Taomeow

Hi Witens, I only read some of his material, but a friend of mine studied with him in person. Not for very long though, about three months, so I don't know if she is qualified to answer your questions, but if no one better familiar with his work shows up, try asking and I can ask my friend.

If the offer was "I need money, I'm broke, please donate," I'd give some. People need money. Sometimes they have something to offer in exchange, sometimes they don't. I sometimes give to those who can't give anything in return, sometimes I don't. I myself might ask for money in exchange for goods and services, or not. What I try to never do is give money for nothing that is being sold as something, nor ask for money for nothing presenting it as something. God grant us all the serenity that comes with getting money in exchange for goods and services, courage to admit we have no goods or services to offer in exchange for money, and wisdom to always tell the difference.

Taoists are fond of numbering everything. One Principle, Two Qi, Three Powers, Four Forms, Five Elements, Six Harmonies, Seven Stars, Eight Trigrams, and Nine Palaces. All of them are used in all serious taoist sciences and practices. For taijiquan, e.g., the Classics talk of "Thirteen Songs," or techniques, which are comprised of the Five Elements (let's use this metaphorical word for simplicity) and Eight Trigrams. Each corresponding to a particular way to use the body. These Thirteen rely on One Principle (wuji-taiji) and Two Qi (yin-yang), use Three Powers (head, hands, feet), Four Forms (cardinal directions), Six Harmonies (jing with shen, shen with qi, qi with jing), Seven Stars (head, hands, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, feet), Nine Palaces (the way to establish and maintain the stable center throughout the changes of the Eight Directions). So you are basically dealing with 5+8 ways to use your body-mind-spirit while the body-mind-spirit itself is asked to be in a 1+2+3+4+6 state. To a total of 45 Great Processes. 45(states) --13(uses) = 32. "Heaven above, 32. Earth below, 32." 32 yin and 32 yang trigarms of the I Ching to a total of 64. And so on. Still, the OP is about the five "elements" corresponding or not, or partially, to those of hermeticism. The answer ought to phase in the question methinks. The short answer is, not really, despite surface similarities.

Please note though that it's a correlation of the hermetic sciences with other Indo-European sciences in this case -- the ones that made their way into taoism. So I'd say it's more of an influence, a borrowing (and an afterthought at that) than correlation. The taoist fifth "element" (phase of qi) missing from Indo-European sciences is Wood. Which in wuxing sciences corresponds to biological life -- plants, animals, humans -- and any other biological life anywhere in the universe. I've always found it very noteworthy that this very distinct phase of existence is absent from Indo-European traditions, and very disturbing. The idiosyncratic behavior of Wood, of biological life as a phenomenon in existence, is not really reducible to that of any other phase. And since taoist sciences are mostly concerned with processes, it's the behavior of a particular phase that determines "what it is." It is "what it does" and "how it does it" and "under what circumstances does it behave the way it does." The process of biological aliveness is a distinct phase of qi which can only be thrown out of the picture for reasons I almost dare not contemplate...

Poor things... Exactly one year ago, when here in California we had the worst wildfires ever, there were thousands of animals who suffered too -- wild ones and also thousands of pets. This year we also had over 6,000 wildfires to date, but not as horrible as the inferno of last year... when there were also many human fatalities (over a hundred.) In some of the surrounding (and densely populated) areas, wildfire evacuations are a yearly event. A couple of years ago, the mandatory evacuation zone moved to within 4 miles from where I live, and we were warned to be ready-set-go any moment. You're never ready for these things though, I thought I was but then when it was over I unpacked my bag of necessities and discovered that it contained a bizarre assortment of items that I threw in, mostly represented by a mix of some obsolete jewelry of unknown value and three kinds of cat food.

To the first part of your question: yes, absolutely, the classical feng shui (not the pop version most Westerners have heard of and read silly books about) does not exclude the actual material energy -- or the material itself -- from the greater picture of a particular "elemental" pattern of qi transformations. These transformations manifest in a myriad ways, and discerning which is which can be as simple as noticing that "something" flowing from your tap, in the river, or in the ocean is actually water, part of the Water phase. The phase is not limited to the "element" by any stretch of imagination, but the element itself is included, it's part of the phase. It gets far more intriguing though when the actual "element" is not possible to discern yet the behavior of a certain "energy stream" or "pattern of change" resembles that of a particular phase of qi. E.g. the flow of money can behave as Water phase -- nourish or rot, flow or stagnate, accumulate and break through obstacles, overcome hard power with soft power, and so on. Trickle down if we're lucky. But it gets even more intriguing because taoist sciences also look at the dynamics of those "elements" on the level of the individual, and reveal that one's personal "money phase" may be something entirely else, something that behaves in a manner influenced by every other phase it interacts with in a way that would cause a "cash flow" or "going broke." But it gets more intriguing because "cash flow" can be just one aspect of an individual's overall stream of "good luck" -- something seemingly very intangible yet a bona fide probabilistic science to a wuxing student. You can quantify good fortune and misfortune in taoist sciences based on those "elements." I'm not sure it's part of hermetic sciences. To your second question -- yes, there's taoist schools and authors who have been influenced by the (chiefly) Buddhist systems and they might organize the taoist Five to resemble the Indo-European Four. E.g. by placing Earth in the Center and sort of taking it out of the five-phase circulation and mutual transformation pattern that is the main feature of the taoist five qi phases dynamics, make it sit there representing something immutable and static, "self" or "original self" or what have you, without participating in the transformations. They will arrange everything else around it and essentially proceed to work with just four... often practically reducing to just two -- e.g. kan and li, or "true yang and false yang," or some such. Personally I avoid those systems based on my own training and understanding, but you will hear much derived thence on this forum and elsewhere. The reason you can't place something in the Center and revolve the whole hoopla around it is that the Center itself is as movable as everything else, it never stays put. So another "great" taoist system needs to be taken into account to get closer still to the whole dynamics -- the great Nine. But that's not the time nor the place to get into all that.

That's exactly what I envisioned as the best outcome of my endeavor.

Do tell about the dog. Gilgamesh is a great starting point indeed. I have it in Stephen Mitchell's translation ("Gilgamesh: A New English Translation") and while I haven't looked to compare it with other versions, would dare recommend it on its own merits. It has energy, passion, startling surprises -- you almost feel as though you're reading a thriller rather than researching some ancient dust.

@welkin You are proposing induction: learn the parts to arrive at the whole. Ask questions toward getting answers. Whereas I'm engaged in deduction here: I have the answers, I know and understand the whole -- and now I want to study the parts and parsels that came together to produce this whole. It's the exact opposite of connecting the dots. My dots are connected. I want to disconnect them so as to take a look at each dot individually and at what it is exactly that holds them together. Let me offer a simile. Let's compare our present world to a very sick, dying person. To assess his overall condition, we don't need the exact diagnosis and the comprehensive lab work to be able to tell deathly ill from healthy and robust -- most people don't have to have a medical degree to tell the difference. We already have our whole picture -- to wit, on the whole, the patient has one foot in the grave. However we arrived at this conclusion, we have indeed arrived at it -- so the stage of induction is behind us. But now I want to know what the patient is dying from. And of course it takes a study of the anamnesis, of the nosognosis. What happened to him. What did he do or what was done to him? A bullet? A drug addiction? A suicide attempt? A congenital heart disease? A genetic mutation? A birth defect? Abuse in early childhood? A blood clot in a major artery? All of the above??? None of the above??? And so on. I want to follow back (and back and forth and forward while at it) the cascade of events and experiences that caused him to arrive at the deathbed where we presently find him. Which is what the thread is about. I'm not looking at "Sumer only" -- anymore than a pathologist might look at "heart only" or "brain only." It's just the present stage of our investigation. I have to look at Sumer, it's not to be ignored. But I didn't start there and I don't have to stop there.

Depends on your lineage. These neidan notions are the “foundation” (ti 體 ) and the “operation” (yong 用 ) of one another. The Southern (Nanzong 南 宗 ) schools give precedence to the cultivation of ming, and the Northern (Beizong 北宗 ) emphazise the cultivation of xing. And to top it off, the “conjoined cultivation of xing and ming” (xingming shuangxiu 性 命雙修 ) is much discussed in both. So it basically becomes the question of temporal sequence -- which one between xing and ming is seen as the basis for cultivating the other in order to realize both. Some schools see the cultivation of life as the prerequisite (my favorite quote capturing this attitude is not from taoism but from essentially "taoesque" Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Stand up and live before you sit down and write" -- which can be applied to "before you sit down and cultivate"). Others believe that cultivation of heart-mind is necessary first for the life realizing itself harmoniously. Chicken and egg problem. Personally, I believe in a kind of yo-yo cultivation of now xing, now ming, where every next stage of one (doesn't matter which) informs the next stage of the other and helps it arrive at a new level -- ultimately both arriving at a new level with every such "upgrade." Experientially, that's how it goes for most modern cultivators. If you focus on one exclusively, you lose perspective of the other, thereby losing traction of either xing or ming and, consequently, and somewhat paradoxically, both -- attending to just one is not unlikely to impede the other and thereby be impeded itself. I believe doing it the way tao does it is best. "Leaving the world and coming into the world." Being in the world, leaving the world. Leaving the world behind, manifesting in the world again. Many taoist sages, reportedly, often did it like that too. Even Laozi. The modern real-life sequence is usually "ming before xing" -- unless otherwise predestined.

The Four are the four main compass directions of the eight trigrams (the bagua) -- north, south, east, west. The bagua is formed by eight patterns of qi -- north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. This is a huge area of study in its own right. The 13 together -- 5 of the wuxing (phases, aka "elements) patterns of qi interlock with the 8 of the bagua (eight trigrams) to account for a lot of dynamics that are explored and worked with in all taoist arts. Actually you can't separate the two, because taoism was originally an extension and development of proprietary shamanic traditions of the area that later became China. Proto-taoism precedes both taoism and China, and wuxing comes thence. It was the prevalent thought of the Shang dynasty period and the underlying method for, e.g., oracle bone divinations of the time, all relying on the number five and the associated properties, permutations and metamorphoses of the "elements." These were already associated with much of what later was further organized into a taoist-proper philosophy and cosmology of the five phases (wuxing jia -- "family" or "school"). All taoist fundamentals, of which this is one, were developed from shamanic proto-taoist practices and ideas and, moreover, by shamans and shaman-kings in communication with mysteries and mysterious beings. Not all things Chinese are taoist, and not all things taoist are Chinese, but taoist fundamentals are inseparably Chinese.

Not so much "man" as yang in men who abandon yin. "Expansionist policy" is a natural inherent property of yang, and it's not wrong until it loses the opposite balancing drive of yin -- withdraw, stay put, go inward rather than outward, nourish rather than subjugate, increase inner quality rather than outer quantity, and so on. In practical terms it translated into millennia of patriarchy, which exploits the fact that men are naturally more yang than women. Once you subjugate women instead of maintaining a healthy yin-yang balance, yang flares out of control. This never happens in matriarchal societies. It becomes an issue of gender on autopilot, even though occasionally you might get a very yang female ruler in a patriarchy (rare exceptions, I call them "honorary males," all those patriarchal overlords who happened to be in the position to take on a yang role and perpetuate a patriarchal pattern despite having been born, technically, as a "more yin" gender.) Life, according to our indoctrination, was hard for most of human history, but according to common sense and also some researchers who manage to bypass the installed narrative, it was easy and enjoyable to the max. The lost paradise story is retained by all cultures. Hunter-gatherers didn't know backbreaking labor nor boring mind-numbing labor nor specialization that reduces a human being to a cog in the machine. People live like that today by paying good money for a week's vacation in conditions and environments that slightly resemble that lost paradise. And then back to the machine. We envision their life as hard by placing ourselves in their shoes -- but they were not ourselves. Far more agile, attuned, competent in their environment, not a victim of it as we're conditioned to believe but the apex predator, collectively. The apex predator's life is that of the ruler -- we were collectively the ruler, but we didn't rule by going against nature and mutilating it, we ruled because nature made us this way, competent, adaptable, forming a cooperating unit as an extended tribal family (competition is a made-up rationale for our existence -- made up with nasty ulterior motives and jammed down our throats by force), capable of collective work like beavers and of individuation like cats, bound by togetherness like elephants or dolphins yet not helpless when alone, just like one of them. Fiercely loyal like a family of wolves and yet capable of handling independence like a tiger. Maybe that's what all those ancient depictions of man-animal combos are about. We used to be magnificent and capable of having a good life when we were fully human, a good life under any circumstances (we thrived even when the oceans were frozen to the bottom and storms lasted for centuries!) -- of this I am certain. Every "explorer" in history discovering an "uncontacted" tribe discovered happy, content people who did each other no harm and were immersed in love and joy. And then armed conquerors, exploiters and enslavers who followed in their footsteps ended that condition within one generation. So whoever survived, the second generation was already "ourselves." The damaged kind. The grouping together under single rulership is natural for children. The ruler is mom. The only natural hierarchy is that of seniority in age and the only natural rulership in mammals is determined by who gave birth to whom. If I'm older and you are my outcome, my creation, I rule, it was as simple as that. By the time you are old enough and big enough to rule, you create your own kingdom -- your own children, and rule them, not me, not your older siblings, not your father, not your grandparents, not your aunts and uncles. You either don't rule at all if you have no kingdom, or you rule your own kingdom only, i.e. your own children. And a non-damaged human mom does not rule by abusing her children. It's only when child abuse starts that we start coming up with those abusive patterns of rulership extended to the rest of society. The first abused child in history transferred his imprint onto the rest of our history. Who he was, who did it to him and why, I don't know, but it never happened in 2.5 million years of our prior existence without kings or presidents or warlords. And then it happened. We're the PTSD outcome.

Methinks the story about building three levels of walls around a city for no reason, just for the hell of it, holds no water. Who would do something like that if not cornered into submission? And how does the city not being attacked prove anything at all? -- no city enclosed in three walls will be attacked if the opponent doesn't have the capabilities to breach them, and/or is up against an army way bigger and stronger, and/or is not civilized and therefore not interested. Large scale warfare is a civilized sport. If city dwellers are not attacked, it doesn't mean they themselves don't attack. Sumerians and Akkadians didn't attack each other -- they attacked the "uncivilized." It was only many centuries later that, after peacefully exterminating the "uncivilized," Mesopotamians proceeded to wage wars against each other. To me it looks as though all ancient city builders had a mind with a long term plan behind their activities, a mind that acted with meticulous uniformity toward the implementation of this plan everywhere. It unfolded in stages spanning millennia, and ultimately always in one direction only, with fluctuations that can only be seen as minor and temporary in the historical perspective. Could it be that globalism is not a modern fad? Could it be that the plan has always been there? -- lots of things that happened to us along the way seem to make sense only if one allows for the possibility. The uniform and unabating destruction of tribal life and the herding of unrelated and often culturally incompatible tribes into "nations," "countries," "empires," great empires" and their single-minded "alliances." All those "unifications" (with episodes of dissolution of the unions thus created merely followed by new unifications on a larger and larger scale). The relentless deforestation and monocultural takeover. A war on biodiversity on all levels, human to soil-based organisms. And war as such. Humanity has been engaged in warfare for 96% of its civilized history. So I don't think pointing out a particular place that within a particular time frame wasn't at war is of any consequence. No one attacks the city I live in right now, but we have a large-ass marine corps naval base here... and you can't have marines without a certain social pre-arrangement that would cause young healthy kids to work their asses off for years toward maybe killing someone someday if told to, for reasons they themselves had nothing to do with.

They're not snobs, they're health nuts. Who wants a virusy party guest spreading infection? Would you invite someone with a chronic contagious viral condition to your party? I wouldn't.

Wang Liping's shuigong is the only one I've practiced. There's been a discussion of other versions and a book mentioned not long ago: "Daoist Sleeping Meditation: Chen Tuan's Sleeping Gong," by Tom Bisio. I don't know of a qigong that would rearrange one's mind toward better focus within a week. In the time left before your test, I think your best bet is just making sure you get enough sleep, it usually works very well toward the goal. For long term improvement, shuigong (sleeping qigong) is reputed to help with focus, but any good traditional qigong works as well. I like yijin jing, badua jin, shibashi (there's a more traditional version and a "promoted" version, I only know the traditional one), Five Animal Frolics, to name the ones I've practiced -- but there's a lot of other qigongs out there, some are probably good, others, who knows. I'd suggest finding a teacher though. Any good traditional qigong can be used toward improving your mental focus by improving your mind-body connections.

All of these:

If you need it by next week for an important test, sleeping qigong is your best bet. Or even just getting more sleep than your regular amount. And going to bed earlier.

This is consistent with my experience. Years ago, when I started practicing qigong and meditation, I had to cut my hair extremely short because throughout the day I felt as though the movement steadily "crawling" up my back channels was entangling in my hair. I could barely resist the temptation to shave my head. The feeling went away with change of practice, and was never again encouraged until in taiji neigong I was taught to direct and use it. I think the expression "empty revolutions of the waterwheel" refers to doing it "because it's in the book" or "because I was told it is a sign of an advanced level of practice" or for whatever impractical reason of that nature. If you look at the Neijing Tu, you'll notice that everybody in it is busy with a particular task along the way. The Water of Kan flowing in the opposite direction (upward) irrigates the fields, pulls along the Weaving Maiden's spun yarn (this is what may have felt as though it was "engangling" in my hair! ) and so on. It is meaningful -- it's there to do something useful. You may or may not direct it -- what you need to be in charge of though is the "what for," the clear calm intent. "Clear" is not immediately clear till later in a typical case, and "calm" can't be a derivative of wishful thinking. It's not circumstantial and not intellectual, you can't "decide" to be clear and calm. It's something that might arise with practice if you're lucky. Good luck.

The sun was known to Sumerians to "aṣû" -- "rise, emerge, appear" and "erēbu" -- "set, sink, go down." Aṣû -- Asia? Erēbu -- Europe? The Indo-European root hojbh-/*hjebh meant "the sun going down." It was also used as a metaphor for sex. Modern Russian retains this ancient root in two profane words, one for the male reproductive organ and another for the sexual act.

I believe in early taoism, just as in shamanism, the world was full of spirit-shen, and nothing was thought of as non-living. Today's science seems to push the boundaries between "living" and "non-living" back and forth -- e.g. there's no consensus regarding whether viruses are alive, and some crystals actually meet about as many requirements that define "aliveness" as, e.g., mules (and even have one of the basic characteristics of aliveness over the latter -- mules can't reproduce by making copies of themselves, crystals can.) It's more like a spectrum. Perhaps one thing that only living things have is jin (not jing)... which is why it's no fun to practice push-hands with an inanimate object. (I don't mean to offend anyone but can't help sharing an empirical observation: subjectively, to the feeling ting hand of taiji, pushing someone who has no taiji feels somewhere on the spectrum between pushing a piece of furniture and pushing someone with taiji skill -- but closer to the piece of furniture. ) On second thought, strike that. Push-hands with the ocean reveals that an ocean wave has jin aplenty. On third thought, strike that too. The ocean is a living thing.

Intent is definitely of shen, but not necessarily of the mind in the sense "in the head" or even not always "the human mind." In taoist subtle physiology it originates in the Kidneys -- it's the shen of the Kidneys known as Zhi. While its yang aspect usually sets immediate or long-term goals based on its communication with other shens, the mind "in the head" or "in the heart," the environment, etc., and forms intent based on that (an impulse, drive, or conscious decision), its yin aspect is more tricky. This is hidden intent that can communicate with the intent of one's destiny, and set goals toward fulfilling that destiny in a very indirect, roundabout manner. So the person driven by that kind of intent can usually appreciate what was accomplished and why only in hind sight. Yin zhi somehow knows the ultimate outcomes it desires, hopes for, or "reads in the stars," and can subtly direct one's decisions toward those outcomes throughout one's life. When a person whose yin zhi is after a particular goal encounters a system, a practice, a teaching, a belief, a master, etc., something resonates -- sometimes almost imperceptibly, and sometimes it can feel like an imperative, a eureka, "that's what I've been looking for all my life" kind of feeling. But of course there's simpler cases too -- e.g. of accidental (or familial, traditional, opportunistic, etc.) indoctrination. I guess one's mileage may vary depending on what the driving force behind a particular intent is.

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Sure thing. Our city gets an average of 35 million tourists every year -- although when they undress on the beach, it becomes clear that most of them are Canadians. My guess is, not too many Australians have to go to California in search of the sun. But for a Sumerian dinner -- well, barring time travel, that might be your closest bet. Just say when.

At least far as I've been able to discern. Taoist subtle anatomy and physiology got influenced by other systems (primarily Buddhism which in its turn was a recipient of many Hindu concepts), and that's where "void," e.g., comes from. There's no "void" in early taoism. There's a two-way process, of coming into existence and going out of existence. The non-being whence being comes is not a "void." It is a pretty organized system of perfectly balanced energies of the world in a state of supreme equilibrium, and therefore immobility and lack of manifestations. The "nothing" is merely the "everything that doesn't interact with anything." Returning to this state is the natural and, in the absence of cultivation, inevitable state for all live things of the manifest world. The opposite process is also thought of as natural and inevitable -- non-being reverts back to being. It is something happening "always" and it does not require any measures toward "accomplishing." Definitely for a modern (in the broad sense -- the last bunch of thousand of years) human, it is not so much necessary as inevitable, I don't know what the situation with the "sages of old" may have been. To "uncook" the cooked rice requires a deliberate decision and access to the know-how. That's the domain of shen. If it stayed put ("the sages of old had spirit but didn't exploit it"), it would just attend to the immediate needs of maintaining and relishing aliveness. It wouldn't get "creative." So, we the creative have to stop creating and start uncreating in order to reverse the process. So, zuowang with both all of its sources and all of its offshots (like zen meditation, e.g.) is really an attempt at doing just that, getting one's shen to stop dissipating, putting a brake on the process. But that's only the prerequisite, not the actual "uncooking." No, to yang. Almost pure yang. Yin is the direction, the vector of where you want to reverse and return it -- from a dispersed state, "all over the place," "out there," "spread out throughout the space and time of your life" to the concentrated, condensed "in here," "inside your very own body" "now and from now on."

Recently, a team of international scholars versed in culinary history, food chemistry and cuneiform have been working to decipher a few of the world’s oldest-known recipes using tablets from Yale University's collection. The ancient recipes seem very close to some foods still eaten today, especially regionally, but also all over the world. All are meat-based, with plenty of fat used, and suggest some grains, bread and vegetables as additions. Broths, soups and stews are prominent. The recipes are neither simplistic nor overcomplicated and seem pretty sound -- you could cook a flavorful hearty meal based on these today, they use specific herbs and spices, and point out health-related affinities of each dish (just like they still do in many restaurants in China). E.g. a soup called Pashrutum is "unwinding" for someone suffering from a cold. They also recognized something we call cuisine today, differentiating between local and foreign dishes. Foreign were considered neither better nor worse, just different. One of the earliest recipes, for a soup called Tuh'u, is very close to borscht! (Not what is called this name in the US though --somehow a soup that survived thousands of years elsewhere found its demise on this continent, albeit recent Eastern European immigrants still remember what it really is and still make it at home.) I might take a closer look and see if I can replicate any of the four fully deciphered recipes verbatim. Sumerians cooked the way I do -- the recipes specified all the ingredients but none of the amounts for each. You have to have a feel for these things, not a scale. I assume most early people experienced with cooking from just observing since childhood how it's done had it. But of course standardized feed can't be made like that. I am surprised people try to cook standardized meals in their homes as well... but then, on second thought, I'm not.