SirPalomides

Deleted for probable bad taste

My knowledge of the various martial arts, qigong, etc. systems would be over-generously called "rudimentary," so forgive me if this question is kind of dumb, but don't the various established traditions have disagreements with each other? Couldn't they each scrutinize each other and find this or that detail a little bit off? Not that this justifies someone striking out and piecing together his own system but... isn't that where some schools got started? (EDIT: I think this is more or less Freeform's point above?)

There are a hell of a lot of people in Australia not descended from genocidaires. Also, since you’re complaining about leftists, you should move out of SA to some racist apartheid state like Israel since it was leftists who abolished apartheid in SA.

To summarize Borewars argument:

Show some respect. I’ve spent so much time with my mind in my Dantian that my head disappeared and eyes sprouted out of my nipples.

While we’re paraphrasing movie lines, also don’t forget to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women.

Sorry, I'm not going to just submit to your clown dogmatism and your armchair mastery of the clown arts. Keep your amateur cream pies out of my face until you take off the red nose and top hat and find your own true face and know the meaning of REAL CLOWN POWER. I was astrally face-pied by the great master Bo'ozobub (you wouldn't have heard of him) and I don't need any initiation from lesser mortals. I just came here for some pointers on the art of talismanic balloon animal crafting and have no interest in the ossified, orthodox clown liturgy you've erroneously constructed around it.

"Cultural and dogmatic attachments" are inextricable from any spiritual practice. They are not accidents. They may be more or less fluid or ambiguous but that doesn't mean they're readily interchangeable or, even less, negligible. When I try to empty out the cultural content of a practice something else must fill the space. More than likely that is whatever is surrounding me and (often unconsciously) shaping my own decisions and preferences. That means that whatever practice I adopt becomes weakened, distorted, or even hijacked by forces inimical to its normal intent. (This is what uneases me about "Chaos Magick" which, while vocally eschewing dogmatic systems or seeing them as interchangeable tools in the service of what "works", clearly does assume some unspoken dogmas that look a lot like run-of-the-mill modern egoism and consumerism. ) You say you are not particularly interested in Daoism itself, but only interested insofar as you think it supplies something missing from your Pythagorean-Orphic tradition. Are you sure? Is there really nothing in the traditions of Neo-Platonism, hermeticism, Western alchemy, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mysticism, all of which are deeply influenced by or proximate to the tradition you profess, that could fill this gap? Have you really mastered this tradition enough to find it missing an important piece that needs to be imported from a tradition with a very different historical and cultural background? Are you sure there isn't something you overlooked or misunderstood? And if there isn't, is it really not possible to elaborate something to fill this gap on the basis of principles native to your chosen system? Now if you respect the Daoist practices because of their long history and accumulated knowledge, that's great, but then you have to also respect what you seem to be dismissing as baggage- namely the cultural and doctrinal underpinnings. You have to go deep into this tradition before you can plug in bits of it to your existing practice.

I think the best way to read the book is not just have a good translation but good commentary to see how the book has been read through the ages. Without that context it's easy to miss things that were obvious to ancient readers, and likewise misread things based on faulty assumptions. And of course it's interesting to see when the commentators have very divergent readings. That's why I love the Red Pine version. Like I said before, I haven't seen the Cai DDJ but I imagine a cartoonist could also be a perceptive commentator. And I love Cai's art style.

Humility is the only way to survive in any kind of spiritual path. I find myself in a position of being driven to individual practice, not because I don't want a teacher but because there is none currently available to me (apart from internet correspondence). The temptation to jump ahead, make things up, etc. is huge and dangerous. You have to try to be the empty hub and not the flashy wheel. Anything not done in service, love, and respect to our fellow beings will collapse on itself. "Mixing currents" is of course something that happens in Daoism itself, but it should never be done without patient and sober reflection based on practice and understanding. You have to be very familiar and experienced with a given system before you have an idea of what parts of it can be work together with other systems. You have to know the rules- not just academically- before you know how they can be bent without danger. It's edifying and beautiful to contemplate the lives of great masters and aspire toward their attainments, but we've got to recognize how far away we are from that, both in our own lives and the world we live in. We are groping in the dark. If we do any good, it is better to ascribe it to others and to the merciful spirits that help us, than our own worthiness. Self-aggrandizers are everywhere around us, in religion and in every other field. Why not just humble ourselves, put away any notion of our own merit, and let our glory and merit be that of the great assembly of teachers, immortals, and sacred spirits?

Dr. Alberto Rivera? The guy who claims the Catholic Church invented Islam, communism, and Nazism? Who appears prominently in several Chick Tracts? That Dr. Alberto Rivera?

My apologies for my uncalled-for snippiness. I think if the document were genuine, someone by now would be able to produce a copy other than Robert Ware's 17th century English version.

Are there any Taoist gods or goddesses specifically in charge of birds? I know the fenghuang is sort of king of the birds but I don’t think it is directly worshiped. Also I read that Jiutian Xuannü originated as a bird -like goddess but I’m not sure if she is closely associated with that nowadays. I like to feed the birds where I live and would like to focus it as an offering to whoever looks after them.

The forger's name was Robert Ware and he published it in 1689 at a time in England when anti-Catholic polemics were hot and purported secret documents were guaranteed bestsellers. It's a fake. And while this particular fake may or may not have had an immediate effect it is no secret that English anti-Catholicism fed into their genocide of the Irish. As for who takes this forged document seriously today--- go to the front page of the very page you linked to, http://www.reformation.org/. That's the sort of person who pushes this document as genuine nowadays. Now I have to ask what this has to do with Michael Saso. If the implication was that he left the church, got married, and got ordained in Taoist and Buddhist lineages as an infiltrator for the pursuit of some nefarious Jesuitical agenda, I would say that that is outright slander. You didn't say that though, so I'm sure you did not have anything of the sort on your mind when you raised this forged Jesuit oath as purely a historical curiosity.

I'm trying to translate some of the incantations here, both from curiosity and to practice my Chinese reading. 桃花竞开放，飘逸万里香. 姻缘天上降，花开又结果. 九尾红狐在，香火闪金光. "Peach blossoms race to open, graceful fragrance drifts afar. Decrees of marriage fall from heaven. Flowers open, bearing fruit. The nine-tailed red fox is here. Golden flash of burning incense." How did I do? I'm not trying to be 100% literal, just get the meaning in reasonably flowing English.

This is a forgery pretty typical of Protestant conspiracy theories about Jesuits. This is Protocols of the Elders of Zion type stuff. A lot of documents end up in the congressional records without being credible.

I wasn’t thinking of Catholic patronage so much as gods and their departments. There is, after all, an insect god, a horse god, a wolf god, tree gods, a bunch of fox gods, as well as gods in charge of thunder, rain, rivers, etc.

A lovely scene from Cai’s “Fantasies of the Six Dynasties.”

Also Michael Saso was a Jesuit cum Daoshi cum Tendai priest, and I think he’s back with the Jesuits now.

I don’t know that one but I grew up with Cai’s comics retelling Chinese folklore and I love his work.

Well now that I know Flowing Hands is a Maoshan wizard, I think we’d all better be a bit more respectful. He has chosen to vent his frustration with long internet rants when in fact he could be sending ghosts to torment us or transforming our Christmas trees into bloodthirsty demons from the pits of Diyu. Let us incur no further wrath but thank his forbearance.

Rhyming Zork with Dork is such a master stroke of genius that only an immortal wit could have revealed it to you. Incidentally an anagram of “flowing hands” is “fondling haws.” Leave the haws alone, man.

Some people say Shou-Lao’s head resembles a phallus, so I’ll take that as a complement. I’ve got a surplus of jing, baby.

I see “Taishang Laojun,” obviously a reference to Allah. “Wang Mu Niangniang”- the Theotokos Virgin Mary of course. Reference to the thunder immortals obviously the sons of thunder, James and John. hey, why are you posting Christian prayers?

I believe this is where one simply says “OK boomer”