wandelaar

Thank you all. If that's how you like it, I was on the right track after all. But I don't want to force the issue, and that wouldn't be a Taoist approach either. In the other topic Lost in Translation suggested a Socratic way: That's what I am going to try next.

Here are some rules of thumb for acting in the spirit of Lao tse and Chuang tse: - Never overdo things. - Don't brag of your accomplishments. - Keep an eye on the inherent dynamics of situations. - Look for polarities in evaluating situations. - Act on the right moment. - If possible act when problems are still easily solved. - Consider paradoxical actions when direct approaches don't work. - Don't let egocentric considerations becloud your evaluation of situations. - Don't get caught in tunnel vision or group think, but regularly try out other perspectives. - Use meditation to just observe your emotions as they come and go, thus weakening their grip on your life and decisions. - Let your intuition suggest creative approaches to daily problems. - Using empty spaces is just as important as using solid things. - Let the (easy) opportunities of a situation be your guide. - Don't use a difficult approach for showing your skill when something less demanding will do. - Don't follow desires that will (probably) hurt you. - Don't micromanage. - Don't unnecessarily confront or belittle other people. - Don't limit yourself to (these) rules of thumb when you see another appropriate way of proceeding. Any comments? Are there some rules you disagree with? Am I missing a rule? I know that the whole thing has to become automatic, second nature, or intuitive eventually. But that's not the point here. I just want to know whether the above list contains the most important rules.

That's a good one, could you post the same in the new topic I will open in a minute?

I will start another topic about how we are supposed to discuss things on this forum. As I am a newbie here I might be able to learn something.

Nice - then why discuss anything at all?

The problem with just picking a irrefutable feel good philosophy resides in the fact that there are innumerably many of them. That was the reason behind my examples. And as the world presents us with a mixture of pleasure and pain, choosing the feel good philosophy that you like best will probably give you a philosophy that is false (although not provable so until it's too late). That's why I don't like philosophies without empirical support.

Acknowledging the facts just as they are, is a very difficult thing when our ego stands in the way.

There are some similarities to Epicureanism, Stoicism, the early Cynics and Skeptics, Heraclitus and probably some others to.

Here is an expression that I never quite understood: Seeing with the ear and hearing with the eye This may be the key to true emptiness. As long as you still categorize impressions in terms of sounds, sights, flavors, etc. you have not quite arrived at empty awareness or true emptiness.

Does that mean that when you hear a sound you do not recognize it as "a sound"?

A bad one this time: 4. The devil is fooling us all: the physical world doesn't really exist. And if you want a happy ending: 5. Eventually the devil will be locked up in hell, paradise will be restored and we will all receive compensation for the nuisance.

And all the while there is not a shred of evidence that the physical world is just an illusory dream rising out of consciousness, awareness or whatever one want to call it. It's just one of those feel good philosophies that have no recognizable connection to reality as actually lived. But there are even more possibilities. Pick and choose: 1. Our current life is just a (bad?) dream, and soon we will wake up as a pretty prince or princess and all will be well. 2. We are part of a cyberworld and everything will turn out fine because the programmer is a nice guy. 3. There is a heaven and nobody will go to hell. And as there is hardly any limit to the human imagination there will doubtlessly be a lot more. All of them logical possibilities and impossible to disprove. When all you want is a philosophy that makes you feel good, I guess you can start and end right here. No need to test the predictions of your philosophy against reality, as the philosophy nicely avoids making any predictions that can be tested. Pseudoscience at its best! But then again, when all you want is a nice irrefutable feel good philosophy it's perfect.

It's much more difficult than you think. Just noticing your thoughts and feelings is not yet without opinion, at least not as long as you name or recognize (and thereby categorize) those thoughts and feelings. I think absolute nothingness is meant in the Buddhist sense here, as no-thing-ness.

@ Bud Jetsun Even if you are speaking the truth it is still no answer to my question.

Well - there actually is such a thing. See: Every day I read a card.

Another great example of Lao Tse embracing a rule of thumb: http://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu42.html

Yes - one somehow has to. But one should not make unnecessary dogmatic claims about it, as the article clearly does towards the end.

The problem is that things can be seen in an innumerable variety of ways if the only thing you require is that your position is a hypothetical possibility (however far fetched). I think Taoism has the most reasonable position in this by simply claiming that ultimate reality (the unnamable Tao) is beyond words.

It's always difficult to know the reasons why we do this or that. Actually I don't think there are such reasons. It's rather that we feel the need to live this way or that way or search for still another way when we are not satisfied with the way things go. Those needs are not of our own making, but nevertheless they make us who we are. Wanting to know has always been an important drive for me, as well as desiring a more easy going general approach to life. As a young man I wanted to know everything. That wasn't reasonable even then, but now that I am getting old it is clear that I have to be more selective in making my choices for the rest of my life. There was a time I wanted to be a scientist, but I'm not smart enough for that. The best thing I can think of now is exploring philosophical Taoism and trying to apply it to my everyday life.

I don't say matter is all there is. The extremism is to be found in the opposite claim that everything derives from or is consciousness/awareness. Yes - so what?

Useless discussion. The important role of matter (and our body) in our everyday life is clear to see for anybody taking the trouble to reflect on how life is actually lived. We don't just dream up another reality when some aspect of our supposed dreamlike world needs to be changed. If such were the case there would indeed be reason to question the reality of matter, but there isn't. The supposedly awakened ones have to eat, drink, sleep, etc. like anyone else. They use the door to enter and leave the room. They don't ignore the supposed dreamlike Laws of Nature. Science is here put away as just another belief when the results are not appreciated, but then again computers are used al the same. And when some scientific result (such as entanglement) does happens to fit into the dogmatic picture it is suddenly accepted as a scientific fact as if science wasn't just another belief after all. But let's stop. This will lead nowhere as arguments don't count for those willing to believe.

I don't like the strangeness of quantum mechanics myself, and neither did Einstein. But if we are to acknowledge reality as it is we have to accept it.

The weirdness of quantum mechanics does not reside in the fancy names, complex mathematics or scientific interpretations, but in the phenomena themselves. See:

@ Starjumper I'm afraid it is not that simple. Physicists didn't accept the strange non-local aspects of quantum mechanics just "to 'appear' as being intellectually superior". No - simple explanations are always preferred. Physicists first resisted non-locality like anyone else and tried to explain quantum phenomena in a classical way based on how we know things in the macroscopic world to behave. Only when that failed did they hesitatingly try out other "weird" approaches.

@ Starjumper I don't understand much of the video you posted, but it at least shows how one should present a difficult subject. However our relativistic physics is a century old now and has empirical backing, and thus can hardly be considered an unsubstantial fashion that will soon be forgotten in one generation.