Pietro

Thank you, YM for providing such a great defence of my writing. In this case asanjuan is correct. I did infer that the new religion would be more superficial, and thus contain less value for the someone approaching it, than the other two (so new age taoist, would be less interesting than original taoism on the one side or christianity, on the other). The idea that things are either hierarchical, on a single dimension (like money), or different but equal, like all the colors that has the same brightness, is reductive. In mathemathics, for example, you can have what are called "Partially Ordered Set", which means that some two elements are one better (higher, bigger, whatever you are measuring) than the other, and some others are not. I do not have the time right now to enter into a detail answer to your message asanjuan. I will try to do so later today. Thank you, Pietro

Breakfast is circling Around the table. Grab! Grab! The chick by the neck!

durkhrod chogori, gave a great answer. It is not just this or that. There are many tonalities. And it surely is interesting to hear what a person from a lineage who devoted their lives to understand and embody the principles of this book has to say. On this board, for what concerns me, there will always be a place for people who just read the TTC and feel drawn to it. As well as a place for martial artists, who think that unless you can use those principles to knock out n number of opponents you have not really understood and embodied them. As a well as a place for strict meditators, sometimes whith extended Buddhist experience, who see meditation as the royal way toward the Tao. As well as a place for Chi Gung people who use energy and moving energy as their understanding. And for people who are a bit of all the previous. And let us not forget the for celibates and the internal alchemists. The term Tao Bum represents that this place is not the house of a single school. But people come over here from different schools, and some people will have experience from more than one. We are not closing any door, we are just opening up a new wing. A wing that was missing from a long time. As this happen, if this happens correctly, there will be a lot of adjustments, with a lot of new information. And it will not only be us having to adjust. Craig gave a great answer to Mak, explaining how people are expected to behave in our community. This is not Mak school, nor it is his temple either. But is a place where he can share what he knows, and we (most of us) desire that he can feel welcomed. It's like a family. You don't share everything with everybody in your extended family. And you, by and large, have not chosen it. But you have many things in common, and you just avoid passing too much time with the people who do not like too much in your family

Thank you. And keeping on the topic, can FU be sent (say in a letter)? Would it be possible for people to ask for a FU to bless a house, or a meditation room, and have it sent to them? Or does it have to be passed down from a hand to a Taoist to a hand of a Taoist? Of course we assume that the letter does not get opened. I am asking this with something in mind, as I am moving (again) I might have this time a meditation room. Maybe I could prepare the energies of the room in a more traditional way.

Yes, but is there a continuity between the east and the west? Were there people from the Taoist tradition who passed down the book and its meaning, who came to the west, and as it mingled with western culture, it started a different interpretation (like you have in Buddhism, from my partial understanding). Or is it that Chrisitan monks brought the three books (TTC, ZZ, IC) from China and people from here used them coming with their interpretation. Which still is based on them (but often from translations from people who also were also not Taoists). But then there would be no continuity with the original tradition. You mention Christianity, Christianity evolved over time but in the same general area. When it would expand in an area it would do this by having different people going there. And when new branches were created a lot of discussion was involved. Even when a single person started a branch (say Lutero), the discussion around him was strong and vivid. All this made sure that no single person had a huge impact on the development of the tradition. It is ok when a single person have this impact, if this person is a sage, or a wise man (Jesus, Buddha, Ta Mo). But to simply let any traveller who reaches a new land start his own version of a religion, and expect that to have equal value than the original on the one side, and the native in that land, on the other, is according to me a bit naive.

Hi YM, sorry, I still don't have it clear. Do I understand correctly that it mainly depends on the school. And in some school talismans are really important, and the Taoist Clergy are supposed to know it. While in others they have a secondary importance and students of the Tao can avoid to study them. Or do all sects give this sort of freedom. Pietro

Thanks to all those that are sharing their knowledge. Is the art of writing Fu a fundamental knowledge for a Taoist, or a complementary? And for a Taoist Priest? It is my understanding that there is quite a strict division where the Taoist Priest must know how to write the Fu, and no one else, but him. Or are the boundaries less strict, where a Taoist Priest might not know or specialize in Fu writing (say he is not personally interested), and someone else in the social community who is more interested does them, instead. Thanks for any pointer, Pietro

From an historical point of view, as a cultural fenomena at least, it surely is more deserving to be called Taoism. I think it is more on you the weight to prove that what you call taoism is taoism. Especially if it is based on your personal understanding of a book that was written in another time, in another culture, and in a language that you probably ignore. Craig, very good points. I simpathise with your work of trying to promote a dialogue.

He is not teaching how to use them. He is just sharing about it. This is a prerequisite before even contemplating to learn this "stuff". Understanding all this will let us understand if (a.) we want to be a taoist priest (there is a number of people on this board that have asked about it, in the last months.); and not necessarily with him. (b.) understand if we want to get involved in other ways (for example asking for a blessing before a retreat). Plus since this tradition should be coming from the same root as the one we are studying, then we might discover striking similarities between this material, and other material we are studying. I mentioned the case of "Jelousy" in the other thread, remember? Sometimes things have an use which is not direct. I, for once, learned that altars are passed down through the lineage. And there is a difference between a taoist which is just used for worship and lineage altars (and maybe there are others too). Also it can be useful if you find your name on a red cloth with some weird looking chinese character arounds. It might mean that you are in trouble. In short I think you are going way too fast. At the moment this gentleman is presenting to us the elements of his world. Some of us might learn to use them. Some might not. But in any case, since this is the world of taoism, the world were the meditations that you find so dear came from, it is still interesting. Take a modern meditation like the 6 healing sounds, as teached by Mantak Chia. This is actualy a very old meditation (you find references of it in th Ge Hong, which is available at least in Italian, I think also in English), and the sounds (from what I have understood) were the actual names of the spirits of the various organs. Can you see how this knowledge might give rise to insights, understandings, and comprehension about the taoist world that go beyond the mere "doing something right now"? Relax, absorb, and be grateful for the opportunity to be exposed to something unusual.

To avoid keep on using a thread that was not devoted to this topic, I start a new one. If you want to read the previous messages on this topic, please refer to this thread. And this is an example of what I am looking to get: except that what I am aiming for, has 64 bars (instead of 18? there?). And an horizonatal graph below that measures the correlation between right and left hemisphere. I think the firm that produces it is this: http://www.elemaya.com/Default.htm But they only produce it for windows. ( I emailed them some time ago and they were not interested at all to expand their product) sorry to hear so. I could not see the video, but the last one seemed to have some more serious stuff. I downloaded "sbagen", and even another binaural beat (custom binaural beat) on the ipod. This must be doing something because it definitly has a very pronunced laxative effect.

wow! Really fucking cool! I might decide to put some money away for this. It looks that between the eeg and the software we are speaking of a couple of thousand dollars. A lot, but not impossible. Thanks

I think we should start another thread. Instead of keep on abusing of this one. Can you program it? A "video game" sounds very cool, but also very shallow respect to what could be done with it. And honestly Deepak Chopra isn't exactly my kind of Guru Why is the person selling it?

Of one's own death? Maybe. But I fear that your action might cause this person to stop sharing with this community. And I would love to keep on hearing what he has to say. Even if I already have a teacher, even if there is not one possibility in the world that I could study with him. I just find his lessons fascinating, as they help me understand better about the other lessons I am receiving. And I think other people are in a similar situation. So I would like to ask you to just phrase your comments in a way that does not feel to harsh. And if this is not possible that you refrain from adding a particular comment. Zhuang zi speaks about expressing emotions. Not about lieing. And he surely does not say that you should always say what your heart wants to. And you know why? Because in the warring state period (when ZZ was written) you would not be alive for long if you were not able to keep some of your comments for yourself. -Lord: this guy has a weird face, he looks like a thief. Torture him and his kids until he says what he has stolen. -Soldier: we did so, but they all died under torture before speaking. -Lord: too bad, he should have confessed immediately. By the way, my dear Taoist, what do you think of my way of governing -Taoist: You are so good my lord. Now can I go fishing? You see what I mean? This is what was the situation in China for many many years. It is not a case that ZZ does not say that you need to speak your heart. Just avoid expressing fake emotions. It is different. Daoists were in general rarely the religious or philosophical group in power. Often Confucianists and Buddists where the personal advisors of the lords. We understand the art of being diplomatic. Ok?

Oh boy, a man. Any man! Woman, think they know how to play the game from a male side. But the game is not symmetric. What is good to pick up men (just be yourself) is a lousy suggestion for 98% of men to pick up women (there's a 2% of naturals out there). I tell you more, women do not even understand much about their side of the equation (a), because so much pleasure for them is to be swept out of their feet. When they feel they know what is going on, they lose interest. This guy has been himself all along. And of course this begets the question "which self?". But the result he had were less than what he wanted. Should he keep on doing more of the same? At least he should ask himself, what self does he wants to embody. And here you are, you have moved from just being yourself, to working on yourself, reaching for yourself, looking for yourself, and working also on your image (gasp!), on your way of interacting with the opposite sex (if I tell each girl I love them and want to have sex, they think I am cute and just want to be my friend? Duh? But I was just being myself). Luckily most of you do not believe this BS about just being yourself, if not you would not be giving him advices along side. You know who is really good on picking up women? A woman. A lesbian. They are really good players because they need to be so good to convince a women who thinks at herself as being etherosexual to move at least to thinking at herself as being bi-sexual. Now that needs a lot of attraction to pull that off. But normal etherosexual women? They are terrible. And they think they are good. There is a myth that they are good. Which is part of the problem. Yes they have extra senses to pick up what is going on. And extra parts of the brain to process the social situation (. But this does not help them to help a man. Because the social world a man lives into is so fundamentally different. And when a man can make them intruigued even above and beyond their extra senses, now they are really interested. And who was this guy being? "His PU self", no one else! NOTE: If you read carefully you would have noticed that statement (a) and statement ( are in apparent contraddiction. And yet I would stand by both of them. I think it is just that the reality of social interaction is very complex. Hi Shon, that is mostly to get competent. Things balances out eventually. Take care, Pietro EDIT for clarification (subject, verb )

That's a possibility. Another possibility is that you think you can discern if what other people say is coming from their heart, and you don't get it always right. Now, if you consider that when many people think that you have been an... sorry, I mean when you have not acted out of your higher self, they might be right, this should at least give you a resonable doubt that you might give other people a bigger chance. That's at least another possibility.

If you knew they were doing it on you, they were not (yet) good.

Hi, thanks for getting back to me. The programs are: mindwave, mindfreak and BinauralBeat. mindwave, mindfreak are produced by the same company with mindfreak for crazy stuff: astral projection, crazy high, out of body, 3drd eye float and weightless mindwave is more on the healthy side: study aid, sleep induction, relaxation, deep meditation, coffee, mentally refreshed, and many more and binauralbeat let you put a binauaral tone on the background of some more "usual" sounds like birds flying, or ants singing, and so on. None of them let you really control the binaural tone. (although there is a new binauralbeat available). All those things are on my totest when I have time list, somwhere on the second or third chapter. Your program seem to be the real deal. But is neuro programmer, right? Nero programmer gives me no results. Too bad is only for windows. To tell you the truth what I am really looking forward is eventually getting a brain olotester, one of those things that you plug in your head (there should be an usb behind the ear, I assume, but I never could find one ) and measure the brain wave activity. The brain olotester is nice, and they made some nice experiments. Unfortunately it is not precise enough to be considered valid from a university perspective which is why it is so cheap, and which is why the results are not considered. There should also be somwhere a machine that gets your brain wave, transforms them into sound and feeds them back to you. Imagine making love with a girl where you are hearing her brain waves and she is hearing yours. ;-)

Thanks. I never used those sounds before. Except for a couple of time. There are two or three programs for the iphone who give them. Each program have maybe 10 different sounds. Have you tried them? What's your take? P.

Hi Bum G., Hmm, you might need to look at the link you provided. As it is right now it only let a person look into their rapidshare folder. So that is the url that you need to use to take back the file. Is not the one that we need to use. Looking forward to hear yur files, Pietro

I have to say, I am amazed by this thread. Way to go! I am very grateful with Ya Mu for bringing this up. And yes I too was taken aback by the level of disrespect toward the taoist priest. But I also have to agree on a number of points that were raised (for example by "fiveelementtao") : He did came here looking for new members of his church and he did not expressedly say so. Which I thought was funny for a person so hung up in always telling the truth. . His attitute was really the attitute of "I know, you poor westerner do not know". He showed no sign of respect for anybody else here. Or for their school, for that matter. He did say that school in China respect and recognise each other. Using the hand sign as a way to recognise the various traditions. So he must have assumed that no one of us was studying in an authentic tradition. He did ask, on one of his early posts, who was already studying with a Taoist Master. And no one I recall answered to that. But this is no tell-tale. Especially in Taoism where people do keep their practices for themselves, and sometimes are also bound by vows to do so. I am also very grateful for """Our Man in Havana""", YMWong , who could tell tell us how this kind of school are popular in Hong Kong, and they are "modern Reformed daoist". (And you thought Christians had too many denominations, wait until we meet the reborn taoist, and the late day immortals taoists. They are bound to be there, somwhere). It is really important to keep things in perspective to know what is the real situation where a person is coming from, to judge if the way he is describing himself is also the way others would be describing him. It is very easy for a person to move from one country to another, and be called a master over there. It has happened, it is happening, and it will keep on happening. But I also thought that what he was presenting was very interesting. The lions, and the greetings, and so on. I think if this group wants to grow we need to be able to attract a more diverse crowd, a crowd that includes religious taoists, and philosophers, and martial artists, and healers, with most if not all of them being meditators. We need to be able to interact with every new school or tradition explaining how our plurality of visions is not to be seen as barren land to be conquered, but as a complex inter-related society. A sociey which will be very interested (by and large), to hear them; a society where they might even find some students; but also a society which historically many school has tried to conquer in one sweep, and have always failed to do so. We have by now developed our antibodies to external schools which makes us fall less into a daze every time a new Master comes around. In the measure in which we are able to comunicate this, we are not going to see the Tao Bum rock like a crazy boat every time a new school arrives, but we are going to interact with them in a respectful way, learning from them. Integrating some of what they are saying, and maybe also sharing something of what we might know. And I think this Taoist Priest is a good man; yes he believes that his school is the best, but com'on who doesn't . I think if we were to present him this unified position, he might be willing and interested to keep on posting. And maybe he might shift his point of view just enough not to expect that everybody is going to run asking for an initiation to him. By the way, I do feel also a bit responsible: when he started interacting with us I went to his website and then posted a message saying that his program might become quite popular around here. If he read it, this might have influenced his attitude. "goldisheavy", Anabhogya-Carya, please understand that in this board each of us has a lot of power. Especially respect to new people. By posting a few angry comment you can really turn back a person from posting. Now you might not care about what a person is saying, and you might not agree with him, but you need to interact in a way that does not prevent other people from enjoying their interaction. Often just by rephrasing your critic in a less harsh way, you can let the message come across. Now, we olders of the board will just ignore this behaviour if it is done against us, but new people will often walk away. Especially people who either are used to be very respected or expect to be very respected. Independently if you feel this respect is well earned or not. If the present Pope were to come here we would interact with him in a civilized way. We would probably strongly disagree with him on a number of points (like why he swore to follow the Concilio Vaticano II, and then ignored it, or parts of it), but we will act with him in a civilised way that would not stop the conversation from happening.

Vortex, way to go! I did not had the heart to tell it. The dark side B;-) The video is not reachable from here, But I think you were pointing at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDcNjhYJLwg I could write so much...

well, according to what we seem to have discovered the tao te ching was not written all at once, but was generated through a process of continuous refinements of notes passed down. This seem to be the case from the fact that we found different versions of the tao te ching, in tombs from that period. For sure the order was different. And I am not sure if the content was always the same. Then from a certain point onward all the TTJ found were of the same kind. It is as if an agreed version have been reached, and then all version from then onward were pretty much the same. Now archeologists seem to see in this process of continuous refinement a proof that a text was not originally a work of a single great mind, but a work of a school, or of a series of masters, or maybe a tradition. This because when a work IS the single work of a single man, everybody takes great care not in changing a single word. Does this make the Tao Te Jing become a less important work, in your eyes?