wandelaar

I completely accept the existence of mystical experiences, and it would be foolish to deny that people can have those experiences. It would be ridiculous to suppose that people throughout the ages and in all places would have just made up similar stories about those experiences that often enough got them into trouble because they were considered as mad or heterodox as a result. It's the interpretation of those experiences that I consider doubtful as it seems to be based on nothing more than the feeling of absolute certainty that often accompanies such experiences. And this I cannot accept: it's the same fallacy as of Christians who say that the Bible is the word of God because the book says so. In other words you just have to believe it. I rather honestly acknowledge that I don't know what I don't know.

That's why I wrote "serious scientist" and not just "scientist". However there is a problem even for the serious scientist in that some pseudoscientists such as the flat earth believers are incapable of rational argumentation and immune to inconvenient facts (which they simply discard as being lies or fake news fabricated by those in power). Many a scientist would have no time left if he were to answer to all the nonsense and stupidity that is posted on the internet or delivered to him by email (in case he is a publicly welknown figure). As to the effects of meditation, they are indeed measurable. However one can meditate without having mystical experiences, and one can have mystical experiences without meditating. So the problem is: what do you consider to be awakening or enlightenment?

Yes - that's the form of discussion I like. What you describe above could be the case. Maybe. I would be pleased if this were so. You are wrong here. What I see as spiritual arrogance is when Bums claim superior knowledge or insight without them giving the slightest indication or proof that they really have it. A serious scientist would answer a critic by giving arguments and pointing out verifiable facts, not by framing the critic as a (spiritually immature) idiot.

And as usual no decent arguments are given. Obvious things are not always true, and true things are not always obvious. The rest of your post isn't any better. These type of non-discussions are the reason why I have become highly sceptical about enlightenment. There obviously are mystical experiences, but what they mean is quite another cup of thee. What I said is only confrontational for those Bums who don't like to critically examine the meaning of their mystical experiences. They rather prefer to just accept the feeling of absolute certainty that often accompanies such experiences. And when somebody comes along who asks why their interpretation of their mystical experiences should be accepted as true, than the questioner is framed as obsessed, stupid, spiritually incompetent, etc. No decent discussion ever evolves. And thus I have no reason to believe in the interpretations of mystical experiences that are here propounded as absolute truths. They are no better than the dogma's of the church. I will go my own way whether or not this is approved by those who consider themselves as (partially) Awakened or as the True Taoists. Further it is clear what the term "philosophical Taoism" means, and I will keep using it. You may now have the last word, as I am tired of discussing enlightenment.

@ rideforever Just one more case of spiritual arrogance, nothing special...

Did Lao tzu or Chuang tzu ever mention spiritual transmission?

And the spiritual bragging goes on and on....

Yes - those damned skeptics who always spoil the party. Just call them obsessed or stupid, that will teach them how to behave!

It sure is funny, but that's how our world (in all probability) is constituted. Mind you that there is a difference between nothing and no-thing. Clearly it is not the case that there is nothing, because even an illusion would be something. What the Buddhists and Taoists are saying is that what we in daily life consider to be self-subsistent things are not really things at all but rather temporary dynamic structures within the larger world process. This can and has all been explained in the literature. Wondo mentioned Nagarjuna, read about his guy if you want to know how it all fits together.

@ Rara Perhaps your current girlfriend thinks you're forcefully refusing to remember what has been? Repression could cause problems later on, but if you just prefer to go on with life and make the best of it with your current girlfriend I don't see what's wrong with that.

Truly radical sceptics doesn't pose an "I" who is doubting, whatever that may mean. A truly radical sceptic simply acknowledges "doubting" when the experience of doubting presents itself. Posing an "I" who is doubting goes way beyond the experience of doubting, and thus would be illegitimate for a truly radical sceptic. The Buddhists were more logical than Descartes in this matter.

@ thelerner I appreciate your honesty.

That's exactly why I have given up discussing with believers! Most of them simply don't care about the facts of the matter. Values are never solid, no matter how strong you want to believe they are. Most believers rather choose to live in a world of make-believe than to see the world as it is. They prefer a happy lie above the sober truth. An imagined meaning above an existential realisation of our own insignificance in the greater scheme of things.

In that case I must be making progress.

I don't know where it will end but I just finished sorting out and throwing away a lot of papers and documents from studies I did, jobs I had, etc. from many years ago. It was almost an archive! Completely insane - but that's how it goes when you're a rash young man with plans of becoming a famous scientist or philosopher. Nothing came of it, and decluttering is now also a way of acknowledging the fact. I have also decided to not study all kinds of things I still planned to do when I was young. I am not smart enough and too old to catch up with cutting edge research. So as the nobody I am I don't have to complain about any students or followers, let alone students or followers who overload me with presents.

What did Galileo, Max Planck, Neils Bohr, Isaac Newton, Leibniz, Marconi, Louis Pasteur, Faraday, Copernicus, Boyle, Heisenberg, Kelvin add to our knowledge of our existence or non-existence after death? Even highly intelligent people can be dead wrong outside of their field of expertise, and they frequently are. Acceptance of our mortality is the way of the philosophical Taoist. And instead of making life worthless this acceptance rather makes life precious exactly because it is finite.

This doesn't prove anything: some forms of stupidity never die. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy The illusions of heaven and hell and of the immortality of the soul are in all probability just make-believe. People find it particularly hard to accept that crime often pays and that death is the end. Many religions basically tell the people what they want to hear: that evil people will eventually have to pay for their crimes, and that all our toil on this earth will not come to nothing when we die because we will live on after death in some other form. There is no reason at all to think those religious dogmas are true. Often out-of-body experiences and near-death-experiences are taken to prove the independence of the soul of the body, but when put to the test the amount of proof for the independence of the soul looks rather shallow. The nice thing about philosophical Taoism is that it doesn't need such religious dogmas.

We recently had a topic about it:

Even the first chapter of the TTC recognises that meditation (or the nondual viewpoint) is only one side of the coin: http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu01.html It's a huge distortion of Laotzian Taoism to focus on meditation while ignoring the many lessons of living well that are contained in the TTC. In my opinion this unbalance is an important reason for the many cases of meditation sickness we read about lately.

As I understand it the only way to be sure that trolls will not ruin your topic is to start it in your own PPD. The downside is that topics in your PPD have less overall visibility and thus tend to draw hardly any comments.

I know of some books and articles, but I would definitely advise against trying these things out as a form of medicine! Waidan is only interesting today form a historical, philosophical and scientific viewpoint. References to the literature on Waidan can be found on Wikipedia. And indeed much less is written about Waidan than there is about Neidan.

I tried to add whitesilk to my ignore list myself some time ago and wasn't allowed to do it either. But I tried again just now, and now I succeeded. Strange indeed!

Something to ponder:

Why hold on to illusions?

Wondering about this answer. Particularly in Zen there are stories about people suddenly seeing the light because of the sound of a bird or bell, the wind in the trees, the smell of a flower, anything. Is that what you mean?