but I didn't, so it tells nothing to my instincts. I'll go with my yellow idea. But maybe I'll pick another horse. A few other horses. Look, the numbers under which they run are color-coded, and one of the colors is yellow, for number four. So I'll bet on four horses in four races, the ones that are each number four in its own group. And I did. That I lost on all of them is not the heartbreaking part. Nor that one of them, a most unremarkable one, picked up in the last thirty seconds and, with me jumping and screaming and trying to give it a push with my own qi, came second, losing to the winner by the length of the nose. The really educational lesson was that the horse of my initial I-Ching-inspired choice, the one with yellow and gold, the one my heart voted for, came first, just as the odds against him jumped to almost 50 -- which meant that my first choice, the one I didn't go with, was to make about two thousand in about two minutes. Since I didn't go with it, it felt, for all purposes, as though I actually had this money and threw it away. It felt as though it was rightfully mine and the "san niang affliction" that caused me to second-guess my own instincts and the exact way they resonated with what the I Ching was telling me snatched it from my purse. Ah well. In some Tibetan monasteries, they build a magnificent sand mandala for three years, spending countless monk-hours on the task, and then take a broom and sweep it off the face of the earth in three minutes, in order to learn to look the mighty goddess of futility and loss in the face -- and smile. So I smiled, and as the sand of time was being swept off the mandala of the race track, people, horses, the two lakes, the two grand, everything -- I recognized the goddess's face. It was yellow, with golden eyes.

Thanks for being receptive to my yin, Pietro! Little1, it's not Witch's fault -- I owed her. I called her "tame" in another thread. Totally my bad. and, Yoda, I did have fun... but the financial outcome is a separate story. Witch, Western astrology is divination on the zodiac; zodiac is the Greek for "circle of animals"; "circle of animals" is the Arabic for "Chinese astrology." So I just leave out all the middlemen and go straight to the source... when I said the day was "inauspicious," I meant Chinese Astrology assigns a "san niang affliction" to this day, which should have been enough to stop me without getting into any further details -- but didn't. So, here's the rest of the story. I am clueless about horse races, so I decided to follow those of the I Ching clues that seemed helpful, amidst all the warnings of all the dangers. "Hold on firmly to the yellow ox hide," the I Ching suggested. I know the metaphorical meaning of "yellow" in her context -- "middle of the road," "balanced," "the golden in-between course." "Yellow" of the I Ching is like Buddha's "Middle Way." But since all her meanings are layered and some layers are metaphorical while others are directly literal, it could also mean the color yellow, it could mean gold, it could mean "bet on horses with yellow or gold colors or markings in the outfits of the jockeys or the horses." It could mean "gold begets gold." I envisioned something yellow and gold and decided that if I find a horse and/or rider wearing such an outfit, I'll bet all the money I was prepared to lose without getting into all the more dangerous possibilities and potentials of a "san niang" day, which I designated to be $40, on this one horse. So I was going to have to choose between "mid-range odds" and "actual yellow color." So far so good. My heart said, OK, I'm going to give you a tip now, since you're up and at it anyway. Now the first hexagram I had to consider when doing the divination was the Double Lake. The first thing I saw at the race track was that it actually has two lakes behind it! This reinforced my heart's desire to go with the literal rather than symbolic reading. Yellow and gold. I opened the program, and my eyes fell on an outfit description that matched this requirement. I told my daughter, this is it, I'll bet on this one, and only on this one. To be continued...

Sorry, this has nothing to do with anything except the title of the thread, but someone just told me something that seems to explain everything. He said, there's so much yang we've generated in the environment that Gaja, our gentle mother Earth, is turning into a butch dyke. All those storms and hurricanes and tsunamis... she's acting like a woman who's been exposed to too much testosterone.

(replies, changes her mind, deletes)

Right, and wonder is not even a quest for an answer. Wonder is the answer? I have this image of myself, aged four, standing in some grass higher than the top of my head, holding a grasshopper I've just caught, a subtle, plain, dark-and-light-grey spotted creature with transparent sapphire-colored underwings, with vicious and yet harmless jaws biting into my finger without causing any pain, with sentient multifocal eyes, sharp claws on the back of the hind legs scratching me in a cat-like fashion, with delicate whiskers, antennae, tiny hairs, miniature crocodile scales, soft innocent belly, armored athletic chest, hand-like familiarity in the motion of the front paws, and a positively human air of being pissed off about the whole deal, and make-believe ferocity of a captive dragon. And I am suspended in a bliss of wonder for all eternity. Yes, to this moment, and perhaps forever. All those dissectors of live reality ISO "answers..." ...all those "scientists..." ...their inability to know this bliss is their punishment. A horrible one. A really great answer comes to me in a process I call "sudden crystallization." It happens when I've saturated my mind (or, to be more precise, my body-mind-spirit) with questions pertaining to a certain inquiry without rushing towards any answers. Just a hypersaturated solution of questions with no answers. Then one day a speck of meaning falls into this solution... ...and wham! -- instantly everything starts connecting with everything, and in a second I have this crystalline structure of an answer that has built itsel out of the hypersaturated solution of questions, and now it's impossible to doubt -- it's just there, built into my overall structure. I can examine it from every which angle, top to bottom, inside out, every side, focus on an individual crystal sparkling inside it in its proper place (its ONLY proper place) or take a bird's view and look at the whole -- it doesn't matter, it will never change now (even though it pulsates with life and motion, it will fundamentally retain its completeness, much like the ocean can change without changing), it is real, it will endure. Later, it may connect, in the same fashion, to another, different, but deeply related structure like this. Until and unless it happens, I don't trust any answers anyone or anything produces. (Including myself.) But when it does happen, it's non-negotiable. THE answer that can accommodate not one question but each and every question of a particular type... What about you?

Interesting question! It depends... I've noticed that answers and questions are linked in some almost metabolic feedback loops -- i.e. to a certain point the more questions you ask, the more answers you get, then at some saturation point it all flips over (inverted-U effects of nearly all neurological interventions are metabolically common, by the way -- i.e. if you keep increasing the dose of any brain-mind-affecting substance or phenomenon, you will keep getting more pronounced effects up to a point, then increase it some more and -- oops! -- the opposite effect!) When it flips over, you stop getting answers no matter how many questions you produce internally and/or express externally... Or, say, you've accumulated answers to give -- and at some point this process has downregulated your level of question-production, sometimes all the way to zero. We've all met people like that, right? -- they always have all the answers, never any questions. Or the opposite. Not just people though, phenomena too. Here's my favorite question/answer duo: "Which arrow flies forever? The arrow that has hit the mark." -- Nabokov

you're right, as below so above -- e.g., Confucius models the state on the family, with the power of the father being replicated on a larger scale by the power of the emperor, filial piety of the children, by the service and devotion of commoners to the rulers, and so on. All fractals go either way, they can replicate themselves top to bottom OR bottom to top. That's one of the reasons messing with life on Earth can demolish the tao of the Big Dipper. And that's also the reason Ta Chuan states that someone who understands the Changes (I Ching) perfectly can even assist the gods.

And I thank you for your thoughts, Todd. Well of course I have a general theory of everything of sorts, but I know it's incomplete, so I don't have a complete response to the "what the hell is going on" question. I use taoist arts, sciences and practices and some other goodies from other sources as tools to help me fill in the gaps in my perceptions, cognition, and -- most importantly -- memory (not my personal memory, which is decent, but the collective memory of the human race, and of life on earth in general, and of life in the universe in general.) For there's no understanding today from looking at today. What is going on is usually what has been going on for a while, and the closer to the origin of this process one can get, the better one's chances to understand the present picture. Of all the things that the Ten Wings (e.g.), the oldest surviving commentaries on the I Ching, call "the virtues of tao," I am presently trying to focus on the one virtue completely overlooked by most seekers who seek elsewhere: Heng. Endurance. Duration. Reliability. Tao's virtue is that she isn't new-age-style flaky. Tao is Heng, you can count on her. You can count on tao to finish what she starts, to deliver sense when a promise of things making sense has been made, to not call you and cancel on you at the last moment when you're all set to go to the show. Dreams aren't like that. Dreams are flaky. Now you dream this, now you dream that, I once dreamed I was a character in The Simpsons cartoon, totally 2-D and kinda grokking it -- I painted myself onto a wall when I wanted to hide from another character, e.g. -- so, yes, it was possible to be something else in a dream and totally perceive yourself as "real" for a while... the litmus test for telling this kind of real from the real real is, the unreal illusory dreamlike-real doesn't last, it has no Heng, it has no glue. And therefore is devoid of the main virtue of tao. Tao has glue, once it starts you as a 2-D character of The Simpsons, you last, as Bart or Homer or Mr. Burns -- and once it starts you as a 3-D character in your present material life, you last a bit (or a lot) longer and in a more comprehensive fashion if all goes well. All going well so that such a project of tao's as "my personal this-here life" can last for as long as she intended it to was probably the main concern of the "holy sages" of taoist classics. They didn't get much more ambitious than that. A good life with reliable Heng is good enough. Pending that, nothing else is, far as I'm concerned. Life has to be taken care of as though it is absolutely real and absolutely matters -- because it is, and it does.

Karmically speaking, you are not supposed to be getting something for nothing. If you do, you'll wind up owing your teacher a debt you will have to repay anyway -- it's your debt for all eternity till you pay it off. In many cases, the easiest way to pay a debt is with money, rather than with suffering and adversities of destiny or devotional (or slovenly) service (which is how a debt to a teacher was traditionally repaid by a student who is poor.) In China, gifts to masters in excess of the asking price are common, and have always been -- you always try to give a bit more than you're getting, just to be on the safe side in the overall karmic checks and balances, if for no other reason. Of course there's other reasons to give freely, but they don't invalidate the give-and-take that involves money. Teachers have to eat. Teachers have to pay mortgages. Teachers have to educate their kids. Why are they supposed to get nothing for what they give you while you're happy to pay Joe who fixes your car or even George who wages your war for you so that you can put gas in same? My teacher, who charges a very reasonable fee, is very careful to avoid situations where he might owe a student any money. If you miss a class, you are invited to come to any other class free of charge; if you can't, he'll extend your term free of charge; if you still don't come, he'll give you a gift -- a free CD or a T-shirt or something. A good lesson in and of itself I think -- students should likewise try to be careful in their taking, and make sure they don't owe a teacher what they haven't somehow repaid, and like I said, in many cases, paying with money is the easiest way to do it. Then again there's greedy teachers whose fees are prohibitively high. By all means, stay away from these, unless you know for a fact they are taking what is owed them, and are karmically entitled. I knew one teacher like that. He gave me treasures -- for an impossibly high price. He had suffered so much though that no money will ever fix that... but whatever he takes, he takes with an unwavering hand, feeling that the universe owes him. And he's probably right.

"Most people imagine god as a cat with his paw in the fish tank." -- Terrence McKenna And why is that? Why, if it's all a dream, billions have been dreaming the same dream for the past fifteen thousand years? and nobody, before that?.. Looks more like the kind of dream induced by sending a signal from a central computer to the microchip imbedded in a cyborg's pineal gland. Do check yours, and if you find one, pull it out -- then you'll hear the music of the spheres and know the universe is real. "It's beautiful, you balmy bastards, this is not a dream." -- George Starbuck