wandelaar

@ Windwalker I have had more than enough political discussions in my younger years, but I found out that the large majority of them were completely useless and took up inordinate amounts of my time and energy. There is nothing wrong in refusing to participate in activities that you know will be a waste of time and no fun besides.

I wouldn't call that biased, that's just plain common sense. I have nothing against that. What I call biased is distorting the facts or cherry picking those facts that suit one's case and ignoring others that refute one's case. Correct. No - we shouldn't leave our emotions home, because than we couldn't make any value judgements at all. What I think one should do is make a sharp distinction between the facts and the political values on holds dear. When you present your case in that format others could evaluate whether the arguments you are making are correct for somebody holding the political values that you do. And that again could be an objective evaluation. Such discussions would be very interesting, but are hardly ever found on the internet. Most political discussions aren't really discussions at all.

The main thing that is keeping me from participating in the political threads is that being biased is consider as something that is OK. I don't think that is a fruitful attitude. One should try to view the facts as objectively as possible, and one should try as best as one can to only use logically and factually correct forms of arguments. Otherwise the discussion quickly degenerates into name-calling, the typical straw man arguments, incorrect generalisations, etc. Political street fighting of this type may helps one to score some short-term successes, but in the end it helps no one and only poisons the relations between people of different political persuasions. (I know that there are also a few more nuanced participant in the political threads, but they don't set the general tone.)

I think you are right. But apart from the measures already taken there is nothing we can do about it. Bums make their own choices where and how to invest their time and energy, and it is their right to do so. The only thing we can do to change the balance of the current spirit is to keep investing our own time and energy (meanly) in topics that do have a connection with Taoism and/or spirituality.

Yes - there are many forms of wu wei but apparently until now nobody thought of (or dared to mention) the most obvious case. Thanks Marblehead!

Brain function should be different in case of wu wei as compared to deliberate action because in wu wei conscious control would be greatly reduced. What happens in the brain is in principle objectively measurable, although that might be very complicated in actual practise.

It's probably best to reckon flow as a particular form of wu wei. The method used to get into flow is doing something you like and that takes your full concentration to do well. That would explain why flow cannot be kept on for very long.

Maybe we should change the name of this forum into The Dao Trumps? When I look at 'Activity' I see that most time and energy is invested in debating the excellence or deplorability of Trump. And with what result? Has anybody learned something that changed or nuanced his point of view?

We have the same connection to something bigger in flow. Here's a screenshot from the earlier video about flow (see point 5. in particular):

Just looked at the video. Very interesting! I also ordered his book: https://books.google.nl/books?id=gSReaja3V3IC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Thank you very much! I think all that could be done about this has now been done.

For comparison, here is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow:

Well - I have only just started reading the book, so I don't know what will be Slingerland's final thesis on this subject. But he seems to say that flow misses the feeling of becoming part of something bigger than oneself that gives wu wei its religious or spiritual flavour. (I think flow may also have a spiritual aspect so that this proposed distinction that is somewhat doubtful.) Also wu wei doesn't need to involve extraordinary activities or accomplishments that necessitate one's complete involvement. And I think he has a point there. That seems correct to me. Yes - wu wei is a more general concept. But nevertheless in flow one also has to rely on intuition and automatic responses to come to optimal results.

That's a good one! Learning can become an addiction that's very hard to conquer.

Currently reading his book (in Dutch translation): https://books.google.nl/books?id=sTG0AAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Interesting point: according to Slingerland there is a difference between flow and wu-wei. What do the Bums think about that?

This very weird video refers to a book by Ray Vespe (see the accompanying text on YouTube): I couldn't make head or tail of it, and so I watched only the beginning. Don't know what to think about that...

https://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:"Raymond+Bart+Vespe" Just now found the above. Never heard of the author or the books before. Does anybody here know more about it?

Might be interesting, but it's hard to tell because I haven't found a free book or article by Rohan Sikri to read on the internet: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/192/

I would call that mythological. As far as I know the Zhou Yi had already some text by way of explanation. But I am happy to learn from somebody who knows more about this.

... what Taoism really is. And you're talking about my limited perspective? But as I have experienced time and again, it's no use discussing with believers. So indeed - we better stop.

Yes - I do not use the I Ching myself, because it's not my kind of thing. But the perspective offered by Hacker makes it possible to understand that using the I Ching may be useful even when there is no magic involved.

What do you consider as being the earliest form of the I Ching?

@ Freeform And there we have your limited perspective. Taoism has many forms, and the path of spiritual alchemy is only one of the roads taken. The early Taoists like Lao tzu and Chuang tzu were not much into that. Another example: Buddhism moved from India to China and from China to Japan and changed in the process. As a result we now have Chan Buddhism and Zen (among others). Was that wrong? Don't think so. Spiritual traditions develop and jump from one culture to another changing as they adapt to the changed cultural environment. Western Taoism will again be different from Chinese Taoism.

Yes - human experience is not to be ignored. But it should not be accepted uncritically either. Most people don't know and often don't even want to know how to evaluate the probabilities of something happening on the basis of pure chance. That's why all kind of things are given a magical explanation and/or are considered as proof of paranormal phenomena where there is no need to do so. That's why I take those stories with a grain of salt until proven under conditions that rule out fraud and self deception as best as we can. But wu wei isn't some magical unknown phenomenon, so I see no problem in scientifically investigating how it works.

Indeed there is a difference between knowledge in the sense of a bunch of learned intellectual tricks and understanding where one knows what one is doing and why it works out the way it does. I never considered the first form as the real thing.