Taomeow

Death is "feminine?" And who gave birth to you? And how many spermatozoa have you killed since then? Women only discard 300 to 400 eggs in a lifetime with "wasted' ovulations due to just being women. Whereas men, in their lifetime, kill 525 billion spermatozoa due to just being men. In the light of this information you may want to reconsider your "death" attribution.

Everyone's origins are obscure. There was no "Italy" the country until 1861, no "Germany" the country until 1871, and no "Ukraine" the country until 1991. (Which really gives me pause when 23AndMe tells someone they are "67% Italian" or "13% German" or what have you.) Imperial consolidations and break-ups have little to do with genetics. There's more genetic diversity among descendants of various African tribes than in the rest of the world combined. So stating that the origins of Sumerians are "unknown," only more so than the origins of others, is nothing if not stating the obvious. Who are the "gypsies" by the way -- "Egyptians?" Why do Cherokees have blood type B occurring with the same frequency as it does in the Middle East -- twice as often as among Europeans -- while nearly 100% of all other Native Americans are type O? Why do Basques have almost 100% type O blood and all their European neighbors only around 50%? Why do I surprise dentists who consistently discover that they need to use the "Asian angle" on the machine when taking an X-ray of my back teeth even though I don't look Asian? There's more things in heaven and earth, Horatio...

Thank you. I read a bit of it, then went searching for the information on the author -- someone named K.E. Elujee. Couldn't quite figure out what his claim to fame might be. He is a Zoroastrain/Aryan theories proponent, this much is clear, the rest, not really. The illustration does resemble the Four Corners of the World that can be encountered in Sumerian and pretty much all other early traditions (of course in taoism too), except Sumerian originals quite clearly indicate totally different locations for their domain without mentioning any "earlier" ones. To wit, Akkad, Elam, Amurru and Subatru, corresponding to the four compass directions, and Larsa in the center. These are further subdivided into northeast, northwest etc., eight directions like in the taoist bagua. And, just like with the bagua, they are way more than merely geographical locations and refer to "winds" of particular nature (closely resembling qi of different phases in the taoist bagua), corresponding deities, and are utilized in a long tradition of geomantic divination (with similarities to feng shui), what not. I'm guessing the author just recognizes in Sumer some of what he's better familiar with from his own area of interest -- just like I spot taoist tidbits or even huge chunks when I look at any ancient tradition. Also, there's a lot of nationalist sentiment that got interwoven with all those studies (which is one reason, out of many, I mostly only want to look at the original documents and bypass what "experts" have been trying to shape, each to his or her liking or to the liking of a mothership institution). I've read Tajik, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and so on articles, each proving that Sumerians really spoke Tajik, Uzbek or Kyrgyz, and that they are direct descendants who taught everybody everything. Which may be true or false but can't all be true simultaneously methinks. Also, in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, a lot of "proof" has been produced recently by the Ukrainian side aimed at delegitimizing "Russians" as a nation, ethnicity, or anything other than an evil fantasy of (usually) Finno-Ugric origins, while stating that everything that ever happened in that part of the world was accomplished by Ancient Ukrainians who were the true Sumerians. So... meh...

Thanks. Yes, definitely, Gobekli Tepe is a separate can of worms which for the moment I'm not ready to open. Mesopotamia is my relatively new suit, so whether it might grow strong with time remains to be seen. For now, I'm trying to put together assorted pieces of the puzzle but at this point, a lot of the puzzle is, well, puzzling. Moving on. The Code of Hammurabi, consisting of 282 legal demands written in the form of "if... then" (which our "wherefore... therefore" of modern legalese still imitates), in cuneiform carvings into a monolithic 4-ton black stele shaped as a finger ("carved in stone"), used to be publicized as the first code of written laws in history, but later other Sumerian legal codes were discovered, ones that predate it by hundreds of years and in their turn may not be the earliest ones. The U.S. Supreme Court building features Hammurabi on the marble carving on the south wall of the courtroom that celebrates outstanding lawgivers of history. Hammurabi was what one might call an imperial expansionist ruler, dedicating his long reign to wars aimed at land grabs, overthrowing the kingdoms of Assyria, Larsa, Eshunna and Mari and subjugating all of Mesopotamia toward the end. The slaves were promptly put to work on grandiose military and civil projects -- irrigation (we'll look into the origins of "climate change" in the area closer at some point), fortifications, and of course construction of numerous temples dedicated to his patron dragon deity, Marduk. It is interesting to compare this code, which seems to be demanding harsh punishments for the wrongdoers for the first time in written records, often including the removal of various body parts (tongue, ears, arms, eyes) with the earlier codes -- Ur-Nammu, Eshnunna, Lipit-Ishtar. I read the Lipit-Ishtar code and it's like something the IRS might issue, all punishments appear to be financial, it's not yet as bloodthirsty (at least the parts surviving) as what was to come. It is also formulated in the "if... then" fashion, and asks for higher payments for harming the aristocracy, medium sized fines for the freemen (the middle class), a token payment to a slave who has been harmed by a doctor, and monetary compensation for the owner of a damaged slave or ox. Slaves' rights are also defined to some extent and circumstances under which the person became a slave considered. E.g., if he is a voluntary slave who came to work for the master because there was no other way for him to survive, the master is supposed to let him go if the slave so desires later. A slave is also allowed to buy his freedom, and it costs only twice as much as the master paid for him. Idyllic times... In a hundred years, physical pain and suffering will be seen as necessary payment for deviations from the king's law more and more -- of course without replacing monetary punishments.

I don't remember it in Gilgamesh, but then, there's different translations, so who knows. At first glance I noticed some things in common with Laozi's opening lines. Yes, do tell me about Gobekli Tepe, I honestly don't know what to make of it. Saw a couple of extended accounts on Youtube from Russian archeologists working there. They came away believing it was either from a civilization unknown that went before everything we know, or else a civilization unknown that was from elsewhere. Much about the stones cut in a way our modern technology can't come close to replicating -- some unimaginable precision. Been a while since I watched though.

Central Asia and Western Tibet seem interesting. Yes, if you drop a reference to those recent papers, I'll take a look, thank you. The rest I sort of am not buying at all, but don't feel like going in depth into the reasons why. Yes, I originally meant "consecrated by academia" translations of original Sumerian texts when I said "legitimized" (i.e. as opposed to Sitchin's translations which I am familiar with but whose accuracy I have no linguistic capabilities to personally verify or refute, and whose story derived from those translations is very far from "legitimized" by mainstream. Which in and of itself is not enough to make it true. Or false for that matter.) Mostly, however, it's not about "what they were really up to" -- that seems to be pretty clear -- there's literally thousands of years' worth of writings that all tell the story of what they were after and that part is mostly a no-brainer. It's about why it never changed once installed, and only spread wider and wider, in exactly the same pattern. No, not even that. How to demolish that pattern. And one can even begin to hope to understand how to go about dismantling a pattern if the pattern is visible. I don't think treating the effects ever cured anything whose cause persevered and remained unknown and unaffected by the treatment administered. I usually seek to address the cause. Please feel free to have more fun now with more cartoons, but be informed that providing entertainment for you was not the main goal of the OP. Just FYI.

"Besides, nobody else in that city gives a shit."

Thank you, Sean. Reciprocated. I didn't see what you've written as anything other than an exchange of perspectives. Sometimes something like a good spell might come out of that.

I brought up Sumer, which built the first city, in another thread with an eye on this one. I've been reading up on Sumer in the past few months. The first and only goal of this "civilized" arrangement, from the get-go, was centralized power, suppression of absolutely everything and everyone standing in its way, and an obligatory monarch on top. The rest of civilized (the word comes from the same root as "city," "citizen") technologies were always ultimately serving this goal. I'm not saying we are not creatures of tools and arts. Pablo Picasso, upon seeing the paintings of the Lascaux Caves dating back 20,000 years, proclaimed, reportedly with tears in his eyes, "We've invented nothing. They've invented everything." I don't think I ever saw that many modern works of art that made a deeper impression on me either. What I'm saying is, tools and arts and sciences can exist on entirely different terms if the goal is entirely different. There's ample evidence, information about which is not being widely disseminated for some interesting (methinks) reasons, of our ancestors taking great care of the old, injured, sick instead of engaging in any which Darwinism and any which "survival of the fittest" (oh how I despise this bogus doctrine -- almost as much as Darwin himself despised it in private correspondence). It couldn't be any other way for our species in natural environments, because we are hardwired to care for the absolutely helpless -- more than any animal on earth -- and that's because our young are born the most helpless and the most dependent of all and remain so for much longer than the offspring of any other species. Which means that we can't have anything else in our makeup that would allow us to keep procreating than the desire and ability to care, absolutely altruistically, for the helpless and dependent. And a child raised like that is not very likely to turn around and discard the, say, grandparents who are helping raise her own children... another peculiar trait in our species -- a heavy reliance on grandparenting throughout our "pre-history" -- and this help and social value and usefulness of it is in no way predicated on physical strength of the grandparents' bodies. They can be (and were) storytellers and teachers and just sources of love and I don't believe prehistory was about discarding and not valuing love. Not for a second. Same deal with anyone disabled or otherwise disadvantaged in prehistory. Only with the advent of civilization and slavery that is its prerequisite did "able-bodied" folks get a special status. So, no problem there. I don't think modern medicine helped us survive for two million years prior to the past 100. I think love did. And, yes, selfless love too, we couldn't raise our young if we weren't capable of that. I don't believe in "overpopulation" either. It's the stealing of resources and their greedy and absolutely idiotic mismanagement that makes it impossible for the majority of people on this planet to have a good life. An example of what I deem idiotic: killing 60% of all wild animals on earth since 1970 alone. Creating The Age of Chicken -- there's currently 66 billion chickens on earth --- almost 90% of all birds living on our planet today are chickens. And don't even start me on what monocultural agriculture does to life on earth. Skinning the planet alive is not "technology." It's pathology and a death sentence. Billions would have to die if we were to try to switch to a different way of doing things? That would be horrible and not worth it. But I don't see how on earth billions won't die if we don't switch to a different way of doing things. I absolutely can't begin to imagine how this can be practically not our future, considering that every next century brought wars with percentage of victims an order of magnitude greater than the previous one. Every. Single. One. I don't think "eco fascism" is a feature of anarcho-primitivism specifically -- I think it's way more mainstream than that. But then, I'm not taking my ideas from them to begin with. They just happen to have noticed some of the things I've noticed, and in that, are different from most ideologies that absolutely don't notice the elephant in the room. To wit, the inverse relationship between the amount of technology we use and the amount of life shrinking away from the planet.

No, the other way around.

You are talking things that were decided upon in 1930 in order to package everything neatly. Your other references are likewise concerned with theories and speculations, not decisive answers to the "unknowns" I mentioned. Whereas I am talking Sumerian sources per se. No Sumerian source claims knowledge regarding any of the things I said are unknown about Sumerians -- not a shred that would even remotely coincide with anything those orthodoxies of ours say about them when interpreting them. I want to go with what they actually say, and hypothesize what it might mean utilizing my own brain. If you don't mind letting me. I sort of want to speculate here, not to stand corrected.

This is a truly cool picture -- more like freezing cold -- taken in the coldest inhabited area on Earth. Snow Queen, the author of the photo (Alexander Khimushin, a native of the same area) called it. It's a portrait of a young Indigenous Evenki woman from Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Siberia.Evenki People are reindeer herders spread out all over vast lands of Northern Siberia. Their villages are often located thousands of miles from each other. They are sometimes called "Aristocrats of Siberia" for their beautiful traditional clothing.

Universe Man's watch, Universe Woman's pendant. Customers welcome.

What can be more hierarchical than to dismiss an entire world by proclaiming it "just appears to be" as opposed to some other, bigger-better, higher-more important, "real deal" ? What can be more pyramid-like than looking down, from the vantage point of some higher order abstract absolute, on the totality of the observable universe, all of nature, all of life on earth, and every creature trying to "live out its years" as happily as possible? "Non dual doesn't give rise to the dual" does not do anything for the investigation a taoist might undertake -- how "being comes from nonbeing" and "nonbeing reverts to being" -- since it tells only half the story and tells it in a static way that the Way, whose pattern is motion and change within the motionless and the unchanging, can't possibly accommodate. I've been quite preoccupied with this investigation for quite a while now, and not because I overlooked other ways to look at it. Just because they didn't fit in my cup of tea. Yes, I know there is no cup, but it does not matter in the least. The cup that isn't there is every bit as important as the cup that is, because they both rely on me to be created and uncreated. I am the co-creator of the cup and I won't have it any other way.

Laughter is interesting in that all the muscles involved in producing it are the same as the muscles that produce crying, weeping and sobbing. It's the physiological equivalent of our species' reaction to being upset or hurt -- with a psychological twist: upset about something that could hurt me but didn't. If you ever observed a young infant when, e.g., mom or dad pretend threaten her -- I'm gonna get you -- aiming two fingers with mock menace and then gently poking or tickling her belly -- you probably observed the origins of laughter. The baby's first reaction is to get ready to cry -- threat, fear! -- but simultaneously the source of the threat is recognized as non-threatening (it's just mommy/daddy), the danger is assessed and found not really dangerous -- and she proceeds to laugh. We refine this reaction to happenings that are "scary, potentially hurtful to me, but not really" as we grow older, to include many situations where something bad is happening or a mistake is being made that does not "really" affect us personally, and call it a sense of humor. Sometimes it's just an involuntary reaction (when watching a slapstick comedy or a real-life happening along its lines), sometimes it evolves into a refined sense of irony, satire, etc. -- but it's still about that hand play-tickling our stomach that could easily, in a different context, snap our neck.

And that's why I'm a taoist. I've never been "only" this or "only" that. They are not an inferior-superior hierarchical relationship. Duality is not a "mistake." Not an "illusion." Not the orphaned child of the "real" unity. They are both real. They are equal sides of the same coin, same denomination, same value. The coin says "zero." Flip... the coin says one, two, three, ten thousand things. Flip... no things. Flip... but we digress.

"See, my lord, from this room -- from this room I govern not only Paris, but China; not only China, but the whole world -- without anyone knowing how 'tis managed." -- Michael Angelo Tamburini, then Superior General of the Jesuits, said to the Duke of Brancas, 1720

Yeah, I thought it was about Shiva since it says Shiva. A propos, you will probably find it funny but I've always read your screen name sort of as "dvai" -- which to the taoist in me would mean something like "a houtian person," as opposed to "advai" -- "a xiantian nonperson." I'm probably making up those words but that's how I've always seen it. (I'm a fan of dealing with phenomena of the manifest worlds on their own manifest terms, and nothing kills my interest faster than a sermon of oneness in response to happenings in the world of "dvaita." So someone called "dvai" would instantly command my respect for spiritual honesty. )

I like it, but some non-daoists may object to the negative definition -- even though (or maybe precisely because) it is a very daoist way to avoid pigeonholing phenomena into names. Daoists are fond of approaching a verbal description of what something is indirectly, by pointing out what it is not. "The name that can be named is not the eternal name." "This is as true as that an ox is not a horse" (the taoist equivalent of our notion of an "axiom" in mathematics.) And so on. So, what do we call all things Non-Daoist without starting with a "non?" Maybe go with Daoist All Names That Can Be Named General

That's what I thought too.

My newest one is P5P50, the active metabolite and predominant form of plasma pyridoxine (vitamin B6). I've only started taking it a week ago, based on folk testimonials that it cures a trigger finger. My trigger finger is a new pest, but the inflammation probably goes waaay back, to my taekwondo days and breaking boards with my knuckles. It first manifested a few months ago and was getting slowly but steadily worse since then. Too early to tell if this P5P50 thing is going to cure it, but I did feel the easing off of the symptoms within a few days, after no such developments before. So, I'll keep taking it, see what it can do. Another one -- don't remember if I mentioned it earlier -- is 5-MTHF. This is for people oversensitive to all artificial chemicals, due to a genetic twist that makes it harder to clear xenobiotics out of the system, mildly harder or dramatically harder with all in betweens. Oh yes, I think I did bring it up before -- there was a severe sufferer who answered the call as I recall...

Ah, yes, I just didn't recognize the spelling. So, no problem there either? I am not a bit expert on things Hindu/Vedic (used to know them better but am very rusty). Way back when, I did sing (though only in my car) this awesome chant -- Shambho Shankara namah Shivaaya Girijaa Shankara namah Shivaaya Arunaachala Shiva namah Shivaaya Om namah shivaya...

Some masters and experienced practitioners can do it because they understand the principles. Some not-so-proficient practitioners sometimes do it because they can... or because they don't have enough schooling (or patience) under their belt to become proficient in a classical form, so they "invent" their own that goes as far as they can go, usually bypassing all the fundamental principles, occasionally putting together a convincing (to an inexperienced eye) imitation, and so on. Sometimes they are ego driven and want to be seen as "masters." Someone who is "really" a master or at least in command of enough fundamentals might want to create his or her own qigong (or even a new martial form) toward a specific "local" goal, in many cases related to teaching students of various levels of proficiency. You can gear it to taiji/qigong virgins and keep very basic -- or make it very challenging for the advanced, toward an extra boost to their internal power, or focus on the healing aspects and so on. The qigong I was taught how to make is actually based on Chen style taiji, geared toward teaching beginners, and consists of a series of 1) static executions of various moves from the two main Chen routines (yilu and erlu) instead of stepping, 2) execution with simplified stepping compared to what is in the taiji form, and 3) some specific breathing-coordination moves (in our tradition we don't do it "deliberately" in taiji and rely on the breath stabilizing and self-correcting with progress in the art -- then start "tweaking" with it later, chiefly in application.) So, it's about making things easier, making them non-martial (for those who are either not interested in, or not ready yet, for the martial schooling), while simultaneously laying a structural and functional foundation for the more challenging things to come. Someone of very high skill (like my teacher) can create a qigong rooted in something entirely else -- e.g. combining or modifying several classics, or doing in-depth research and restoring a classic that's been screwed up in unqualified renditions, or putting together something proprietary that will be solid. I wouldn't be comfortable doing any of that at this point. Even with taiji forms that you know back and forth and top to bottom, it's not that easy to simplify without losing the essence. But for the particular purpose of easing the beginners into this way of functioning, it's doable and very useful.

Upanishads are parts of Vedas. Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva are the four Vedas. A Veda is divided into four parts, namely, Samhita, Brahmana, Aranyaka and Upanishad. I don't know what Sankara is though.

Brewing with a kiss, pouring out with caresses, divining with dregs