goldisheavy

This is very interesting. Thank you exorcist_1699, many bows to you. It seems similar to the Buddhist 8-fold path. Of course it's not the same, but I see some overlaps. The Taoist method/way, fortune, companion, place, seem to emphasize the practical side more explicitly than the Buddhists, whom limit themselves at a pretty high level of abstraction in their 8-fold path. I have a question, which I hope you can answer (or anyone else, please chime in): Suppose you attain immortal yang shen (do I understand correctly that yang shen is an immortal body?). This is all well and good. However, why would life become better at that point? And would it? If you fly around in an immortal body, how can you guarantee you won't get stuck in some bureaucracy and other stupid situations? Sure you can always fly away, since you're less stuck in any situation due to the immortal body, but don't you think there is a chance that you'll have a stream of unsatisfactory experiences that you'll constantly have to run from? In other words, what is the purpose of an immortal body? If it's to satisfy the desires, surely the worlds you will arrive in will have competition and contention, and soon you'll need to run away again. But if you don't have any desires that need satisfaction, then why even bother with the immortal body? It seems like there is an assumption that immortal body solves all the problems, but is that true? Is that something you take on faith, or there is a logical reason to believe it?

Ok, so it looks like you pretty much agree with what I am saying. In practice whales do not encounter a sonar, and never mind a threatening one. I'm talking about pragmatic real day to day life of a whale. It just swims around, the biggest thing in the ocean. This shows that no, there is not always something bigger. It's not always true. It's true that there always exists a potential for something bigger and/or stronger. I agree with that. But that potential can remain as potential. It doesn't have to become actualized. Universe doesn't have a point to prove, does it now? It depends on what you mean by strong, but yes, it's possible to be so strong that you don't fit in with anyone. It doesn't mean you beat people up. Gosh no. It just means other people are not interesting to you because they cannot challenge you or upset you in any important way. They cannot touch you anymore. They cannot make you care. They don't know how to understand you (hell, they don't understand themselves yet... never mind you). It's all possible. The potential is limitless. This works well if you're the best plumber in the world, and you then take up welding. Then you become the best welder in the world and take up pole vaulting and so on. In other words, this works with non-transcendent endeavors. However, if transcendent realization is what you want, there is no switching around. You can't say, well, I have reached perfection of wisdom, so let me try welding now. It just makes no sense whatsoever. It's like saying, "well I am the best among the wise... so let me try to become the best among idiots as well." It's nonsense. Abuse, no. But use, yes. Always? Just how far back are you going? You know apes are not the starting point in evolution, right? But from a spiritual point of view, what I am saying is the same thing Zhuangzi says. He says it similar to this, "When fish are in a bucket, they can barely survive by frothing from their mouths on each others gills... but when fish hit the blue depths of an ocean, they disperse." Zhuangzi is saying that we need each other when we lack Dao, but when we return to Dao, we don't need each other anymore. Humans serve to each other as a poor man's Dao substitute. I think you and I have very different understanding of strength and nobility, both. In my understanding, Sahara is a desert for a reason, and should stay that way. It would be the highest folly to go against nature and to try to reforest it. It will simply waste the trees and the land. It's like what people do in most of Southern California. They put land here, which was brought from else where. Then they have to water it every day. If they don't water even for one day, the grass dies, and the land is blown away by the air. So what do you call this? I call it "pissing against the wind" or "going against nature." The land is not meant to be here. This place is a desert. But people resist. And in resisting they create immense wasteful effort for themselves. Being alone is different from pushing others. Who pushes others around? Only someone who is jockeying for a top position in society -- that's who. People bully each other precisely because they are social. They are social and they value the top spot in the social order. The social order doesn't exist without the society. As long as the social order exists, top spots in that order exist too. And as long as those spots exists, people will want to reach them. Thus bullying. The higher the top spot is from the low spot, the more bullying there will be. Someone who can live away from society doesn't push anyone around. They stand alone and Dao is enough for them to feel good. Of course if you trespass or piss such person off, you'll get what's coming to you. But it's not the same thing as pushing. This person doesn't jockey for anything. They are happy if you just leave them alone. Personally, I enjoy society. I like human beings. This might be a fatal flaw in me. Even if I were strong, I would stay with humans or human-like beings just because I think it's fun and entertaining. Well that's what I think now, eh? I might change my tune when I get stronger.

I've run into this attitude before. I think the idea behind this attitude is that Buddhists ignore the material world, while Taoists pay attention to it. Taoists who have this attitude tend to believe in substance and in objective reality, etc. To them spirit is separate from the mind and the matter is also separate. So when they hear Buddhists talk about mind, they conclude that Buddhists are only talking about a small part of reality and are ignoring the rest of reality. Taoists with this attitude don't really understand that the fault is with them -- they hold physicalists ideas in their minds! If Taoists could understand how to dissolve their physicalists ideas about the world, suddenly what Buddhists say about the mind is what Buddhist say about the world and everything, because the nature of the world is the nature of the mind, it's the same thing. So suddenly when you understand mind, you understand everything and nothing is ignored. How cool is that? It's because Taoists don't understand the scope of the mind, they think the mind is strictly in the head, and thus Buddhists who keep going on and on about the mind are living in their heads according to these ignorant Taoists. But the real Taoists like Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu understand correctly what the mind is, and wouldn't find any faults with Buddhism, except one -- Buddhists tend to be too serious. Buddha himself was terrible -- he's never cracked a single joke. Not even one. Buddha, to my knowledge, has never made his monks or nuns laugh. Instead he kept harping on and on and on about cultivation, insight, wisdom, blah blah blah. No joke. No humor. Nothing. This is a serious serious flaw in Buddhism and in Buddha. And Chuang Tzu would certainly laugh at Buddha, while also laughing at the foolish alchemical brand of Taoist as well, for different reasons. You know, before you extend your life, learn to enjoy it, right? Most people don't enjoy their lives, but yet they seek to live forever. It's pretty mind-boggling. If people didn't fear the unknown, and if there was no social taboo on suicide, I think the vast majority of people would kill themselves instead of trying to live forever. It is grossly deluded to seek to prolong the experience you don't enjoy as a means to begin enjoying it.

We feel offended when we feel like the source of offense is a conscious intention that violates our values. If whatever is happening is unintentional or if the intention is not totally conscious or realized, we don't get offended, but we do get upset though. So for example, if a bear is trying to eat me, I don't get offended, because I don't perceive the bear to have enough moral and spiritual development to be able to produce the same level of intention as a human being, in other words, the bear doesn't know with great insight what it is he's doing, he has no appreciation for what he is about to ruin by eating me. So I wouldn't get offended at an attacking bear. I would be upset though and I would kill the bear without hesitation or remorse. Being offended is different from being upset or from being inconvenienced in that the source of the violation or inconvenience is a conscious intention, which normally means we perceive the source to be another human being. If a human being is known to be mentally retarded or crazy, we don't hold them responsible for their actions, because their intentions are not fully conscious (in other words, just like bears, they don't fully understand what they are doing, don't know the significance of their actions, etc...). So if a retarded person said something insulting, there might be no offense generated, because we know they have no idea what they are saying. Let me put it this way. We get offended when those whom we can consider to be full participants in society behave in ways that violate our values. Bears and retarded people cannot be full participants in a human society. Retarded people can participate partially, depending on the level of retardation, and bears not at all. And our laws also reflect this. We put stricter punishments on those who did something knowingly, deliberately, with full intent, than we do on those who did something without full intent (like due to recklessness).

Thanks exorcist. Can you please elaborate on item number 4? I think the Buddhist equivalent would be the 8-fold path: 1. Right View 2. Right Intention 3. Right Speech 4. Right Action 5. Right Livelihood 6. Right Effort 7. Right Mindfulness 8. Right Concentration

I've never tried to re-attach myself. This is what I did instead. I started wondering, "Where did I get the idea that I am separate to begin with?" See, if I am separate, it makes sense to glue myself back to the rest of the world, or to re-unite myself, etc. But what if I never were separate to begin with? Then if I try to re-unite something that was never separate to begin with, won't I be strongly deluded? In fact, by trying to reconnect with the world, won't I be reinforcing the idea that I am indeed separate and thus could use some reconnection? I think the issue here is not with the feelings but with the ideas about what is really going on, what is taking place.

Dreams feel exactly the same as waking to me, in terms of the quality and lucidity of perceptions. I can't understand why one experience is called subjective and another objective, when both experiences feel exactly the same. There is no difference in perception, and yet we arrive at two different labels for the same thing. I don't get it.

That's interesting because often color-blind people find out about their condition by accident later in life. The color-blind people start out in the world without any indication that there is anything different about them. I suspect many somewhat color-blind people die without even knowing of their condition. Everything you just described I have felt in a dream. Would you say that things I saw my dream exist objectively?

That's theory. In practice whales, polar bears and the Alaskan moose do not encounter bigger animals. Wolves can take down a moose on two conditions: the moose is scared and wolves act as a pack of 3 or more. But even if there is a pack of wolves, and the moose is not scared, the wolves are doomed. One is alone when one is strong. You don't have peers. There is no community of strong people. You stand alone. If you think about it, communal living is precisely a reaction to losing inner strength. It's a coping mechanism: "so we are too weak individually??? Fine, we will band together then. Safety in numbers." It's a defense. When you no longer need that defense, there is no longer a need to be social or to be a part of the community. You can still choose to be in a community, but it's not a need anymore. It's maybe a pleasure or an ornament.

He can't hear this. It's like there is a muffler on his ears or something. He just can't face it. But he gave us a clue as to why not. And you know what it is? Marble said that if you dismiss the notion of the objective world, it makes you apathetic. To Marble, saying, "I don't believe in an objective reality" is equivalent to saying "I don't care about anything." Of course it's not equivalent. I think most people in this thread know this. But Marble doesn't. This is a clue about his state of mind. I think Marble is pretty old/mature too, so my guess is that his beliefs are pretty solidified by this point and are not subject to change. The opportunity to try to understand a different belief system will come for him only in the next life at best. He's pretty set in his ways now and he seems to be happy as is. Why should he examine what you or me or anyone else is saying? He's set.

I'm not sure I can answer that question. I think we can study our beliefs and how beliefs affect our perceptions and how beliefs affect our manner of being in the world. But is paying attention to beliefs the same as paying attention to consciousness? Is paying attention to perceptions the same as paying attention to consciousness? I think that consciousness is a very high-order idea, that investigating it is like tasting your tongue. But when hypnotists talk about consciousness, I think they mean something simpler. I think consciousness as hypnotists usually mean it can be examined and studied. In that sense, consciousness is our belief structure when fully engaged, and it's like a filter. We see what we believe in and we do not see what we don't believe in. And by belief I do not mean what people claim to believe, but that upon which they act and base their very lives. I find that what we claim to believe significantly differs from our real beliefs. Marble, don't take it so seriously. When I said I was furious, I meant it as a metaphor. I hope you don't think I am actually furious. I welcome your presence. I sometimes don't understand why you are present here, but I have no intention whatsoever to shoo you away or anything like that. Just the opposite. Please stay and share whatever it is you want to share. If I don't understand why you are here, that's my problem, and I am free to wonder about it out loud. You don't seem to have a spiritual bone in your body. But by all means, please stay.

You are very observant. This observation of yours has instantly increased my respect for you (by some undisclosed amount). Depending on what you mean by thought-process, the answer is "yes." That's exactly the case. Have you heard this expression: "A problem well stated is a problem half-solved?" This goes to the very bottom of my abilities. I have an ability to state my own problems so well, that they solve themselves in 99/100 cases. And in the one case they do not, I will seek external advice. Also, in case I actually do seek external advice, I have incredibly good sense of who is a good teacher and who isn't. So I will instantly bypass all the frauds and wannabes and will immediately go to the horse's mouth. In the discipline of contemplation I am the horse's mouth though. But if I wanted to learn welding, for example, I would have no trouble discerning what makes an expert welder and finding one to learn from. This is because I can pay very careful attention to the intricacies of the art and I can appraise them very well, because I feel them down to the core of my being, very deeply. Qi "stuff" is different depending on who talks about it. For most people Qi refers to the subtle feelings that people conceive to be between the spiritual and the physical (between shen and jing, if I understand the terms correctly). The language of qi gong is not my native language however. I am not a fan of using qi metaphors to express conditions or causes. But I can hang with it, so to speak. It's not a problem. I sincerely suggest you ignore my posts. I don't have any practice. I just masturbate all day. I hope this clears things up for you.

You hit the nail on the head. I see the same quality in Marblehead and I find it deeply offensive and highly insulting. His penchant for superficial politeness just makes me even more furious. It's like his whole value system is distorted. To him decorum is lord, and the meat of the issue is just a side dish. Not my man.

Yes, power does grow from that. When you realize that you have the entire convention internalized, you become the master of it. What do I mean? I mean normally people think that agreements exist externally, between one mind and another mind, for example. Or between mind and some external state or situation. That's one level of perceiving convention. A deeper level is to wake up to the understanding that all agreements are internal and that you are holding all the keys. It's like finding out that all the puppet strings go to one place and that place is your very core. Then the whole world is your body and all mind is your mind. But from a normal point of view, this kind of life is insane and scary. Well, fail at what? In some ways Dawkins is spectacularly successful. He's popular. He's got a big band of sympathizers. He's energizing a movement. And frankly, while I don't like physicalists (and most atheists are physicalists), if they do something to take religions around the world down a notch, I will be grateful. I think religions need to be toned down and that we need to seriously revise things in our so-called "holy" books. In particular I think we need to de-holy-fy all the "holy" books, so we can look at them without the trace of awe, but just look at them in a practical and honest sense and throw away all the useless or barbaric stuff. I think the entire Bible, if you throw away all the garbage, can be condensed into 5 pages or so. And that's how it should be. Out of Koran you can maybe squeeze one page of something that seems useful. There is way too much bullshit and downright wrong and harmful instruction in religion. So I am thankful to people like Dawkins for taking religion on. More power to him. If I actually had a personal, private debate with Dawkins, I would demolish him. I have no real sympathy for physicalism. It's definitely intelligent if you must stay comfortable within the convention. If being comfortable is important, or is an end-goal, certainly being a "yes man/woman" will go a long way, etc. Maybe. Or maybe not. I think it all depends on how you interpret loss. Is friction a loss? Is being insulted a loss? Is not getting along in society a loss? So a lot has to do with how you understand value. What has value? Why? What is the nature of comfort? It's not as obvious if you actually question it. We tend to have a pretty solid idea about what comfort is. For example, never being insulted, always being respected, always getting along, always slipping through society like fish slips through water -- for many people this is what comfort is. But is that what it really is? Or is that just one possible preference? Seriously? I don't feel that way with children. Children are mostly losers, and do you know why? All the good qualities children have are unconscious. What does it mean? It means children don't know they have any good qualities, do not value them, are not wise about all possible alternative ways of being (they are comfortable in their more magical reality, but for example, they don't know about the less magical world of the adults, and that's a serious fault). Because children don't know that the qualities of mind they have are wonderful or precious, they lose them easily. And we see this first hand everywhere. This is why children are not sages. Sure, you can learn a lot from a child, but a child has a lot to learn from the world and from the adults too. A child is going to lose his gems because he or she doesn't know they are gems, and so lets go of them easily, but once they let go, reclaiming them is not always easy. I don't think of children in worshipful terms. I respect a child's natural mind's ability. I do. But I also see lots of flaws in children. This is why children are not enlightened and they are not sages. You can learn from them, I won't argue with that at all. I know when I was a child, I was pretty magical too. But I quickly lost it because I didn't value it. I didn't think it mattered or that it was useful. So when adults taught me their ways, I just accepted that without critical thinking. See the weakness? Logic is an important guard dog of the mind. And as a child, my mind didn't have that guard dog protecting the treasures. So when adults taught me their ways, without logic and analysis, I had no tools to use to evaluate their ways, and simply uncritically accepted them. Big mistake. Exactly. This is why you should never put logic down. Logic is the Lord. When your reasoning skills are mature, you can never be tricked into any belief. When they are not, you will mindlessly follow whatever random beliefs floats through your mind and you'll be a victim of beliefs and not their master. Logic and the Mystery are one perfect whole. They exist in perfect union. Logic doesn't destroy the mystery. It protects it. The mystery doesn't destroy logic -- it's what gives logic its force. Like two wings of one bird, they carry the bird in flight. Reason and mystery, I use them both equally.

That's almost right. If you have answered "in my own mind", then I'd give your answer an A+. As it is, you just get an A.

Thank you Marblehead, I appreciate your reply.

I agree with this 100%. Even if you don't care about your own life, and thus don't feel any danger by staking your very life on a delusion, it is still just silly. We need to be honest about what we are doing. If anything, spiritual people, and people who cultivate any kind of qi, should be even more honest than normal, not less. But while we don't see any internal artists in an MMA match, do we see any MMA guys in a leitai tournament? As it stands, there is really no civil way to resolve this issue. That's why if you must know the answer, simply must know it and cannot accept not knowing it, you have no choice but to fight (with full intent to do harm) any and all internal artists you come across who make amazing claims about their invincibility or whatnot. Since internal artists will often refuse to fight in a civil manner, the only way you can get an answer about their ability is to punch them straight in the head. And frankly, if you know any internal artist that makes loud and consistent claims, I think they deserve to be knocked out. Actually it does predict. You just don't know what it means. You have no idea what a belief really is and how it manifests.

This reminds me of a quote I read in Pavel Tsatsouline's book: A man asks, "Who is stronger, a whale or an elephant?" Reply: "Where? On land or in water?" There is no such thing as being absolutely stronger. All types of contests depend on conditions. Some of these conditions are subtle, the ones in the mind. They are powerful and real conditions and very few people understand them. But don't delude yourself: even someone who doesn't consciously study the conditions of their own mind, still has those conditions working for them subconsciously. So someone who has mastered their own mind does not get an automatic win. There is a reality even higher than this, but in the higher reality there is no fighting and no contests are even possible, so it's not worth describing the higher reality in a thread about fighting contests.

This is a very naive understanding of what I actually said. A man who makes doughnuts understands that they are not intended for fighting. The intent of a doughnut is to enjoy food and maybe to fill your belly. Another way to look at it is to define winning. If you take the doughnut guy's idea of winning, winning is when there is something tasty in your mouth. In that case, after eating 1 arrow, the archer will lose the fight. And a doughnut guy will eat his doughnut and win. Do you understand now? Of course if winning is defined as getting the body of your opponent pierced, then the archer will win. It's not just the strength of the belief, but it's quality that matter. The intent matters. Are doughnuts intended for fighting? For winning battles? What if you feed someone a poisoned doughnut? Can the archer defend against this possibility? There are lots of subtleties in this. So if you go back and try to re-read what I said, but with real understanding this time, I think you'll benefit.

Where are you getting the idea that Tiger is a Buddhist? This is the first time I hear this.

I don't think you understand what's going on in this case. In this case, it's a contest of wills. It's a clash between two worldviews. In one worldview, qi energy projections are real. In another they are not. What you don't understand is that neither worldview is inherently correct, and what actually manifests depends on many factors. Hard stylist has his intent not only on his style and on kicking your ass, but his intent is also magickally maintaining a reality in which qi simply does not exist. This is why hard-core skeptics always find nothing but fraud when they search for magick. Why is that? Because skeptic's mind is just as magickal! That's why! A skeptic can create his reality just as much as the magick user can create hers. See the point? Skeptics and physicalists run on the same set of batteries as Buddhas. So while it's possible to overcome all that with an internal style, don't assume it is a given. You must have a very superior insight and very strong belief in your reality. Stronger than your opponent. It's not trivial, especially if you yourself started out with the same beliefs about the world as the hard stylist. Then you're actually at a disadvantage, because while you worked to change your perception of the world, hard stylist focused on kicking more ass. So you have some catching up to do.

I think this is exactly right. Precisely. Since anyone who exercises and spars, especially for many years, has demonstrated in a big way their intent and resolve. A qi-user would have a lot on their plate when facing someone who has put so much focus and tenacity into their practice of external martial arts. Qi is not some magic pixie dust. The real magic pixie dust is intent, and unfortunately or fortunately, the hard stylist has equal access to intent! The qi model is at best a refinement of what intent can accomplish, and that refinement only works after you allow your mind to accept a different reality of how the world works, which is not a realistic or reasonable choice for a lot of people. Lots of people like their reality just as it is and are not willing to change it. Especially not just to kick more ass -- that's a shallow motivation and is insufficient for changing the flavor of one's reality. There is another problem too. This problem is connected with intent. Since hard stylists don't need to alter their model of reality to get results, their intent is more honest right from the beginning. A qi-user is first somewhat dishonest to himself/herself. Because when you first begin practicing qi, you may not believe that reality can work in a different way, that it can have another side to it. So the intent is explorative at best, or dishonest at the worst. The intent is not as purely focused on ass kicking as in the hard style, because part of the intent is dissipated with doubts about the reality of qi and so on. In time all that can be overcome and intent can become pure and very honest once again, but it might takes 30 years, and it's uncertain. It's predicated upon a total inner change.

I think you make some good points there. I think that if kicking ass is what you want, forget qi. Just study Muay Thai or MMA, and be done with it. I think after practicing Muay Thai hardly anyone will want to take you on. It's perfect for kicking ass. Consider this. Even if qi is real, all the people that practice it say it takes years to get the effects. Supposedly after you invest many years into it, it begins to overtake external arts. Also consider this. In traditional Chinese training, even the internal styles had tons, tons of external stuff. It was customary to master the external arts before beginning full time concentration on qi. I think the whole qi is soft-skills-only thing has been a recent trend. At least I think it's pretty clear that in Shaolin, qi was taught after you could already kick ass and not before. Qi works by modifying your mind state at a very deep level. For it to work, you have to allow it to change your reality. And this is too much for a lot of people. Imagine the universe as you know it ending? Can you take it? Is it worth it??? Just to kick ass?? Seems like it's not worth it just for ass kicking. If you study qi gong for health benefits, I think you can get results much faster than for the martial purpose. If you study qi gong to enlighten yourself in a profound way, then the long time it takes is not a deterrent and then the result becomes worth both the time investment and the loss of the old beliefs and the loss of the old reality. If all you want is some righteous ass whooping, it's a waste of time. Think practically. Even if everything people say about qi is true, do you need it in your arsenal? How many people use it today? It's a tiny, tiny minority! What are the chances you will need to whoop one of the qi-using people? I say the chances are practically zero. So even if knowing how to manipulate qi made one God, as long as only very few people know it, you don't need to escalate the arms race on your side. Now, if 50% knew it and constantly used it to very lethal effect, then you simply couldn't afford to be without that weapon. Then and only then you'd need to upgrade your arsenal, from a practical point of view. Even if qi makes people into Gods, as long as you are very unlikely to run into a qi-user, you don't need it from an ass whooping standpoint. See, it's simple. I think most people who are into qi, are not into it for martial benefits as the primary reason.

I agree with this sentiment 100%. Well with the difference that as long as they limit themselves to gum-flapping and don't go beyond that, it's OK. Tiger can take it. Or at least I think he should be able to take it.

Is this from the outer chapters? Only the inner chapters are considered to be Zhuangzi's actual writing to my knowledge. I've read the inner chapters and haven't found this parable therein. I'd like to say that people don't have a problem with an empty boat precisely because empty boats do not travel anywhere. If you like your boat to move somewhere in a concerted way, you will need to cause some offense from time to time. If you don't mind just wobbling on the water, being haplessly shoved here and there by the boats with people in them, then of course you won't cause that much offense. And how many times have you seen someone kick a stone in anger? I know I have both seen it and done it. And what did a stone do? I don't think Zhuangzi would advocate this kind of spiritual absenteeism.