Taomeow

I think it depends on the subject matter of the disagreement and the magnitude of the issue over which we disagree. If it's about something of very minimal importance to me, I might offer a different perspective. How do you pick a really good watermelon at a store? Some people just cross their fingers and hope for the best. Some look at external signs they were told to look for. No! Put your ear to it and knock on it with your knuckles. A hollow sound bodes well, a dull thump -- forget it. If they disagree, let them eat a watermelon that's neither sweet nor ripe, who gives a damn. But when something bigger is at stake, it's a lose-lose situation. If I say nothing, I'm betraying myself. Oh, every fucking time! If I say something, a pointless argument may take place -- not my chosen pastime. Hermits had a point.

Definitely. There's nothing scarier than a smiling sociopath.

In the former Soviet Union it was the opposite -- you didn't smile at strangers. Or for passport pictures. Or in service situations -- neither sales people nor shoppers smiled at each other. Teachers didn't smile at students, and students smiling during class could be reprimanded for lack of seriousness. There were perhaps multiple reasons behind this lack of public smiling, but one of them may have been just that -- to show you are dangerous, or at least not someone to be taken lightly. Also a lack of economic incentives for smiling at clients -- it didn't matter for employees of government-owned businesses whether they smile or not, are friendly or not, welcoming or not. In the US, this lack of smiles can also be easily observed in places like the DMV or if you are engaged in any which bureaucratic interactions with government officials. In China, they also smile less -- until you open up at least a little bit about who you are, tell them anything personal about yourself. This is perceived as an opening and the barrier is quickly removed and then people smile easily. Interesting how many meanings a smile or a lack thereof might have.

Not to encourage or discourage this face on you, just to thank you for supplying the term. Just a day ago, I saw, in a debate, exactly this kind of face but didn't quite know how to define it. Ever so grateful!

Don't know if it will be helpful but FWIW: Many moons ago, when I was working on resolving some past/childhood issues, one thing that happened was, I stopped smiling around most people. Until then, I didn't even realize that I was, so often, smiling. Not a smile of genuine pleasure that internally means, "this person makes me feel good." No! A smile in response to expectations, learned early on as a confirmation to them that I am not going to bother them with any feelings they don't want me to have. That I am unconditionally approving of them no matter how they treat me. That I'm fucking harmless. A smile to diffuse abuse. Not on purpose, but because of the dynamics of working on my "stuff," I stopped smiling for a while. It made them extremely anxious. I wasn't doing or saying anything confrontational -- but a mere withholding of the smile they came to expect, felt entitled to, was perceived as a signal of danger. So I see two reasons why you may be smiling uncontrollably in situations you describe: 1. It's a genuine smile of pleasure -- seeing attractive girls makes you feel good inside. 2. It's a conditioned reflex -- whoever makes you feel insecure might trigger it -- due to prior unconscious conditioning that you are expected to signal, by smiling, your acceptance of them and your harmlessness.

I'm talking about a specific period. Which ended 19000 years ago. Then I'm talking about another specific period -- 14000 to 8000 years ago. The blue-eyed western Europeans disappeared during the first one of the periods discussed. During or after that second period, one or (most likely) both things happened: 1. Blue eyes are the outcome of many genetic modifications, the most common (but by far not the only one) being a variant of the OCA2 gene which is involved in making melanin. Environmental conditions that are conductive to making less melanin (which is what blue eyes really are -- eyes with less melanin) would favor the appearance and proliferation of this trait in the newcomers (who underwent many genetic changes besides this one once they settled in the new environment.) 2. After the second period discussed, i.e. from 8000 years ago to present, there were many new waves of many new settlers from elsewhere, who may have also brought blue eyes to the area.

Genetic data suggest that pre- last ice age human populations of Western Europe (dark skinned blue-eyed people) did not survive that last ice age and disappeared completely between 25 000 and 19 000 years ago. Once the climate warmed up (rapidly -- melting an ice sheet two miles thick that was covering the continent), settlers from the East (fair skinned, dark eyed) moved in and spread across the territory of modern Western Europe. These new settlers had an almost identical hunter-gatherer lifestyle and culture (fat goddess statuettes etc.) to that of the people whence they came, i.e. modern Eastern Europe. However, the two populations didn't mix at all for some 6 000 years (between 14 000 and 8 000 years ago.) That, despite the absence of any geographic barriers that would prevent them from mixing. This led to a rather rapid accumulation of genetic differences between those who lived to the West and those who lived to the East of the Baltic sea. Researchers whose information I've used above promised to explain why they didn't mix in the next publication.

That's great. In the comments to that video I posted above, of Polish mountaineers encountering a cat on top of the country's highest mountain, someone wrote that this is not a domestic cat but, rather, a European Wildcat, thought to be extinct for a while but now supposedly spotted here and there. I hope they're right.

I was specifically looking for the English translation of Invincible Sun, a novel by one of the most important and most quirky contemporary authors a number of whose books did get translated into English (don't know how well though), Victor Pelevin, to recommend to you. It came out in 2020 and, alas, at 700 pages, no one has undertaken the feat yet. But I'll be sure to let you know if someone does. It's phantasmagoric (like most of his stuff) and fun and no belief is ever safe in his renditions (except maybe some extremist Buddhism which he seems to favor.)

Henley was 26 when he wrote that inspiring and courageous poem. I remember being at least as cocky at that age too. (Although girls mature a bit sooner, so I wrote a poem with my first doubts in the Invictus doctrine at 25.) We have a saying that translates, verbatim, "until the roasted rooster pecks" -- meaning, until fate really shows what it's capable of. Yes, roasted roosters don't peck -- under normal circumstances. It's just that no one is guaranteed that their circumstances will always be normal, nor that under grossly abnormal ones they will remain true to their normal-circumstances behavior, outlook, resolve, or level of success maintaining same. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." As for me, being a mossy traditionalist, I am the master of 40% of my fate, and the captain of about 1/3 of my shen. (And I believe that's a helluva lot more than I would be the master of if I simply mistook whatever conditioning I've been subjected to for free will, fate, god's will, or the imperatives of the soul. I wonder if it makes me more fatalistic or less fatalistic than the ant in the cogweels of the cuckoo clock.)

Good questions, thanks for asking! I use all of them on occasion, depending on the occasion. "What will happen if" -- only in order to "pre-divine," so to speak, if the divination or a ritual is appropriate or useful right now, for this particular situation. What will happen if I ask the I Ching about this and that right now, or if I address the deity of choice with such and such petition? It's a simple one, like a toss of the coins, only instead of coins I have jiaobei or moon blocks, two of them, which can land on the yin side or the yang side when you toss them. A yin and a yang mean yes. A yang and a yang mean no. A yin and a yin mean gods are laughing at your endeavor. "Auspicious days and so on" -- that's not divination, that's calculation. I pay attention to auspicious or inauspicious days (sometimes hours too, for an important endeavor). The San Niang or Three Killings days I know by heart, so a quick look at the sun-to-moon calendar conversion calculator tells me when those are happening, and I avoid important stuff on those days if at all possible. The yearly Almanac that goes into more detail -- that's either a physical copy I've bought some years, or just an online consult. (I used to be able to calculate those things by hand, but it's been years since I last tried... it's the same thing as with kids who use calculators and forget -- or never master to begin with -- the multiplication table and the simple arithmetical operations and can't read an analog clock... but it does save a ton of time ). Of course going in depth would yield much better results -- there's always a day of the year, an hour of that day to be precise, when if you buy a lottery ticket (you personally, with your bazi chart, not everybody's) you are guaranteed to win that lottery. But calculating it would take so much time and effort (and, for starters, study and comprehension) that you might be better off investing that time and effort into something more mundane. "How can I best achieve this goal" -- that's close to how I formulate my I Ching inquiries: "I divine my best course of action toward such and such outcome" which I desire, or "my best course of action toward avoiding such and such outcome" I am wary of. The "oh spirits make it so" approach -- that's for the formal taoist ritual, but I don't address impersonal "spirits," I always address my request to a specific deity. In taoism deities are specialists, not universalists. (There's universalists too of course, tending to the whole universe, but they will not get involved in the personal affairs of individual humans except maybe in exceptional situations with universal repercussions -- if then.) Also, sometimes the ritual is not about a request, prayer, or any kind of favor seeking, just for veneration and admiration. E.g. I sometimes make offerings to the goddess of the ocean, Mazu, just because I admire her.

Polish mountaineers scaled the country's highest peak (2,500 meters or 8,200 feet high) and found a cat. https://fb.watch/uq99MdbsRL/

My favorite. This is the god of literature, Wenchang Wang (whose name literally means "king of culture and language"), whose talismanic invocations are used in their many forms to aid students in passing exams, creative folks in writing their books, artists and calligraphers in perfecting their art, and so on. This particular depiction is the talismanic rendition of his name that forms his traditional image: like all taoist deities and immortals, Wenchang is portrayed in possession of specific attributes (which make images recognizable -- e.g. Guanyin usually holds her vessel/vase, Li Tieguai leans on a crutch and carries a gourd, and so on). In this case, it's the calligraphy brush (pointing at the Big dipper, no less) and Wenchang's usual means of transportation across the troubled waters of culture, an ao 鰲 -- sea turtle (sometimes a dragon-carp) on which he stands.

I like this book:

I'm not sure I know what the term refers to. What does it mean to you? If I were to compile something like that list (I do think it's quite a bit arbitrary, mentioned it already), I would definitely include exorcism practices, which occupy one of the most prominent places in the Daozang, with hundreds of scriptures dedicated to the subject. That might be close to the idea of spiritual hygiene, no?

Wouldn't you agree that night and day, summer and winter, rain or shine, water or quicksand, infancy or maturity, animals coming or animals going, and the WHEN of all that -- those are all external signs. A fully synched person is primarily at home in her environment and acts or doesn't act in a timely fashion due to understanding its dynamics -- precisely by paying attention to its external signs. Nothing mystical, just awareness and acting or not acting in a particular way at a particular time based on that. And god only knows how expansive that awareness could have been in folks who could direct it to the stars above and the infinite variety of life below and Time and its changes. "External signs" of taoism were born of that kind of awareness.

Right. Not so easy to fix bazi and feng shui "desynchronizations," unfortunately, but "at least something" can always be done. Or (often) refrained from doing. The precision of qimen dunjia in the moment, right meow, is one possible way -- unfortunately, unlike with those other methods, I'm only a beginner with this one. Ah, no. 5 elements interacting with the 8 directions interacting with yin-yang interacting with heavenly stems and earthly branches including the hidden ones, with yi and its 64 configurations, with a whole bunch of Flying Stars and assorted destiny stars and constellations, with 12 "animals" aka earthly qi situations, interacting with 60 Grand Duke offices... those ain't no simple cogs, alas. "When complexity strikes, meaningful statements lose precision and precise statements lose meaning." -- Lotfi Zadeh

Simple, until you get to the next question -- what does "in sync" practically mean? If you look at an analog clock, the surface is simple and synchronizing your analog watch with it is a piece of cake -- you just turn that little wheel on the side and move the handles to the desired position. But take a little prying tool and open the clock and look at what's inside, what makes it tick... and how... that's where the difficult part begins. And both the cosmic clock and the personal clock are way more complex than an analog watch. What a paradigm is is a very useful approach to a lot of things -- e.g. I remember learning something a professor called "the paradigm of the English verb" and all of a sudden, oh man, it was like a bolt of lightning! -- it all clicked into place, hey, I know how to use English now! I know how it works! And yet it was no replacement for actually accumulating a vocabulary of English verbs to use with that paradigm. Knowing the inner workings of a thing is important... but it doesn't suffice if you don't have all the actual parts it needs in order to work, nor how exactly they fit together, move together, move each other, and so on. A curious kid disassembling and then assembling back a watch is invariably left with a couple of little cogs that seem to be extra and don't fit back in... very small ones, tiny, unimportant... but the watch doesn't work anymore. (talking from experience, first my own and then my kids')

I had my fair share of arguments with the author of this chart, who tends toward taoism-tinted new-ageism and an inflexibly dogmatic kind at that. But I haven't spoken about things taoist proper here in years, nor heard anything of much consequence, so coming across this chart seemed like an easy way back into the subject. And bingo -- now you're telling me you know qimen! That's rare and precious! So what is it that you know about the paradigm that nobody understands? As for "the methods done in the mountains," it's not historically wrong, taoists always escaped into the mountains in the course of many social upheavals and, especially, those directed against them, of which there were many. And even earlier, in proto-taoist antiquity, the wu congregated on mount Wuashan, e.g., and Maoshan was also practiced in the mountains, and hermits yada yada, I even know one still living in a cave on mount Huashan. But my interpretation is not too shabby either.

Your teacher was more merciful than mine. My teacher didn't mind that I have this habit of meowing in situations where normal people go "ah!" or "ouch!" or "watch out!" -- it's my idiosyncratic, totally spontaneous way to react to an unexpected jolt, sudden danger, etc.. But he demonstrated the most arcane martial moves on me by calling out to the group, "Come here everybody! Pay close attention! I'll teach you how to make her meow!" Oh the indignity!

Most humans translate stuff from the Chinese even worse, and most taoist compilations fare worse than most texts and often contain inexplicable stuff or sheer nonsense or both. However, while this Mountain might have been an AI glitch or a human glitch, it might also be none of the above and quite meaningful. It is one possible way to render the notion of "Stillness," by using the corresponding trigram Gen, aka Mountain, aka Stillness, which is an acceptable general reference to the practices cultivating same as the foundation from which they are undertaken. Besides,

Curious to hear from folks who have undertaken studying and practicing (and maybe teaching?) any of these methods. I've learned and used some from each category. Within each, I've familiarized myself with most, have given much time and effort to some, undertaken a cursory foray into others, and haven't touched still others. Of course the list, like all lists, could be organized rather differently, expanded, contracted, and refurbished terminology wise. (E.g., there exists a tradition of including most of what's on that map under the broader notion of feng shui, not feng shui as it is known in the West where self-appointed masters sort of rearrange chairs on the deck of the Titanic and call it feng shui, but as a fundamental taoist space-time science underlying all others.) But at a glance, someone interested in taoism (supposedly) might get a very general idea of what it is that taoists actually do (as opposed to what its accidental tourists talk about.) I always give this suggestion to those with budding taoist interests: pick something from an array of what taoists do and start doing it. That's a foot in the door. Limiting one's participation to thinking, reading, writing, talking "about" (and, yes, even "meditating" without a clear idea of "how," "what for" and other technicalities) is a foot jammed in the door that is being shut. Interestingly enough, any one of the methods can be complete, the whole thing is holographic. But to get the whole enchilada, this one thing should become all things to the practitioner. One would have to go deeper and broader, higher and lower, faster and slower, engage expansive and concentrated thinking and no-thinking, throw everything and the kitchen sink at it.