SirPalomides

I don’t think there will be a Democratic tsunami. Even if there is, it will consist mostly of center-rightists like Biden who will do nothing effectual to address climate change, healthcare, systemic racism, etc. They will prolong pointless wars to enrich their friends in the military industrial complex. It’s true there are a lot more candidates talking about green new deal, m4a, etc. but these are just words without well-organized grassroots pressure- and the left is very weak and fragmented. The oligarchy is vicious and well-organized. Trump is just a symptom. Real change in the US is not going to come from the ballot box.

Further demonstrating the bipartisan insanity of the American political elite: Read the rest here: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/02/house-democrats-working-with-liz-cheney-restrict-trumps-planned-withdrawal-of-troops-from-afghanistan-and-germany/

It's funny, I got myself a Xiao flute a few months ago and I looked up some tutorial videos and his video was one of the first that came up. This guy has his finger in everything!

My uncle took lessons from Steve Segal before he was famous. He says the guy acted like a movie star even then and his "lessons" basically consisted of showing off his own alleged prowess by knocking around the students.

"Behold, already on the long parades the crows anoint the statues with their dirt..." - Wallace Stevens, "Invective against swans"

The external text (waijing) is what is in Saso’s book.

Michael Saso’s book The Gold Pavilion contains his translation and commentary. There are more scholarly translations too.

Um what?

Might I make a friendly suggestion that you enjoy your current state away from the computer? Listen to the birds, sniff the shrubbery, etc.

The earth is immortal in the same way everything else is immortal

I'm in the middle of reading this fascinating article about the poet-scholar Su Shi (AKA Su Dongpo) and his views about the arts as means of self-cultivation. In his essay "Seeing off Sicong, a monk from Qiantang, on his return to the Solitary Hill", he says: Just as the wheelwright Bian crafted wheels or the Old Hunchback caught cicadas – a thing is never too base if it inspires one’s dexterity and intelligence! If Sicong would achieve the Way, then zither and calligraphy will both have helped, and poetry particularly so. If Sicong could imitate a water-mirror, which contains the myriad forms in its Oneness, then his calligraphy and poetry will become even more marvellous. I will observe them as signs of his progress towards the Way. Su Shi's attitude is that the arts are equal, or even superior, to what are traditionally considered Buddhist practices- this of course has a lot to do with the Confucian tradition, though other Song Confucians (eg Wang Anshi, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi) took a rather dour view of literary cultivation, which may reflect Buddhist influence. Which is funny as they were far more sectarian in asserting Confucianism versus other paths than Su Shi was.

These Soviet Star Wars posters are cooler than the actual movies.

Great! Give me your exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:44 with citations from patristic commentaries. Have you considered taking your own advice? As you say, the official Catholic catechism is available free on the Vatican's website. Here's some of what it says about theosis: In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully 'divinized' by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to 'be like God', but 'without God, before God, and not in accordance with God'. ... The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: 'Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.' 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.' On the mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands: 'Listen to him!' Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: 'Love one another as I have loved you.' This love implies an effective offering of oneself, after his example. The Word became flesh to make us 'partakers of the divine nature': 'For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.' 'For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.' 'The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods. ... Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ's Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself: '[God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. ... For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized.' ... The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification: 'Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.'

How would you know this? And what makes you think qi is simply a matter of belief?

Tibetan diaspora has spread to a lot of places. Also Chinese Buddhists abroad sometimes support Tibetan dharma centers. Look for a Tibetan Buddhist center or meditation group near you, preferably Nyingma, though there are non-Nyingma lamas who teach Dzogchen.

I can’t pretend to have achieved Gnosis myself but I feel confident that Tom Cruise isn’t any closer.

In the Christian tradition there is a long and colorful practice of making mystical and allegorical readings of the scriptures. One of the best examples is St Gregory of Nyssa's The Life of Moses. He goes through each event of Moses' life and extracts some lesson from it for spiritual practice. History comes in a distant second as a concern for him. Since you mention the burning bush, here is his comment on the episode: [When]…we are living at peace, the truth will shine upon us and its radiance will illuminate the eyes of our soul. Now this truth is God. Once in an ineffable and mysterious vision it manifested itself to Moses, and it is not without significance for us that the flame from which the soul of the Prophet was illuminated was kindled from a thorn-bush. If truth is God and if it is also light – two of the sublime and sacred epithets by which the Gospel describes the God who manifested himself to us in the flesh – it follows that a virtuous life will lead us to a knowledge of that light which descended to the level of our human nature. It is not from some luminary set among the stars that it sheds its radiance, which might then be thought to have a material origin, but from a bush on the earth, although it outshines the stars of heaven. This also symbolizes the mystery of the Virgin, from whom came the divine light that shone upon the world without damaging the bush from which it emanated or allowing the virgin shoot to wither. This light teaches us what we must do to stand in the rays of the true light, and that it is impossible with our feet in shackles to run toward the mountain where the light of truth appears. We have first to free the feet of our soul from the covering of dead skins in which our nature was clad in the beginning when it disobeyed God’s will and was left naked. To know that which is, we must purify our minds of assumptions regarding things which are not. In my opinion the definition of truth is an unerring comprehension of that which is. He who is immutable, who does not increase or diminish, who is subject to no change for better or worse, but is perfectly self-sufficient; he who alone is desirable, in whom all else par­ticipates without causing in him any diminution, he indeed is that which truly is, and to comprehend him is to know the truth. It is he whom Moses approached and whom today all approach who like Moses free themselves from their earthly coverings and look toward the light coming from the bramble bush, at the ray shining on us from the thorns, which stand for the flesh, for as the Gospel says, that ray is the real light and the truth. Then such people will also be able to help others find salvation. They will be capable of destroying the forces of evil and of restoring those enslaved by them to liberty. This kind of thinking permeates the hymns of the Byzantine church where every event in the life of Christ or the saints is related- often in surprising ways- to events and visions of the Old Testament. There are people who ascribe pretty much any religious experience to drugs, mental illness, hallucination induced by fatigue/ hunger/ thirst, autosuggestion, or some combination of any of the above. It's usually an assumption impossible to prove or disprove and just leads us back to the ideological commitments of the person making the claim. Anyway, the whole account of Moses is highly mythological so these discussions miss the point IMO.

One of Sidney Sime's illustrations for Lord Dunsany

I think this is actually a very normal way of reading texts, until recently. It is true too in the West where commentators would routinely find in old texts (Homeric poems, the book of psalms, etc) all kinds of allegorical and mystical meanings that seem farfetched if we are strictly reading the text with a concern for literalism and (supposed) authorial intent. Such readings shouldn't be pressed dogmatically but they are useful both for the message they uncover and the exercise of analogical thinking. Finding hidden connections between seemingly disparate things is in my view an important spiritual skill, as we work to integrate ourselves within the motions of Heaven and Earth. That is why the study and practice of poetry can be so beneficial; likewise the practice of Yijing divination or reading marvelously figurative texts like Zhuangzi.

As far as Greek philosophers go, the soul was generally just whatever principle enabled life- a human without a soul would necessarily be dead. The soul might be considered inherently immortal, or impermanent like the body. Even the atomist philosophers like Epicurus talked about a soul, though for them it was just a very fine body of atoms that animated the rest of the body, which dispersed at death. In Chinese philosophy, terms like qi, shen, etc. have varying and overlapping meanings. This is a great article on Neo-Confucian conceptions of these terms, which is helpful in understanding Chinese philosophy in general.

This article is a very good overview of the period: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20059006?seq=1 Non-academics, take heart, JSTOR is offering free membership during the pandemic.

In the 90’s the category of “medical qigong” was promoted by the government, as opposed to “superstitious” styles with religious overtones or charismatic leaders. Scams and cult/ mass-movement behavior were growing concerns.

Can someone produce this list?

Are you saying Tian’s children and John Dolic are teaching xianggong without authorization?