Walker

I agree with what you say here, and I think this spirit of due diligence should be applied to all who promote ideas here, including such ideas as your brand of "There is no Tai Shang Lao Jun but the one Flowing Hands talks to, and Flowing Hands is his prophet" brand of millenarianism. In that spirit of questioning, please allow me to venture that the unattributed block quote that you copied and pasted for us doesn't do diddly to prove the point you're trying to make. Why? 1. First of all, this article paints a picture in broad strokes of the repeated tragedies that struck mainland Chinese people post-1949. However, Effi tells us that Xiao Yao Pai became public in Indonesia in the 1970s, under the direction of a master who was in Indonesia since the 1930s. Their master would have avoided each and every one of the tragic historical events listed in the quote. That fact alone ought to put this discussion to rest. Grassmountainsage (from what I can tell himself no cheerleader for XYP), says: On top of that, there's the problem that there is a mountain of anecdotal evidence suggesting that some "real teachings" really did survive all the chaos of the 20th century in the PRC. Which brings us to point number... 2. Even if Xiao Yao Pai was being transmitted by a master in the People's Republic of China, the history painted for us by the quote (which was apparently written by somebody called Danny Xuan in a book about wing chun) you provided is far from authoritative. One can go see people in a martial arts forum debating the quote here. I tend to take the side that says the quote fails to account for everything that happened in the immense land mass that just so happens to contain the biggest population on earth. I know plenty of people who lived through that era, including cultivators and martial artists who have told me personally that they found ways to practice. Hu Yaozhen's daughter Hu Lijuan, for example, told me that when she was sent out in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, she wandered off to practice her qigong in the woods, where she wasn't bothered. In Bill Porter's Path to Heaven we see the hermit who says he was dragged from his mountain by some Red Guards. After awhile he stole away in the night and went back to his hermitage, and the Red Guards never came after him again. I could keep making examples, but I there's no need. The quote's value is in reminding us to be skeptical; it can't possibly be used to definitively rule out any possibilities. 3. The quote you gave us is only talking about kung fu. Clearly it's not even accurate about kung fu. You're trying to say that what it says about kung fu holds true for everything traditional and Chinese. However, if the quote fails to describe the state of kung fu accurately... and we're talking about a religious cultivation movement instead of a martial art... and that religious lineage wasn't even in China during the period that the quote is talking about... then... well, then there is no then. The points are moot. Ah, now if that ain't the bluesy lamentation sung by forlorn prophets everywhere! I'm sorry to break it to ya, but part of the reason you're gonna encounter billions of pairs of deaf ears in this world is that prophets really are everywhere. Why, if I had a dime for every time I met a prophet, well, shucks, I'd at least have enough change to able to treat you to a Guiness for you to drown your sorrows in, chum. Worst thing is, you're not even close to being the only person out there who says they've spoken a word or two with Laozi. What's the likelihood of convincing people with quotes from kung fu books? Well, you see, there's this story about walking up Mt. Everest on your hands... I reckon probably no more or less than we can trust the ones that have emerged from dudes in Britain...

It's got it's hilarious sides, for sure. But as with all cults it's got a tragic side, too. Is there any chance you can tell us what the name of that document is? Is there an official we're supposed to visit? I see your point. But on the other hand, even if we meet in a chat room and then you're able to demonstrate your ability to push me from a distance, unfortunately it proves nothing other than the fact that you possess the magic ability to push me from a distance. Maybe you possess amazing powers of suggestion. Maybe there are such things as demons, and one of them is helping you. How could I know? Thus it is that there's a warning that one hears plenty of cultivators in Asia make: never make the mistake of thinking that anybody's extraordinary ability is proof of anything other than their ability to do something extraordinary (and, if you do see something extraordinary, don't be too sure it's not an illusion!). If the results are real, then obviously what XYP offers is unique and priceless beyond description. But to those of us who've been around the block in the Asian spirituality subculture, the claims aren't terribly unique. Over the years I've heard numerous stories about a handful of lay Buddhist masters from students of theirs who swear up and down that their masters are capable of knock-your-socks-off displays of ability. In more than one case I have been invited me to come and see for myself, and I've been given an opportunity to enter into tutelage with three of of these teachers. I know a student of one of these masters who has told me she developed clairvoyant abilities by practicing his brand of Buddhism, and who once believed his claim that she was a manifestation of Green Tara, and who gave me a book informing readers that so many of their fellow believers are heading to the Pure Lands that apartment blocks are already being built there to prepare for all of the newcomers (no joke). She invited me to join more than once. All I would need to do is write a letter and be accepted, and then I would be able to do practices which would let me develop abilities "very quickly." Having had already long ago had one very bad reaction to a practice given to me by a teacher offering fast-track "shengong" (and receiving admonitions from my most trusted Daoist mentor: "this is the type of mistake one should only make once," and, "be very cautious whenever anybody starts talking about shen practices right off the bat"), it was not hard for me to decline my friend's offers. As time passed, I saw her grow disillusioned with her great master, a man who is surrounded by controversy; whose practices led her to such imbalance that she said she nearly lost her mind; and whose students, while indeed supposedly developing interesting powers, nevertheless do not necessarily transcend the three basic components Buddhists identify at the root of so much human suffering: greed, wrath, and stupidity. Somewhat sadly, my friend has struck me and several of our mutual friends as somewhat imbalanced and gullible for years now. Some down-to-earth, downright boring cultivation might be just the ticket, but that's not for everybody. I've read a smattering of this organization's publications, it makes use of "spontaneous" practices which allow one to connect straight to the Dao or whathaveyou. If I recall correctly, they like to refer to their methods as "spirituality on nitrous oxide," or something to that effect. Another fellow who I met about eight years ago in Guizhou tried very hard to get me to join his master, another lay Buddhist, this time one who could supposedly put his hands on you and get you to see something "close to" your Buddhanature, was impervious to cold, and was just all-around amazing. He instructed me to close my eyes, visualize his face, and then relax and let a dragon--so the story went, anyway--take control of my body and lead me to do their kung-fu, which would cure all of my illnesses and lead me on the way to realization. I saw my friend do the practice but I got the heebie-jeebies from these guys big time and refused to even try. Four years later when I saw my friend again he had left his great master and abandoned all of his teachings. He came to his decision when he was meditating shirtless in the winter on a mountaintop and kept getting sicker and sicker, only to be told, "you haven't overcome your mental obstacles: keep meditating!" He did, and shat a large quantity of blood, only to get the same instruction once more. After the second large bloody stool, and "near death," he had a friend carry him down the mountain. It's probably in some ways unfair to be bringing this up in an explicitly XYP-related thread, but on the other hand I think it's fair enough to want to shed light directly onto the complexity that's created when, on the very surface at least, there appear to be similarities between your school and many others that exist in China and in the Chinese diaspora. There's a tricky reality we humans face, which is that it's really hard for us to assess anything we don't fully understand, and it's easy to get wowed early on by things that, in retrospect, weren't actually good for us, and indeed might even have been harmful. In religion, spirituality, and esoteric practices, I think we're all gambling a bit when we plunge into anything new. I think we continue to be gambling for quite a long time after we've started, too. "Only time will tell," the saying goes... In sum, I've no way to judge you or XYP (I wouldn't even feel comfortable rendering a judgement after attending an initiation; I think that the traditional Chinese advice to observe a master for about three years before coming to any conclusions is extremely practical), so I'm not throwing your school into the same basket as some of the worrisome things I've seen in my wanderings. But I don't think "Fort-Know-level-lock-down-denial" is the only possible factor that would make people choose not to give XYP a test drive. Like I said, in Asia one can easily find oneself being advised to be careful when hearing promises like the ones XYP makes. I may be wrong but I think I see echoes of this in Wu Ming Jen's post. While some people who make these warnings are just parroting what other's have said, there are also plenty of people around here who've got firsthand experiences that lead them to say what they do. Yep, it's a conundrum. Certainly many some schools deal with this conundrum by explaining that marvelous results are beside the point unless a person first has cultivated lots of wisdom--and one of the marks of wisdom, of course, is patience, meaning that the mark of being ready for abilities is no longer even caring about them. Talk about a catch 22. Others may answer that that's just sour grapes; naturally, the "slow down and be patient" schools only tell you that marvels are unimportant because they have nothing to offer! Probably any solution to this conundrum will leave some people unsatisfied. Another conundrum is that not everybody who demonstrates skill is worthy of being called master... and quite possibly not everybody who refuses to isn't... Ya never know, eh? Well, since you're happy to answer questions, please ask your Chinese-speaking fellow disciples what the name of the document in Baiyunguan we should be looking for is called. Thanks!

@ Effi, Thanks for your thoughtful, detail response. Till now I've been mystified as to why what seemed like run of the mill zifagong needed to be called a "pai" and beefed up with all sorts of ontological teachings and mystery. To put it plainly, seemed a bit like... marketing (if you'll pardon my French). Part of the reason I asked you my questions is that not long ago in China I encountered a gentleman (I say that word with a cough) who makes claims that are extremely similar to Xiao Yao Pai's. Instead of the word hufa he uses the word tianshi (天师, "heavenly teacher"). His claim is that after a brief ritual in which disciples are connected to Tai Shang Lao Jun, taught a mudra, and taught a few words to "ask for assistance," then a personally-assigned immortal tianshi will visit and trigger zifagong--which of course he did not like to call zifagong--in order to help the disciple cultivate. I observed this group as up close and personally as one could without actually living with them (they did ask me to move in), and realized within three months that they were a cult through and through. They demand huge sums of money from their students and the people they treat in their clinic; offer no tangible results whatsoever even to those involved for years both as students and patients; and they go to lengths to strip their students of freedom of speech, thought, association, and movement. After I bid them farewell they threatened to hire goons to beat me up a couple of times; I never did get beat up, so I guess the goons-for-hire got cold feet when they finally realized who I am That or the "master" was too cheap to pay for hoodlums. The bright side is that this group is small and unlikely to attract too many new members before the aged leader kicks the bucket and gets whatever is waiting for him on the other side. From the looks of things, some on this thread may read what I just wrote and interpret it as in some way being an indictment of you and XYP. It is not. There is no subtext in my sharing what I just did--I'm just explaining why I've been a persistent questioner. Anyway, like you say, words are just words, but still, I'm glad you took the time to write your reply. I'm more than happy to confess that I'm in no place to make any judgments about your school. But having read your explanations, my hunch is that regardless of the similarities between some of the statements XYP makes and the ones the old sociopath in Beijing makes, you guys are cut from a completely different cloth. You've satisfied my curiosity... I appreciate it.

Hi Effilang, Thanks for your offer, but it isn't really practical for me to take you up on it at the moment. And to be completely honest, I'm really more interested in how you will answer this with words, precisely because everything you've been sharing with us about XYP for the last few years has come in the form of words. What draws my curiosity is that you devote no small amount of verbiage to presenting three types of stories here. The first type of story you've shared involves numerous new students' early experiences with a zifagong-esque practice (ironically, even the claim, "what we teach isn't typical zifagong" seems to come part and parcel with most zifagong teachings!). The second type of story you've shared involves a vast cosmology and its complex, detailed ontology. The third type of story is the idea of a gradated practice: eventually, the beginner who is represented in the first type of story should be go from, "well, my XYP teachers said that what's happening is because a spirit who was assigned to me by Taishang Laojun is helping me, so I'll take their words for it," to, "now I have seen and verified with my own 'eyes' that what my teachers were talking about all along is true." Here's an analogy to explain how this looks to me: this thread is a bit like setting up wine and cheese promotional events at the office of a travel agent specializing in trips to Paris--or the Wuji Heaven, take your pick. Our travel agent brings us convincing evidence that Paris exists. In the form of triggering zifagong, he can even give people a little taste of Paris from afar. He must also make people believe that it's possible to go to Paris themselves, or else they won't take the next step, and actually make the effort to travel there. Thus far in what you've shared about XYP, I've heard from a lot of people who've tasted a little bit of proverbial wine and cheese, and they take their teachers' words for it that what they're munching on is the real deal; to me they sound like visitors to the travel agent's office who take it on faith that Parisians really do eat maracons drink Chateneuf du Pape. Effilang, our truly tireless travel agent, narrates to us great detail where the airports are, how to arrange flights, and he also gives all sorts of interesting excerpts from the Lonely Planet Guide to Paris that seem to answer any possible question. To further set our travel jitters at ease, he also offers lots of enthusiastic testimonials from satisfied clients. But there's a problem: upon close examination, one sees that all these testimonials only come from people who are praising previous wine and cheese events at the travel agent's office! After several years of this, I think it's a little bit strange: why aren't any actual seasoned travelers returning to give testimonials about Paris itself, after they've made the trip? I even start to wonder, has our diligent travel agent, Effilang, even been there himself yet? Since XYP regularly collects written testimonials and then uses them to communicate--proselytize might even be the right word--with the public, I'd like to see how you answer my questions with words, if possible. Here they are again: P.S., just in case, I should say that my travel agent analogy is not an attempt to underhandedly suggest that you're after people's money--it's a non-profit travel agent, of course!

Sigggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh, bulllllllllsssssshhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiittttttt. Man. Just cause pulling nonsense out of your ass can get you elected president doesn't mean it's ok, ok? Hot damn. I'm going to start billing people for medical expenses every time I have to get my forehead fused back together from yet another Dao Bums-induced face palm. Not only do millions of Chinese people read the Daodejing in classical Chinese (granted, there are different versions, thanks to the results archaeological excavations), but dozens of Daodejing quotes in their exact, original wording are a part of the daily lexicon of modern Chinese, including folks who didn't go to college and don't read a whole lot of books. As for the OP, I agree with whoever that there's a vague connection to Chapter 67. The second half of the sentence in the OP has echoes of "慈故能勇." If you plug the characters into a dictionary like CC-EDICT and see why. The rest of it seems embellished.

Hi Effilang, Can we see some testimonials from people who've stuck with the school for a long time? Or can we hear about some of your experiences now that you've been practicing for a long time? You have spoken before about some students being able to directly hold conversations with their fufashen immediately after initiation, and you also speak about all sorts of quite dramatic changes occurring for those of you who make progress in the system over the long term. And yet, in all of the testimonials I ever can recall seeing here, the only thing that separates what people are talking about from good-old qigong zifagong as well as the effects people here report from Max's Kunlun, Jenny Lamb's spontaneous practice, Michael Lomax's Stillness Movement, etc., is this: belief. They attribute what's happening to the "FFS," but that's after they've been given an extensive theoretical education that explains the phenomena and its mechanisms before it occurs. You show that they report experiencing the phenomenon, and they take the existence of the phenomenon as evidence for the validity of Xiao Yao Pai's explanation. But all of these people have been prepped. This begs the question: is their surety that XYP's explanation is accurate any different from the surety of people who've already been "initiated" into teachings on catching the Holy Ghost going into dramatic spontaneous movements at a Pentecostal revival? They will happily and with extreme confidence tell you that they know exactly what is happening, and why it's happening. My firsthand experience, research, and the many, many anecdotes I've heard over the years have lead me to believe that spontaneous "practice" isn't all that hard of a thing to trigger in human beings. That is probably especially true when one considers that most of the humans we're dealing with in any setting devoted to this behavior have self-selected and are in fact looking for a certain type of goods. Even our "curious skeptic" in the most recent testimonial can ultimately barely contain his desire to taste the Kool Aid. I've raised this question long before, and years later, we're still just seeing XYP testimony from rank beginners. As wonderful as it is (truly) for a man to go off of dialysis, you've still shown us nothing to suggest that practitioners jump a bridge from "typical zifagong" to directly experiencing anything that proves that the Xiao Yao Pai explanation for what is going on and why is any more valid than the explanation a Baptist preacher, late 20th century qigong master in the PRC, or Kunlun student would offer. Could you offer testimonials from people who report actually directly experiencing the vast cosmology that you paint for us here? Do you yourself now, after several years with your school, hold actual verbal discussions with a spiritual entity, or several of them? Do you--not in a dream but in the completely conscious state that you say is the mark of XYP practice--have the ability to enter into the wuji realm and confirm firsthand for yourself that what you say about this celestial hierarchy, gold auras, immortals affiliated and unaffiliated with various lineages, and so forth is not just a "teaching" but an actual, tangible experience available to you as a living human being? I know it is not typically considered to be polite in traditional Daoist circles to ask another about his personal practice, but then again, as you say yourself, the XYP way is pretty clearly one that has divorced itself from much that is traditional. I think that the questions I'm asking are quite loudly begged by all of the testimonials you place here.

Indeed you are. But off-the-cuff unqualified statements don't really do much more than muddy the waters, so if you feel something is so important as to require clicking "Add Reply," you might as well back it up. Perhaps in another thread, though. Anyway, regardless of whether any of these texts are "side gates" or not, 火候 shows up in book after book, including many of the ones Sillybearhappyhoneyeater likes to quote from--not just Xingmingguizhi, but also the writings of Huang Yuanji. The way 火候 is spoken about is quite consistent from text to text--clearly the Daoists were quite concerned with this word. However, among its consistencies is a tendency to say very little. So, while Sillybear is not incorrect when he states, that doesn't mean he can declare "case closed." As my pop always says, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." That's an important thing to keep in mind when dealing with the writings of a group of people who are known for their secrecy, eh? It's not like the Daoists don't give hints, either. Keen-eyed readers frequently see warnings like, "古经云：'圣人传药不传火，火候从来少人知.'" That' a common trope you'll find hiding out in the pages of plenty of dusty old neidan books. Then there's the problem with paraphrasing something Hu Haiya said about sitting postures to make a point about breathing practices. I can see Sillybear's logic, but it's fuzzy, and it overlooks an important point: Hu Haiya himself seems, in fact, to have been quite devoted to mentioning the importance of breathing techniques. One can easily find essays online where he discusses their value and variety, for example here and here. There's even a book put together by one of his long-term students in the later years of Hu's life which is all about a method of breathing that Hu developed on the basis of his master Chen Yingning's interpretation of Zhuangzi's "sitting and forgetting" method (坐忘). The book, which came out shortly after Hu passed away but is based on a dissertation presented in 2008, is called 《如鸡抱卵常須听》. So, Sillybear, when you say, I don't think this is wrong in the context of certain schools of Daoist practices, albeit in some of them perhaps only up until the point when certain things that occur "when yin reaches its extreme and gives birth to yang" necessitate a 有为 response, whereupon certain teachers may instruct their students to use breathing techniques in order to "gather medicine" and so forth. Might one argue that there are schools where things are wuwei all the way? Sure, but by that same token one probably has to accept that at a different end of Daoism's broad spectrum there are all sorts of practices involving complex breathing instructions. That's a point that Hu touches on in one of his essays I link to above. As for doing things the wuwei way and ultimately "forgetting [one is] even breathing," well, if I have understood Joe Blast correctly, then he agrees with what Hu taught the author of the book I just mentioned: getting there (entering stillness) is a big problem for most people, but cultivating via breathing practices can be a great way to get there. Returning to the O.P.'s question: I personally can't think of any book in Chinese or English that offers a survey of breathing practices.

Sillybearhappyhoneyeater, Since you're quoting from the Xingmingguizhi to make your point, I'm curious how you would translate and explain the concept of 火候 in the following sentences that I've copied from that text: 学者徒知以铅汞交结为丹，而不知采取、抽添、烹炼、火候各有次序法度。盖采取以作其始，抽添以成其终，于中调停，全仗火候。 And 薛道光云：圣人传药不传火，从来火候少人知。 In your opinion, in the context of internal alchemy, what do 文火 and 武火 in the following passage, also from Xingmingguizhi, refer to? 火候最秘，圣人不传，令则露之。药非火不产，药熟则火化矣。火非药不生，火到则丹成矣。且火候之奥，非可一概而论。 故未得丹时，须借武火以凝之，既得丹时，须藉文火以养之。文火者。结实之火也。其养之法，节其寒温消息是也。 Also, In my opinion to interpret this line as being about "breathing techniques" may be quite false. I have met cultivators who quite literally swallow gulps of air into the stomach, attempt to draw sunlight into their mouths and/or somehow swallow the sunlight along with a gulp of air, and so forth. I'm pretty confident that if I keep up my wanderings long enough I'll run into somebody who makes a practice of swallowing cloudy mist in the mountains or something to that effect. These things really aren't the same as breathing, so any statements about them in fact may tell us nothing about the speaker's opinions on breathing.

Why, thank you kindly. Nope to the first question. As for the second, not really trying to make comparisons. Just a bit of show and tell, is all. Sure, I've heard all sorts of less-than-stellar things about med school in the US from friends and family. I highly recommend that anybody considering any kind of medical work read The House of God--from what I've seen in western medicine hospitals here in China, I tend to believe that the author is not lying nor even exaggerating. But. Look. How to put it? The PRC is on a whole 'nother level. In the US and much or most of the west you can march in the streets in fury if your university is that bad and not only get away with it, but maybe even make things a little better while you're at it. Here? Here, to unite students to sign a petition complaining about the full-bore 100 dB broadcast of a Cultural Revolution-era exercise routine that the entire library is subjected to EVERY DAY at 10am, well, even that is taboooooooo, 'cause you don't wanna do nothing that has echos of 1989 coming off of it, even alls your doing is pointing out the absurdity of making hearing one's own thoughts downright impossible for ten minutes each day so that a red guard can screech at you to touch your toes. And nobody ever, ever, neverneverneverever stands up and does so, save for the one crazy lady who occasionally mans the front desk, and that's 'cause she was probably busy whipping real-life Dao bums with her belt in one hand a Little Red Book in the other forty years ago. And while you learn to shut up and wait for the tammany to run its course, you still silently wonder if making sure for ten minutes every day, in 2016, you still gotta sit back and let the red guard do her ululating, is an accident or something that's very much on purpose. I dunno. Nobody wants to talk about that sort of thing here. But let me paint for you a picture of a typical day in a Chinese TCM university classroom: "Professor" walks in. Boots up aged computer--these are never replaced and in ill repair (just like the foul toilets) because "the school doesn't have enough money," or so the apparatchiks who all drive Audis and Benzes tell me, "their skin smiling but their flesh not smiling." Aiya, I'm already digressing. Next the prof plugs in the USB card. Sometimes asks class what s/he is supposed to be lecturing on that day. Hopefully gets PowerPoint presentation loaded. PowerPoint presentation is dated 8 years prior. So blatant. It is just a copy-and-paste plagiarism of information that probably reads exactly word-for-word like the textbooks we bought, and if not the textbook, then it's just taken from some page on Baidu. Often (usually?) there are no diagrams. Often (usually) there are dozens and dozens of lines of small-print text filling slide after slide. The presentation has never been changed in all its 8 years, and will continue to be used to who knows when. "Professor" proceeds to drone on under the dim fluorescent bulbs until the bell rings. Anybody who is capable of reading aloud could do this job. If your prof is a ranking cadre, and therefore particularly cynical, then you may have to wait while he plays with his phone, sending messages and maybe even buying and selling stocks, upwards of 25 times in a class (yes, I have counted, many times... the fuck else am I supposed to stave off encephaloatrophy or whatever it is they're trying to give me over here?) Seven to nine out of ten students are either playing videogames on their phones, watching videos, playing with social media, taking dozens of selfies, or asleep. The remainder are passionate study-a-holics who are disgusted almost all of the time, except for the Korean study-a-holics, who betray very little of their inner worlds to anybody who is not Korean--I don't even know if they open up to each other. They say it's because they "understand Confucianism." Chrisamighty, well, my gasface proves I don't. Occasionally a question is asked. Answers range (in increasing churlishness) from (a) a re-reading of some sentence in the PowerPoint presentation to ( I don't know, to © that's not in my field of specialty, to (d, by now in openly sneering churlishness) you should already have learned that 3 years ago, to (e) please don't interrupt, I have to deliver this entire presentation to you before noon, and all of this information is going to be on the test. Phheeewwww. If any point is emphasized by a professor, 95% of the time you hear, "listen up, this is important, it's going to be on the test! The test! THE TESSSTTTT!!!" Oh, yes, the test--the TEST! Any emphasis on the actual clinic is almost unheard of. We one day will treat patients? Actual human bodies, that maybe even have hearts and minds inside of them? Then again, when you actually get to see the clinic, then you will know why the professors don't want to talk about the clinic any more than they have to. And to be fair, in a small minority of cases you hear interesting stories. There are a few diamonds in this rough, it's true. But, well, just as likely, when a prof strays from the PowerPoint, you get a nonsensical digression, which may or may not (no, just may), consist of self-aggrandizing anecdotes, like, "I went to Taiwan to teach and they all told me I'm quite amazing." Well, shucks, the Taiwanese are a famously polite people, now, aren't they? Finally, the bell rings, the prof skedaddles licketysplit, the class snaps out of its smart phone glaze long enough to pack its bags and wave cutely at each other, and the weirdos who give a fuck gather to share their bitterness for the ump-hundredth time before schlepping off in despair, reminding themselves, "well, at least I don't have to go $250,000 into debt to study here." For that is our mantra--now you know our secret. Experiences with the administration and the hospital "internship" are par for the course. Except with the administration to the churlishness is added reflex dishonesty and irresponsibility, and to the clinic, a mind-numbingly drone like attitude ("well, yes, we could tailor treatments to the patient like TCM says you're supposed to, but we're too busy for that. And more to the point, if I make up an individualized protocol on the basis of my diagnosis, and then something bad happens, then the responsibility is mine. However, if with every single cardiac patient I just use the exact same 'standard cardiac protocol' every time I do acupuncture, then even if the patient up and dies right there on the table, I won't get into any trouble, 'cause I was using the standard, and the standard is safe, because it's the standard. Standard, get it? Always go with the standard. I just use the standard and I'm safe--after all, patients killing doctors is a big problem these days, and I don't wanna get fired for doing my own thing, either--we've got rules here." Thank Hua Tuo for getting the doctor teaching us that day to at least be honest, instead of pretending to be doing TCM for the sake of wowing the foreign class, 肏!). Administratively, flabbergasting bullshit that causes you to once again push your expectation bar into uncharted netherrealms happens, at minimum, every week. Every fucking week, sometimes more often. No, really. Most recently? The mail box in the foreign students' dorm disappeared last week. With all the mail in it. Noone, not nobody, not noone in any department whatsoever, will admit knowing who eliminated the mailbox, and all the unclaimed mail that was in it. After much prodding and investigation, the mailbox returned, fetched from oblivion by a nice member of the custodial staff. The mail? Well, gone. All of it. Forever. But don't say nothing, don't lose your little smile, don't go too far with your protests, because you've thrown half a decade or more into this hole, and these vindictive little people, well, they're gonna remember it if you rub their nose in any shit, and they will just maybe fail to release your diploma when you're applying for a license a year down the line, and hell, they might even do that even if you never rocked the boat not one inch in all your years here, because really, most people eating from iron rice bowls don't give a damn about anything but gripping that next rung and slurping that next ass up the line (just a wee House of God reference for ya). So we all smile and nod and make that little polite Chinese "ah ah ah" sound as we ram our fury back into its nebbishy little cage, deep down, to not be the nail that sticks up. Oh, and that mailbox thing? You've gotta be either a fresh off the boat or princess-and-the-pea sensitive to let that get under your skin. That ain't shit, even though I do so wish I had my forwarded copy of Mother Jones to thumb through. Dag. Anyway, not being that nail, well, that's really what this is alllllllllllllll about, all of it, really. Going all the way back how and why TCM became what it is (again, watch Nugent Head's video on the history of modern TCM). The seldom-spoken reality never far from anybody's mind is that this entire sprawling monstrous edifice is a thumping, beating, quivering, metabolizing, metastasizing organic mass of Party power. It's that thing in Akira that Testuo turns into, except Kaneda just doesn't ever win, and it sprawls its guts over 1/5 of the world's population. Oh yes. And it's a Party that's damn fucking sure what it wants the smart, energetic, educated, potentially "empowered" youth of its realm doing in their dangerous years between the rigid rigors of only-childhood and the exhausting rigmarole of parenthood, home ownership, and the career ladder. By which I mean to say that the party-pooping Party wants to be damn sure that the yutes are not sitting around engaging in critical thinking, organization, or, Xi (our noble and glorious Xi Da Da!) forbid, expressing any dissatisfaction with the official China Dream and its enablers. And it just happens to be that those who run this university, are just those very same enablers--you'll only find obedient little cadres here. And so almost everybody--even a grand portion of the foreign students--just shine this shit and call it gold, and smile meekly and politely, and never be that nail, 'cause you know what, the scary thing about China today isn't that it really has to kill or imprison or disappear all that many people any more (save for, amongst the Han, a few rascally reporters and lawyers and Hong Kong publishers, and then a few Tibetans and Xinjiangese whose demise quite possibly comes in the form of a paradox--a quiet machine-gunning). Nah, by and large, the State doesn't have to work hard like it used to back when that lovely red guard work out tape was recorded. It did all that blood and guts work for so long and so well, and to boot has nowadays more or less mastered the internet, that people don't even need to see any bloodshed to know that it's best just to shut the fuck up and get busy carving out one's own little cave in the dungheap, 'cause suggesting that we might have more to aspire to than a lifetime of backbiting in a shitpile is anathema. Anathema that can get you rubbed out with the quickness. And even if it doesn't, well, ain't nobody about to take to the streets with you, so why waste time and breath you might better be using carving out your hole in the dung? So yeah, are any institutions in any lands perfect? Hell nah. Helllllllllll nah. But the PRC's brand of imperfect is something else altogether from what I ever witnessed in the three western countries I've lived in (the US, one in Scandinavia, and one in Oceania)--except for the "grey mass" that is the criminal justice system in the US, which I'm thankful to have only encountered as a white male US citizen, just as I am happy to have encountered this Red Mass as an outsider who can leave at any moment. Anyway, to tie this deluge back into what we've been attempting to talk about in this thread, well, let's just say that it's best not to have any illusions about what one is buying when one pays one's tuition fees at at a Chinese university of traditional Chinese medicine. And for those of you who might be looking for an acupuncturist, nor do you want to be under illusions about what you're paying for when you fork over your hard-earned and accept treatment from 9 out of 10 of the graduates of these institutions, a solid chunk of whom have firm and definite plans to emigrate to western countries. And I don't blame 'em--I just wouldn't let those fuckers stick a needle in me, 'cause a sizable portion of em haven't needled anybody more than 10 or 20 times in their entire five-year university careers, and that's real talk, word is bond!(!) Chinese medicine, with PRC characteristics. Yes indeed, yes indeed. Hot damn, writing that was cathartic. I need to go outside and do some Cultural Revolution gymnastics while I'm still feeling all spry and youthful, 步行者万岁，万万岁！！！！！

@ Orion: great post!!!

Reeeeeeeeeeeturning to the OP, believe me, I feel you friend. I've been through years of everything you're talking about here, except I've got to live it out in the utterly soulless hallways of institutions of higher stultification in the People's Republic of China. Foreign student attrition rates here are probably at about 50%. If you decide to withdraw from your studies, don't worry, you're normal. It's a good idea to take a good, long, clear look at the pessimistic side of the coin, because it's a coin that's going to eat thousands of hours of your life. Many of those hours will really and truly be wasted, because much of what you do is going to be jumping through hoops. You will be forced to "learn" many things which you will never use, from people who do not use these things, via books whose trustworthiness, veracity, and practicality is impossible to question from your standpoint as a person who lacks the experience and knowledge necessary to judge with any accuracy whatsoever how much of what you're reading is going to be of real use to you. You need to view your TCM education institution realistically. In addition to serving its own ends, your institution mostly exists to make sure that you memorize the information that will show up on licensing exams; to make sure that you know not to stick a needle straight into somebody's liver or spinal cord; to ensure that you hopefully will not throw 200 grams of ginseng, 200 grams of astagalus, and 200 grams of ephedra into a pot to create homemade "energy drinks" for your chronic fatigue syndrome patients; and to give you a diploma which will lend you a degree of prestige, believeability, and the right to make money without fear of prosecution. Your institution is almost certainly peopled from top to bottom with professionals who are middling practitioners, if not worse. Its curriculum is almost certainly almost a photocopy of the PRC TCM university curriculum, which is a piece of shit, and will continue to be one for decades and decades to come, because the Chinese Communist Party really decided, with bloody finality in 1989, that it is willing to accept the consequences of stifling the intellectual growth of its promising youth if that is the cost of maintaining its grip on power. By which I mean to say, your education was not designed in China, nor by your professors overseas, to provide you a platform from which you will encounter Chinese medicine with academic rigor, critical thinking, serious hands-on experimentation, and whatever else your heart may call for. You are paying to get boilerplate, from people who stole their boilerplate from the Orwellian-Kafkaesque-Joseph Helleresque shitshow that anything the Chinese Ministry of Education has its hands on invariably is. Just be thankful that you're probably in a place with much more breathable air than where I am. Now, what's the positive side of your position? If you plan to devote your life to the study of TCM, you will need a diploma, and you will need to pass those licensing exams, so you do need to do all that rote memorization. It's like coughing up the money to get through a toll booth. Once you're on the highway to a career as legally-recognized non-MD, non-RN health practitioner, you are no longer romping freely in the wildnerness the way a reiki practitioner or shaman is, and therefore you will need those precious pieces of paper which instill legitimacy as well as protection from lawsuits and prison. What else? Even though you will certainly have to memorize information that is poorly translated, poorly explained, misinterpreted, never used in the clinic, and even flat-out wrong, you will also, somewhere in there, be memorizing the basic vocabulary and knowledge base that a TCM doctor needs. Thus, as bad as things are, if this is your chosen career path, you actually still do need some of what your university gives you, because its curriculum will instill in you a certain level of basic competence. Furthermore, if you really do make this your life's study, then you're going to need to know thousands and thousands of obscure Chinese medicine vocabulary words and concepts, or else you'll never be able to read the works of great doctors nor further your education by taking courses with some of the highly talented teachers who are indeed out there. Without the basic vocabulary of terms, you're TCM illiterate. The books will be ever impenetrable to you, and the teachers you encounter will find your lack of basic TCM knowledge so frustrating that they will not teach you their advanced knowledge. Showing up at their doorsteps without having a basic education would be like showing up to driving school and expecting to be taught what words like wheel, street, and traffic light mean. Your driving instructor would kill you. Does Chinese medicine work? Yes, it can yield amazing results. It can also fail spectacularly. Most often, I suspect, it's just something ho-hum in the middle. Your university will hopefully give you enough to be ho-hum. Not killing people, not making them (too much) sicker, but also not pulling off too many miracles. That's what you get for four years and tens of thousands of dollars. So it's a pretty good idea to be really, really sure that you're willing to throw so much coin into such an expensive, slow moving toll booth before you continue. If you have the kind of passion that will see you through to the end, then you will need to see beyond the narrow confines of a TCM university education into what's beyond. The best suggestion I could possibly make to an English speaker is to watch everything that Andrew Nugent Head has produced for free (you might want to start with the lecture that's titled something like "the state of Chinese medicine education today), and then pay $120 to join www.traditionalstudies.org and watch some of his videos there. When your level is high enough that you've got some actual needling experience, go to some of his seminars. Nugent Head is not only a very skilled practitioner, but a really, really good teacher who is committed, wholeheartedly, to transmitting practical knowledge in as short a period of time as possible. And he's very good at doing so. But if all this sounds like too much trouble, or you're really not that drawn to learn more about TCM now that you've seen it up close and personal for six months, well, then run, the further the better, because I know waaaaaaayyyyy too many guys and gals who put in four, five, six or more years trying to learn this stuff and left it all behind, so starkly that when their toddlers get sick it's still straight to the hospital for antibiotics without even thinking twice about what else one might do. After all those years of tests and listening to profs drone on and on about yin and yang? Not to mention all that money and lost opportunity, well shit. Now that's a fucking way to waste a solid chunk of your youth!

There is much to be said about this question as well as much else in this thread, and hopefully I'll have time to jump in later on. Regarding your point here, I think that you've identified an important point. While it is true that sometimes the character zhuo/浊 is used to refer to something dirty, mucky, and undesirable (especially in its modern usage), in my strong opinion that is not what is meant by the Qingjingjing. An easy example of why that is can be seen in the way the relationship between qi and blood was envisioned in Chinese medicine. In a healthy human being, qi and blood should be a totally-integrated "substance." The blood, rich and full-bodied thanks to a good diet and healthy living, should be able to fill the body. Importantly, it must be rich and full-bodied to provide a good medium for qi to be carried in. But, of course, a body full of fluid that does not move and is not imbued with heat is, essentially, a corpse. So, to the yin of blood, one adds the yang properties of movement as well as heat, so that constantly-flowing blood reaches all parts of the body, warms the body, and overcomes the stasis-causing effects of gravity, tight spaces, and the millions of corners in all our vessels. The yang is what gives blood that "energy," but again, it must have its material basis in the yin of blood for a person to be healthy--otherwise you're talking about a frazzled, jittery, unrooted yang that shoots upwards and stays there. A vial of blood drawn and left on the table will immediately begin to separate. Immediately, it looses its motion. Yang has fled away. Then, quickly, its heat will leave it, and it will become cold. More yang has flitted off, and now yin and yang have really begun to draw apart. Then its physical constituents will separate, with the cells falling down in the vial, leaving the relatively-transparent of plasma and serum above. Yin and yang are now really far apart. Pretty soon the blood is going to be "dead"--no longer usable for a transfusion, and then breaking down, rotting, and becoming poisonous. Yang with no zhuo/浊 to root itself in flits away and disperses into oblivion. Yin with no yang to enliven it sinks down into stagnation. The marvel of the human body (and all bodies) is in providing a vessel in which both elements are relatively sealed in, wherein they constantly cycle together, so well integrated as to go from being distinct parts to a unified whole. Yang without yin is like a churn of great ideas, flitting about in a mind, but never organized and put down on paper, they are just madcap dreams, bouncing around. "Giving form to one's ideas," "putting them down on paper," means uniting the dispersed yang qing/清 of ideas with the yin zhuo/浊 of a book's structure. A beautifully bound book without a single word within, is all zhuo/浊 with no qing/清. It's not really a book. Structure, no function. Daoists are and were sophisticated enough not to believe that what the Qingjingjing here is saying about males and females is a rigid, blanket description of how men and women are and/or should be. After all, Daoists will be the first to tell you that any living being is in all ways an amalgam of yin and yang--the humans who seem to be the perfect embodiment of so-called masculine and feminine traits are no exception. Given that in some ways alchemy can probably be described as taking advantage of an "internal mating" function in the human body, it may be more fruitful to think about what the delineations between yin-yang, qing-zhuo, male-female, heaven-earth, etc. mean within the individual than within societies. Not that these points don't apply to society, but rather that they need to be viewed in a more "raw" form than that which has already been so heavily chiseled at and mutilated by centuries of contrivance and power play.

For what it's worth http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/09/02/did-chinese-civilization-come-from-ancient-egypt-archeological-debate-at-heart-of-china-national-identity/

I don't know anything about him, but I have studied with two of the late Master Pei's students. There is no reason to believe that Master Pei named anybody as a successor, although there are rumors about a conflict well over a decade ago involving different disciples wanting to have the honor of laying claim to such a title. Master Pei, however high his accomplishments, was not really in a position to be called a "patriarch" of Wudang Daoism. He was a layman with dozens of recorded disciples and seemingly some who didn't make the "official" list published in the book published in his memory on the 100th anniversary of his passing.

Hahaha, I so want to disagree with you and pretend I'm floating around Beijing on a purple cloud of bliss (not 'bis), but seeing as I just had an 8am parking lot run-in with BUCM's infuriating 窝囊废 of a 院长, I can't even front. I do need another damn vacay. Even a cup of Yogi Tea blessed by a level 9 reiki master and fortified with maca and sacred geometry napkins and cucumber sandwiches ain't gonna help. Although, to tie this all back to the OP, now that would be a cup of tea worthy of a Daoist.

What he [sillybearhappyhoneyeater] said. I've heard Daoists scoff about the tea-and-Daoism connection more than once. One made a good point: all that fluid has to be qi-transformed--better to drink only when you're actually thirsty, and even then, just enough to wet the mouth. Otherwise your spleen yang has to do all that work transmogrifying the liquid, and we all know that the source of the spleen yang is the mingmen huo, and even though we'll never be sure if it's in the right kidney or betwixt the kidneys or simply up yo butt an around tha corna, we'd still better not douse our precious life sparks in Lipton's and Tetley's. Not that I follow that advice, especially if what I'm drinking comes from Mt Wuyi... Or Starbucks. But also like Sillybear said, if you cultivate and you get the chance to sip some top notch tea, very interesting things can happen. Probably maybe best you can say is it's yet another gray area in Chinese cultivation like martial arts. Connected to Daoism? Yes, no, depends who's practicing and who's talking. Who's blowing air up a cow's ass (and how much said air fans the proverbial mingmen flames). You really gotta create a good seal and have lungs like Louis Armstrong if you wanna compete with an old guy in the park who wants--no, needs--you to know that Chinese people technically invented guided missiles 'cause they technically invented firecrackers. Moo. The friendly young ladies serving tea in Daoist temples ranging from the Shanghai Chenghuang Miao to the not-part-of-the-Daoist-association temples dotting the mountainsides of Wudang know no more about Daoism than the shallowest of ying-yang boilerplate. And in this fair land, nobody, not no nobody, wants to be bothered with much more than the comfortable, hypnotic drone of CCTV ying ying yang yang 5000 years 博大精深 boilerplate. So soothing, like standing stock-still and slack-jawed, two abreast on narrow escalators and just wuwei'ing the day away. 兩腳與肩同寬，雙目平視前方. On a conveniently located escalator, who isn't zhan zhuanging his potbellied way to heaven? It's only wayward laowais whose parents can't be shitted that there's a black sheep in the family cause there's too many kids to worry about who have the luxury of developing that fully-fledged neurosis we might call a case of the Dao Jones. Well, That's not true, there're weirdos of the Way here, too, but mostly they're middle-aged woman hypochondriacs who vibrate nervously as they recite their collective mantra, "那我怎麼辦呢，我不行啦." Ommmmm. If that's your type, weekend TCM lectures are your meat market. Ah, but I regress. Anyway, honestly, when it comes to monastics and lay people who can brew a cup of "holy shit there's something fizzy fizzing at my K1 points," all the ones I can think of are Buddhists for some reason. Maybe because bestowing copious amounts of expensive leaf upon baldheads is a common habit among the faithful here. The topknots definitely don't get as many cool presents. Or maybe more of the ones who like stuff are just less shy about taking booze and cigarettes, so they get that instead. But it's a fact: baldies get way more stuff on Christmas than man-buns. Then again, perhaps it's they don't blow their bar mitzvah money on baijiu and socks-you-wear-on-the-outside-of-your-trousers, and instead build massive edifices where you can come and give them more bar mitzvah money. Which is pretty smart. But how will we ever know the reeaaalll truth, Mr Verdesi? We won't. So let's shutting the fuck and 吃茶去. Wu Ming Jen... I know that magical Wudang tea. Cool effect, and never been a poorly received gift when I've blessed a friend with a canister. It'll even make a cigarette taste sweet, dontchakno. But a couple years back a Zixiaogong nun told me that all along even they didn't know that actually that's some chemical sprayed on those leaves to give them the little white markings, and the effect. She was adamant and made me promise to stop gifting it on the unsuspecting, so I stopped buying it just in case. Supposedly only Wudang is home to this rarefied treasure, but two-three years ago in the Purple Bamboo Park in Beijing stalls were hawking the exact same damn thing, except this time it was some magical tea belonging to some other far flung land of immortals and wispy beards. Ah, China, how I love you.

Whatever and however many the influences of Daoism on Chan Buddhism, there's will be no question in your mind that Chan Buddhists are still very, very much Buddhists if you spend time around them in China, read their books, or visit their temples. Nearly all of them I've met view Chan as simply one part of the vast Buddhist milieu, and they tend to draw upon ideas, practices, vocabulary, and beliefs from other currents in Buddhist thought just as much as they draw upon those that are more strictly Chan-related. Conversely, my experience is that they seldom draw upon Daoist ideas. While many enthusiasts for Chan Buddhism have varying levels of interest in or acceptance of a small number of Daoist texts (usually just the Daodejing, maybe a bit of Zhuangzi--in a few rare cases I've met some who also study more obscure Daoist books), they nevertheless use a vocabulary that is almost entirely Buddhist. I've heard many Chan Buddhists say things like, "Laozi certainly had great wisdom, but let me tell you, the Daoist teachings are still miles away from Buddhist teachings," or, "Buddhism is so much higher-level than Daoism that, because I'm a student of Buddhism, I can read any chapter in the Daodejing and know exactly what it's talking about with ease." The book Autobiography of Empty Cloud, translated by Charles Luk of Taoist Yoga fame, can easily be found for free online. It's a great read about a great Chan master from recent times. Reading this book is a good way to see how a Chan master views Buddhism and Daoism, and also how he uses other aspects of traditional Chinese culture, such as fengshui.

I think you make a good contribution to this thread but I think that your rhetorical question at the end is moot--the story tells us nothing. An old Daoist might hear it and just laugh, "well, he could have been living next door to Lu Dongbin for ten long years, and if it wasn't his fate to hear the Dao yet, then he'd be none the wiser." I know monks who live in temples with masters who have neidan lineages who don't know the first thing about neidan and sit around playing beat the landlord on their "smart" phones long into the night. I also have also met monks in temples who crave neidan transmission badly enough to try and get a laowai to make introductions for them, but who still know little or nothing about the immortal method. Taiwan has, what, 20 to 30 million people? Nobody can say for sure what might be found in such a population. We can leave aside questions of who brought what from the mainland when the KMT came over decades ago; there is a thriving interchange of people, ideas, and spiritual teachings between the mainland, Taiwan, and the rest of the world that is going on ceaselessly. An immortal who was in the Zhongnan Mountains yesterday could book a flight to Kaohsiung tomorrow. Who knows. Regarding Daoist practice, the most well-informed individual I met on the island last I went was a Buddhist monk who splits his time between Taiwan, the mainland, and Japan. I know a young Taiwanese-American woman there who teaches yoga and spends three months each year in India deepening her studies of yoga and Buddhism with admirable dedication. Tomorrow or the next day, who can say who will be where, teaching what? Thus, one hundred wanderers might comb Taiwan (or the mainland, or the many qigong or Daoism retreats in the West) in search of transmission and come up empty handed; the one hundred and first has the right combination of de and ming and luck and hard work and ends up finding real teachings. Of these one hundred and one people, who has wasted his or her time? Ultimately, I would say none of them. In my opinion, the time often comes when it's right, which may have little or nothing to do with all our good planning and informed choices. Returning to your example, yes, we can say that the Taiwanese Yi Guan Dao devotee in your story "wasted" his decade. But looking at it from another angle, I cannot but suspect that had he not spent his ten years this way, he probably never would have encountered his new teacher.

http://www.arcworld.org/faiths.asp?pageID=70

Amen. I am all but convinced that this widespread idea is the product of Bruce Frantzis' imagination/marketing, and nothing else. I've never seen or heard even a single mention of fire and water to classify philosophies and techniques in nearly a decade in China. An easy way to see why this dichotomy is false is by looking at the use of"heating" and "cooling" methods in Chinese medicine: one uses "fire" when it is appropriate to use fire, one uses "water" when it is appropriate to use water. One is not better than the other. Daoism is interested in appropriateness. To the OP--if what you have come up with is creating improved mental and physical health for you, then in my experience an old Daoist would be much more likely to say "good for you," than, "hrmmm, doesn't seem watery enough." Then again, if you want to know more about water, there are plenty of lovely books on the topic for sale...

Hahaha, touché!

Zen practice has helped God-knows-how-many people pierce through their neurotic obsessions with fantasies and delusions, calm their raging, restless minds, and plant their feet on solid dirt. Unfortunately, for several centuries now, nobody in the tradition has turned into anything cooler than a level 3 stardust pixie pony with a bubble gum saddle or a snuggly wuggly muggly buggly little wittle cutey wootey care bear (waaaaa, so cuuuuuuttteee!). But even these lowly accomplishments are rare. One must sigh: what a stupid fucking waste of time! As for me, guess what, suckers: I wanna be a rainbow, and when I turn into one, I'm not giving any of you any Skittles at all. So nyah. Wonder what I need to learn to turn into after I'm a rainbow. Maybe a gas giant? Or a star, yeah, that's it, a shooting star! Ooh, dontcha just _love_ it?!

I will leave aside all of the above speculation about the lifestyles and psychological states of Daoists of thousands of years ago and Siddharta Gautama, and merely ask the following: if Shakyamuni started his practice with "bias," do you really think that any Daoist did not? Do you know anybody out there without bias? Does anybody embark on any path without bias? Are you, dear "spiritual Daoists," not also possessed of plenty of this stuff? My point is, even if your conclusions about Shakyamuni's mental state pre-cultivation are 100% correct, to conclude that you know what happened to him after that is arbitrary. Nobody is without their "baggage." Your certitude that Buddhism fails to deal with it is built on a very poor foundation, namely, a lack of a well-rounded understanding of Buddhism. Well, I'll let you go from temple to temple telling the Buddhists about the importance of mind Buddhists have made contributions in all of these fields, both in China and in other countries. Buddhism leads one to a place beyond dogma as well. You might find this interesting: there is a Taiwanese Buddhist monk called Konghai who was a Chinese medicine doctor before becoming a monk. He has a looonnnnnnngggggggg lecture series on the Daodejing that he made before he was a monk, but released afterwards, with a foreword recorded in his robes. Over the course of many hours, he makes the argument that Laozi and Shakyamuni's ultimate teaching is the same, except that Laozi speaks only about the state of enlightenment, whereas the Buddha's sometimes spoke about this, and sometimes laid out teachings for people who weren't yet capable of understanding these teachings. Perhaps you have mostly been exposed to the latter of Buddhism's contents. There is much more than what you have seen, it seems. Neither does the path of Bodhisattavahood. But, my battery is nearly gone, so I write no more... Maybe later, maybe no need

Again, you've locked your mind into an incredibly limited, narrow, and stifling (mis)interpretation of Buddhism. Again: the Heart Sutra is a very short text that lays your ideas to rest in short order. But it alone isn't enough. You need much more study. About eleven years ago, when I was still a violent, thieving, bullying, dishonest, selfish, and profoundly unhappy young man, I began to study in earnest Buddhism, which I had been introduced to in prior years in a variety of different circumstances. Within a very short period of time, most of my habits changed, drastically. As the years went on, subtler, more deep-lurking habits also changed, drastically. Now I am a very different young man. Many, many, many other people in many, many, many places have experienced very similar effects during the last 2,500 years, thanks be to Shakyamuni's insights. I ask you: if one cannot transform the violent, thieving, bullying, dishonest, selfish, and profoundly unhappy in this world... ... then where is the civilization you speak of? He was being serious. It is a common type of answer, which means to tell you that Buddhism is very down to earth, and that the practitioner learns to live in a state of awake awareness ("enlightening being," to borrow a term from Deci Belle) the here and now. The Compass of Zen is basically a long explanation of what this kind of answer means; it's a very readable, fun, and engaging book, though to be sure its author was human and did his fair share of erring. I think you are. Have you seen Twelve Years a Slave, full of poignant scenes of Christians thumping their Bibles in order to justify slavery and even using Christianity to control slaves? That was a widespread historical fact. One finds plenty of murderous, loveless Christians... plenty! Plenty! I am not criticizing Christ. I am saying that your yardstick stands up to no scrutiny at all. Read the books above. Then read more. Meet more teachers. Visit more countries. Watch the episode of Extreme Pilgrim when Peter Owen-Jones stays at a secluded Shaolin temple, far in the mountains, away from the tourist trap--a temple where the lifestyle is the opposite of what you imagine here. Buddhists recognized this long ago.

"Right" is just one of many translations used in speaking about the Eightfold Path. A translation that I prefer is "expedient," as in, it is more expedient to behave in such and such way if it is one's goal to live in a way that will facilitate your efforts to understand reality; one lives this way in order to minimize the likelihood of creating obstacles. Nothing is writ in stone. Even the Buddha is said to have killed a man when he was in a past life close to his incarnation as Shakyamuni. I cannot speak about monastic discipline, as I am not a monk. But for laypeople, the rules are not understood as being there for their own sake. They are there to facilitate one's path of accumulating wisdom and "merit" in this lifetime, and the next. "Merit" means planting seeds that will yield favorable circumstances in the future, which is best done by treating other beings with as much kindness as possible. Circumstances are favorable if one lives in an environment where one can encounter teachings that accurately reflect the nature of reality and enjoy the luxury of being able to study them and put them into practice. Right right, wrong wrong. Entry level teachings indeed warn us against doing wrong, and encourage us to do right. This is for the reasons I just stated above--to help people with low levels of wisdom from digging themselves into holes within which it will be difficult to practice Dharma. As one progresses, one very quickly finds Buddhism is just as unconcerned with defining right and wrong as Daoism is. The Heart Sutra is a very short text, the study and contemplation of which will show you where you are mistaken. As with Buddhism. These questions are worth contemplating, but ultimately I don't think you can draw conclusions from this psychoanalysis. But if you really do find these questions important, then a Buddhist would recommend that you seek out many teachers and put these questions to them. Buddhist teachers generally welcome questions, even/especially tough ones. Buddhism does not deny these things, at all. I think that you might benefit from reading some of Thich Nhat Hahn's works, such as Old Path White Clouds, which is his take on the Buddha's life story, as well as Your True Home, which contains hundreds of short excerpts from his writings, the brunt of which fly in the face of your conclusions, and instead demonstrate a Buddhism full of life and love, and very much geared towards the layperson. Another book you might want to read is What Makes You Not a Buddhist, by Dzongsar Khyentse. Finally, John Blofeld's recollections in Wheel of Life: Autobiography of a Western Buddhist include conversations with some of his teachers where they taught him in a way which is not what you imagine Buddhism to be. He was encouraged by one teacher to go out and continue living his life, which included even a bit of whoring and opium smoking (which he brought to his teacher's attention), and simply--I paraphrase from memory--"remember the suffering alongside the pleasure." The above are popular titles, should be easy to get from the library (though you might need to use inter-library loan) if the PDFs don't work. They would be contemplating an idea that is Effilang's, not Buddhism's. I won't speculate about how accurate your ideas about existence are or are not, and instead suggest that my hunch is if you devoted some good years to studying Buddhism--both textually and, importantly, by seeking out many teachers other than the ones you know--then you may be surprised to find that you not only don't disagree with what you find, but that some of your ideas quite likely came from Buddhism in the first place! Perhaps, perhaps not. These are big words.