wandelaar

@ heatrate It's no more than speculation as long as there are no arguments to back it up. The guy says he has lots of proofs. Perhaps you could post some of his supposed proofs here, so we can see whether they make sense...

For a general overview see: http://www.goldenelixir.com/files/The_Way_of_the_Golden_Elixir.pdf

Looks like most Bums don't want to talk about what Neidan as a theory and practice actually is, but prefer to reason about what it should be when one's personal perspective were taken as it's foundation. Clearly such a discussion will have very little to do with Neidan in the sense of internal alchemy as it was actually understood.

The idea that everyone can have anything he/she wants cannot possibly be correct for both logical and physical reasons. People have all kinds of wishes and thus it will happen that there are people A and B such that A wishes a situation X and B wishes a situation Y where X and Y cannot both be realised. Another example: suppose we all wanted to be rich, could that happen? No - clearly not because then there would be nobody left to work for us. What is called destiny is actually the laws of nature, or Tao. One cannot beat Tao.

Maybe. See for something similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_language#Writing_system But of course it will come at a (heavy) price if they do...

Do you have the exact title(s) of the book(s) by Pulleyblank and Barnes?

The concept of evil is relative, but not so relative as to be without meaning.

I don't consider Neidan as useful to me personally. I only made some study of it to know how it looks like, and so as to be able to recognize those parts of Taoism that I can safely ignore.

I don't understand what it matters whether I consider the practice and theory of Neidan as valuable or not. The world is full of theories and practices that I personally consider highly improbable to succeed (to use a decent expression ), but I still try to represent those theories and practices and their goals (whether those goals are realistic or not) as objective as possible. Saying that Neidan is only about prolonging life gives an impression of Neidan that - in my opinion - is incorrect.

And that's why I am not personally motivated to follow the path of Neidan. But what has that to do with the content of Neidan?

@ Stosh The practice and theory of Neidan has several stages. At the lowest stage it is indeed only about prolonging life, but at the more advanced stages it is about transcending the physical world by building up a spiritual body within oneself that is able to survive the death of the physical body. The latter goal could be described as "becoming a God". Now I don't believe immortality as conceived by Neidan to be actually possible, but that is no reason to present Neidan as something else than it is. But I am no specialist on this subject, so maybe I am wrong. In that case please place a link where I can read why Neidan is only about prolonging life.

Interesting topic! Are there also free You Tube lessons on ancient Chinese characters (as used in the Tao Te Ching)?

Is this trustworthy? What do the Bums think of it? Has anybody researched this?

Society will not change just because you don't like it. Actually you have a huge battle to fight, but it is against yourself:

The abhorrence of war is as old as the Tao Te Ching, and probably much older. If you like fighting you can do martial arts as a sport...

I see - you didn't consider the possibility, and you are not even prepared to consider it. Well - it's your life...

@ rideforever Did you already consider the possibility that your problem is psychological, that is: that you are suffering from depression? Searching for occupational or spiritual solutions might then not be the correct approach.

Nobody knows everything. In my opinion you did the right thing in asking about something you wasn't sure of.

Sending this joke towards the end of December gives a high probability that the person reading the joke already had his/her birthday of that year. And in that case the formula cannot fail to give the current year as an answer. The claim of this happening only once every 1,000 years is nonsense.

@ Nungali Calling everything a dream makes it impossible to discuss the psychological and practical problems of losing one's ability to differentiate between sense perceptions and dreams or hallucinatory images.

No - there is a problem. Suppose one were born on the first of May in the year 2000 (to keep it simple), in that case one would now be of the age 18. Adding those numbers gives: 2000 + 18 = 2018 . But now lets suppose one were born on the 25 December of the year 2000, in that case one would now be of the age 17. Adding those numbers gives: 2000 + 17 = 2017 .

In any year you will have two ages: depending on whether it is before or after your birthday. So the formula cannot be universally true.

Because gold is (almost) incorruptible the magical idea is that one could become incorruptible oneself by ingesting gold.

Too bad that the article ends with the typical postmodern nonsense that has infected parts of academia: In fact Christianity has very little to do with the words of Jesus Christ as found in the Bible. And so there is nothing wrong with appreciating Jesus Christ without bothering oneself with Christianity as a faith. The same is true as regards Taoism and the works of Lao tzu and Chuang tzu. So the old Sinologists were simply correct in making a distinction between philosophical and religious Taoism. Of course culturally one may find a mixture of both, but in essence they are quite different.

There also exists a very basic form of morality in the animal kingdom among social animals. And this is to be expected as a community of animals that are in a constant state of war with each other is not very likely to survive. On the other hand "crime" pays for those individual animals that are smart and/or strong enough to avoid playing their part, while profiting from the work of others and escaping punishment for doing so. So there are two contradictory forms of natural selection at work at the same time. And that is why we have "good" and "bad" both in the animal kingdom and in human societies. These tendencies have become instinctual. Thus - in my opinion - it is possible to recognize the nature of reality while choosing the way of evil. Of course one takes the risk of being punished by society for doing so, but somebody who is willing to take that risk cannot possibly be convinced of making a mistake by doing so. The Way of Lao tzu for instance is explicitly based on avoiding unnecessary risks by following the basic customs of society (while living in society) and the laws of nature. Lau tzu doesn't prove that way to be the correct one, but his choice rather defines his form of Taoism.