Flynn

Hello all, After a fairly long hiatus from meditation and my studies of taoism, I've recently decided to resume a schedule of exercising and meditating daily. So far I've been at it for about three weeks, and things seem to be finding their way back into balance again. I'm very interested, however, in learning a martial art to help improve my physical, mental, and spiritual self. I've been searching around a bit, and it seems that the only schools near me (I live in a fairly rural area) teach either Aikido or Wing Chun (I prefer the pinyin "yong chun," but that's just me being a snob) gong fu. I have taken a few courses in Aikido, and I really enjoyed its philosophy of nonviolence, but I have always been primarily interested in Chinese schools of gong fu. Have any of you practiced yong chun gong fu, particularly in the US? I'd love some advice about what I should do, and what other schools may be better if it is not ideal. Thanks! Flynn

Ni men hao, Do any of you guys get chronic migraines? I'm coming down with one right now, and I was wondering if any of you guys had some preferred methods of dealing with them. I don't get them too frequently (once every month or two, sometimes more when I have lots of work-related stress), but I still don't like popping large quantities of painkillers when I do. Are there any natural remedies or meditative practices I could try, or am I kind of stuck with ibuprofin and sleep? Flynn

Hi everyone, I'm interested to hear what you know/think about sufi mysticism. I've only studied it a bit, and that's all been in the context of middle eastern history classes. I'd like to know to what extent and in what form it exists today, as it seems like a very intriguing type of practice. Have any of you ever been personally involved in sufism to any extent? Flynn

Rene Descartes (I know, boo Cartesian dualism) and David Hume both wrote about the philosophical problem of whether or not we can ever know, logically, if there is a physical reality beyond our sensations and perceptions. Hume used an interesting scenario to test the commonsensical assumption that our sensations are linked to actual, physical objects. Say you are looking at a red ball (or any other object) on a table. You see the ball because your retinal nerve cells are firing in a certain manner, and the electrical signal is carried through your optic nerve to your brain, which produces the mental image that you see. Now, say that God decides to maintain the exact neuron firing that makes you think there is a ball on the table, and then he destroys the ball. To you, there has been absolutely no change in the ball. One could include other senses, like touching the ball or smelling it, but the argument maintains that no matter how you try to detect it, God keeps your sensory neurons firing as if the ball was there. Hume's point is that, to you, there is absolutely no difference between the situation in which the ball exists and the one in which God destroyed it. Our knowledge of the physical world is relegated entirely to our sensory input and perception. My question is, does Taoism assume absolute reality? That is, is the Tao the basis of a real, physical world that we perceive? Some passages in the Tao Te Ching lead me to think that it might be, at least to a certain extent.

Yes, exactly. I'm sorry, I should have clarified. My question was regarding the existence of a physical reality that exists independent of our awareness of it. Does the ball only exist in the form of our perceptions? Or, I suppose more to the original intent of the philosophers, is there any way for us to ever know whether or not it exists in a physical form?

Hello everyone, I used to post on this site and check it religiously when I was in high school, but I trailed off and eventually stopped reading it altogether. I'm now a few years older, a few years less zealous about my beliefs, and I would simply like to apologize for the times when I acted like a bit of an ass due to the fact that I was absolutely convinced that I was right about everything. A lot of things have forced me to get over that. So, if you don't mind, older-me would love to join y'all again in some nice, refreshing, tao bum philosophy. Cheers, Flynn

Hello all, I am currently researching tea and its influences on spirituality and culture in China. Do any of you know any of its history, or have any knowledge of its significance in relation to Buddhism or Taoism? If you do, I'd love to hear it. Flynn

As far as I can tell, there is very little wiggle room between looking at the world as a series of choices which we ourselves control, and looking at it as a complicated play of sorts, with every action, thought, and emotion scripted before we are born. Both are a bit bleak; one makes it seem that we have very little purpose aside from living out our lives looking for personal happiness, and the other would mean that we are not much more than minions of some higher being, doing their bidding working towards something we will most likely never understand. I know many of you will disagree and say that life is not this cut-and-dried, but hear me out. If certain major (or minor) events are fated to happen, by default every other event that has ever occurred must have been scripted by whoever or whatever scripted that more "significant" event. Every thought that passes through our heads influences our actions and influences our other thoughts, even on a microscopic physical level. Every action we make influences some other organism or object on some level, no matter how small. This object or thought then influences others, and so on, in a sort of hypersensitive butterfly effect. Were any event/thought/action in that chain of events changed or removed, the entirety of the future would be changed along with it. Thus, fate cannot be looked at solely in the classical or biblical sense of great plagues and floods or great times of peace or societal revelation; fate on a large scale requires fate on a small, everyday scale. I have my own personal reasons for believing this theory of a scripted universe, mainly my frequent encounters with premontion and supernatural-esque foresight. I often have dreams about events that occur the next day (never anything very special, just average things that happen to everyone). Also recently, as I have been working on trying to accentuate these dreams, I have been thinking of things before they happen while conscious. Quite often, I will have a song in my head a few minutes before I hear it, or think about a seemingly random topic before someone else brings it up in conversation. Some of these can be explained by hearing something and bringing it from my subconscience to my conscious mind unbeknownst to me, but many cannot. How can I explain these thoughts and dreams without believing that life is scripted. Many times I would not have experienced the event about which I dreamt if I had not dreamt it. The Tao and Eastern holisticism explains these things perfectly: everything in the universe is interconnected, and therefore everything influences everything else, whether directly or indirectly. What purpose, then, do we serve in the world if all we do is follow a script? Can we ever know, or are we destined to be stuck here blissfully ignorant of something to which we are all connected? I would appreciate your opinions on the subject. I'm off to think about what will happen to the rest of the world now that I wrote this...

Thanks guys! I've got a copy of Lam Kam Chuen's book on the way, it seems very interesting.

Here's the direct link to the Discover article for those who would like to read it http://discovermagazine.com/2006/nov/cover...t:int=0&-C=

I have had the same experience with claustrophobia, and I cannot bring myself to ignore or overcome my fear. I am interested in any of your ideas regarding this.

Great for camping too!

Come on everyone, keep it civil. On the internet we deal with philosophical and hypothetical much better than personal.

I think that originally, this topic was referring to "deep" as philosophical conversation. Certainly you can learn lots about people and have meaningful relationships with them without discussing the meaning of life. There is, however, a distinct lack of thoughtful, philosophical conversation in our society. People may use small talk as an outlet for their emotions and "deep" feelings, though I think that many of us prefer straightforward, intellectual discussion. Think about it, if you didn't desire this type of interaction you wouldn't be here, intellectually and philosophically discussing the meaning of small talk.

Just for the sake of argument, why would they deserve to die any more than you would? You can't possibly claim to be aware of everyone's role in the world, or if you do, can you really justify the idea that you are more deserving of life than they are? In all honesty, what is there to fear in death but the unknown? Killing people doesn't solve the problem, or "help society". Think of that person's family. Would you really feel justified in taking someone's child, parent, or sibling just because they posed an immediate threat to your personal security? In terms of "survival", I think that the argument of survival lost its validity long ago in our evolution. The fact that we possess the ability to reasonably assess a situation means that we have the ability to come up with an alternative to our natural inclination of violence. I don't know, maybe my views are dated and inapplicable to today's world, but I would hope that there is the possibility of peaceful resolutions becoming the normal way of solving conflicts. By the way, are you really "all for peace" if you are so willing to kill somebody for your own protection?

My sincerest thanks for that post, it is very helpful.

I'm going to have to side with Cameron with this one. I can't stand the thought of killing anything, let alone another person. The thought process you have to go through is whether or not you would want what you are doing to that person/animal/insect done to yourself. Personally, I think that there is always a solution other than violence. Guns just serve to make it easier for us to distance ourselves from that which we are killing. I don't have any issues with guns when they are used for sport (targets, not hunting), but in the context you are talking about I am strongly opposed. Mantis, I think you have to look at the bigger picture: the effect that will have on other people and society and the world as opposed to self-defense. Guns are not as much a form of self-defense as martial arts are, as many martial arts teach you to subdue an opponent rather than kill them. With a gun it is much easier to kill or maim than to disarm. I also agree with mwight's feelings about the negative energy, I sense that too. Even strictly politically speaking we are on the verge of WWIII, just ask any historian or anyone that was around before and during WWII. History unavoidably repeats itself, you just have to make sure you aren't part of the problem.

Perhaps you love them for the fact that they aren't what you expect them to be, or you just learn to deal with the fact that you can't control other people (well, to a certain extent at least). Love is an emotion that often comes with negative extremes as well as the positive ones, I think that contrast is what makes it seem so wonderful in the first place.

Fun seems to work more like an addiction: extreme highs followed by (comparatively) extreme lows. Quite often I find myself engaged in something that is loads of fun, but afterwards anything else I do seems relatively boring and not fulfilling. It seems like anything would be worthwhile to get to that state of enjoyment again, which I blame for many of the stupid things my peers do. After meditation, however, or accomplishing something difficult like Lin said, I can maintain a feeling of fulfillment for much longer periods of time. I am only speaking from my limited experience, but I am sure that many of you experience something similar, though probably on a much higher level. Fun seems to be a kind of self-imposed filler that we created when we split with our spirituality as a culture. For things like this (i.e. interpersonal relationships) I really like the "Celestine Prophecy" theory of energy transmission among people and nature. It would explain a lot.... I really like that argument that "good" and "bad" are societally imposed ideas, I can't count how many times I've had that discussion. Even if they are of our own creation, though, isn't there a point at which they are necessary for our society to keep itself in check? I can't bring myself to kill anything, and I try my best not to make other people upset when I can help it, but I want to know if things like that are really justifiable or just my delusions about right and wrong.

I go to private school, I don't think you understand how much meaningless small talk I have to deal with every day. I have a few friends with whom I can actually talk about things that are important to me (one of them is the one who got me interested in Taoism in the first place), but for the most part I just throw out my stock responses/jokes when the occasion for them arises. It doesn't bother me as much now as it did when I first started realizing how pointless it was, but it still can be a bit painful to have a ten-minute conversation about nothing. One of my friends has truly passed the point of dealing with it and actually does ask people those sorts of questions, like "what is the meaning of your life" in regular small-talk conversations (I try to emulate his way of interacting with people, but I usually just feel like I'm trying too hard). Usually, they either ignore the comment or try to turn it into a joke. It is, however, quite comical to see their reactions, it vaguely reminds me of a computer receiving data it is not designed to process. It just serves as a reminder of how different our outlooks on life are, and also leads me to the depressing realization that they will probably never get it. Apparently our society's definition of intelligent has nothing to do with thoughtfulness or maturity, really just grades and SATs and the ability to hold a riveting conversation with the admissions director. I just reread this post, and I realized that it sounds painfully arrogant. Forgive me, I try not to be, but I don't really have time to rewrite it.

1. Guitar, though I would love to pick up the violin 2. Three minutes ago 3. Almost always original songs, I think it is a lot more fun to write music than to learn it

Despite the fact that I have very limited experience in political philosophy, I think that there isn't really any current system of government that would actually fit into the category of "Taoist". Most people, unfortunately, are not willing to accept any form of government that doesn't already exist, and thus we are stuck in our current position. I think a Taoist government is a nonexistent one. Perhaps certain forms of government could eventually lead to a Taoist government, but most of them would have to dissolve to be at all effective. -Flynn

I think we're in relatively the same boat, and If you want to talk to someone else our age who is more experienced than me send rainbow a PM. I have found that most teachers I have encountered are very open to teaching younger students. There is a local Tai Chi instructor who has offered to teach rainbow and I once a week, just because he wants to get people started at a younger age. I agree with Hundun that you should keep an open mind about everything you practice, and don't get stuck with just one set of ideas. I have changed my mind more times than I can count over the past couple of years, starting with voluntary confirmation class in a congregational church and ending up here. Good luck with everything, and hopefully we can stay in touch! -Flynn

Hey Cameron, I think that there is starting to be a greater interest in Taoism among younger generations. I go to a boarding school in California, and since I have been here I have met a few people in my class and others who are receptive enough to listen to my friends and I about it. I actually didn't know anything about Taoism until I came here just over a year ago, and one of my friends was beginning to discover its philosophies. This seems to be spreading a lot among people my age, and I have found that it often is better to discover something like Taoism yourself than to be force-fed it by teachers. It is one of those things that you will find if you are meant to, as far as my experience tells me. I just wanted to let you know that there is hope yet, just be patient! -Flynn

I have as well, though they are usually pretty mundane things on the surface. I have been training myself to be more perceptive to premonitions while I sleep (dream recollection and such), and I have experienced the interesting "side effect" of having similar experiences while awake. I usually find those to be random thought processes with no apparent logical origin, though I never realize what they are until I experience the actual event. If any of you have read the Celestine Prophecy, it is actually quite similar to the premonitory phenomena in that. I can only ever guess as to the meaning of these images, but I know that they somehow change my actions and thus my life and everyone's around me in some subtle way. They are not very regular, but I often go through days where I have several and then weeks where I have none. If anyone has any theories about this phenomenon I would love to hear them! -Flynn P.S. I apologize if this is not very coherently written, I just woke up!