Pietro

Thanks. The elements you pulled out make a lot of sense. Also I remember Alan (anthropologist) telling me how there was a tomb of thousands of years ago with a dragon inscribed with shells on the one side, and a tiger on the other. The buried king was in the middle. Said that, I am not sure there are no oral traditions alive in China.

Thanks. I do not share the widespread fascination for Crowley. Beside my interest is mostly trying to understand Taoism by itself. Not in its most modern interpretations. As I am not interested in Crowley, and I do not believe Crowley could give me anything-but a modern interpretation of it, I really have no use for its work. But do not take my entry as a suggestion that you should not read Crowley. There is probably an important message there for you.

Thanks. I don't take meds, but the compost heap is within reach of the chickens so I am not sure if it is a good idea to use it there. But I iwll try to use the urine daily, every morning. I am mixing it with water, though, so it is not added directly. And it is generally not a lot.

Thank you. It has been raining like crazy up to few days ago. But now it looks like it has started the dry season. Amazing how portugal can have a dry and a rainy season. It is Mediterranean, but very diverse between the winter and the summer months. I have been collecting my urine, as suggested in some books, and was going to mix it with water, and use it for the garden. I also realized that the sheet I made is too heavy in carbon. It is just a cardboard, and no green mulch on top of it, and just some earth over it. So I am thinking to use the urine+water to break up the cardboard. The nitrogen should do its job. For the rest I should follow your advise and keep it wet with water. It is just that I am looking for some ways where there is not much work that I do. It's not just laziness, it is also looking for ways to let nature flow, and only gently directing it.

Nice thread! I have laid down some card box and put some earth on it, and threw some seed balls. The seedballs have come to life with a lt of little leaves coming out. But I am afraid they will not have eough earth to sustain themselves as the cardbox have not rotted enough to let them root through them. I probably should have put the cardbos before winter. As you might have gathered I am trying some no dig method. Mostly because I am way too much of an armchair gardener to do anything else ;-)

Taoist Lineage Master Bruce Frantzis speaks of being uncool ;-)

Hi Ramon, if your knee hurt check your posture. Make sure there is space on the back of the knee. Just put two fingers and open. Is good if you do this with a friend. Also make sure that the knee fall in line with the foot. Again a friend is important. A few other things you asked. Yes you do always dissolving from the head down. you do dissolving always inside your body. Yes, it is possible to dissolve the aura but it is not a beginners practice. I have been doing dissolving for years, and I don't dissolve the aura. At the beginning do not dissolve inside the brain. After some time you can. How much time? I am not sure, but I think a couple of months will do. Probably much less. In general for joint pain you need to work on opening and closing. Which is a different practice from dissolving (a different point of the 16 nei gung). But that can be done at the same time. Although you should not do it at the beginning together. Instead really do learn this while sitting. Find someoe who does tui na from Bruce school next to you and ask him to show you how to do opening and closing. Then go home and practice that. Cheers, Pietro LATE EDIT: I realise how unfriendly my entry might look. Coming late, not reading the other entries, and just trying to answer the question. Forgive me for that, I had little time.

Interesting. I know that if I eat to much raw meat, and I don't drink a celery juice I become very antisocial. I can take offense at anything. I am able to feel offended by the way a fly has entered my no-fly zone around my body. I bought the theory that it had to do with the Ph of the body (blood?). But as it was pointed out, what the f... do I know. But the difference is tangible, and there. Something changes. And I don't know what. I also don't know of any tablet or similar that can do it quite as well as celery juice. And having to rely on a celery juice about 3 times every week is really logistically a problem when you travel. People in my diet often do like the chimps, chewing celery all the time and spitting the fiber. If anyone here has some good integrators I would love to hear from them.

I think the voice might be from Pat Condell. And the arguments too.

While I am not a moderator, and I never will. Yet, I cannot be silent. Taomeow, I think and feel you are abusing your power in this. You might be doing this while being fully in good faith. But it still feels abusive. Strong disagreement is, and has always been, permitted. Criticizing a thought is not the same as criticizing a person. Calling a thought dumb or stupid does not imply calling the person having that thought dumb or stupid. It might be an offer to rethink an argument or go deeper. In this, this site offers an educational occasion for people, while exchanging information. We have participants of all age, some of whom learn here the fine art of dialectics and of looking at weak points in one's own and another's argument. While no one is dumb, not all thoughts expressed here are smart. Calling them on those thoughts is not just permissible (as it is), but laudable. I invite you to reconsider your position. Pietro

Look into permaculture and look into the books of masanobu fukuoka. Especially the one straw revoltuion. You will find a person who was able to feed himeself and make a living while non gardening. The book can be downloaded from gigapedia, I think

As mentioned, we had this discussion before. I am of the (minoritarian) school that that is how it should be done. Read it 3 times, from top to bottom. That was Bruce suggestion to me. Once you know all the situation you will automatically associate the situations in your life with one of the 64 cases. Just remember that you are not the most important person in the universe. So what you are experiencing might be one of the 64 hexagram, just focused on someone else.

While we are happily bashing each other at the feninization of the western male, an important topic came out. Something I wanted to speak about from a long time. Here and there people are realising that men and women are not opposite. But I feel the big picture is missing. And this is somethign I realised some years ago. I was following a thread that started from "the science of discworld" but it actually want deeper, into Aristotele. It is the concept of privative. What is a privative? A privative is something that does not exist... (easy hehe ) ... but that we treat as if it existed. You want an example? Cold. Cold is a privative. Cold does not exist. As correctly stated you might say, lets open the window to let the cold in. But it is not the cold that gets in, but the warmth that gets out. There is no thing which is cold, as also things that are cold are warmer than others... there is no thing that is cold... but there is something called a temperature. So in a sense everything is warm, and the situation is not truly symmetric (I know some of you will not grab the tao te ching, and want to burn me, we'll speak about it later). Everything is warm, and the only thing that is truly cold is something that is at 0 degrees... kelvin. But nothing is at 0 degrees kelvin. It is not even possible to have matter at 0 degrees kelvin. So cold is a privative. It doesn't exist but we treat it as if it existed. Another is black. Every color has a bandwidth... but for black. Black has no bandwidth, as it is the absence of any color. You cannot associate any vibration to that. So privatives represent one side of the biggest polarity we deal with: the polarity between what exists, and what does not exist. And here comes the real cool thing about it. This polarity is not symmetric: one side (what exists) further differentiate, while the others does not. And the one to first make this observation was Aristotele in the Categories. Darkness and light is a first polarity, but then light differentiates in all its color. So we now have the polarity between darkness and light, and the polarity between blue and red. Can you spot that they are not of the same kind? In one case you have one thing that exists and one that does not. In the other you have two things that exist. We shall call them polarity of type A (between a privative and a non-privative), and polarity of type B (between two non privatives). Can you now guess male-female what kind of polarity is it? Hint, it is not of type A. And TaoMeow is absolutely correct in stating that if you take away masculization to a man you don't automatically get a woman. Also if you look at trans, and hermaphrodite, those are people who are both male and female. Like the color violet is both red and blue. They have both male and female hormones. And then you have people who have very little of both hormones. But of course since the absence of hormones is a privative you can't really reach that side completely. And in life, what other polarities are between a privative and a non-privative? After careful consideration I reached the understanding that freedom/non freedom is a polarity of type A. And the privative side is freedom. You are never totally free, you are always tied. At least to your physical needs, and similar. And I used the term non-freedom to because there are so many different ways to be non free that I just can 't come up with a term on the spot for one that embraces them all. And now let's go back to the TTC. I once told all I have told you to a friend, an instructor from Bruce. He told me: "you are wrong, for you think you are smarter than lao tzu, so you MUST be wrong". He left quite upset. I, a couple of years later, told about all this to Bruce himself; his comment was: "of course, it is obvious". Was Lao Tzu wrong in saying that all polarities are symmetric? Was that what he was saying? Even if it was it would not be the end of the world. The fact that thousands of years of civilization can progress the history of understanding of polarities is actually quite a good thing. But the truth is that I am not sure what was Lao Tzu saying. And I will doubt of anyone who here will claim that they understand the real meaning of what Lao Tzu ment. Lineage masters aside. Now a last question: is enlightenment a privative?

what? all 1600? You must have missed some, then. Keep on reading. -------------------------------------------------- Keep on with your witchhunt attitude. If someone calls for some calmness he must be evil too. If you are not with me you must be against me, right? I am for the truth. Although I realize the David has obviously done many silly things in his life, I criticize the action not the person. We know that the Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters but where do the monster come from?

Thank you. I was considering the implications of me being David. I mean, from letting down one of my girlfriend... and then hosting her because she did not have a place to go; envying and hating myself. Throwing myself out of my own website. Receiving gossips about myself from my friends. Being a friend and not a friend to the same person. Being both an internet geek and an internet illiterate. Following he way of the water and of the fire. Considering and not considering myself a friend. I mean, boy am I messed up.

while instead having never met David Verdesi and giving a personal opinion about him is fine

Are you sure you are not projecting your own uneasiness? I use the know David many years ago. I see nothing like what you guys say in the picture. Yeas, he had his issues, (who hasn't). He was both hated, loved and envied. But to look at a person't picture and start claiming that you can feel evil things about him is not a good action either. What will you do next? Attach him with a pitch fork? There is an interesting piece of wisdom in judaism that a jew friend once explained. It's something about: "it's a very evil action to say that a person is evil". In other words no one is good or evil, but our actions sometimes are. Criticize the actions, in case. Not the person. And regarding the looking into a person eyes (and hearing a person speaking) to see if he or she is lying. I can do this. Anyone who is in conscious touch with his emotions can do it. But you cannot do it from a picture. And again we are speaking of judging an action, not the person.

That's good, but in this case the problem is not what you recognize, but what the Dalai lama recognises. If he says that he is not enlightened, it means that he refers to an experience-state- that he has obviously not reached. Independently if what he has reached is already an enlightening state from your point of view.

I think the dalai lama himself describe himself as unenlightened. Something along the lines of "no I am not enlightened but I know the steps necessary to get there". But what do I know? I don't even know the steps...

sorry edited out. :-)

make a search on david shen, david verdesi, or DV and you'll find plenty of material. Why was he kicked out of China? This is new stuff from what I know?

I finally found the original quote from Terry Pratchett Science of Discworld on what a privative is. SO I decided to add it to this thread:

If it was a random walk it would move around, instead it remains at the same place. Molecules under brownian molecules move around, and the average distance is correlated with the time passed. Instead here it would be like you measure the position of the molecule at big time interval and find no change. SO it would be like measuring a molecule and finding out that it's distance from where you measured the first time does not correlate with time. So I would say they are quite safe respect to the objection you bring. But thanks for having chipped in. I think it is always a very interesting subject.

I have the Wilhelm, the Alfred Huang and the Eranos translation. I also have the Wu Jing Nuan (mostly because Trip gave it to me as a gift, but I do consult it too). What other important translations am I missing? I still have somewhere Cleary's "Taoist I Ching" but was unimpressed and it's still lying in a box in my father's house. Similarly I was unimpressed (but more for gut reasons, can't really point out what) by Ni translation. What other important translations am I missing? Pietro