SirPalomides

Re: Mopai I propose putting a moratorium on the subject but pinning the current thread so everyone can see the criticisms and the proponents' defenses.

gendao is ridiculous but it's this Mo Pai stuff that's cluttering the forum more than anything else at the moment.

As for Falun Gong's claims about organ harvesting in the PRC... well, there are certainly many horrific things the PRC has done, but Falun Gong's claims about being systematically targeted for organ harvesting are almost certainly a hoax. The key report cited by Falun Gong- "Bloody Harvest," co-authored by David Kilgour and David Matas- was requested by a Falun Gong front group (the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong). A follow up report, recently released by the "independent" China Tribunal, was sponsored by yet another Falun Gong front group (International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse). The latter organization claims to be "independent" but if you go through the names on their board of directors, almost all of them work at Epoch Times. As for the report's authors themselves, Kilgour and Matas, they have some interesting connections too. Among other things they are both enthusiastic apologists for the Mojahedin e Khalq, a weird Iranian terrorist cult that is favored by regime change hawks in US and Anglo state departments. The report itself dismisses contrary expert testimony and relies heavily on dubious extrapolations and testimony from Falun Gong curated sources. To date there appears to have been only one independent investigation of the claims in Western media, by Simon Denyer of the Washington Post, and what he found did not support Falun Gong's claims.

I'm pretty much just paraphrasing their own series of articles, How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World: But wait, there's more! The whole series is worth a look as it lays out Falun Gong's worldview and goals in painful detail. I think there are plenty of other qigong practices that accomplish this without involving devotion to a deluded charlatan like Li Hongzhi.

Let's assume that devoted Falun Gong practitioners can, after certain amount of dedicated practice, levitate, shoot lasers from their eyes, and fart rainbows. So what? Is the purpose of spiritual cultivation to acquire powers? What about righteousness and humanity? Because if you lack these the rest is just a puff of smoke in the wind. And without having practiced Falun Gong even once, anyone can see that the organization and its leader lack them.

His purpose is to sell Shen Yun tickets to fund Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.

I’m mixed race myself. I find it to be utterly looney but thankfully I have no involvement with this madman’s organization. I’m glad you got out while you could and spared your son from this nonsense. So if we advance to a sufficiently high level of spiritual vision, we too will be ardent Trump cheerleaders who think race-mixing, homosexuality, and feminism are all part of a Satanic communist plot? Here’s Falun Gong linking up with Steve Bannon to produce some anti-China schlock. Nope, nothing far right here. If we were all sufficiently advanced we’d see this is based on pure cosmological vision.

It doesn’t matter whether the talks were delivered in the 90’s or yesterday, or whether they appear in a central publication. They are clearly the thoughts of a deranged mind, which belongs to the founder and leader of Falun Gong. Nowadays the Falun Gong organization is a rabid pro-Trump propaganda machine, so things are as crazy as ever. I’m glad to hear that you have no objections to having a multiracial child. So how do you feel hearing that your child is “pitiable” and can’t go to heaven?

Li Hongzhi also wants everyone to minimize computer use so that the aliens don’t take over our bodies.

The beauty of Francis E Dec’s worldview is that it’s so insane that you can’t even make enough sense of it to become a believer. You would have no idea what you’re actually agreeing with. The only other theorist I’ve seen achieve this is Gene Ray, the Timecube guy (anyone remember Timecube?)

Earl Grey gets it. The difference though between Gendao and Francis E Dec is that I find the latter’s psychotic rants much more inventive and entertaining. Also I have posted a different rant each time. There’s plenty more where these came from! Honestly I think the only sane way to respond to Gendao’s rubbish is to reply with even crazier rubbish. Gendao is an amateur. It takes a truly powerful but sick spirit to elevate conspiracy theory to an art form and I’m sad to say Gendao doesn’t quite have it.

please make copies and share widely

I'd like to resurrect this thread with a question, for the excellent Zhongyongdaoist or anyone else who might know about this: One of the commentators cited in Brook Ziporyn's translation of Zhuangzi with commentary is a Buddhist monk, Shi Daosheng AKA Juelang Daosheng who was an advocate of the unity of the "sanjiao". Apparently he believed Zhuangzi was actually a Confucian through and through but concealed this due to it being politically dangerous in his day. He doesn't seem to be the only person to argue this but perhaps he is the best known. Anyone know anything more about this guy? Unfortunately not much about him in English that I can find.

Oh I have no doubt that many Of his accomplices are among those pointing fingers. Hollywood is just trash in general, no amount of protest and accountability will change that. The only solution is roving packs of rabid flesh eating wombats.

I’m convinced. Let’s go back to the good old days of Weinstein prowling with impunity.

I’m casting hard doubt on the “no laughing at work” rule. I’ll need more than a second hand anecdote to buy that one.

Maybe it’s excessive, and maybe it doesn’t really address the problems it’s supposed to, but it sounds like minor inconveniences compared to being constantly preyed upon, harassed, and taken advantage of by men in the industry.

Can anyone give me some guidelines of formatting a typical Chinese ancestor tablet- specifically for my departed parents? I have Chinese family I could ask about this but I'm a little embarrassed/ afraid to, as they might be scandalized that I didn't already have one. Is it simply a matter of putting the names side by side or is there more to it?

I'm guessing Zhang Shifu is 張明心 whom the Parting Clouds Daoist Association also trace their authority to.

Thanks, Nathan. What you say makes perfect sense. And I didn’t want to give any impression that I’m accusing anyone- I’m just thinking aloud.

Some general guidelines off the top of my head for Daoist sites: Don't point at images of deities. Don't photograph altars. Don't photograph monastics without their permission.

Nothing in the world is larger than the tip of a hair in autumn.

This is perhaps the perspective of the Kalama Sutta and maybe some other texts, where the Buddha exhorts seekers to examine teachers and practices critically, before committing to them. But the Buddha, as we meet him in the sutras, clearly does have a large body of doctrines that are not to be lightly set aside by his committed disciples, including some very specific, and exhaustively pronounced, doctrines about cosmology, karma, and rebirth. The significance, in practice, of these doctrines, is often not immediately apparent in public presentations of Chan or Vipassana meditation- in those cases they are more like the hidden support for what seem like very plain and commonsense teaching. In more involved schools, e.g. Vajrayana, the practices are often unintelligible without these doctrinal foundations. Perhaps realized practitioners feel themselves increasingly unchained from these dogmatic boundaries but nothing I've seen in the sutras, or Nagarjuna, Fazang, Tsongkhapa, Dogen, etc, suggests that Right View is ever dispensable.

Is this true? It would explain why some of those early Quanzhen guys so callously abandoned their wives and children.