Pietro

I'll be technical.. According to what we are taugh. Male to male homosexuality is not ok. Female to female is ok and is called polishing mirrors. It actually increases the yin. To be VERY technical what is not ok in male to male homosexuality is butt fucking. That is what harms the energetic system. And yes, we did ask to Bruce if it was ok for a women to butt fuck a man using a Dildo (that was the first question from many of the more masculine ladies, hemm). Yes, that's fine, because although she is the one with the dildo, energetically she is still the yin side. We were also told that there is a group of male homosexual in china, but they keep to themselves and (as we were told), write "weird things indeed". I know Bruce has only one vow, and that is that he is not allowed to teach to a male homosexual, that living near S.Francisco must be quite an effort. We also asked what was exactly that happened when man have sex with other men. We were told that something in the energetic structure change (I understood something that has to do with compassion) so that IF that man become politically powerful he could cause the death of many million people. Taoists have observed this pattern recuring over the centuries, so now they don't teach to male homosexual... just in case. And I think Bruce had to go through, with his teacher, the whole history of China, and how this person caused those deaths, and that person caused those other, and so on. As such, if you intend to learn from Bruce and you have had homosexual experiences, he, being in the modern world, practically follows a philosophy of don't ask-don't tell. So just shut up or he would be forced to throw you out of the class or stop teaching (forever?). Late Addendum: I am off to Germany for a week of workshop with Bruce. I have been waiting for this workshop to come up for a few years now, so I am quite happy. I will not check the board regularly until the second week of November. It all depends on how easy it is to find an internet connection. So if you have any comment on the above, don't expect me to answer them.

Taomeow, we, men, don't chat: we communicate.

I feel very similar. But there are few things I noticed.. A) not everybody is a small talk fan. You can often spot those people just by looking in their eyes, or hearing the depth of their voice. You will probably end up cultivating those relationships up to the point that you seriously consider flying 20 hours just for an evening of chat with a good friend. B)there is a number of ways to break through small talk. You heard some before. I am right now in Ireland. Here every time I buy something they ask me: "how are you". We don't use to in Italy, so it feels very strange. I normally look at them in the eyes, answer truthfully, and still looking at them, I ask:".. and how are you?". They often ask to thousands of people in one day, and no one ever asks them back. This normally cuts through the first ice, although we just moved from no comunication to small talk. C) some people also answer "how are you" "do you really want to know or you are just asking to be nice". Said it right this can get you through the small talk with all those that have an ear, and a mouth connected to the heart. my personal difficulty right now is that although I hate small talk, I tend never to do it, and this makes people unconfortable. I am always felt as being too intense for most people. Also consider that you might be more mature than your years. Although many people never mature, you might consider having conversations with older people. Like you are having right now, here. Just there. Now let's cut the crap: So how are you supposed to love people if you expect them to be like you want them to be?

Sometimes you are brilliant. I so want to do this now.

Even if that was it would not be a problem. In any case I suspect that under this definition some unicellular being, who can live in all temperatures, produce all its aminoacids, get energy from glucose, lactose and maybe even sunshine are way in front. Plus how do you measure unicellular beings who exchange useful pieces of dna. As Brian Goodwin says: they had internet from a long time

Sorry, you are right. I was so folded up in my own reasoning that I did not notice we were essentially agreeing. Fact is that I saw this quote at least a decade ago that claimed that you could define being "more evolved" as being adapted to a wider range of environment. I don't remember the exact phrasing, I don't know where I read it, nor who came out with it first. I have asked around to scientists and philosophers who study evolution (the scientists) and study the study of evolution (guess who, the philosophers). But none seem to know it. I think it is fascinating, but unless I find the origin of it I can't use it in my work. Somehow I hoped you might have read that, too. Yeah: is intelligent design a scientific theory? No. It is an undisprovable claim. That's one

w.w.w.wa.wa.wa.wait: Having a direction does not imply having a goal. I never heard of a scientist say that evolution had a goal. I did heard some say that it had a general direction from more simple organisms to more complex ones. With this I am not saying that multicellular are necessarily more complex than unicellular. But for example that in general, if you take yourself (A), a unicellular being that is around now (B ), and the common ancestor between you and the unicellular being ( C). That is C being a unicellular being of a few billion years ago, then C would be simpler, than A and B. Also althoug evolution does not depend on time, it does depend on the number of generations. Unicellular being reproduce every few hours, sometimes once a day. You reproduce every 30 years. So the number of generations between you and C is much lower than the number of generations between B and C. In other words B had more generations to adapt to its environment from the common point than A (you, and your line of ancestors). Both you and A need 20 aminoacids to live. You can produce 12 of them, and need to take the remianing 8 from food. Where as many unicellular being (sorry, I am not a microbiologist, the following was assured to me by one) can produce most of them from simple molecules, like sugar alone. Speak about being vegetarians, those unicellular beings are glucose-arians. You neet a temperature between 15 and 60 degrees to survive, they can easily live between 4 and 90 degrees, or even more. So, in this respect a unicellular being B is more evolved to its environment than you. And you both are more evolved than C. Note, by the way, that although according to this pov there seem to be a general direction, in no way is evolution monotonous in pursuing that. In other words, take vitamin C. No really, "go, take vitamin C, you need it!". Most animals are able to synthesize their own vitamin C. Most (all?) primates are not. We cannot, and this is why we need to take it from oranges, and meat (internal organs, as Eskimo take it). We were able to synthesize it, many generations ago. But then we were eating so much from the environment (while we were on the trees), that the genes to synthesize it started to mutate, and was no longer able to do it. But since we were having it from the environment it wasn't so much evolutionary disadvantageous. And then when we left the trees, we had to find other ways to get is, or we had to keep collecting it from the trees. So, no goal, but does it have a general direction? I would say that is not a black and white answer.

You are probably right. But being in the academic and studying evolution I have heard scientists claim both that it has a direction and that it does not have a direction. Someone tried to claim that it has no direction for chemists, while it had a direction for biologists. So I wonder: you say this is what the theory of evolution "says". Where does it say so? I am really tring to understand, because as you would suspect I am very interested in the topic. After all we would agree that being smart is not necessarily such an evolutionary smart thing (at least we seem to proove it just this century). But there might be other measures. Measures for which cockraoches and bacteria are above us. And thus would outlast us. For example, what about range of environment for which you are able to survive and thrive. This would make most bacteria way ahead of us. I am just thinking aloud, but if you do have definite, references, or just interesting exchange on the topic please feed them on. Pietro

Thanks, but my statement is more universal. Using feelings to ascertain what is real from what is not is not ok in general. As such I am saying that in general to do that is bad. You see Cam, for as much as you sometimes might like, we don't live in different universes. Next time you trample, try to repeat, "I am not a scientist, I am not a scientist, I am not a scientist", and see if this will permit you to avoid falling. Again I insist, please read the book On Bullshit. Don't take this as a personal offence, I am not single-ing you out, it is a very common error in our post modern society.

oh boy, another reptilian tread. It was well due time. My feeling is that feelings are not a good way to find out what is real and what is not. May I suggest the two books On Bullshit & On Truth from Harry G. Frankfurt.

Well, I heard it from at least two sources. One being Jarred Diamond, the second being Vilhjalmur Stefansson, captain who described the life of the Eskimo people before they started eating western style, having lived with them. And I do think (but I am not an anthropologist) that the consensus is that hunter gatherers lived a long and healthy life. The idea of the short and bruttish life coming from some philosophers in the 19th century. But with agriculture things went downhill (but was necessary, or at least you could not go back) because agriculture gives you more food (of less quality, but still you feed more people), than hunting. Industry was from there an improvement. BTW (sorry for the sidetrack), have you read Guns, Germs and Steel, from Diamond? Really interesting. And especially it explains in a direct way how the land you are in defines the kind of economy you tend to get, and from this the society that is developed. With richer lands generating enough surplus in the economy that they always build up casts, poiticians, even merchants. While poorer countries where everybody have to find their own food every day simply does not permit such 'luxuries'.

Hi, sorry, I though I answered that. You can't really discuss cross cultural issues unless you have solved this problem first. Our opinions on this are too polarised. Or you could have the girls and cameron giving one answer, and the boys giving another. Which I suppose is fine. But then we can as well have two different threads.

I wish I had the time to make a more prominent contribution to this thread. But I (predictibly for those that know me) stand next to Vortex in everything he has written so far. In particular, is so precise! I also want to thank arnquist for this: It truly made me realise how sick is this way of dealing with discussion. Who gives a fuck if you or I am offended. If what I claim about you is true, than you have offended yourself with your behaviour, and if what you say about me is true, than I have offended myself. energy goes where the blockage is. We went there because we have work to do there to bring on a smoothness in our pov. Once that is done, cross cultural issues become much easier. Until then you will have a split position also in cross cultural issues

Yes, I was totally blown away by his work when I saw his first speach. I see him as the guy who is giving birth to a new biology. One that has predictive abilities, like physics, and not just descritpive abilities like it had for the last hundreds of years. I am pretty sure he will win the Nobel prize for his work some time soon. And for the non academists, Nature is considered a very high ranked journal. It is very hard to get a paper in Nature. So someone who sais: "any of my Nature papers will do", is indirectly telling you how succesful his work has been. By the way the link I put before, the one from video google, is of a talk quite similar to the one I have seen. Same non existant power point, same hand written slides, same concepts, even same structure of the talk. I just spent 1 hour looking at that, again.

Thanks for the interesting seed for discussion. WHile therre is a lot that I could say about it and philosophize, I think I will say something that really might be a different perspective. Let's talk about scaling laws. Scaling laws are those relations that by looking at what your size is, can predict how long will you live, how much is your blood pumping, its pressure, how much do you breath, and so on. For example it has been known for quite a long time that number of heartbeats in a lifetime is pretty much constant between different species. Oh, yes, those are all average quantities, averaged over a whole specie. So I can predict how much will on average live a 0.1 kg creature, just by knowing its weight, and so on. Those are laws that span through many orders of magnitude, maeaning they are equally true for the smallest multicellular being, as for the biggest mammalian. We knew about some of them from a long time, but now for the first time we are starting to have a theory about why it is so. And because of the theory we are discovering a lot more. And extending the work in many other places, like looking at scaling laws between cities, and so on. The person who really brought this work on is Geoffrey West (Santa Fe Institute). In my memory Geoffrey is the person, that when I asked him how could I learn more about his work, he answered: "Any of my nature papers will do". Any... Wow. Well, one of the scaling laws predicts the amount of energy that is consumed by a creature. Another when is on average its reproduction time. And since those two are related between them, knowing one you can know the other. Well, the average reproduction time for a chimpanzee of our size, is about 13 years, give or take a couple. But we don't consume any more the energy of a 65 kg chimpanzee. We, with out house, our car, and so on, consume about the energy of a small whale. So each of us, in the west, is like a small whale. Now the reproduction time for a small whale is about 35 years, so we are absolutely inside nature when we reproduce at 35. And why is it so? Why scaling laws, are a big topic and I remind the interested reader to any of Geoffrey Nature paper (there is actually an mp3 of him giving a lesson on the web). But this particular effect you could think of it as: the more we become big, the more we need time to grow before reaching an adult (according to our society size). This is when you have a house, a car, a job, and generally are an ok member of society, not needing mommy or daddy to support you anymore. This takes time. To grow from 65 kg, to the tons needed through the external objects that you need to own, and to learn how to control all your external body takes time. So at 13 a kid is not fully formed anymore, does not know how to control what will become his external body, and is surely not ready to have kids. At 35 he is, and this is why we reproduce at 35. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...1187290,00.html http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/94

In the gym, here at the Uni there is a 5-person jacuzzi. It is quite something. Now just next to it, on a small room 3 tanks of freezing water are kept. I mean, freezing with ice floating on it. Really cold! The university has some serious athlets over here. People who actually go to the olimpics, were in japan just this summer, and so on. Well, what many of the athlets over here do is, after training they would get their legs (they are runners) in the ice water. Up to the beginning of the belly (ouch), stay there for a few minutes, then come for a few minutes in the warm jacuzzi (they make the water all cold, aargh!). Then go back to the cold water, and so on. They do it three times, and after the third cold bath they don't come back in the jacuzzi. I am no chinese doctor, but this just does not sounds right. I mean what has their kidneys done to them to be punished in that way? They say it is done for the muscle, as it helps dissipate the "acido lattico" that gets formed. Anyone here knows what is the official position from chinese medicine on this practice? Many thanks, Pietro

Thanks to all for the answer. If I can summarise what I understood: a) it is individual so you really need to check each person yet chinese medicine is often not ok with many western methods. When you train for a dash is different then training for a marathon. Chinese medicine is to get you to old age healthy. Western athletic medicine is to make you super fit now. The two might not work together. c) it can increase sperm production d) it is done in various countries around the world in various form thank you to all. Cheers, Pietro

LOL (they heard me out of the campervan!) You just can't resist, eh!

Yes, I have no problem with that! maybe, time will tell. Oh yes! He surely is.

Wow! Would this also be valid if the crime was planned many days earlier?

yep, being courteous is not the way to go with me. As soon as I feel that your heart is not in what you are saying I take it as sleaziness. I just value truth more than good manners. I suppose is a matter of priorities. I personally have a friend who has been istitutionalised because of doing the wrong meditations. Now you might claim that they istutionalised the wrong person, but the truth is that people do get crazy by practicing the wrong thing. Oh, yes, a friend of a friend of mine threw herself from a tower. Shit happens. This is false. There are many level in between and many complex concepts where you might know some things and not others. Similarly a person can be able to put you in bliss, and then ignore what to do when things go wrong. I know logic, and I know my experience, and I know that some practices are dangerous, and I have had direct experience of bliss. (Of course it is different from the divine bliss that only Your teacher can induce, I would never dare to say otherwise). I know for example that bliss often comes from rising energy. I know that rising energy is generally dangerouse if you don't have a strong enough downward flow. I know that putting your weight on the ball of the foot tend to rise the energy. I have done taoist meditation for some years, and you want it or not, there are often many elements in common. Among them the channels used are often similar. The danger and the pits where one can fall are often similar too. For this reason I could so easily relate to Trunk experience. In short I reckon I know enough to make an educated guess of the dangers involved, and the bets that a bum might be up to in the long run. If you don't like it, don't read me. And by god, don't pretend to be courteous to win my simpathy.

I said nothing about the practice, because I know nothing of that practice. But I do know that unless you are learning inside a tradition you are betting your ass. Now, this guy comes and teaches a bliss practice. Ok, fair enough. Is he inside a tradition? Was he given permission to teach? If he had, good. If he hadn't we are betting our bums on him. This is what I am saying, not very hard to grasp, even for you. Do I have authority to say that if he cannot produce an approval from an external authority, something that has withstanded many generations, producing enlightened individuals along the way, we are just betting our bums? Oh yes I do. Because it is not based on experience but on logic. And my authority comes from my understanding of logic. Fairly simple. Trunk, thank you very much your account; really adds to the reading of the situation and it seems a reasonable version, grounded and balanced. As well as a good explenation of what is going on.

Hello Cameron, sorry to hear that you were feeling starving for spiritual teachings, so much that you had to accept food of unknown origin. I have a hard time understanding your feeling since I feel we are living in an age of great abundance, but you have my full simpathy, and I hope that in time you will feel less hungry, and more able to apply discernment to your actions. *true story* Two women make a hike and thirsty arrived to a stream. One goes on her knees to drink immediately. The other goes to a shepherd asking if the water in the stream is drinkable. "You are not really thirsty" answered the shepherd.

Hello Harry, when they have authorization, then it is simple. And often you do find people who start something new and had authorization from a previous lineage (isn't this how the Yang style started?). But of course it IS POSSIBLE that there are other people who have no authorization and still are very good. Or people who had secred authorization just before the master died, and then no one can witness it. You will know for sure only many generations later. Now you can only bet or play secure. If you had no choise, I would say, consider betting. But with the abundance of teacher and teachings we have right now. With so many school that are teaching directly, I really see no point in risking years of your life on someone you just can't be sure.

Being an external person to all this I think I can try to make some balance of the whole thing. The guy obviously has some power. But quite obviously has also no official permission to teach this stuff. (Thanks Kunzag for writing that letter) I think that in this day where it is fairly easy for a person to find teachers and accumulate knowledge, we are bound in the next years to see this happening more and more. Also there is a sort of vague confusion going around that if someone does not have the permisision to teach he must not be able, and if he has the permission than he surely was able. So Yoda seems satisfied with Cameron report, but that talls me only that he has power... so what? I personally see the issue of permission and power as two fundamentally separated issues. A person might not be given permission for a whole bunch of reason, or be given permission for others, like political reasons. Generally I don't consider having permission from the authority to teach to be enough for me to be interested in them. But in all those years of meditations I have had many, many unauthorised teachings. And for one reason or another I always ended up understanding why they were not authorised. Not having power or not being able to make you feel strong sensations was never one of those reasons. From the other side I have seen myself and many other people lose a lot of time in following those people. Yes we learned a lot, but eventually there was something that was missing, something that just wasn't right. Some moral teachings that came with the power, teaching that were doubtful because of some of the things you eventually discovered about the person. And then it takes ages, literally years to untangle the mess and understand what should be kept and what shouldn't. For goodness sake, look at where we all are thanks to out good old chinese-thai friend. Where we don't even know if doing a powerlock is a healthy procedure that will increase our probability to maintain well, or make us more prone to injuries and neural instability. And I am not speaking about not knowing how to do the procedure, but for people who know perfectly, tested with many teachers, how to do it. Or what shall we say about Osho, or Castaneda, just to cite the more famous, the one we all are familiar with. Many years ago I was in the army, was compulsory in Italy. In the same group, with me was a fascist guy, ex streetfighter. Being the only other person with a degree (law, of course), and of opposite political spectrum we became soon friend. In the army, in Italy, there is a very silly game in which someone pretends to hit you with a fist in the balls. If you move, trying to protect, you get to "pay for the move", which means getting a real hit on the shoulder. Very stupid, I agree. One time someone did it to this streetfighter guy. He protected, and the guy asked him to "pay for his move". He replied, "no because I will always move. The risk is just too high, I will NEVER let you pretend to hit me in the balls without moving". Since he was respected, no one said anything. Here the situation is similar: the risk is just too high. You are giving an incredible amount of power to someone you don't know. And someone who does not have official permission to use this power. Why? We don't know, and at this stage any explenation could only come from the authority, anything from him would be doubtful. So for me I generally go for people who have both the authority-approval and the power. The intersection. Yes, they are few, it takes ages to find them, but once you found one you are set for many years.