Daniel

The principle AND an origin?

From the infamous, elusive, and mysterious "deleted" thread which inspired this one...

The character that is translated into the english word "spirit" occurs in 4 chapters in the DDJ as brought on Ctext.org. Chapter 6: 谷神不死，是謂玄牝。玄牝之門，是謂天地根。綿綿若存，用之不勤 Chapter 29: 將欲取天下而為之，吾見其不得已。天下神器，不可為也，為者敗之，執者失之。故物或行或隨；或歔或吹；或強或羸；或挫或隳。是以聖人去甚，去奢，去泰。 Chapter 39: 昔之得一者：天得一以清；地得一以寧；神得一以靈；谷得一以盈；萬物得一以生；侯王得一以為天下貞。其致之，天無以清，將恐裂；地無以寧，將恐發；神無以靈，將恐歇；谷無以盈，將恐竭；萬物無以生，將恐滅；侯王無以貴高將恐蹶。故貴以賤為本，高以下為基。是以侯王自稱孤、寡、不穀。此非以賤為本耶？非乎？故致數譽無譽。不欲琭琭如玉，珞珞如石。 Chapter 60: 治大國若烹小鮮。以道蒞天下，其鬼不神；非其鬼不神，其神不傷人；非其神不傷人，聖人亦不傷人。夫兩不相傷，故德交歸焉。

To supplement my question above, "sometimes 有 and at other times 無" seems to be all-inclusive? Nothing is excluded? Literally. "Nothing" is excluded. ~virtually nods towards @Michael Sternbach~

In the TTC is there any "thing" or "non-thing" that is not 道? Ignoring what is written, according to your intuition, is there any "thing" or "non-thing" that is not 道? If so, if they are not 道, from where are they originating? Edit: "thing" and "non-thing" are not limited to objects. They can be objects, actions, ideas, or symbols.

In the translation you brought 無 and 有 are nouns when it is referenced as "name" 名? I see a similar pun in line 2? 名 ( noun ) 可名 ( verb )，非常名 ( noun )。 To be clear, I'm not trying to establish a rule. It's just an observation. And perhaps it sets up the pun in lines 3 & 4?

And this, imo, is what makes language "magical". At some point when learning language, the character ( written word ), the vocalization, the various meanings, and the context will all unite and resolve in the moment of comprehension. Not only for the individual reader, but for all other readers who are sharing the moment. All of them are united in the moment of shared comprehension. And little children do this every single day all across the globe when they are learning to speak, read, and write.

No. I don't see it. I love it, but I don't see it. And if at all possible can you elaborate on the pun? I don't get it. But I am honestly tickled with the mystery of it. It literally is... tickling my insides. Hee. I like it. So perhaps it's better left as a mystery. I don't know. All I know is, I came back from some frustrating work, physical labor, outside the house. Sat down and read this post, and now I am happy-happy.

When 有 and 無 are translated into visible and invisible ( noun or verb ), that, in my mind, is communicating vision, like physical sight. But is that what is intended here? Or is it maybe more than lacking physical visibility? When something is invisible, maybe it stlll exists? Or maybe not. Maybe I can even grasp it? Perhaps I wouldn't know I was grasping it. Or it would be grasped by not grasping it. There's many options of what it could be, if I release myself from the cage, for lack of a better word, of the literal english meaning of "invisible". At risk of making a mistake which you just recently cautioned against, there is a concept "the unseen". It's a category of "things" which simply can not be grasped intellectually in a standard straight forward way. I'm not comparing the two concepts, 無 and "the unseen". not intentionally. I'm bringing the idea "the unseen", the category, as an example of a concept which is named "invisible" but is not actually communicating no-sight. It is not *limited* to things which are not physically visible. Is that at all comparable to 無? Is 無 in this context limited to lacking-physical-sight?

Yes. Thank you. Other than the english word spirit. My intention was to, maybe, use the english translation to "spirit" simply as an opportunity to locate chapters and verses which describe this concept, whatever it is.

I'm listening to you, and that is my aspiration. But, if I may, this doesn't tell me whether I interpretted the concepts properly. Unless, your message is the kindest gentlest version of "sorry, that's not it at all". At some point, i will need to attempt an understanding, type it out as best I can, then receive some combination of correction, confirmation, or guidance. What I described, in my mind, does not actually exist in "english thoughts". A primordial energetic principle of decomposition? What is that in western religion, spirituality, esoterics, etc? Entropy is the closest thing I can think of. If it's premature for me to attempt typing out my understanding, that makes sense. But our conversations are going to be somewhat ... empty.

If I told her that, she would say, "Chi, who?"

My mother in law likes to say: "When in doubt, just breathe." And she gave me a river rock from her garden and she painted the word "breathe" on it. True story. And it works. If my heart starts to pound, a few deep breaths reduces it.

In my mind, right or wrong, I consider 有 and 無 as verbs, maybe not technically, like walking, sitting, jumping... but as "energetic". I've mentioned it in another thread, 有 is composing, for lack of better word. Compostional, almost like authoring a book. But more than that, more basic and primoridal? Not writing the words, but forming the thoughts and ideas from an unformed pool of possibility. Forgive me, do you know what I mean when I say primordial? Pre-existent? Original? Foundational? um... fundamental? Primordial. Also 無 not as an object, but as the action of decomposing. Not in an ugly way, like a corpse, although that sort of qualifies as what I am imagining. But it is a primordial energetic principle of "being un-made", dissassembled. And both are non-substance, which is why I really appreciate understanding them as spirit, but certainly not spirit in a western sense of disembodied soul.

Ahhhh. That makes perfect sense. Thank you very kindly!

We're basically envisioning the same thing. The point at the center, from my perspective is 1. And all the other numbers, including 0 are produced from it. And from this perceptive yes, there is a beautiful symmetry and coincidence ( literally co-incide, a fun paradox ) of 1 and the infinite. The infinite is 1. Just 0 is boring. Just that specific number. Although here in America there was a fun kids song made about zero in the early 70s, "Zero is my Hero..." Facinating, I did not know that. No. They're sets. The only way for them to nullify each other is if they share something in common. These two are disjoint, which means they share nothing in common. Which is kind of a fun linguistic trick, word-play. "they share nothing in common" Or "they share "nothing" in common." If they share "nothing" in common, and nothing is actually something, then they actually share something in common which happens to be be "nothing". So, what about "nothing", does it share anything in common with itself? Of course! It's has "nothing" in common with itself. So, is it disjointed from itself? Yes! defintely. But its concordance is deviation. In this special edge case, the extreme rare example, everything flips. Being disjointed describes absolute perfect simultaneous correspondence with itself, where-as, all other examples of disjoint are the opposite: absolute perfect simultaneous differences. Now it's possible to consider the "principle of explosion", and perhaps the reason why so many occultists seeking apotheosis are fixated on "zero" and emptiness. Meditating on it... "From falsehood... anything". Does it actually work? Not really. But it's wonderful for all sorts of things, particularly opening the mind. Also relief of suffering. But as I've said, it can cause unwanted side-effects for some. Especially those with a history of trauma, or who are attempting it solo.

They begin by considering {x:x∉x}. This is "set builder" notation where x a set which conforms to the function x∉x. That's a sematic contradiction. The fault is the negating self reference. x is being defined as something which is not itself and nothing else. I don't know any of his work. It's been recommended by someone I trust when they noticed me getting excited about sympathetic paradoxes ( def A of paradox, that you brought earlier ). Question: If there is no consistent set of axioms... as stated above, what are the implications, in your view, on the version of infinity I have described and have been calling absolutley literal infinity? Yes. The completed infinity is "assumed for coontradiction". Once it is shown it cannot ever be complete, then it is proven to be incomplete by contradiction. Incomplete in this context means "uncountable" a perfect unbroken spectrum between any and all, let's call them, way-points, or coordinates. Agreed! But, I'm not a fan of using the word "size". The cardinality of the set is larger. OK. yes, he was religious. And thats important. Again, I'm not seeing any conflict. OK.... Cantor's god is more infinite than the incomplete infinty. Incomplete infinity is more infinite than complete infinty. complete infinity << incomplete infinity << Cantor's god << = "much less than" Actual. Meaning it is something which can be used as a discrete starting point for Leibniz's "theory of everything" aka "set theory". The fault of this "theory of everything" was asuming that this "theory of everything" could indeed be completed. Now you have Godel saying, the "Theory of Everything" never ends. And this is consistent with Russel's paradox. But is has zero bearing on literal absolute infinity as I have described it. There is only 1 absolute literal infinity. It cannot ever be included in itself, else, there would be 2 of them. So, it's not just that Russel's paradox is avoided in what I'vee described, its completely irrelevant. it is never-ever a consideration. It is, basically, a Russell set and that's perfect! There is only one of them. In context: the discussion was omni-presence and approaching the infinite-divine. I said, it cannot be appproached, because, if it is [absolutely literally] infinite, then, it is omni-present. Then, you seemed to challenge this claiming there are gaps in numeric infinity. And there was another comment? "there's us and it. Never the 'twain will meet. It is not here there and everywhere" Or perhaps I'm remembering wrong. Size cardinality as they say, doesn't matter. It's the motion of the ocean... or something. The point is, uncountable infinity has no gaps. Spectrums are physical real world objective examples of this. Absolute literal infinity is much-much greater than uncountable infinity. Therefore there are no gaps in absolute literal infinity. Conclusion: IF the divine is absolutely literally infinite, THEN it is certainly omni-present and it cannot be approached, it's already here, there, everywhere. How is a person going to appproach it? No matter where they go, it's still there. They have neither gone towards it or away from it no matter where they roam, in time and space, even in no-time and no-space, even in the realm of "could-be".

I'm sorry to hear you are struggling. Anger is not an easy problem to solve. Imo, anger is a consequence of lack of empowerment. This is just another way of saying that there is something in your life which is not the way you would like it to be, and you don't have the power to change it. The problem is, it's normal and natural to be out of control of certain aspects of life. Even if it's unfair, it's just a fact of life that certain things are beyond control. In addition, anger can build up over time in the form of resentment. This is also a lack of power to make changes, but the frustration is deffered. It could be that a person completely accepts that the situation is unfair, and they cope, but then if there is one thing after another anfter another after another, accomodation, after accomodation after accomodation, it just gets to be too much. And all the deffered frustration piles up, and produces anger even though those previous circumstances were accepted in a healthy way. The defferred frustration can still bubble up to the surface. My advice would be, to try to find healthy ways to empower yourself. Even if certain parts of life are frustrating and out of a person's control to change, activley look for opportunites to execute control over your life. Take charge of a hobby or project that has been on the back burner for a while. Maybe make a list of the things you do on a daily basis, if any of those things is irritating, brainstorm ways to make it more pleasant, then do-it. Even if it seems like a small insignificant change, just taking charge of that one aspect can maybe lead to more and more empowerment, and less frustration.

Status update: Kakapo and I have been exchanging messages this afternoon. Eventually we made a bit of a break thru where it was acknowledged that the picture of the pipe, and the 2-d television monitor were poor analogies due to depth perception. Then we started talking about haptic feedback. Then I presented the idea of a fully immersive body-suit. Steadily increasing the acccuracy of the analogy so that we could have a proper discussion. But no, Kakapo cycled right back to imagining the 2-d television monitor. There's also a major contradiction: "What you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, and what you feel, do not exist external to your mind." "I believe it is a remarkable, and amazing simulation, which I hope is accurate." This is described in the critical analysis of Hoffman's theory under the subheading "Self-refuting". If it is unknown what is outside the mind, then it cannot be claimed not to exist. I have tried multiple times to clear up the sloppy language. Define this "what", the perception doesn't exist? Of course it doesn't exist outside the mind, but there's multiple reasons to have very strong confidence in the accuracy of the perception. There's been so much cycling and repeating, claiming I just don't get it even though I do. Now I have resorted to asking just a simple question on each reply: "Who are you talking to?" Hopefully that will be the end of the private convo.

Well, that's odd, because, the proof of transfinite numbers, uncountable infinity, doesn't require any set theory at all. It's a matrix, an array. It can be constructed by anyone. I'm not really sure how this works either. Stack Exchange is a forum. Yes it has social confirmation, up votes / down votes. But I still struggle to see how self reference defeats the simple idea there are some infinite different wavelengths of light between "red" and "orange" with absolutely zero gaps. Here's just a little simple confirmation from the wiki-monster on the semantic workaround for absolute literal infinity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_of_small_categories The category Cat is itself a large category, and therefore not an object of itself. In order to avoid problems analogous to Russell's paradox one cannot form the “category of all categories”. But it is possible to form a quasicategory (meaning objects and morphisms merely form a conglomerate) of all categories.

4 entities: human, earth, sky, Tao Water is part of nature Spirit is not real ? where does water fit into the 4 entities ? ? how is it known that spirit is not considered real?

It was unneeded after Chidragon's reply. It looks like we were typing and posting simultaneously. I asked "entity?" Ok. Interesting read. Yes. Agreed super important concept. Apologies, I missed your previous post. Ok. I read the thread, but I didn't follow the links posted. Would you like me to do that? Are you asking for my input, or just maybe letting me know about the different interesting details you're finding? Did this indicate it is an entity? My gut response is, I do not understand it as "nature" but how nature behaves.

The shadow work was not included in your OP. In the thread, I replied to a theoretical. I also notice the keyword "heart" in all of your replies. All of this i think is significant in my opinion.

Ziran! Got it. I have to run away, sadly. But I'll look at it in detail when I return.