Taomeow

"An immigrant learns how to look at things with her eyes and the eyes of others at the same time, as if she were simultaneously in front of a mirror and inside of it. In the US, an immigrant is someone who is simultaneously inside and outside the mirror called “America.” A “native” (in this case, an American-born person) is trapped inside the mirror. Americanness: the privilege of never having had a mirror placed in front of your nose because you are always already inside the mirror. The privilege of never looking at yourself with the eyes of Others." -- Alta Ifland

Every time I look at that banner, I'm reminded of a Chinese expression -- here we call those sad clumps of weariness and defeat that gather in the corners of a neglected room something deceptively cute -- "dust bunnies" -- but the Chinese call them "grey mice of despair."

My teacher's lecture on nutrition for the cultivator included many valuable tips -- here's some general ideas: When you're going to have a meal, first try giving your current appetite a rating -- say from 1 to 10, from "well, I could eat, if there's nothing better to do" to "hungry as a wolf." Skip a meal if your current appetite is too low on that scale. Try to never eat to 10. Stop at 7 or 8. Stop when you think, "well, that was good, I guess I could eat some more before I'm full." Don't go here: If practitioners always observe the rule of not going past 7 in satisfying their appetite, most of them don't have to worry too much about when exactly they'd eaten before starting the practice. But we're not all the same, our digestions are not the same, foods eaten at a given meal are not the same -- so self-observation is important. If you find, experimentally, that your practice benefits from giving yourself some time to digest your meal first, it's a good idea to give yourself that time. If you find it doesn't suffer or even benefits from your not being distracted by hunger, try the 7 out of 10 approach, see if it works better.

My autumn-winter-spring city life was fully modern, but I spent summers at my grandmother's, in a city that had an "across the bridge" semi-rural part, and that's where my grandmother lived. Coal and wood for heating and cooking -- an indoor stove for each room and also an outdoor stove for summer cooking -- and for something quick (e.g. to boil water for tea), also a kerosene stove known as Primus that looked like this: Water from two sources, a hand pump in the street and a well a bit farther with absolutely the most fantastic water I've ever tasted. At the time I hated that well though, because I'd suffered a complex arm fracture one summer when I was 6, and after the breaks healed, the arm emerged twisted and wimpy -- so to straighten and strengthen it, the doctor prescribed walking around carrying downward-pulling weights, starting with very light ones and increasing the weight gradually. The easiest way to accomplish that was to carry a small bucket of water -- then a bigger one -- with just a little more water in it every day. So I was tasked with walking to and from that well every day dragging that bucket back and forth, and it hurt like a bitch. It helped though -- a couple of years later I was doing competitive gymnastics. Then there were chickens chaperoned by a rooster. A root cellar where huge blocks of ice were stored -- they lasted throughout the summer -- for refrigeration. I There was electricity though. And very easy access to the civilized part of town "across the bridge" (where my grandmother worked) -- by tram, the stop was nearby. Here's what it looked like: I would live like that again -- or simpler than that -- if there was a need. In fact, I don't exclude the possibility. If shit was to hit the fan in earnest, I'd rather live like that than amidst either urban collapse and decay and disease or a super-efficient totally controlled society of digitized half-past-humans. I think "simpler lives" chiefly scare those who have never experienced them.

Chinese deities welcoming a Soviet rocket, a Chinese propaganda poster from the 1950s

Coffee maker I grew up with. My parents had it for 20 years or so. It was German made, all stainless steel inside and out. Indestructible, not prone to clogging -- unlike modern espresso machines that also force water through the grinds under pressure in a seemingly similar process... but something went wrong, straightforward simplicity was sacrificed for gimmicks and trinkets that make modern ones not as capable to produce high quality brew and nowhere near as reliable. When I experimented with simplifying my morning coffee routine (which entails standing patiently over the cezve on the stove), I threw out a couple of those over the years because they clogged regularly asking for annoying and excessive maintenance, and then just stopped doing their job for no good reason. Been trying to find this one for years -- even though it's 220V, I'd install a converter or something -- but it's unobtainable, and even pictures I was able to find miss the glass receptacle that was placed underneath, capacity about 2 cups... all of them probably broken by now. And this is my trusty Armenian cezve of the last 30 years. Also indestructible. Made of "German silver," which actually has no silver (as I found out, to my chagrin, after believing for a long time it was real silver -- it's the most convincing look-alike though.)

I used to take it, years ago. The quality of the brand I used at the time deteriorated taste-wise since then, toward unbearable sweetness. I just couldn't handle the last jar I bought, so I abandoned it. If anyone can point me toward a reputable brand that is not overly sweet, I'd give it another try.

@Bindi A few thoughts. Control comes first. You can't do things you plan unless you're in control of the situation. If you plan to do major things, you need to gain major control first. If you gain major control, history shows that the next goal is, invariably, total control. If you gain total control, history shows that it has never been used toward anything but total horror. What shape and form the horror might take depends on the epoch. Ours is better at wrapping it up in shiny ticky tacky than any that went before, so it's not immediately obvious to most people. You don't need a particularly deadly virus or a particularly sketchy vaccine if your goal is total control. All you need is a set of beliefs they can help you create and install -- beliefs that will hand you your total control on a silver platter, with no resistance, even with gratitude -- with carte blanche to do as you please. Do you think the current pests fall short of that goal? For one thing, the night's still young. (I've elaborated on that in a long post in my Batshit thread but am reluctant to open it, it's still in its virtual state. Don't want to go into all the dark places I've seen, there be dragons. ) For another, the goal, if total global control for whatever purpose is the goal, is so within reach of those who call the shots... I don't think we have ever been anywhere near so close in all of our history to "getting there." Once there, you reckon total control will be used in some new improved fashion, toward making us healthy, happy and free? Heck, I'm all for it. I just don't know of a single precedent in 10,000 years.

He had to travel far but he finally found his lost cat.

Let's not forget that all people are insecure. It's just that different people find different ways to feel more secure. Some discover martial arts as a means to that end, others might resort to something entirely else... money, status, belonging to a group, religion, education, sports, cosmetics, fashion, plastic surgery, eating "healthy" rather than whatever they want, preparing for SHTF scenarios, the list is endless. Our insecurities are not all the same, and remedies we find are also not all the same.

Indian Bar Association is suing the WHO for running a disinformation campaign against ivermectin. https://indianbarassociation.in/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Legal-Notice-to-Dr.-Soumya-Swaminathan_Chief-Scientist-WHO-1.pdf

A couple of days ago, from a Ukrainian doctor working with covid patients in Mumbai, India, Oleksandr Kuharchuk: "Shake off the veil of absolute numbers from your eyes! Yesterday in India, the maximum rate of daily detection of infected people during the entire pandemic was recorded -- 362,902 people, which is 0.028% of the total population of the country. As for funeral pyres, they've been burning in India for thousands of years and will burn for thousands more -- that's the Hindu custom. It's just that you weren't shown them before -- because, by the same custom, it is forbidden to make photos or videos of the funeral pyres!" As for covid-19 death rate (persons per million), India is currently on the 39th place in the world (which is far lower than the US and most of Europe). What it really suffers from is the usual -- devastating poverty, malnutrition, hunger, famine, abysmal scarcity of medical resources. Things that are "the usual" for a post-colonial country, only made worse by a new and improved wave of corporate looting. The latest graph looks like this: Note the timing.

nm

Found and lost a dog today. In that order. My son picked up in the street and brought in a tiny fluffy white thing with big ears, big intelligent eyes, a fragile physique and a calm, composed demeanor. Not shy, not scared, not clingy. Silent, friendly and very polite. It was less than half the size of an average cat and looked like a miniature cross between a little lamb and Falkor from The Never-Ending Story. The dog approached my son in an empty street and explained, with eye contact and body language, that it was lost. Not panicking or anything, just looking in the eye, then indicating with body language that the street was empty, no owner in sight, could you please assist me, sir. It had a collar with a tag. The tag said "Santa Monica" -- which is 115 miles away from where the encounter took place. There was a phone number too, so we called that number, an answering machine said we'd reached animal rescue service of Santa Monica police department. The dog was so tiny that to imagine it escaped from the cops and used its four little legs to walk 115 miles seemed like a stretch. It would take it 115 years. Several attempts to get anyone to return our calls to that number failed, so we started planning on keeping the dog. I know nothing about tiny dogs. If I hang out with other people's dogs, I favor big ones, I have an idea of what to expect of them, I know how to play with them, what they like to eat but shouldn't, what their level of intelligence is, what mood, and so on. But a tiny dog is something I don't understand. I mean, if you're into dogs, get a dog, and if you're into something that can fit in your purse, get a cat. Why overcomplicate things. So, I never thought of taking in a tiny dog, ever. And yet, within an hour of that Falkor-lamb hybrid appearing in my life, I decided that if all else fails, I'll give it a home. I fed it a bit of a hot dog and gave it some water -- both were accepted politely, with no sign of starvation or thirst, just well-behaved acceptance of my hospitality. Then the dog asked permission to sit on my lap. Permission granted, it did. I stroked it and it seemed quite relaxed and comfortable but didn't purr. If it was a cat I would be worried -- why, what am I doing wrong, why are you sitting on my lap being stroked and yet refusing to purr? Oh... Right. You're a dog. A purrless animal. The next attempt to call Santa Monica finally produced a person on the other end, who then identified the dog and the owner and the fact that the owner was visiting family in San Diego. So the dog didn't walk 115 miles after all. It took a car ride before getting lost. So we called the owner and the brief episode of my being in possession of a tiny dog ended with their happy reunion.

This picture was taken by a friend of mine, the son of the great Boris Strugatsky (of sci-fi's Strugatsky Brothers). It's not a reflection in the mirror. It's his current cat, named Kalyam, captured at the moment of establishing a mysterious connection across time through the picture of one of his cats of decades earlier. All his sequential cats were always named Kalyam, after his father's sequential cats who were also always named Kalyam, including the cat of the main protagonist of "One Billion Years to the End of the World," Strugatskys' 1970s novel. The word itself is mysterious, apparently of Turkic origins and several historical connotations, one having to do with a writing implement used at the times of Genghis Khan, another one, with something small that is part of something big.

There's a number of ways the hexagrams have been arranged. In fact, the number of ways 32 pairs of trigrams can be arranged is astronomical (a number with 35 zeroes). The one most used is known as the Zhou sequence (after the Duke of Zhou), and that's the version the term Zhouyi (Changes of Zhou) refers to. Aka the Fuxi arrangement. Another one is the King Wen sequence, which is supposed to be much older. In any event, the term Zhouyi is interchangeable with the term I Ching (Yijing), and so is the term "King Wen sequence" -- a different arrangement of the same 64 hexagrams. The difference is of much scholarly interest. For divination, it doesn't matter.

Yes. It's always there and all of it is real -- even the illusions. Anything that has impact is real. Anything that doesn't have impact (the unmanifest, tao-in-stillness) is both its birthplace and its destination. "Being comes from nonbeing. Nonbeing reverts to being." "To and fro goes the Way." A master of old, Qingyuan Weixin, put this remarkable realization in simple terms (often quoted but IMO seldom understood): Before realization, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance, I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters. This 9th century Zen master asserted it took him 30 years of study to come to this realization. So those who didn't might still have a chance -- maybe they're currently at stage 2 of the process. No hurry and no worry -- unless they proselytize to those at stage 3, where proselytizing is proselytizing again and those who aren't into that are those who aren't into that again. Stage 3 where things are what they are no matter what other things they are or are not to anyone at stage 2. Methinks taoism is a shorter way to this realization (took me maybe the first 3 years of study to "get there" ) but everyone finds their own pace -- it's not a sprint and not even an ultramarathon -- and perhaps their own destination.

Not coincidence of course. The spiral pattern, with a combo of clockwise and counterclockwise vortexes, is not only common but fundamental in nature and governs countless processes on all levels. The human body follows it too, and not just the subtle body -- even on the gross level, our bones are actually spirals, and the heart, as it has recently been established with high resolution imagery, is really helical in its structure. Ancient sciences that noticed, explored, and learned to use these universal patterns, with whatever methods they devised, are more of a rule than the exception. In competent taiji, we also rely massively on the "corkscrew" spiral forces (peng) we learn to discern, generate and use in our patterns of movement, internal and external. Spiral movements prioritize actions that are curved rather than angular and utilize the opening and closing of all of the joints in sequence. A slow sequence in training, a very rapid sequence in competent applications, so the peng-driven discharge is a snapping force, like that of a twisted whip rather than a straight stick. Just one example of course... helices and double helices are all over taoism too.

How is Gilead coming along? How is Ofjoseph doing?* Today's Los Angeles Times: "In December, when babies conceived in mid-March through early April would be expected to be born, the state saw a 10% drop-off in deliveries, compared with the 2% year-over-year decline that had been typical for about the last decade. In January, when most babies conceived in April and early May would be born, births fell a staggering 23%." So now we know which age group has been really massively impacted by all the measures implemented for our own good and for our health. California, the poster child of compliance with those measures, succeeded in eliminating almost a quarter of that population in just one year. But we're not going to see the planet turn into Gilead. No way. Gilead abused women, as punishment for being able to become pregnant and for being unable to become pregnant, in special ways custom-geared to each category. Not our problem at all, since we don't even have "pregnant women" anymore. We now have "pregnant people." So institutionalized misogyny has nothing to do with it. Nope, not Gilead at all. We are in Year One of Not Gilead At All. Wait for it. *An allusion for those who've watched Handmaid's Tale or read Margaret Atwood's novel

He may be a non-dualist but hardly a non-duelist -- he keeps challenging me to duels all the time. But you know what happens when you throw a gauntlet at a cat... she might just chase it around the floor for a while and then push it under the sofa and walk away.

@liminal_luke Ack, missed my chance to start competing with your planned edition of "Selected deletions of Taomeow" and start working on "Selected deletions of Liminal Luke."

Well, I think the "macro" explanation is, "as above so below." And "above"-- or rather, both above and below, underlying all things -- is the pattern of tao. "The way of tao is motion and the pattern of this motion is return." There's built-in laws of how tao operates, "the way and its power" lies in self-similarity, in being patterned on nature -- reflected in the fundamental taoist principle "tao fa ziran." Observing nature, with its ever-repeating cycles, from the great cosmic seasons of Conception, Growth, Fruition, Consummation followed by the great return -- down to every seed that remembers this cycle and repeats it -- has led the great sages to the conclusion that "to and fro goes the way." And is never exhausted, never lost unless you forget how to go "to" or "fro." But tao is not amnesiac. Nature is not amnesiac. And that's why reality will never "forget" to exist. Yet a human being can. A human being can become self-important enough to ignore the patterns of nature instead of observing and following them. A human being can be conditioned to believe that unverifiable made-up shit happening in his brainwashed head is the pattern reality follows instead. A human being can lose the Way. Taoist sages were aware of that and came up with the remedy. The remedy is to relearn to be fully human. The real human. And the real human follows tao, and the way of tao is motion, and the pattern of this motion is return. Monkey see monkey do. A smart monkey knows that it's too dumb to come up with something better in its mind than what's born of the mind of tao. A dumb monkey thinks its mind is better, and in that monkey mind might come up with better ideas. E.g., the idea to discard its monkey mind toward getting some miraculous "awareness" as a trade-off, much like one would trade in an old car and get an everlasting car with an eternal engine instead. As though not having a monkey mind (which however every monkey that's ever tried to discard it invariably failed to discard) means you're getting something better on autopilot. After all, the ever-so-honest salesman told you so, and that's all the proof you need. Nevermind the better car you're getting instead doesn't even exist. The ever-so-honest salesman has given you the keys, so the better car will surely materialize as soon as you quit being attached to it. Human beliefs are nuts. Nature's mind is real. It operates a certain way -- and the choice is between accepting it as is or making shit up. I prefer to accept it. Who am I to blow against the wind.

See my response to Dwai -- and as for characterizing my view in a statement, it is a co-creation between taoism proper (minus all the foreign influences some schools have absorbed) and my own forays into taoist arts, sciences and practices. The word "memory" is used here in the broad/genuine sense which is closest to the taoist concept of jing in the broad/genuine sense -- a pattern of origin. Something that really happened to bring a live being into existence, beginning from the beginning of its living history.