Pietro

Hello, welcome, and thanks for joining our little game. Nice question. Mostly Taoism is a pro women religion. In early scriptures the Tao is seen as female (or so I have been told). It is very clear that although both yin and yand come out of the wu ji, yin comes first, and yang is generated by yin. In this some people see yin as deeper, and more near the dao. And women being yin, similarly more intuitive and nearer. Daoism did have a relevant number of taoist adepts, and practices that are for women. There are a couple of books out there on the topic. Amazon.com: Women in Daoism: Catherine Despeux: Books Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women Second Edition (Paperback) by Thomas Cleary Generally it was accepted that women had a different path to men. For an example you can read about this in the White Tiger, Green Dragon: A Tale of the Taoist Inner Alchemy but also mantak chia and maneeewan chia wrote a book on female sexual practices which is not bad. One of the things on which taoist women are really different from others is that taoist men are supposed to deal with their jelousy with meditations. So women were not criticised so much for having external affairs. Of course this was inside a confucianist culture where all this was not really accepted. So the result would be that if it would happen have to be kept quite to the officials. But it was ok for the taoists. As part of the sexual practices there were various ways in which women and men would come togehter. In ancient times in China they would organise state organised orgies, where person x had to go with person y. All this was eventually eliminated, but it gives you a bit of the hint. There is also a lot of cult of the pure yin energy. So on the side of all this, you also find taoist men who try to absorbe the essence from as many young female as possible. (there were forms of vampirism both of men versus women and women versus men). ANother thing which you should consider was that homosexuality was (and is) seen very differently if it is female homosexuality, versus male homosexuality. Male homosexuality is not much accepted (it goes deeper than that, but let's keep it simple). Female homosexuality was not only accepted but considered very good for the women involved. Male homosexuality would ruin their yang, female homosexuality would enhance their yin (it's called cleaning mirrors in tao-speach). So generally female in Taoism had a similar status of men, different practices, had somehow to abide to the confucianist leadership, and in some ways had even elements where they were more free than men. In a more recent settings I remember Bruce, my teacher (a taoist lineage holder), to whome a women asked how can she be accepted and related to by men as men relate to each other. Bruce laughed, and asked her is she really desires so, because, he said, men also break each other jaw all the times in bar-fights. Would she like also that? So there is generally a no-BS approach where women are considered in egalitarian terms, but they are not permitted to be equal and then play the victim card. I hope it helps, Pietro

What is this BS of we taoists are supposed to be tolerant? We express the fullness of nature. What about the rage and force of a thunderstorm! Where is tiger, Chen, Thunder! It's just that a mighty storm doesn't last long. Be well (to all the Buddhists too!)

Dear Zhuo Ming-Dao, in another thread you wrote: As I think Islam is on the rise on the west, I am interested on how Taoists use Islamic "techniques or philosophies" for their own practice. Can you shed some light? Many thanks, Pietro P.S. I post it here since I think the topic deserve its own thread, and the other thread is right now focused on something else.

But of course, if my request was going to be felt as a rule. Take care, Pietro

Zhuo Ming-Dao, thank you very much. Do you have particular example on how modern taoists cope in an islamic environment? We know in recent years Islam has really exploded, and is now present everywhere. More than that in some situation is quite imposing its way of living. How do Taoists cope with this kind of situation? This is particularly interesting since Islam tend to be nicer toward religion of the book (christian and Judaism), and less nice toward the other religions. Vajrahridaya, please if you can, accept to be a bit more in the background for one time. Thanks, Pietro

Thanks. I agree that science and spirituality are not mutually exclusive. Although some time to sinthesis out of this dicotomy is a greeater quest than out of different religions. So, what is a good method to shuffle cards, then? What do professional players do? I assume they must have studied the topic really well, to avoid being played.

Thanks. I think we are all very excited to read the review. COnsider even to make a video of you opening the box and so on. This could make us drooling . On the other hand if it can only measure alpha and beta it is obviously not advanced enough for any serious application. If you look at the video from Ken Wilber, the machine the guy is using is an olotester. I found the website and contacted them time ago. It only worked on windows. Also when I asked some neuroscientists about it they told me that you can't really rely only on measurements done on the temporal lobe. Mostly because they are really spoiled by the muscles under the place where you measure. In any case it was interesting how they measured the wave in 64 components (the 64 bars, *2 right and left). I hope we can do something similar with this toy.

Well, if we look at the history of this site, we had several invasions in the past. Some from a single individual who overposted (makes me wonder how would the site cop with a hard limit for everybody of 5 posts a day, 15 posts a week and 100 posts a month), or when a group of individual like us so much. The Kun Lun went down when their discussion board was settled. The FU guy was limited as to number of threads he could open. He made his own discussion, discovered that he could not discuss all by himself, came back. And now I don't know what happened of him. The DM was invited to leave and he accepted. When he came back years later everybody was so happy to see huim that he only posted once. In a sense is flattering to have people come here and participate in a forum which is so different from their view. Somehow We taoists tend to be quite nice in the fact that we usually don't force things one way or the other. Trying to go with nature. This makes for very hospital conditions which many people like. I read that the Buddhist forum (I gather it's called e-shangha, although I never registered there) is no where as nice as this. I wonder why, as Buddhism is such a complex and interesting religion, it need to host different point of view. On a formal sense the Buddhists that are coming here are being nice, they are exposing their point of view, they are not using foul language or opening 25 threads a day. They are not doing anything wrong on the formal side. And since this forum is open to every person that has any spiritual interest (have you read the list at the beginning? Even New Agers, can't we really born at the stake anyone anymore?), we can't have anything done formally (nor would Sean do it, he is quite fair from this point of view). It would be unfair, like trying to silence someone when you don't like what they say. Maybe the solution is to act as a community, and ignore the offenders post. We have acted like this in the past with trolls. The practice is expressed in the book seven taoist masters (Mal, can you cut and paste the excerpt?): when you see something offensive, ignore it. Look as if you haven't seen it. This would work if it is only one person, or if the person are here with an open heart. In the first case he would get bored (and tired of feeding the community, and not being fed back), in the second they would get the message. It is a different thing if there are more people and they are looking for ways to disrupt the community. Then they can just start to discuss among them about this or that Buddhist precept, effectively making it impossible for everybody to have their own conversation. Since my experience is that those people are here trying honestly to convert us. But not really wanting to disrupt the community, it might work. We could even make a small sign, like if we need to answer something. We just answer what we care, and roll our eyes on the repetitive bits. I wonder if we start to do it all, as a community, how funny that would be . But the funny thing is that before those incidents happened, some months ago, I was seriously interested in learning more about Buddhism. I even ordered the book from Ingram from Amazon which is next to me on the table right now (the book, not Amazon). All this gave me quite the creep. I said it, it started feeling like the discussion with evangelical christians. They go in circles, and the person you are discussing with will never give in, because consider his/her duty to save you. So with all this preaching what they obtained from me was quite the opposite. How interesting!

Could I change my vote? I voted No, Buddhists can express their disagreement and explanations in every thread, its fine. which expressed well what I felt at the time. Now I would rather get any other option.

Why don't you test it? So far you only had the glimpse of something, but to be scientific you need to go through the long (and boring) of setting up an experiment, predict what will happen, run the experiment, and observe how what you predicted, and what was going to happen where different. And you need to do this a number of times. Say 100. So that you can get some statistical data on what you are observing. Now it is very important that you do not fall into a trap. A trap that many non scientists people tend to fall into when they start doing science. That is the trap of ignoring the results we don't like. You need to decide when the experiment will start, how many times you will run it, then you run it, and then you observe. You don't just run it, and ignore the ones you don't like (or forget, you need to take note of all the times your run the experiment, and of every single card that came out). Also you need to make sure that you are fair respect to when you stop the experiment. This is why you need to decide before hand how long should it last. Finally, in your prediction, you should be aware that no experiment will come out as an exact average. The phrase I once found was "on average nothing is average" which I think is true and gives the idea. Now for this you would be better to speak with a realt statistician. SOmeone who can tell you how far from the exact average is ok, and how far should your alarm bell start to ring. This is really important. I remember a paper where they studied the effects of prayer "to the judeo-christian God" on the effects on health. So they took those people in the hospital, measured their health, and then asked them to pray. I don't remember how much, and how long where the experiment lasting. Once the experiment was over they measured all the vital caracteristics. And they compared with the measures done before. And then out of all the possible things that could have gone better, they discovered that the average of how the kidney (or was it bladder) worked was sensibly better. SO they produced a paper claiming that praying the judeo christian God was good for the kidney and bladder. Where is the error? That because they checked all the measurements, each of them was not going to be exactly on average. If the number of different measurements that you are measuring is big enough, your are bound to meet one which is an outlier. Just because statistically it happens. If they did it again, they would probably found that now the Judeo Christian God was good for something else (say the heart, or the knee, or the cerebro-spinal fluid, or...). In short their paper was not giving us any real better predictiva ability that we had before. And this is why it is important to get a statistician involved. Because it is really easy to reach false conclusions. You mention you have studied statistics at the uni, so maybe you might not need a statistician. I would. My math degree did not cover stats nearly at all. BTW, here is a wonderful talk that again express how easy it is to get statistics wrong when we just follow our intuition. But please do not consider that I am trying to stop you. Quite the contrary. Scientists are normal people. Just get paper and pen, make some calculations, predict, then take the tarot cards, and try to see how does reality compares to our mechanicistical view of reality. Then once you have discovered something, you need to measure it, test it and reproduce it. So now suppose you found that the Tarot card The Judgment appears much more often then usual. Then you need to make new predictions, basing yourself on your new understanding of the world. You now predict that The Judgment will appear more often. So you go through the 100 times again (this would be good to do it twice). And you see if you are correct. If you are (both times you run the full experiment your prediction was sensibly better than reality) you probably have a paper. But what if the next time the outlier is not The Judgment. Now we have a problem. It could be that the Tarots are reflecting the fact that reality has changed, or simply that in every statistical series of draws you always have some anomalies. And that is statistically ok, and statistically predictable (have I already mention to keep a statistician next to you?). How do you test that? If the statistician cannot tell you, you can still use an empirical method. You take another set of 21 cards. Not the taror. And then repeat the experiment with those cards. You repeat it 100 times *3. And then compare. Do you find the same level of outliers in those cards (and thus the problem is a statistical problem) or do you find that those produce a sensibly different pattern. If this is the case, you have the ground to suspect that the Tarot cards are the culprit. My take is that you will find outliers, that those outliers will be different from series of experiment to the other, and that if you try with non Tarot card you will have the same outliers. BUT if you try with non tarot cards without writing down every card (both in the Tarot and in the non Tarot) you will not see the outliers. This is because your mind has a tendency to remember images, and stick with them. More than remembering particular numbers out of 21. Try it, test it, and let us know. Seriously.

It is really cool. Now let's talk tech: is it a machine by itself, or it connects with a computer? What OS? ALso Mac? Also what kind of software/program are available? Maybe we could make an open source program that works with it. Part of the problem is that when your eyes are open you can't go very deep. So we would need to use some different feedbacks. Like sound.

Good. So we finally agree on something. How interesting, I think you are right, faith can produce experience. Of course is a process that we can readily recognise when it happens in others. It is very hard to recognise in one's self. Mostly because the faith gets in the way. So your personal experience is corroborated by the Dharma, The Sangha (not all the TB Sangha, I suppose ;-), but we are Taoists), and the Buddhas. While the Evangelical's experience is corroborated by the Bible, the Church (as the community) and the Christian's Saints. I am still having a hard time in seeing the difference. But I am sure you will explain me in your next, enlightening, post. What are you trying to convince me of? Just that there is an objective world. Honestly not much. Do you feel that people call you a failure if they deny your spiritual achievements? In any case since we probably should stop. Take care, Pietro

Thanks, but it's just a stub. I would love the other people from the Water Method that hunt TB to come and give a help. One of the thing which I really need to do is a page for the main teachers and for the teachings. This will give a better sense of the whole thing.

This is a post I wrote in the favorite quote section (page 1). I think it just fits here perfectly, in our discussion of with Vajrahridaya. The post was originally wrote the 23 of October 2005. A sign that my point of view hasn't changed much in the last 4 years. To his credit I have to admit that Vajrahridaya is not that bad, he does try to refer to a community of people that supposedly understand him, are understood by him, and share his experience about reality. It's just that every discussione ends up either into "this is what I believe" or "this is what I have experienced", and on this he is not much better than the New Agers described here.

I appreciate you trying to find a common ground, so I will not comment on this further. Vajrahridaya, if you are going to take just one thing out of my message I would like you to take this: When you train yourself as a scientist (but also as an archeologists, and an anthropologist, I know this because my mediatition teacher is an an archeologist, and he corrects me when I fail on this), you train yourself to doubt, and ask unconfortable questions. In particular you eventually realise that it is not enough to experience something to prove its existance. Let me repeat it: experiencing something does not prove its existance. I could enter into more details, but I would water down this message. Ok the lottery has too many people's thought attached to it. What about just letting me find a lot of money. Or find an old gem. I could then sell it for the same amount of money. And it would not crash into anyone else believe system. no comment needed so unless I believe what you believe I do not know the truth. no comment needed SO we reached the point that you believe something because you have experienced. ANd you will not accept anybody else critcism, because they had not have this experience. And then since you believe the experience are the ultimate proof or reality, you consider that what you experienced is real. How is this different from what any evangelical Christian tells me, or what any person under the effect of an allucinogenic drug experiences? Or I might simply not believe that experience is the ultimate proof of reality. leaving aside the term "lift" which is charged (it means that we are unworthy, or generally less valid), you are saying something. You had some experiences, and those experiences are validated by a community of people. So you see, also you do not really believe that experience by itself is the ultimate test. Hmm, "I believe the language of the Buddha" does not really mean much: You believe a statement in a language. You don't believe the language. But your general statement sounds like: I will be with my friends Buddhas that understand me, and you will be with all the other people. Yeah, taht is fine, except that I know enlightened being with which I have no problems to discuss with. Why is it that if we are discussing, and I fail to convince you, and you fail to convince me. My failure to be convinced is due to my attachment to my view, while your failure to be convinced is due to your enlightened experience, and you being part of an enlightened group of people? Great, invite her to join the discussion! I am always happy to discuss with collegues. I tend to be as blunt, direct and unforgiving in the academic field as I am here. But as a professor she is probably used to the academic dialectic so she will not leave any openings in her discourse. I am sure we all can learn a lot from this. If she is too busy to participate (most professors usually are), maybe she can still read our exchange and then comment to you.

Vajrahridaya, I am not saying you are crazy. It is you instead who say that I just cannot understand (thus attacking me, instead of my argument), instead of admitting that it is on your side the responsability to explain yourself clearly. Honestly, you don't know what I have, or have not achieved. You just assume I am a newbie, because you hear me speaking as a kick ass materialist. More philosophy. I am still waiting for my lottery winning ticket. Ah, now you clain that not only you understand reality better than me, but you claim you understand what is my Karmic situation that stops me from experiencing reality as you (that is, correctly). It does not matter who shares a believe system. The fact that more people share it does not make it more real. People thought that the earth was round for millenia, the earth remained round. you don't know what I know Again you use your experience card: if only I had that experience you had then I too would share this believe system. And the fact that I don't share it is the prove that I haven't had that particular experience. Except that you don't know what I haven't experienced, and thus you are just guessing Plus the fact that a certain experience gives you a certain view of the world does not make that real. Take a bit of LSD, jump out of a window trying to fly, you are still going to die. That is the difference! For you is practice, while I am honestly trying to connect with another human being. And is frustrating because this human being keeps on speaking in tongue.

Well, I got a Phd in bioinformatics and I have to say my BS detector is shouting at full blast when reading even a few lines of those. Can you show me any article in a peer to peer international journal that speaks about it.

Leon, why don't you register, and join the efforts on the wiki website? I am sure Stig will not mind, and the wiki would enjoy your efforts.

No. Being in academic I need to explain complex things all the time. I know the difference between trying to look cool, and really trying to get the other person to understand you. Part of the later require to be really explicit. SInce my teacher is also able to explain complex meditative issues in a similar way, I reached the conclusion that all this mistery about spiritual mater is generated by people trying to explain what they don't really understand. Ok, so at least now is a claim that makes sense. Now to accept that it is true we would have to enter into the buddhist believe system, but you have already explained to me that it is a believe system that is based upon the mystery card and the experience card, so we are not going there. At least I see what you are saying. I am not sure you can mirror consciousness with ignorance. Like light and darkness only superficially they mirror each other. But light is composed of particles, but darkness is not. Darkness is a lack of something. It's a privative. As such I am really doubtful that you can make this comparison. Thanks, but no thanks. When I want to read poetry I read poetry. Trying to read intuitively is the central way to feel good about yourself, and be in a real big confusion. No real understanding comes from there. I will read what you say line by line, and make sense of it, or protest. Or I will ignore your posts in block. Your choice. No, it's not. Or please prove it to me by making me win the lottery. Because honestly I wouldn't mind having a few million dollars. ok Boh!

Wow, really? Which pope? Can you give us a reference?

Ok, what you are saying makes no sense to me. And the first problems are in this first phrase. 1) You take "ignorance" as the subject. How can ignorance do something? Even when we say "ignorance is spreading in society" what we mean is "people who know stuff are dying without passing on their knowledge". It is not ignorance that does something, people who are ignorant or not do something so that the end result is that ignorance is said to do something. 2) you say "a process that ignorance has" you mean that "a process that ignorance has to go through " or you are saying that ignorance is going through right now. In all cases I do not see how can ignorance be the subject. 3) you speak about being "dense 3 dimensions". Man is that how you usually spoke at school? I can see how this might have given you some problems. What do you mean to be "dense 3 dimensions"? Can you not explain yourself using simpler terms? Ok, so this was the first phrase, I'll spare you the others. I am cool to discuss but please try to speak in a way that makes sense to non buddhists. One thing I learned from my teacher is that it is possible to explain complex meditative issues in a way that everybody understand them. The effort is on the speaker side, not so much on the listener side. And when this is not done it is either because the person who explains is lazy or because he does not want people to understand or because he does not have them clear himself, or maybe because he thinks that people can understand jargon. I will assume you think I can uderstand your jargon. Please do not assume so.

Yes in China. I am not discussing individual attainment from this or that practitioner, more like the role that eventually in society the group of people were covering. I just love how those ego liberated respond to a bit of ego poking. Actually is very repetitive. Each chapter is of the structure: We know from this and this teaost book that ... and then from this taoist book that ... I laugh at that and... and then he sums up the believes, and find how they lead to inconsistent or problematic world view. AFter a few chapters you usually put it down. One was: -we know from this book that Lao Tzu's head is this star (A) -we know from this other book that Lao Tzu's foot is this other star (, -I laugh at this and recall that we know from this and this that star A is nearer the ground than start B, (now criminal were usually being left hanging by the feet as part of their punishment) so I wonder what had Lao Tzu has done to be so punished. I don't remember how many chapter, but it's quite a big book. It was written by one of the emperor helpers when the emperor was interested in making the whole empire Taoist. The emperor was so angry he ordered the destruction of all the books (some obviously survived). But the helper was lucky to come out with his head still attached to his neck. Some years later the taoist responded to that book, but by then the emperor had decided not to make taoism that important in society. In any case my copy of the book (bought when it was not that expensive) is now in Italy. I will bring it to Portugal with all my other Tao books. Then you are welcome to visit me any time you want. You can also stay here for some time, and relax and meditate in Portugues countryside.

I don't know who the guy is, but generally when I see someone post as their first post something that is either in moderation, or an advanced but embarassing question, I usually think it's a long term member that is wearing a mask not to show that he is bothered by certain people, or that he hasn't reached certain attaimnents that the community might think he has. There is a lot of face, and loss of face, involved in this community. More like: "...so you father said that he could do it for hours and never ejaculate, and that how you were born" ;-)

Buddhists and Daoists have debated for centuries. Usually in front of the emperor of China. Those were real debates. The winner would get the temples, and all the nuns/monks had to shave/grow their hair. Usually the buddhists were much better. I still don't know how we really managed to get white cloud temple. (Yeah, I know the story, I meant what really happened). The reason why the Buddhist were much better was because debate is part of their training. They had universities in India where they would learn to debate. Think Christina monks debating the sex of the angels and the number of angels on a pinhead. On the other hand Daoists are much better with their body and in the bedroom. We are the ones that recover the buddhists when they go nuts, and totally ungrounded. I suppose each has its own specific. In any case part of the reason why Daoism tend to be quite pragmatic those days is because we have been humiliated enough during the middle ages. For an example check: "Laughing at the Tao". Although you might need to come over here, for the copy sold by amazon costs more than a year of 1 to 1 training with a lineage master.

Wheren't you the guys good about trascending dualism? When did you lose that?