Walker

Sorry to make a selfish request, but when you figure this conundrum out, please send me a PM and let me know, just in case I miss the post.

A Daoist joke for ya: Laozi is riding west on his ox. Yin Xi sees him along the way and sez, "Laozi, why do you ride out of the city upon that ox?" Laozi laffs and replies, "I'm just trying to leave all this bullshit behind me."

I'm sorry, but in the modern world, to various degrees we are all unheard and lack healthy outlets to express our deepest concerns. For a great many people all of over the world, the suppression they face is extreme and comprehensive. Yet most of these people manage to avoid walking to the supermarket and murdering dozens of people. Frankly, I think you are walking a weird line of apologism for a behavior which has absolutely no excuse. Again, that behavior is: going to the supermarket and shooting people. Your "PLAY DUMB" and "DEFLECT" also imply a "them" that acts with intention, agency, and clarity. Most people are really just muddling through. Even we highly "awake" Dao Bummers aren't really sure what the "actual topics" are. He said the reason that the Native Americans were decimated is that they did not appreciate the threat they faced and failed to defend themselves. Ahistorical nonsense. Yes, he does notice that. Then he concludes that the white Americans he identifies with will not change, and on the basis of this conclusion decides that the solution is to reduce the population and stop immigration. His mass murder, he says, will help further that goal. First of all, his craziness and stupidity are so massive as to defy classification. But if classification is necessary, then this is probably what is called "eco-fascism," a new and unfortunate buzzword to add to the mix of unfortunate buzzwords. Where did he say that in his manifesto? Sigh, I am neither proud nor ashamed to say that a few years ago when I was laid up in bed with a back injury I let a friend of mine who is sure about all these alien conspiracies give me a USB card full of what, he assured me, was uncontrovertible evidence that we're being colonized by ETs, etc. I watched a dozen hours or more of the stuff while laid up. It was highly entertaining codswallop. (I'm not saying there aren't aliens and that they don't come here but I've seen the "evidence" and what I can say is that I anybody who tells me s/he knows how the Zerbatookigranaokzivijibbians from Planet Chupacabras secretly invented Barbie Dolls to brainwash us all into plastiforming our bodies so that they can mate with us without being grossed out by our jumbly human genitals and musty pubic hairs or whatever is cray-cray fa sho-sho) You project your proto-religious belief in aliens ruling the world onto this killer's manifesto, and you invariably get what you want to see. If I was convinced that Zeus or the Spaghetti Monster was behind the problems of the world, I could find evidence for that in this manifesto, too. Projection is a hell of a drug. Trying to figure out why a minuscule but not insignificant portion of the population reaches such a level of madness as is required to push a man (seems that women are almost immune to this disease) to walk into a public place and spray shoppers or students or revelers with bullets is a worthy line of inquiry. Ok. I am really trying to be polite. But some sternness is necessary. Here goes: NO, HE DOES NOT "SOUND LIKE A MILLENNIAL." HE IS A SICKO WHO DEVOTED SEVERAL PAGES OF TEXT TO DETAILING A PLAN TO KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE AND TO EVEN FANTASIZE IN VIVID DETAIL ABOUT THE TYPES OF INTERNAL DAMAGE THAT DIFFERENT BULLETS WOULD INFLICT UPON HIS VICTIMS. HE IS A OFF THE FUCKING RADAR, LOST THE PLOT, MAD. YOU NEED TO CHECK YOURSELF HARD IF YOU CAN'T SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THE BOY WHO WROTE THAT PAPER AND IT COMES ACROSS AS SANE AND VALID TO YOU. There are important criticisms to be levied against the many destructive tendencies that have been adopted by certain deranged people and institutions who operate under the banner of Christianity, for sure. But you are taking an extreme, half-blind position. It is extremely easy to find Christians who are the exact opposite of what you describe. Beware projection, again. This JPEG doesn't stand up to more than ten seconds of half-assed critical thinking. Did you post it as a joke or do you seriously find this stuff compelling?

Haven't read this all yet but here's one thing, please please pretty please change it: "道家學說" doesn't make any sense, because a 學說 is a theory or doctrine, not a word that means, as its characters might suggest, to study and discuss. So in Chinese, for instance, if you see the term 陰陽學說 this means "the theory of tin and yang." This means that the banner up there kinda means "the theory of Daoism," which doesn't quite make sense. And you know, I'm pretty damn sure the reason no beautiful woman in China has ever interrupted me to ask for my phone number while I've been surfing this site in cafes and tea houses is because they see that there banner and scoff at all of us. It's a serious problem! Also, can we please use traditional characters in the forum titles that contain Chinese? Simplified characters, while they did play a noble role in increasing literacy back when people wrote everything by hand, are not useful in the digital age. However, the PRC government persists in forbidding almost all local publications and websites from using traditional characters and promotes simplified characters in overseas education via Confucius Institutes in order to enforce their claim of "owning Chineseness." This is because it is ultimately a subversive act to refuse to publish using the writing system that was invented under Mao... the CCP interprets the rejection of their characters as, well, a rejection of their character, and therefore the Chinese in this country aren't free to publish using the traditional writing system, which is just as easy to type on a computer or phone! Well, the communist party here killed and tortured a lot of Daoists in the 60s, continues to make life very hard for Daoists who aren't so lucky as to occupy temples needed by the tourist industry (see: Bitter Winter), and will cause unthinkable further damage to the Daoist tradition if they ever occupy Taiwan, which is a free and vibrant country where citizens can do all the wonderful Daoist things we're all interested in right in downtown Taipei if they like without worrying about going to prison or getting harassed by secret police. It is a small but meaningful act of resistance, I believe, to eschew with the PRC writing system which I hope you will all consider 😁

I guess as the last few years wore on I saw enough smug, seldom-retorted pro-Trump-isms and alt-right-conspiracy-isms pop up (with "likes" applied to many of them by a certain fairly outspoken mod) to lead me to conclude that this reflected the culture of those in charge here. I mean, look at one of the most prolific members, who popped up in nearly every thread and got close to 50,000 posts. Now, I know Marblehead is beloved to some here, but I recall a fair bit of pro-Trump rhetoric from him, and that was not necessarily the central problem. To me, the problem was that he also resorted to blatant misogyny when he got into a disagreement with a woman, and much later resorted to an attempt at "ask about me in the streets" bullying to try and silence me personally when I disagreed with him. For whatever reason he seemed to catch no flak, so later, when 8-Chan/4-Chan madness started to infiltrate the site, I came to believe that whoever was making the decisions here was cool with the directions the winds were blowing in. A bit of rambling to illustrate some of my thinking more generally about why the board needed the recent changes, and why perhaps you are not "spectacularly dense," and perhaps I am simply "spectacularly sensitive"... I have not lived full-time in the US since 2006 and I am quite a bit more anti-CCP than anti-GOP, so I'm one of those people who can see the "right twice a day" part of the ticking clock (hopefully not time bomb) that is Donald Trump. I think the trade war probably needed to happen some way or another (though it is a hamfisted mess), I'm glad he took Taiwanese President Tsai Yingwen's phone call, and I think that whatever you might/should say about them two (and their motives), at least Pence and Pompeo have stood up on the world stage and pointed glaring lights at the ethnic cleansing destroying Uyghur culture in Xinjiang province. Heck, I even go so far as to actually sometimes downright sympathize with Trump when he complains that the media twists his words, because I've seen him quoted in outlets like the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the NYTimes, gone and found the full quote, and then though, "ehhhhhh, he's kinda right." Quite a few times, actually. But on the whole, I feel that the man is a walking, tweeting shitshow who has clearly channeled and amplified the worst of the "paranoid style in American politics." The paranoid style of his supporters is deeply troubling to me. Here's an example of why letting TDB become a place where even the "pizzagate" theory finds a cozy platform disturbed me: I just got back to my hotel room from a boozy Chinese business meeting where I acted as an interpreter and where one of the "guests of honor" has been a Chinese Communist Party member since the 1960s. I tend to be loquacious, gregarious motherfucker with a pretty strong stomach for baijiu, and it is when the baijiu flows that people in this watch-what-you-say culture open up a bit... hence the custom of holding important meetings at night, over dinner, with liquor pouring at twice the rate of tea and thrice the rate of water. Anyway, he was a bit cagey around me at first (I put him off with my 'tude in the beginning, as I'm jaded enough that I don't really give a fuck about the "bothersiderism" that people habitually use here to avoid admitting that there is always and 800-lb gorilla in the room with a red hat on, and I will say straight to people's faces that I think the HK protests are A-Ok, that Taiwan is fo' damn sure a free and separate country, and that everybody here is oppressed and anybody who won't admit it is either afraid to or brainwashed or some combination of the two), but after a couple of bottles and a few jolly conversations about our favorite hikes up a little-known holy mountain in Guizhou province and the beautiful women of Tongren City, I managed to break the ice I'd created and he switched into friendly storytelling mode. Once the party member was good and jolly, another guy his age (late 60s, pushing 70) who grew up in HK broached the topic of the Cultural Revolution. The party member started telling us about how he got swept up in the madness in 1966, when he was in middle school. He became a Red Guard just like everybody in his school did, because classes just stopped, and then it was join or get the shit beaten out of you, maybe get killed, maybe get sent to a gulag, and definitely see your family suffer miserably if you didn't do as you were meant to. Soon enough the Red Guards, even just the ones in his 500 person middle school, split into warring factions (three, in the case of his school), and nobody was safe, because nobody was afforded protection from the factions one didn't belong to. Madness, violence, and the unrecoverable destruction of a culture ensued. He had to stand by and silently watch his grandfather get cursed and then beaten by a rival faction of Red Guards, despite the fact that this granddaddy had been a war hero on the Communist side with a battle injury and papers to prove it. What could he have done to interfere that would not have made things worse for everybody in his family? Probably nothing, I believe. Most of us "know about" the Cultural Revolution and the many other terrible upheavals of recent history, but how often do you guys speak to living, breathing survivors of these paroxysms of the worst of human mob mentality? How many of you, as I do, have a friend who has disappeared, and very likely been sent to a concentration camp because she is a Uyghur--an extra high risk one, because she studied overseas? I say this because while I personally do not have the clearness of vision to determine whether or not Trump is on par with a Hitler or a Mao or even an Erdogan or a Bolsonaro, I do know too many people who can look you in the eyes and tell you one scary thing on the basis of personal experience: it doesn't necessarily take all that much "work" to make millions of people go goddamn batshit crazy and start doing "the unimaginable." Given that fact, I believe that nothing on the spectrum that runs from Orbans and Dutertes to Kims and Milosevics to Maos and Stalins is acceptable, because that whole slope is way too steep and slippery for any society to flirt with. We therefore have a responsibility to pull things away from that ledge, even if only in tiny ways that may seem almost pointlessly ineffectual, like writing posts on websites like this one. Conversations like the one I had tonight are a bit like sitting with a Rwandan who narrates their life story to you, versus you sitting and watching Hotel Rwanda. The latter was a powerful film, but it was Hollywood, and after it's over you can eject the DVD out and file that in your mind as "just a movie," even if you know it was "based on real events." However, sitting with somebody who was in living memory whipping the shit out of their own parents and teachers--or was one of the beaten and whipped, as has been the case with other stories I've heard--is very different from watching a historical film or a documentary. This is living, breathing evidence that societies really can explode into a millions pieces of human shrapnel. Spending long years of my life in the totalitarian surveillance state that grew out of the living generation of people who passed through total insanity between 1966 and 1976 has given me a potent appreciation for the fragility and not-at-all-guaranteedness of what we can take for granted in functioning democracies, as faaaaaaaaar from perfect as they certainly are. And when you are so very well acquainted with that fragility, well, I guess maybe it just makes you sensitive to certain things in posts here that other people might not so easily notice. Maybe it even makes you oversensitive. But I guess I'll just take oversensitive instead of blase when it comes to a fans of a man who flirts constantly with the idea of outright ordering his most committed followers to pick up their guns and take "MAGA" into their own hands, and who is already well documented as being the inspiration for border vigilantes, perverse behavior perpetrated by ICE employees, a pipe-bombing wacko, and countless isolated incidents of hate crime and harassment... much of the above committed, I suspect, by people who are pretty sure that their "red pill" knowledge justifies their extreme acts. Most of that "red pill" shit comes from websites with poor QC. I understand your concern and consider it valid. Flame of intolerance from one side answering those of another will lead nowhere good, even if the flames never do more than consume this website. I probably have not always chosen my words well enough and it is probably true that all of the people writing passionately here should be very cautious--even if one feels very even keeled when writing, the words may not appear that way. That said, without speaking for Sean, I will say that my interpretation of this thread's title was never "anybody who has views on the right side of the political spectrum must leave," and rather as, "get that alt-right bullshit out of here." I don't want to sit here and try and define the alt-right with a taxonomist's precision. I'm talking about tiki torches, MAGA rallies, cars crashing into anti-racism marches, David Duke, AR15s in pizza shops, "lock her up," QAnon, etc. As I said, today I worked as an interpreter, and my American client is a guy with an auto-parts company who I've known for about four years. He's such a Republican that yesterday, out of nowhere, he told me the following story: "when my twin brother came out here on a business trip to China with me one year, at dinner he suddenly said, I've been meaning to tell ya, my son is gay. So the next day I called my nephew to say to him, 'hey, your dad told me your gay, and I want you to know I love you and I don't care about that, I just wanna know what political party you belong to.'" Shit, the old guy is such a Republican that he assumed I knew the answer, but I didn't, so I had to ask, and he proudly replied (with noooooooo irony), ""oh, yeah, it's fine, he's still a Republican." I couldn't but laugh. Today we had a four hour car ride between factory towns and we talked about everything from global warming to wind and solar energy to the Flint water crisis to the trade war and so forth. I'd say he disagreed with me on about 75% of the issues, but the man disagreed from a standpoint I would call sane, well-read, well-thought-out, and conservative. I was not convinced by everything he said, but I definitely learned things, and I very much respect him for having given the thought to these things that he has and indeed applied himself in his life to try and make some positive changes to people's lives using the considerable amount of money he has. I'm never going to see eye-to-eye with this guy, and due to the asymmetry that exists in a relationship where he signs my much-needed paycheck, I'm never gonna even get a chance to present counterpoints to most of his points (though, two years ago when Trump first got started, I did once interrupt him and say that I thought the "give the guy a chance" line was more or less some bullshit--the man's 70s, he's been had his chance to not be a scumbag). That said, we can get along just fine, because we more or less subscribe to the same basic social contract that we need to live in a world where mass hysteria and the violence that can come with it will not take hold. Despite the fact that, as I said, I don't know how what we see now lines up with pre-WWII Germany, I do not think that Trump subscribes to this social contract. He might not actually be planning to try and push the US into the throes of something like we've seen in the bloodbaths of the 20th century... but he's fucking crazy and well-liked enough that he might end up doing so by accident. Avoiding anything that beats the drum for the march in that direction is how I interpreted "enough right-wing bullshit." Somebody wants to talk to me about the virtues of Bob Dole or even Mitt Romney without invoking flat earth and the Annunaki, hell, I'll hear him or her out. But somebody wants to tell me that the red faced, racist, molesting, Velveeta-drinking real estate hustler is involved in a battle against the deep state to save us all from "the swamp" while engaging in the Velveeta drinker's own brand of bullying... well... fuck that.

Re "just don't go to the threads you don't like": I seldom ever read or posted outside of the Daoist sub-forum and I think I only ever looked in the trump threads twice. Nevertheless, the culture that brewed within them spilled well beyond their borders. In all honesty, I had concluded until two weeks ago that this site was alt-right owned and run and even went so far as to avoid navigating directly here from any news sites that would reveal my leanings in order to diminish chances of having any from the alt-right crowd single me out.

I eat dandelions

My man, I think you might need a cup of chamomile tea, too!

I don't think that is a very good idea at all. The logic is skewed, too. People of any and all religions and no religion at all can be "genuinely interested in Daoism." I am aware of your aversion to people who blend Christian and Daoist ideas and practice, but I'm afraid that sort of thing has been going on since the days of the Silk Road and will certainly continue unabated for as long as Christianity and Daoism both exist... probably to many people's benefit, too.

1. The trend towards blacking out of dipshits who go on mass murder rampages is a conscious attempt to stop giving them fame and thereby reduce copycats. 2. There is a huge amount of reporting on the dilemmas of immigration, automation, and demographic change in mainstream sources. If you do not realize this, then my best guesses are that either you do not read enough to have seen it, or you reject it because the Atlantic does not generally mention the Annunaki. 3. Yeah, that was terrible. Thank the Reptilian overlords that this is not getting much attention. The kid, if anything, is a great advertisement for the fact that the defunding public education and municipalities in general that picked up took off with Reagan has done what you'd expect--create a bunch of malcontents who lack critical thinking skills. Bad combination. 4. Why did you forget to criticize this guy for failing to mention the Annunaki and Repterrhoids? 5. OMFG the left has mos def NOT been "sweeping colonialism under the rug," it's just that you and your 8Chan buddy above have the most ridiculously warped notion of what colonialism is and are terribly poorly read and underexposed to the world, so somehow you actually think that your statement about colonialism surprises anybody. DUDE! EXACTLY, COLONIALISM IS A FUCKING PROBLEM, BUT GUESS WHAT, THE FLOW OF MIGRANTS NORTH ISN'T COLONIALISM, IT'S ALMOST ENTIRELY PEOPLE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE MULTIFARIOUS CATASTROPHES WROUGHT BY EURO-US COLONIALISM IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA. If what I just said doesn't make sense to you, go to your local library and search for "Howard Zinn" and "Noam Chomsky." Read all relevant titles. If your library has none, use interlibrary loan. 6. No, really, fucking go. 7. Like, turn off the computer, get off your butt, go to the library, turn off your gadgets so you can focus, drink a chamomile tea, and read that shit. 8. You have two eyes, and two ears, but only one mouth. One's ratio of learning to speaking should be ~5:1. For people suffering from repterrhoids, I recommend ~10:1. 9. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SITTING THERE THINKING UP RETORTS FOR? THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER, GO! Bonus: 10. "Get humans to terraform the planet into a warmer, technological... blah blah..." Lol. They have spaceships and can shape shift and control everything from US deep state to the Chinese government, but they cannot: A-Terraform the planet B-Prevent hardy truthseekers like you from knowing the truth because of YouTube, which is somehow out of their control, and David Icke, whose purple and turquoise clothes are so ugly that Annunaki's can't even look at him without turning to stone. 11. That was not an invitation to talk back to me, kid, you're supposed to be at the fucking library already. You're already there? Oh, well, stop using the catalog computers to surf stupid websites, you're breaking the rules.

歡迎道貓重出江湖嘍！

I appreciate that Lifeforce has been here for a good long time. I also very much (and very much more) appreciate why Sean is not putting up with this shit any more. I can't know exactly why Sean has made the decisions he has, but I don't need to, 'cause know the reasons why I understand them. And it all boils down to: I don't think many if any transexuals had any more choice in the matter of their gender than I had in the matter of growing two arms, two legs, and a head instead of any other combination. And had I come out with six arms I might've even done something so drastic as ask a surgeon to make changes that made me feel at home in my own body, if my body did not feel like home. And I believe that anywhere along the way in that process I for sure would have received so much bullying and disrespect that it would be hard keeping my head high and breathing easy in this world, because I know I've felt plenty cruelty from others--especially in childhood and adolescence--for far lesser "abnormalities" and "transgressions." And I understand that that cruelty is a big part of the reason there are many suicides among transexuals. And the very least we can all do is make this a place where somebody who has been ostracized their whole life breathe easy and find acceptance. Because one thing is for Daodamn sure: all people got spat out of the exact same Dao that births one that births two that births three that births ten thousand things. The process that gave birth to this fool I call "me" gave birth to people who look, think, and act not at all like me. Therefore, tracing things back to their root, I have only two choices: accept that we are of one and the same plant, or cut off my own branch to spite those I have not yet learned to understand, but ultimately cause the withering, ossification, and dry shriveled death of my own shen. Word. Is. Bond. Of course, one can make the argument that one I just said is totally hypocritical and I should open my arms to oppressors in the same spirit open my arms to oppressed, and therefore I should be opposed to Sean's recent decisions. Duly noted, but I view Sean's actions as more like taking a weapon out of the hands of a drunk. A different kind of compassion manifestation of compassion may be needed in different situations. Now, when you've got a bit of qi the universe has a way of answering your questions very quickly. And Lifeforce's post yesterday made wonder what some of the old Daoists I know might make of transxexuality. Lo and behold, this morning at 8:30am I paid a visit to an 87-year-old Dragon Gate master (grandmaster, really) I study with, who is originally from Shandong province in China. He had asked a few of us male students there in the morning to clarify some teachings specific to the male reproductive system, and wouldn't you know his storytelling suddenly veered to talk to some of the young fathers in the room about how it's good to regularly pat kids on the head--but maybe not too much, if the kids are hanging out around cultivators and therefore getting tons of head pats from adults whose laogong points are pulsing with qi. He then told the story of a young man, born in 1981, whose parents were both practicing Daoist qigong regularly in the 1980s, and therefore the kid was often hanging around the school. He was a bright kid and friendly, so he ended up getting a lot of head pats--eventually this had the effect of "opening" (開竅 in Chinese) the spiritual centers in his head, and he quickly turned into a bonafied genius. I will not share the name of the person in the story, but this person is famous, influential, and indeed widely regarded as being truly brilliant, a prodigy. He skipped high school and college and went into the workforce and continues to make contributions in the world. Now, much as I respect him, the master telling this story is close to 90 and not especially abreast of how notions of gender have evolved in the last few years. On the other hand, as you would expect from a devoted Daoist teacher, he displayed no hardness or cruelty or even judgement in his assessment of what happened next to this young man. Continuing the story, the teacher said that one side effect of the boy's qi changes that were brought on when some of the spiritual centers in his brain "opened" was that he started to get frequent, persistent erections--"priapism" this is called. The boy did not have an affinity for Daoist practice, however, and never learned the practices that would have helped him circulate the powerful amount of energy that was stimulating his genitals. In fact, he did not even dare tell his parents about his problems with priapism, which caused him much shame. According to the old Daoist, the unfortunate result was that he came to develop a certain disgust for his physical situation and eventually went to Thailand in his 20s and got a sex change. Now, was the old Daoist right in his assessment? I suspect that at very best he was telling half the story. As I said, the person he was talking about is quite famous, and I looked her up this afternoon and discovered that she has told her own story publicly. One thing she said translates to, "I am 'post-gender.' My choice is to stand on no side of the debate about gender. This is not at all because I feel that this issue is unimportant. Rather, it is because I am of the opinion that debate will not solve any problems." My hunch is that if I asked this woman to tell me about her boyhood changes, she might think that the old Daoist's idea that it all started because people with qigong hands patted her on the head too much is total malarkey. Then again, who knows!? My point is definitely not to try and say, "ooh, look, the octogenarian qi master knows alllllllll, don't rub your kid's head or he'll turn into a girl." Sheesh, please do not let that become TDB sex-related qigong misconception #5,203! (Probably the cat is already out of the bag, sigh) My point is simply to say: the old Daoist who came from a very conservative society (trust me, even today Shandong province, where I spend a lot of time, is not an easy place for misfits of any kind to live in) told this story as even-keeledly as though he were talking about the weather; he talked about how he and this young woman are still friends; and he spoke glowingly of her brilliance for learning languages and many other things. Of the surgery had little more to say than, "well, that was a big thing that might have been avoided if we had realized what was going on, but she never dared tell anybody, which is a pity." But in his mind the problem wasn't that the young man socially transgressed by getting a sex change and becoming a woman... He thought it was a shame mostly because Daoists just generally tend to advise against avoiding all kinds of surgery if that is possible, because they think cutting up the body is really bad for qi! As far as he was concerned, though, in the end this was a choice the man made, and now he is a woman, so be it! They're still friends! She still visits for tea! The Dao keeps rolling! Yeah! That's how you make it to 87 and remain full of vitality and freshness, not grumbling on the internet about how everybody sucks and this and that change is insidious and I just want my pub lunch. Somebody here said that if there must be political discussion here, let it be from the standpoint of "how might a Daoist look at this." I agree, although I also know that we've got too many people here who think they know every last thing there is about Daoism because they read a translation of the Daodejing once and it evidently told them that you can be a chauvanistic pro-Trump "anarchist" because Zhuangzi said so or some other such nonsense. Nevertheless, in the spirit of whoever said that about politics, I ask, how might Lifeforce have worded his above post in a way that perhaps embodies a bit of the Daoist spirit whilst remaining true to the man that he is? My thoughts on a better way of wording these sorts of things: Obvvvioouusssllyyy (and oh-so-fucking-predictably), a solid number of the people who probably aren't too interested in what I have to say except to argue at it are gonna see what I just did and think: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR, LOOK AT THIS POLITICAL CORRECT BULLSHIT, SNOWFLAKE, STOP STIFLING MY FREE SPEECH, etc, etc. I get it. As you wish, as you please. All I can say is I refer you to what I said above about cutting yourself off from the root to spite the branches whose shapes, colors of leaves, and pinkness of their flowers you evidently do not like. Bad for shen. Bad for qi. Not the Way. You suffer in the end. I speak from experience. I have been cruel to many people. And harmed myself plenty in the process. Hope you get a chance to learn. Hope you get a chance to meet more old masters. Hope you soften up, because Laozi said that the opposite is death. And if you're not interested in what Laozi had to say... why the fuck are you wasting your precious, finite, sooner-than-you-believe-to-be-very-finally-over life bathing in your computer monitor glow staring at this load of bullshit?????? Turn off the computer and go outside and smell a flower or smile at a toddler or help an old lady carry her groceries to the bus stop forchrissake! Sigh, like Sean said, it takes SO much more effort to refute bullshit than it takes to poop it out. Trying to offer a little water and fertilizer to the other branches takes work. But really, there's no other option, 'cause nobody makes it alone.

1. Chilllllllll, Winston. 2. My back feels great now. Did you know patting yourself on the back is an important part of shougong in certain Longmen practices? Sure is. 3. Serious question: why are you certain the definitions you inherited from your culture and language are more accurate than those Polynesians inherit from their culture and language? 4. You are a deep admirer of Deci Belle's wise posts, non? Why do you ask her for her thoughts on this, mon cheri? 5. P.S., Did you know your taint is actually a vestigial vulva? 6. P.P.S., Well, it is.

Sorry man, ain't true want you write, though maybe that's how it looks in the part of the world you occupy. (Except through the eyes of your trans neighbor/coworker/extended family member, I would guess) I had seen a documentary about fa'afafine when I was about 18, but it wasn't till much later when I lived in New Zealand and had a Maori roommate take umbrage at my ignorance that I realized this gender category is very old, established, and real to those to whom it is, well... old, established, and real. My then- roommate spoke just as plainly and firmly about the whole thing as you just did, and trust me she was no radical leftist nor even politically correct. P.S. I am on the radical left and I confess that I do not know what to think about many aspects of transexuality. Damn, I just turned your world upside down... TWICE! Guess that means now it's right side up, though, so I'ma consider that mission accomplished, provided your wedgie-tight conclusions have loosened up just a tiggity-tad.

Anyone who doesn't understand this (@MooNiNite@MooNiNite@MooNiNite) should read some of Alana Semuel's excellent investigative reporting on this, especially here and here. P.S., another name drop, I had a beer with her last year in DC and she was cool as hell. So much fun to be had in the world when you go, you know, outdoors and stuff.

My man, China's "communist party" is about as communist as the PRC is the People's Republic. I lived there for a loooooooong time. I've sat down with top students at top universities who are all forced to attend Marxism classes several nights a week, and have been since they were probably still in split pants (er, those're Chinese crotchless trousers for babies used in lieu of diapers... I digress). I have discovered that these kids do not know the word "alienation." With thousands of hours of forced "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" indoctrination under their belts, they have never even heard of the concept. We get out the dictionary to double check that I have not misremembered the Chinese word for "alienation," and there it is in the dictionary, plain as day. We check it together and they look up at me quizzically and say, "no, we have never talked about this. Is this important? You learned about this when you studied Marxism in university?" That's always one of those moments where you can't laugh, you can't cry, you can't even shake your head, you just freeze and think, wowwwwwwwwwwwww, yall are fucked. My point is, whatever the direction the PRC is pointed it, it ain't leftwards, despite the propagandists' continued usage of words like "communism" and "socialism." That said, I don't see much from the history of the last two centuries that leads me to believe that what the world needs will be found by emulating any of the grand communist experiments I know of. Somehow or other and in spite of my earlier prejudices I ended up more or less in the anarchist camp myself. I see it as especially compatible with a true spiritual path, perhaps so much so that the two may in some ways need one another, but I don't have the time or the wherewithall to try and make that point now. Took me a long time to wrap my mind around anarchism even with one in my family, even with the man James C. Scott (sorry about the name drop, but, 'chuknow...) himself giving me a copy of Anarchism in Action on some, "mix this into your Daoist soup, kid" shit. Anarchism is too often portrayed as just a big "anti" full of young kids who don't shower and like breaking shit, and therefore as an unsophisticated, shallow utopian fantasy for hypocritical malcontents. That my brother for a long time was militantly averse to underarm deodorant and serially heisted shopping carts full of bourgie groceries from Whole Foods, and failed to ever eloquently explain to me what the fuck he believed in (not that I was a particularly respectful listener back then, either) generally left me with the impression that anarchism is just some sort of love for chaos and liberated organic avocados. My bro grew up, though, and I read Anarchism in Action, and one thing led to another and I guess the philosophy really did end up mixed into my Daoist soup after all. Anyway, everything I know of it makes me pretty sure it only makes sense to place anarchism very firmly on the leftern "side," though I too agree that there is little value in boiling everything down to L v. R. You hand me the platform of a pre-"Southern Strategy" Republican and I'd probably find a good number of things I like on it. Still though, to the lefty left is for damn sure where I walk my walk, and where I remain despite being plenty aware that yessssssssssssssss, of course, the mainstream media feeds us lies and all that blahzay blahzay. Excuse my digression and my all caps, but yo, last time I checked, MOTHER JONES AND IN THESE TIMES AND ETC., ETC., ETC., HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT BEFORE THERE WAS EVEN AN INTERNET, AIGHT!? Like, um, here: Dear 21st century conspiradudes: We've been knowing that you can't trust everything the NYTimes tells you... So... Your point? Corporate media should be taken with a grain of salt? There are nefarious forces that wish to keep the man down? I dig. But this is news? Huh? To who, exactly? And the antidote to this revelation lies in "research" conducted via the YouTube algorithm, which, um, despite being a product of one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations on earth, is somehow an undiluted source of accuracy and truth? Wuhhuhuhuhhhuhh? All this smells fishier than my lil bro's armpits circa his Oakland commune days, just sayinnnnn. I'd say more but I literally do not have the time to post walls of text day in day out and feast my eyes and ears on hours of "hidden truth" videos. What the fuck planet do you all live on and how is it that there are evidently 45 hours in your day? I can barely find time to get the trash out on time for the truck and make it to the grocery store around the way with discounted pineapples before closing time, much less read these excessively long Intercept articles and finish painting my oil portrait of AOC on a 3 meter tall canvas. Fuck if I'ma spend my precious downtime listening to mp3s of late nite AM radio, much as I do love aliens and shadow people. P.S., to anybody I have annoyed thus far with my SJW ways, would this avocado hummus lighten your mood? It possesses a most creamy texture. No no, I swear it is not stolen, it is merely fregan. Expiration dates are soooo shapeshifting Jewish lizard round earth cabal, knamean? Plus I'm pretty sure this mold contains DMT. Anyway, it is probably high time for me to shut up. In keeping with the spirit of the thread, while I seldom talk about politics here and don't particularly have any wish to change that (you can breathe your sigh of relief now), I'm standing up for this little role call. I'm dyed enough in the wool to have Crimethinc in my browser history and to sneak out at night to put up pro-HK graffiti (香港加油!!!). Hell, when Noam Chomsky Day came around in Captain Fantastic, I was like, oh shit, good idea, can't wait to have kids so I can subject them to this!

Nuff respect. I also welcome the intervention. In recent times it seemed like the cliques that formed in and were fueled by threads that might as well've been labelled "QAnon YouTube Fever Dreams" were spilling their culture into other parts of the forum, to the growing detriment of conversations related to seeking the Dao. It did seem like at least one mod was involved and egging some of this on with "likes" and comments. Having worked hard isn't an excuse for that. A shakeup meant to look squarely in the face of the cultural changes that have taken place since Donald the Trumpet rode down his escalator raving about Mexicans seems right, and right on. Words do have plenty of power. That power can and does extend all the way to, yes, as Steve said, jackasses harassing people of color because they picked that shit up online, or even jackasses bringing AR15s to pizza parlors. "It takes way more effort to refute bullshit than to spout it," I paraphrase, but amen.

No idea what it's called. A good old boy from Geowgia with a broken leg and a Luke Skywalker haircut (speaking of the force) pointed down the road and said, "if you want a perfect beach, walk that way." The water was so warm that my balls didn't even flinch the moment I waded in. Definitely not a place to get your Wim Hof on but good for everything else.

@joeblast Since you would prefer discussion of martial ethics/virtue to be kept separate from discussion of martial technique, and since I think Starjumper has to accept closer scrutiny than just your average TDB blowhard since he's now selling his books and videos here, I am splitting the threads. I write the following to anybody who cares, although it addresses your post directly. (Anybody who wishes to troll this thread, go on ahead. But at least read this first so you can say something genuinely witty and germane. And Starjumper, if you wish to continue mocking me here, you're welcome to. Go hard. Consult a thesaurus even. Why not get it out of your system once and for all, and then try and remember that you're never too old to grow up.) Thanks for your thoughts. If I come across as one who was sheltered and therefore does not understand street violence, thank you for that too. I say that without guile or irony. I take your comment as a compliment, as it was not easy to go from being a person regularly consumed by anger and involved with violence of many kinds to a person who rarely feels the need to even think about harming other people or vandalizing my environment. My most important martial arts teachers would also be satisfied if I told them that it appears I do not carry an aura of violence, even online. They (two from the Shaolin tradition, one from Wudang, neither famous) were exceedingly clear that gentleness and calm were the the most important things we would ever learn, even though to be certain in the Shaolin school there was often bruising and bloodshed as we trained in a way that reflected a real need for self-defense in that time and place. My recollections of the violent side of the world that I passed through are very relevant to my opinion that Steve Gray. It is because of those experiences that I say that if he is going to be selling spiritual books and videos online (and hawking them here), then he needs to assume more responsibility for his words than XYZ random forum member does. One who sells teaching materials related to spiritual practice (even if he denies that's what his books and videos are about) must exercise real discernment and be cautious about publicly disseminating violent fantasies or bigotry, even when in jest or when acting out an outrageous online persona. Those who decide to be teachers, especially when they're selling the types of books young people like (Power! Jedis! Dragons! CIA! Kill you with merely a thought! Bruce Lee! Aliens! Wizards! Harry Potter!), need to know that silly young fools may actually end up taking them as role models. Their words may manifest in their students' and fans' actions. These are things that virtuous teachers keep at the very front of their minds--for the sake of their students, society, and their very own karma I will explain why I feel strongly about these things, but first I will apologize, because I know it is all too easy for discussion of a "dark past" to turn into a sort of dick measuring contest (that keyword is a T-ball pitch for you if you need it, SJ). Nevertheless, here it is: sheltered though I may seem, in fact from mob brawls to 10-against-2 beatdowns (on both sides of that ratio) to bottles smashed over heads (more times than I can count, with a goodly scar on my forehead for when I got to taste it myself) to baseball bats and table legs to stabbings and all the way up to gun play (on both sides for that, also, though by grace of the Spaghetti Monster no altercation I was personally involved with resulted in a bullet hitting a body; yet I've been within fifty feet of a drive-by as well as dumb kids shooting a dude to death because he stopped his car to confront them when they threw rocks at it... cold world indeed), to multiple close friends and acquaintances losing people to murder, to friends falling apart in the crack game, to stick up kid friends who turned into the psychopaths who cut people after getting the money, to friends locked up... I have seen a fair bit, and the list goes on. That's just the violent crime, making no mention of the other crimes as well as my habitually foul behavior towards women, gay men, people weaker or stupider than me, etc. All that said, I came from a comfortable enough household and was not as hard as I aspired to be. I learned I was definitely not hard when my propensity for violence increasingly put me in contact with people who were in much deeper than me. Participating in beating up and apparently stabbing a BPSN one year meant having to keep a gun in the apartment and lay low on paranoid mode for quite some time. Less than a year later, I put a rifle in my friend's hand and he licked a shot at a group of BDs who damn sure knew who we were, so I had to leave my home and nearly everything I owned and permanently camp out on my friends' sofa. Having all that go on while becoming a little too well-known to police and also expelled from college in large part because I was involved in a brawl turned stabbing there, well, it ended up being enough to convince me that I needed to get my shit together. But... Getting one's shit together when one is a young, selfish, antisocial retard who didn't have a good male role model in the home is exceedingly difficult. One of the biggest blessings in my life was that I had encountered and trained with both the Shaolin and the Wudang teachers before I went feral. I was able to remember that while training Shaolin martial arts I had been healthy and in high spirits, and also easily avoided conflict. In my twenties, when I finally realized the need I had for discipline and guidance in my life, I knew that these things existed, and I was able to go back to them. Far more important than the physical practices was the availability of responsible, mature, sane men to teach me how to stop being a fucking fool. That was many years ago. I have not needed to fight with anybody since then. The two times people tried to jump me since then, I just ran away, which was easy, as few goons are in better shape than I am, and also because there was simply no compelling reason not to run away. This last fact I was able to see clearly because my teachers were men who offered their students very clear teachings about what kind of behavior reflects integrity, and what kind does not. The two Shaolin teachers were both cops in an area where violence was a part of life. One teacher's teenage son had died because he was shot in the face at point blank down the street in a convenience store for answering a question about his gang affiliation by saying he had none. You can imagine that we were reminded about this story on a regular basis, especially if anybody in the school got into conflicts in the neighborhood. So, we trained and became strong and punched and kicked each other but we also were fed a steady stream of moral instructions from men who were mature, upright, strong, confident, dangerous, very familiar with violence, and yet never ever ever ever prone to sitting there making light of it, or bragging about it, joking about killing people, name-calling those they did not like, etc. I am sure they behaved the way they did in part because they were aware of how volatile and impressionable all the hormonal, teenaged and early-twenty-something minds around them were. To be unclear about what constitutes virtuous behavior is to fail as a martial arts teacher, regardless of how skilled one may be at teaching people to punch, kick, grapple, etc. My own life example proves that even if you do teach properly, kids will still fail to get the message. Yet, despite the fact that I strayed far from what my teachers had taught me when I was a teenager, my great good fortune was that they planted seeds that remained fertile until I finally began to examine my life in my twenties. Had they not done so, I do not know how I would have found the power to change the direction my life was plummeting along in. Perhaps I would have have failed to extract myself. I can only remain grateful that they upheld the martial culture as excellent role models and mentors who helped me cease harming myself and others. What they demonstrated was 武德, "martial virtue." The character 武 simply depicts stopping (止) and a bladed weapon (戈). Partially this refers to self defense, which helps you stop others from harming you. But when viewed as the basis of moving from simple martial arts training into a spiritual existence it reveals a deeper meaning of learning to stop yourself from harming self and other. This is not easy to do, and yet it is core of all Chinese martial arts that can legitimately claim to have their roots in the teachings of the sages. Those of you who view this place as The Dao Bums and not simply "the bums," please be aware that the Daodejing makes no bones about this issue. If you can't remember where, it is time to read the book again. This brings me back to Steve Gray, who claims to have inherited one of the greatest Chinese martial arts ever--one that indeed comes from the spirit realm and turns people into sages. In choosing to use this shared forum as a platform from which to hawk his book full of purported spiritual teachings, his neigong videos (including those expressly meant to activate shen), and to attract students to his brick-and-mortar school, he has chosen to move from the role of simple forum member into a more public role. I do not suggest that anybody needs to force him to speak and write in one way or another. But given Steve's transition to public figure, I think there is no reason to treat him differently from any other author, video maker, or "master" plying his/her trade on the internet. Given that he is selling teachings, there is plenty of reason to take a serious look at just what kind of teacher this is. That is why I hold his fantasy about killing the BJJ practitioner in a different light than I would if it were posted by a random TDbum. That violent fantasy and all the name-calling that goes on and on and on and on... what kind of person does it reflect? What kind of teacher does it reflect? What kind of energetic, spiritual, and martial development does it reflect? Is it just little jokes, or is this man perhaps deranged and dangerous? If he is not deranged, why does he feel the need to play the role of a somewhat crazy, bullying person when he is posting on the internet? There is another issue which also demands some scrutiny: Starjumper is spreading videos online of shen practices which he admits that he himself cannot safely practice. Today, regarding the videos he recently posted he wrote: It is well known that improper shen practices can and often enough do lead to mental illness and spiritual disturbances. That Starjumper is using the Dao Bums as a platform to advertise and distribute video instructions for practices that he, as their teacher (creator even?), does not fully understand is eyebrow-raising to say the least. My opinion is that simply tacking warnings onto the beginning of videos (or covering your book with the word "spiritual" and then denying it is about spirituality) is a lame cop out, and demonstrative of a man who lacks the sense of responsibility required of a person in the role he is trying to occupy. Anyway, I feel I have made my point. Food for thought for some, hopefully. Maybe some will think I'm overreacting. I was taught by people who took this sort of shit very seriously and took pains to explain why. My hard-won life experience lends me to think they were right in doing so, and thus I take my time to express these things as clearly as I possibly can. People should be very careful when choosing teachers. That is all.

Hah! Damn skippy it wasn't so bad. Thank you for taking the time to read this and give it some thought. I went to the beach for a week and when I came back decided not to write anything in response to what Aetherous and Spotless wrote, lest I be accused of not letting sleeping dogs lie. But since the dog already went and stood up without me poking at it, might as well take a moment to thank you both for taking the time to write those heartfelt posts and helping flesh out the most important points in this thread (which, though "inspired" by my interaction with Steve, is really about the responsibilities we all potentially bear). Anyway, may the Force be with everybody...

I'm sorry, got to strongly disagree with you here. I think you would be lucky to get 10% correct by plugging Buddhist or Daoist canonical works into Google translate, and there's no way for anybody who doesn't smoke as much meth as the Google translate bot evidently does could make decisions on the basis of this stuff. Let's use the Heart Sutra as an example. Here's what Google gives you: View the self-Buddhist. It’s as long as a lot of time. See the five elements are empty. All the bitterness. Relics. Color is empty. It’s not empty. The color is empty. Empty is the color. I am thinking about it. It is also true. Relics. It is the empty space of the laws. Not born or not. Not dirty. No increase or decrease. It is colorless in the air. Nothing to think about. No eyes and ears. Colorless sound and fragrance touch. No vision. Even the unconscious world. No ignorance. There is no clearness. Even no death. There is no old death. No bitterness. No wisdom or no. No income. Bodhi. According to Prajna Paramita. Innocent. Nothing. No horror. Stay away from reversing your dreams. Nirvana. The Three Buddhas. According to Prajna Paramita. Aunt Doro, Sancha, and Bodhi. I know that Prajna Paramita is more. It is a great curse. It is a big mantra. It is a curse. There is no curse. Able to eliminate all pain. Really worthwhile. Therefore, it is said that Prajna Paramita is a curse. That is to say cursing. Uncovering and revealing, Balo’s discovery, Boluo’s discovery, Bodhisattva "Therefore, it is said that Prajna Paramita is a curse. That is to say cursing." Yeah, um, ok. Now here're the last few lines from an important neidan poem called 《金丹詩訣》 by Chen Nan: Once the work is done with sincerity, the spirit is so solid and solid, Yan Rongru is not hungry and thirsty, and Fang Xian Jin Dan is a success. Cui Wei's independent crystal palace, the body is very intentional, in the middle of the night, Huang Po came to the door, as a medium to marry and Jin Gong. Taiyi Xuanzhu Jin Liquid Dan, also returned to the local children's face. If you want to hear a new teacher's language, you can teach him to see a class. In the night, a Büfu 蕖, there are red pills dropping beads, dripping Huachi is Shenshui, Dantian gathers for Danshu. It is called the water and fire essence, this is the two dragons and scorpions, but take the sacred point away from the hole, pure dry can take the flight. There's a point at which 10% correct is actually just 100% incorrect, because all you can do with stuff like this is waste precious, precious time that could be better spent reading books written or translated by people who actually care about helping you "awaken to reality," instead of a computer program. That is, of course, unless "this is the two dragons and scorpions, but take the sacred point away from the hole, pure dry can take the flight" makes sense to you! So solid and solid! Unfortunately what I looked at is so deeply riddled with mistakes as to be close to useless. ~80% of the content in the Daoist Canon is about ritual, btw.

There have been quite a few people who can read classical Chinese in and out of here over the years, with a range of specialties and skill levels. I started with Language of the Dragon, which was recommended to me by a guy who'd studied with the author, I think at Oberlin. It's not a pretty book but I think it was an excellent place to start. A few months later I started pouring over the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic for an hour or two a night, dictionary in hand, and attending classes on this text over the weekend (I was living in China). I used paper copies of the Kangxi Dictionary, the Shuowenjiezi, and Pleco. One person had recommended that I always write dictionary definitions by hand in the margins of books in order to strengthen my impression of the words; another suggested I always write the full Chinese definition, not the English synonym. I combined both people's advice and the pages of my books became very full of words (for a few years, at least), but I learned a lot and now I sit and read things that are a thousand years old at my leisure. Later I attended a few university level intro classes taught in Chinese in China, which were helpful. The key was really just keeping at it on my own, though. Also, early on I had a bilingual copy of the 《太上老君說常清靜經》, translated by Brenda Hood, who's now at the National University of Natural Medicine in Oregon. This was very helpful to have, because she did a great job and it had the original text right before her English version. If you're trying to learn to read Daoist cultivation texts this would be a good thing to track down. It really depends on the topic, the author, the era, the style, the genre, the intended audience, etc... and of course your own knowledge of the relevant vocabulary and similar texts or predecessor texts (because lots of ancient Chinese authors love using allusions or partial quotes which are easily recognized by those "in the know," but bewildering if you don't know what you're looking at). Nowadays I can read some ancient Daoist writings as though they were as transparent as a pane of glass--some of these books even respected, native speaker professors who research Daoism cannot read, but that is simply because I've spent a lot of time learning the terms related to the minuscule sliver of classical Chinese writings that I'm interested in. Conversely, the things that they're into are often just as opaque to me as blocks of wood... and just as boring, too, to be honest! In any event, no matter which fields interest you, building the relevant vocabulary will take you quite a few years, in part because no single dictionary is up to the task of shedding light on a specialized field. Most definitely. This is a major issue in Daoism. For one, alchemical imagery can be very complicated and requires you to be able to figure out what's being alluded to, sometimes by allusions to symbols that represent the ineffable... sometimes, even, symbols that mean one thing in one arcane field (such as Chinese medicine) might mean a whole different thing in a different arcane field (such as when certain Chinese medicine terms show up in inner alchemy writings). In short, a lot of "decrypting" is required to make heads and tails of these things. On top of that seldom if ever did old texts spill the beans with really clear, straightforward instructions like you'd hope for in a well-written cookbook (and even if they did, without having a teacher who's been taught orally to pass the practical explanation to you in person, could you be sure you had the right interpretation?). Then, on top of that, in some fields of the Daoism--especially ritual, but I've seen the same in one instance with "Daoist medicine"--some things are intentionally written out of order, incorrectly, or with omissions to prevent outsiders from being able to use the instructions unless they also got the relevant oral teachings. And then, on top even of that, there is human error from mistranscribing, misprinting, misinterpretation etc. If you get so involved that you're working with 300-year-old handwritten manuscripts, then you're also dealing with rot and bug eaten pages. Ah, there's no end to the fun you can have if your obsession is deep enough... None of this makes achieving your goals an insurmountable task. If this is really you're path, then the 苦 will naturally taste 甜 and things will fall into place and one day you'll find yourself having what a professor I know who researches Zhengyi Daoist ritual calls the "third eye." He doesn't mean what most people mean by third eye--he means that you're so familiar with Daoist texts in a certain field that you're able to correctly anticipate and guess meanings that no dictionary exists to confirm or disconfirm for you, but then months or years later you find some missing piece and realize, ah-ha!, you had indeed been right in your guess. (For the record, whatever "third eye" I have is totally useless in his field of research... Daoism is so huge and old and mixed up with other traditions like Tang Dynasty tantric Buddhism and 法教--which is so little-known in English that I don't even know what to call it--that it's impossible to know it all. Not that the knowitalls would agree with me...) Yes, tons, although the Yijin Jing text is quite a late development (Ming or even Qing, iirc), so it is not especially representative of what's out there. My impression is that writings attempting to describe physical postures and movements in great detail are not especially common in older Daoist texts. 乾杯!

It's great. When it comes to Daoist canon texts, I find it has a far lower rate of mistaken characters than Ctext. However, there are some Daoist canon texts lacking photos of the original pages on Kanripo but which Ctext does have photos of. If you combine your searching of these two sites with Scripta Sinica and Wikisource then there is not much that you can't find, at least in terms of old Daoist books that were printed as opposed to copied by hand and passed down in temples and families. And if you can't find anything on those four sites, then there's always Home in Mists... A piece of advise for Kanripo is that sometimes I have had trouble with the search function if I search for long sentences. I think this is because of the way they use the carriage return in their layout. The way around this problem I've used is to just search for a unique-looking combination of ~5 characters instead of long sentences.

Hi Lightbody, I cannot answer you from personal experience, but one answer to your question coming from Daoist alchemy lies in the teachings on cultivation of xing and ming and the 陽神/yangshen/yang spirit. This teaching, boiled down and oversimplified, is that the peace, happiness, and satisfaction you describe will not actually be permanent unless ming training is complete, because you are still bound to a physical body that will die even if your mind is free. Once the life you have (ming) comes to an end, your mind will not remain free unless you have cultivated yangshen, in which case you have some sort of substantial basis from which to maintain your freedom for eternity. Regarding the yangshen, there are at least two main schools of thought. In one school of thought, the human body of a practitioner somehow "births" the yangshen, which is like a copy of the physical body, endlessly capable of transformation and regeneration, capable of manifesting as a solid form or disappearing into nonexistence at will, capable of replication, etc. If it is fully developed, then this yangshen discards the body when the physical body dies, leaving behind a corpse which, according to lore, may not rot as normal. But it's still a corpse, in any event. Another school of thought is that once the yangshen has been produced, it should be kept in the physical body so that the spontaneous processes that created it continue until the whole physical body is utterly transformed; when this has occurred, then while still alive the practitioner can turn his/her body into immateriality and back at will. When finally leaving the world, the practitioner leaves nothing behind, akin to Padmasambhava in Tibetan Buddhism and some Hindu sages I have heard read about, including one (perhaps in Yogananda's book?) who supposedly had his disciples seal him up in a room where he turned into a blaze of purple light that shone from under the crack in the door, and then totally disappeared. In the case of either teaching, the yangshen is not something that can occur without there also being enlightenment of the mind, because a mind that remains occluded by delusion will prevent these natural processes from unfolding. Therefore, an immortal who has achieved the yangshen is not like a typical "individual" who happens to have a magic, undying energy body. Such a being is, so say the teachings, utterly free from all of the fetters of duality and distinctions. Has any human ever really accomplished such marvels, or is this all legend? I have no idea, but I can say for certain that plenty of students of Daoism take these teachings quite seriously, and view enlightenment of mind nature as just one half of the work that needs to be done in order for alchemy to be complete. The ones who are serious about this teaching like to offer warnings not to sit on your laurels after realizing the mind's nature, as that alone is not enough to prevent being dragged down by karma and yin qi once the yang qi of your ming is fully exhausted.

Strongly agree!