Sketch

An entire riverbank, all the plants, creatures, the wind, the light, can share an emotional state.

It's less that fish have human emotions than that humans have fish emotions.

We can certainly have paid more attention to fish than that. Their behavior is not as mysterious as all that, and putting ourselves in the fish's place is well within the capacity of the human mind. Exuberant, well oxygenated trout running out of river, leaping into the air chasing a recent hatch of tiny flies are hard to mistake...and easy to catch. I know that from the falls, I know that from the banks, I've seen it from the canals of Venice, (watching old men catch branzino there), and it would be observable from a stroll along the dam. If it were impossible to experience the joy of fishes, fly fishing wouldn't work at all.

Your fascination with dichotomies for their own sake has been noted.

A common point of view in discussions on the river.

Not to seasoned anglers, it's not.

Scott Park Phillips wrote a couple of books, "Possible Origins" and "Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir", that go more deeply into relevant aspects of Chinese history. His YouTube channel is also pretty interesting.

More discussion of cultivating virtue could even lead to a more charitable atmosphere in the other discussions posted around here. Most welcome, Way.

The old glass "witch ball" hanging up at my in laws house broke the morning of our wedding. Mazel Tov! Always took it as a good sign.

Checking in on you folks has become a bit of a guilty pleasure...not really as helpful to my day to day practice as all that, but entertaining. Read this and had an impulse to post it. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-pearl-of-lao-tzu/559109/

Sabotage

I find the display of women being hounded out of internet spaces unsettling. To be expected, but unsettling. Perhaps not the Intent but certainly what is seen.

As far as Indonesian Martial arts is concerned, I know there are many and various. My only personal contact has been with students of Poekelan, a broken mirror system derived from Chinese animal forms. There are even folkloric claims that Bodhidarma sailed to the islands after his sojourn in China.

This step away from cultural traditions in China was preceded by the boxer rebellion, nicely framed at the beginning of this video by Scott Park Phillips, who has written fine books on martial arts history.

Once more, I'll let Wikipedia explain; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemy But basically the history of medicine in China and of Daoism would be difficult to disentangle.

Thought I was clearer. The external Alchemy that led to both numerous poisonings and ultimately to TCM was not at a point that reflected well on Daoist thought during the Tang dynasty, by modern lights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_alchemical_elixir_poisoning#:~:text=In Chinese alchemy%2C elixir poisoning,order to prolong their lifespans.

Xuanzong, one of numerous emperors who died as a result of daoist " elixir poisoning ". Not Laozi 's best endorsement.

I think we're looking at an attempt in the people on Annares in Ursula LeGuin's "the Disposessed". But it is indeed built into the dao de jing that most will laugh at the path, not follow it, and that a follower of the way is apart from the general run of people.

My own translation efforts with the Dao are here, as well. A worthwhile effort, one that helps my understanding of translation and commentaries. Nice work.

Maurice Bloch, "Prey into Hunter",anthropology on the origin of religion. A slow, tail biting read for such a slim volume. Cherry picked and incomplete examples to demonstrate a pet theory. Dismissive of themes at odds with his thesis; the Aghori are briefly passed by as "anthrophagous ascetics", which while accurate begs a lot of questions. Howeve, I can see that it is prominent in the bibliographies of several books further down my reading list. Onward! All this time on Archeology and related areas, how about a nice comic book? Rutu Modan's "Tunnels" is set in the world of contemporary middle eastern archeologists, searching along the Israel/Palestine border. Soapy family drama. Annalee Newitz' sci fi novel " Autonomous ", more of this new wave in speculative fiction. Human slaves, autonomous robots, and the people who love them. She's fast becoming a favorite. Excellent stuff.

Hooked on books about Catalhoyuk and other neolithic sites; Annalee Newitz' "Four Lost Cities " and Michael Balter's " The Goddess and the Bull" introduced me to archeologist Ian Hodder, who edited "Religion at work in a neolithic society " and his little book on entanglement, "Where are we going ". Awaiting a copy of his "Violence and the sacred in the Ancient Near East". In between these vocabulary builders, I read through Jin Yong's "Legends of the Condor Heroes", which I recommend highly. Ready to start " A Heart Divided " last in the series. I hope more of his stuff gets released in English translation. N. K. Jemisin, " The City We Became", an example of a growing trend in speculative fiction to deal with themes of race and gender, is some very fine writing.

Strange stuff, how much variation there is between people's sensory worlds. ive always experienced a lot of visual input, phosphenes, after images, and moving colors in the dark. Shapes move and shift; usually abstract, sometimes strange images. Looking at uneven white stucco can have color and movement similar to my experience with drugs like acid and psilocybin. This is separate, as far as I can tell, from interally visualizing things in my minds eye, which seems to be much as Nungali describes above.

There are those with far better understanding than my own. My insights have had to do with getting more in touch with internal perceptions; with the nets and junctions of dense nerves distributed throughout the body; the brain within the body. Flowing, oozing, bouncing, all sorts of shapes that do not correspond directly to my bones and other organs. An energetic system, as they say. The "daoist" breathing style exercises circulate this energy, promoting a tendency for energy to flow in this way. This has short term healing and emotional advantages, as I can say from experience. Getting the mind and body so regulated is prerequisite to more advanced practices within the umbrella of "Daoist Alchemy".

Not universally the case. Buddhist figures and symbols appear in many Daoist contexts; there's nothing mutually exclusive about the two philosophies until it's time to apportion imperial money, basically. Yi jin jing, a foundation for many daoist exercises, was purportedly brought to China by Bodhidarma; an undoubtedly Buddhist figure. As I've gushed elsewhere on this board, the books "Journey to the West " are largely set at an intersection of Daoism and Chinese Buddhism.