terry

aloha, Advice on following a method. Just sit. Sit with no expectations, as a matter of emotional hygiene. Try 15 minutes a day until you are comfortable. A half hour twice a day is probably optimal. You can overdo it, easily, like people who ride bikes and walk and swim for their health, and end up doing ironmans and destroying their health and lives obsessing with personal bests. Simply emptying your mind without excessive effort every day as a routine is the sweet spot. The rest is little more than doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your lord. terry

aloha rong zom, Your idea that every religion is equal and we should stick with the traditions we were brought up with is the equivalent of the ego saying trust me I will get rid of me and the thinking mind trying to think its way out of thinking. Organized religions are organized to support and promote the status quo. One does not convert oneself, one uses religion to make others conform. One need look no further than isaiah to see empire propaganda in its nakedest form, "you worms." Just keep producing and multiplying and pay your taxes and the king of kings will take care of you most paternalistically. Hinduism enshrines the pernicious varna system. Arjuna should have told krishna to shove it. Christianity was invented by the flavians to kill jews. Buddhism, confucianism and taoism are sublime by comparison. Buddhism is a correction to hinduism. The buddha points out in the suttas that a brahman would work for a sudra if the price was right, so caste is not a determinant of status. Confucianism upheld justice and humility for all classes of society, and taoism corrected the errors of confucianism. Western religions reluctantly made room at times for saints who insisted they were catholic, like st francis of assissi, joan of arc and simone weil, but by and large the whole edifice of western religion has been the enslavement of human cattle for the benefit of the greedy few. The opioid of the people. I admit I am right fond of islam but mohammed wasn't a real person either (much less jesus). Christians have their mystics as well but they did not tread the middle way and shouldn't be followed. Any comparison of religions should recognize the fact that some religions are living and some are dead. Islam has similarities to judaism and christianity but it is a vital, living religion as is buddhism, and taoism as a subset or progenitor of types of buddhism. So, I don't agree with muddling together all religions as though they were equally good or bad. The prototypical christians were the conquistadors. In hoc signo vinces. Muhammed said that if you are looking for religion, you should go in through the front door. By this is meant go to temple or church or mosque in your community, and start there. But this too is self serving propaganda designed to ensure social order. As omar khayyam said, And this I know: whether the one True Light, Kindle to Love, or Wrath -- consume me quite, One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught Better than in the Temple lost outright. terry

there's an outfit called terebess online which has the most amazing resources... here are a hundred translations of the tao te ching, no need buy them and waste trees (imagine creating a whole book for a megabyte of data!!! what a waste!!!) https://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html my "favorite" is tim leary's "translation"... 1 - 2 When The Harmony Is Lost When the harmony is lost Then come the clever discussions and "Wise men" appear When the unity is lost Then come "friends" When the session is plunged into disorder Then there are "doctors" terry

aloha, I have seen the bigrams described as old yang and young yang, old yin and young yin. The idea is that each line is always changing into its opposite. The real world is one of change and our symbol oriented mentality wants to discern objects. Objects as such do not exist, everything is a rapidly melting ice cube. Or rapidly freezing. Now water, now ice, soft and hard alternate but are one. So young yin is the change in stuff from recently broken old yang. Old yin is young yin changing but still recognizably yin. Young yang is old yin recently coalesced. Old yang is about to break from excess rigidity. The bigrams represent the states of change of each line, each place, in the hexagram. terry

“fire at will” “which one’s will?” Any discussion in buddhist terms of “free will” founders on the requirement that we define who it is who has will, that is, who the self is, which buddhism will not do. Buddhism in the west tends to deny self, deny will; in this we follow other religions in self-denial and fatalism. It’s all humbug, of course. Will clearly exists, and is free by definition. Some sentient beings are strong willed, some are weak willed; the active and the passive, in their action and passion. So the question is, how can buddhism deal with will in the absence of agency? Further, what is will in the context of non dualism, where the object of willing and the subject of willing are not two? Will may readily be shoveled into the ditch of the skandha of volitions and disregarded as a mere phenomenon rather than as the ghost in the machine. Will must be understood if egotism is not to be fostered as a child of volition. The problem really lies in the traditional theology of the west. True religions don’t require beliefs or a style of thought, only practice. Empire mind control propaganda designed to establish the worship of god kings on earth has been adopted by western agencies and permeates the culture propagated by/in western languages. “I am non self” is nonsensical, like plato’s cretan who said, “all cretans are liars.” “I have no will” is equally nonsensical: will is self-will. This leads those of us who know non self personally to tend to deny the reality of both self and will. Because self and will do/do not exist, we are led to the question, “what is reality?” Or, better, “what is existence?” “Existence,” it turns out, is not what we imagine it to be. “All things arise and pass away,” that is, “things,” dharmas, both exist and do not exist. Things appear to come out of nonexistence into existence and then return to nonexistence. Existence and nonexistence follow each other, depend on each other; they are not two. Our existence as an individual self is like this. A lamp is lit from another lamp; its fuel expires or it is blown out. The will of the flame is to burn as long as it has the requisites. The will of life is to is to thrive. Western theology, unlike buddhism, separates self into greater and lesser, god and creature. The creature is abjured to abase herself and accept god as lord; that is, to submit one’s individual will to the will of god. This separation is dualistic and thus irrelevant to nirvana. God says be fruitful and multiply and the individual agrees, so there is no basic conflict. God is good and loves us. Only, we are selfish and greedy and so god chastiseth. Western buddhists are often infected with this sort of methodism, conditioning the flock to embrace the collective will and do what is expected of them. The problem with dualism is that the ego is made permanent thereby. God is in heaven and we are down here being lustful and angry. God is good and loving and all else is our fault. In non dualism there is no god or self as entities, there are no entities at all but a flux of chickens and eggs with no beginning or end dependently coarising. All sentience is will - look into any eyes of any species and you may see the will of god self in existence. The will of god self is equally real in nonexistence, you just don’t see it. Ram dass used to say, “if god says all the birds will get up at 5 am, all the birds get up at 5 am.” The will of god is what is. When your will is precisely what is, your will is not different from the will of god. And like in mathematics, when two terms cancel each other out they drop out of the equation, leaving no self, and no will, at all. Sunyata. terry from the song “dogma: I am god” by suicide silence Dogma, I am god Evil did I dwell, lewd I did live Dogma, I am god

try iamblichus' "life of pythagoras" plato was a pythagorean, as was his sock puppet, socrates try https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/05/socrates-on-mathematics-and-being.html

aloha, terry