Taomeow

Affairs of the heart are the weirdest. My mom liked to tell me this story. In her youth, she was friends with a group of girls in the neighborhood, and one of them was courted incessantly by this guy whose attention, however, was not appreciated. The object of his infatuation laughed it off and "treated him as a friend" and still he wasn't giving up, only ramping up his efforts to win her heart. All her friends would criticize the girl for her cruelty -- if you don't want him, tell him so and tell him in so many words, don't go hanging out with him, don't keep torturing him with hope. So one day this girl gathered her girlfriends around and told them, I think he is going to propose, can you do me a favor? Tell him that I asked you all to tell him not to. Tell him, as friends, that it will save him the humiliation and pain of being rejected, for reject him I will. I don't want to hurt him, but I would never marry him, not in a million years. Tell him I said that. Please. So the girls accosted the guy and gave him the message, verbatim. Personally I think it was a lot more humiliating for him to get the news from five or six females at once rather than just one, but so it went. He nodded, thanked for the message, and said, I'll take my chances anyway. The next day, he proposed. The girl accepted. Yup. No one saw it coming -- probably including her. They're still married over 60 years later. I don't know what the morale of the story is, except for my opening line. Oh, and my mom told the story as an example of how any third party's advice is likely to fall on deaf ears in the affairs of the heart.

When I don't have a black and white answer myself, I ask the I Ching.

Rancid yak butter does make the batter bitter. Betty Botter knows.

Thank you, @ronko and @forestofemptiness . I decided not to ignore the uneasy feeling I had after posting, which I attributed to my somewhat unclear overall relationship with Maoshan tradition. Thought I might do better not aggravating it with any opinions that may upset anyone from a lineage I generally respect. Ever so honored. To quote my favorite poet (in my prosaic translation), "one could populate a whole city with people who have forgotten me." To say nothing of posts that have been deleted by me.

For healing and hurting -- extended to all spheres of existence.

Edit: Sincere apologies to all who read and "liked" my post for deleting it on second thought.

And when you show something like this in a taiji sparring video, there's no end to yelling that it's all staged and fake.

I think betrayal is the worst thing in the world, and cowardice is the greatest sin. But in the case of someone very young, timid, inexperienced, or very disadvantaged socially (society tends to punish honesty and courage quite severely -- especially in women), and possibly confused because of inexperience with understanding her own feelings and motives, it may well be something different from "betrayal and cowardice" behind such behavior, something less drastic. I would have to hear out the other side before forming an opinion... Maybe when she swore that she has no other boy in her life, she meant she has no feelings for that boy, maybe that relationship was on its last leg and she was trying to ease her way out of it rather than terminate it abruptly... who knows. And, yes, it should be made clear from the start -- but someone very young may not really be clear even inside themselves, volatile. It's about one's core values, I call that "the diamond axis" -- if it's not formed, what drives one's behavior is the mood of the moment, the latest self-serving choice, the latest tantrum, whatever. I would definitely demand this "diamond axis" of truthfulness and courage from an adult... alas, many people I know don't have that personality core formed even by the time they are seniors, regardless of gender. I will do the reading once you provide the details you want to add.

The girl was in some kind of relationship with another boy when she met you? A relationship that was not sexual and started when she was 16? Well... unless she explicitly swore eternal exclusivity, love and devotion to either him or you (and was not coerced, blackmailed or threatened in any way if she did swear it), I don't think she has made a commitment to him, I don't think she owed him -- or you -- or anyone any exclusive rights on her company. She was exploring the new and uncharted territory, the world of love, as teenagers do -- in a way considerably more restrained and, if I may use the word, innocent, than what most teenagers do in most Western cultures these days. Weren't you when you were her age?.. And even if you were not, how much do you know about her need for love, about how frustrated she was not getting it anywhere -- beginning with her own family, where her own mother views her as a commodity to trade rather than a human being to love? The differences between what society accepts for men looking for what they need and for women looking for what they need are staggering and infuriating if you ask me. Even in this thread you see this "looking for sex with no strings attached is fine for men but a no-no for women" attitude -- "just don't get married," don't get hooked they say but looking to have sex at all costs is fine as long as you don't commit yourself. Well, men's commitment to sex comes without the kind of price tag it entails for women -- they don't get pregnant from it, see, nor damage their health with hormonal contraception, nor get abortions, nor give birth should sex turn out to produce a pregnancy the woman can't or won't terminate. So one thing to understand which I don't think is understood widely is that whatever needs women are trying to get met in a relationship are, at the very least, not smaller than whatever needs men are trying to get met for themselves -- including sex. There's passionate women out there, women who need sex as much as men or more -- it's just that for them the hurdles in getting the kind with no strings attached are usually much greater. So one thing I would want to advise is, examine yourself, know what your needs are as a human being, including but not limited to sex, what else is driving you -- then try to imagine that the girl's needs are at least no smaller than that, not drastically different and not something insignificant compared to yours -- and take it from there. If you can accept equality in that respect, chances are she will have no need and no desire to "cheat" ever again. If you love her rather than use her, chances are she will pay in kind. She's not all that different from you. As my first teacher put it, "tao is not unlike you." Other than that... strangely enough, a survey of marriages in cultures where they are arranged by parents vs. those where partners make their own choices proved that spouses in arranged marriages rated theirs as "happy" more than twice more often than spouses in self-chosen unions. Strange but true. Maybe the reason is that parents are, generally speaking, more experienced in making life's choices than children? It's a hit-or-miss for everyone though. Luck is a player too. Those who assert that marriage is overrated weren't the luckiest and have that experience as their frame of reference. Those who were lucky often believe it's the most important part of life, the part that can make or break it. Having or not having true love and devotion in one's life is the foundation on which it can stand strong -- or crumble. Also I can ask the I Ching on your behalf. I'm a fairly experienced diviner.

During these hard times the jackrabbit on the lawn looks quite edible

It takes a special and strong-minded kind of coincidence theorist, after hitting their thumb with an eight-pound hammer, to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, “Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!”

All public figures are Rorschach tests of people's mental health. What they see reflects their latest delusion. -- A voice in my head

I remember a past life where I was raised by a snow leopard. She was badass. I don't remember what species I was myself though. Could have been adopted. The memories are from a very young age, from before I had a concept of "self."

This is somewhat tangential, but I got curious and dug up the following morsel of food for thought. 40% of all people in the world are monolingual, 43% are bilingual, and the remaining 17% are fluent in more than 2 languages. In the UK, 68% are monolingual. In the US, 80% . in Russia, somewhere between 80-90%. I think this means something... in terms of people's ability to comprehend another culture's thought process, "translate" it adequately and form mutually realistic images of "the other." After all, it's a learned skill, to understand what the "other" is on about. And realistic learning can only happen via experiential immersion -- the deeper the better. Any other kind is superficial and, for the most part, illusory. The advantage of taoist learning is that a lot of it can be immersive while bypassing the head almost entirely. It's not that the head is useless -- but for many (not all of course) things taoist, it's optional. Monkey see, monkey do. You understand if your body understands -- that kind of learning. Me like.

You were not. It was an old joke (which a few people have found hilarious over the years, me included) that had no attribution to anyone and was brought up because I found it rhythmically in tune with what the poster I was commenting on (not you) contributed, and aimed to add a lighter note to his (IMO correct) observation, also of a general nature. If your goal intruding on my thread with your... er... remarks was some sort of retaliation in response to a word that triggered you that had, however, nothing whatsoever to do with you, it was misplaced and misconstrued. Hope this settles it and you can leave my thread in peace. I will definitely reciprocate and give yours the widest berth. Promise.

Yes, studying a new drug for 40 years before prescribing it to whoever with assertions that it is safe is, quite possibly, good. Making such assertions with no long-term (or, in this case, any, in the target group of pregnant women) studies and/or data gathering and analysis at all is, quite possibly, terrible. Contrary to popular belief, taoism is not big on moral relativism. The "good" and "bad" of taoism may not be formulated in the same terms as those of Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, but our proprietary notions of "lucky" and "unlucky," "auspicious" and "inauspicious," "shen qi" and "sha' qi" etc. are, if anything, designed to distinguish "moral" from "immoral" and "good" from "bad" with more pragmatic accuracy and attention to the very details that are where tao is -- or isn't. Thalidomide is not efficient in this new capacity, by the way, as further experience with it showed. 5-year survival of multiple myeloma patients showed no difference whatsoever between groups of patients treated vs. not treated with thalidomide. https://news.cancerconnect.com/multiple-myeloma/thalidomide-not-associated-with-survival-improvement-in-multiple-myeloma-JwCPLr8yx0We4VgEyqoDUQ So over the past 40 years its status changed from child killer/mutilator to false hope bringer to dud. I'd say that's an improvement... not enough of an improvement to justify the killings and mutilations though if you ask me.

This Cryptomeria, known in Japan as Jomon Sugi, is one of the oldest living trees in the world -- its age is over 7,000 years. It is 83 feet high and still growing. For those who want to see it, it's a 10-hour hike into the depth of the Yakushima National Park. I wonder what Longmen tree qigong with it would feel like...

La inutilidad en su verdadera manifestación es, según Zhuangzi *, la máxima sabiduría de los sabios. Ay, solo puedo soñar con este nivel. *remember his story about the useless tree?

走開，巨魔

_/\_ Veni, vidi, trolli

If you ever doubted that we live in a golden age continuously celebrating the Alchemical Marriage of Modern Science™ and Globalization, take a look at some of its most prized fruits. (Warning: high likelihood of a cringe/shudder response in sensitive individuals. Proceed with caution.) https://zimbabweobserver.co.za/2021/04/china-seizes-7221-human-penises-on-cargo-ship-from-nigeria/

Watching Monarchs dance, I wonder which one is called Zhuangzi. Who knows?..