Walker

Colloquially in Chinese-speaking communities, daoshi and daozhang are often used quite interchangeably by the non-cognoscenti to refer to religious Daoists of Quanzhen, Zhengyi, and other orders who have been, in some way, shape, or form ordained. It can also be shorthand for "有道之士," or "an individual who has Dao," but that is not common to hear outside of literati circles and is separate from the discussion of people claiming to have formal roles in religious groups. When you speak to people who are "in the door," so to speak, these terms take on different meaning. In Zhengyi Daoism, there is a question of rank that differentiates daoshi from daozhang. A daoshi refers to a formally inducted Zhengyi Daoist at the beginning of his or her studies and clerical responsibilities. If his/her religious career advances he or she may become a daozhang, which means taking a more central role in rituals and, therefore, having much more knowledge of the liturgy, which is extremely complex and involves huge amounts of memorized text, stepping, music, visualization, and more. It is impossible to describe how complex a real Zhengyi ritual is to witness in person, but it is staggering. Needless to say, daoshi are many and daozhang are few in Zhengyi Daoism. Also, note that the character 長/zhang in this word here carries the connotation of "elder," similar to how it is used in words like "長輩/zhangbei/elders" or "學長/elder student in the same school," or "長老/zhanglao/elder [Buddhist monk]." in Quanzhen Daoism, daozhang and daoshi are used more interchangeably, but only to refer to those disciples of the Quanzhen order who have become monks or nuns, and never to describe lay disciples. There are higher ranks for monks/nuns in Quanzhen Daoism... One of them, 律師/lvshi, which is extremely important to understand here, I discuss below. Over the years I've met a lot of Wang Liping students and fans in China, for example, but not once did any of them ever call him a "daoshi" or "daozhang." I know a lot of Quanzhen lay disciples who have teachers who are monks or nuns, and they call themselves and each other 居士/jushi/from the Buddhist Sanskrit term "upāsaka/upāsikā;"俗家弟子/sujia dizi/"layperson disciple;" or simply 道教徒/daojiao tu/"disciple of Daoism." If there is similarity, it is probably unfortunate. Rinaldini's own website admits to an extremely short amount of time spent in China, most of it with the qigong master Wan Sujian, who although a remarkable man, is not and never was a Longmen daozhang. To be truly capable of serving as a Quanzhen monk or nun takes years of study, practice, training, and (often) wandering for a native speaker in a temple in China with living teachers. Rinaldini did not put in the time, and showing how far he has fallen from the mark, the bulk of his curriculum is Wan Sujian circle walking qigong and TCM, which are not important concerns for Quanzhen clergy. Can he even read classical Chinese? Can he hold a conversation about Daoism in modern Chinese with his teachers? (Those who see Rinaldini's bio and notice his claim to have been inducted as priests by a couple of Daoist monks should review my above posts in this thread about monks fucking watermelons and mistresses inside of White Cloud Monastery. The situation in China is a mess, and the selling of all kinds of ordination certificates to Westerners as well as other Chinese people is a major problem and has been basically ever since cutthroat capitalism-plus-spiritual-tourism took hold in the PRC in the early 1980s) I know nothing about them. However, when I have heard similar phenomena discussed by those who truly respect the traditional, orthodox teachings of the Dragon Gate, when similar things come up, they are usually called "incomplete transition," or else less polite terms. This may be related: in Taiwan there are "Quanzhen" groups that claim to have been connected to the lineage through spiritual events. The most interesting thing, to me, is that over time many in these groups have recognized that the transmission was incomplete, and a significant number of such practitioners are spending time in China to learn the old-fashioned way, human-to-human. There is even a group in Taiwan attempting to establish a strict Quanzhen monastery in the center of the island, and one of their explicitly stated motivations is the fact that the Quanzhen order has failed to produce outstanding leaders in a very long time, in no small part due to the chaos ("亂/luan," a character used to discuss Daoism's present state quite often in China as well as Taiwan by actual monks and nuns) that currently reigns. Of great relevance to this discussion is that the formal, ritual transmission of vows (傳戒/chuanjie) plays a central role in this movement in Taiwan. I say this having personally attended (but not received vows during) such a ritual in Taipei. They are taken extremely seriously and have been for long centuries, as I will emphasize below. No. As I said before in this thread, 火居/huoju/"living near the hearth [i.e., in a family at home]" roles for Daoists are not a part of Quanzhen Daoism, despite what a few Americans who spent a shockingly short amount time in China and would like to sell you robes and diplomas might have you believe. This nomenclature does not come from Quanzhen Daoism. There is no "priest/monk" distinction in China in the Quanzhen, and no Chinese words that translate into priest or monk to describe different roles for people in the Quanzhen order. It is ironic that Taomeow brought up the Daozang Xubian to suggest that in the era of its publication the Quanzhen movement slackened in some way to make way for lay "priests," and that Nathan then said her mention of this body of texts was "spot on." I would be shocked if either of them have read it. Part of the reason I asked if Nathan had actually read it--and which authors he thought backed up his and his teachers' claims--is because the primary force behind this project was a Daoist named Min Yide 閔一得. The crux of the irony lies in the fact that one of Min Yide's important works, 《金蓋心燈》(Jin'gai Xindeng or, roughly Jin'gai [Mountain] Heart Lamp) is a book in which great effort is expended to trace and document the lineages as well as primacy of a rank of Quanzhen Daoist called "律師/lvshi/roughly, "stricture master"), who were monks who were often abbots of Longmen temples, in particular because they were those who had thorough education in and ability to transmit all of the monastic vows and strictures, which, as I have said and this article makes so clear, included celibacy and many other rules. Once you get to page 10 of this scanned copy of 《金蓋心燈》, if you can read Chinese you can see that Min Yide began tracing the transmission of Dragon Gate teachings almost entirely through its important lvshi. Lvshi is a term that comes from Buddhism, where it means "vinaya master" (vinaya being the Sanskrit term for the monastic code). The Daoist implications are exactly the same, although one would not use the word "vinaya" to describe Quanzhen monastic rules, which although related to Buddhism's, are not the same. The role of the lvshi in the Quanzhen monastic tradition cannot be overstated, because the monastic strictures are the backbone of monastic living as well as the cultivation of 德/De, and only lvshi can transmit the full array of vows. The video below shows how massive, austere, and beautiful a vow-transmission (傳戒/chuanjie) ritual is in Quanzhen Daoism. This is not "wham, bam, PayPal'ed your tuition, took your webinars, came on your China Dream Trips, here's your certificate" transmission. Rather, this is a massive undertaking that only takes place every few years, because only a small number of Quanzhen Daoists are fully qualified as lvshi (the event shown here, which took place in 1995, was only the second such ritual held after 1949!). Monks and nuns travel from around the entire landmass of China to receive this sort of ordination, and they prepare for a long time in advance simply to even know what all of the minute rules are (I know a young monk who was preparing for it a few years ago, and he put it off to go attend a Daoist academy first, as he felt he was not yet up to the task of keeping up the austerities that are required of those who receive this level of monastic initiation). The irony here gets even deeper, I say with a sigh, because at minute 2:00 in the video the lvshi in charge of the entire ritual is introduced, one Master Fu Yuantian (傅圓天大師, a nineteenth generation Dragon Gate lvshi who was in the twenty-third generation in terms of his receiving full ordination as a lvshi, and thus has a different Daoist name--傅宗天/Fu Zongtian--to refer to his role here). This is ironic, because we can see the absolute respect paid to tradition here by Master Fu Yuantian... and this man is one of the main teachers of Zhang Mingxin, the nun who is evidently now telling all these Americans and other westerners that they can be "priests" in the Quanzhen Longmen without being ordained as monks or nuns! It's not just that Zhang Mingxin was his disciple--she even is on record recently quoting him about how important the strictures are and parroting his words to younger generations of Chinese disciples! Evidently somehow this central importance is being omitted for the Americans, who now would like to sell you "priesthood" for several thousand of your dollars and several precious years of your life. If only these American "priests" took the time to learn Chinese, study the Daoist Canon, and live in the communities they claim to represent, they might realize that something indispensable is missing from what they have been given. But given that they do not take the time to truly learn about the tradition, perhaps they just don't want to know.

Heh. Not by me.

I can see what you mean, and I thank you for providing more historical background. I did some reading today and I can see what you mean. I was not aware of the historical north-south Han-Uighur population disparities in Xinjiang. It would be worrisome if the Han in Xinjiang became perceived as invaders, because this would pave the way for racist blame being thrown at people who are simply migrants, which is a most fundamentally human thing to be. However, while I cannot know what (if any) hidden agenda the reporter might have had, the article did not leave me with the impression that the Han who have moved in since the founding of the PRC are invaders. I am aware that most move there only out of desperation or because they were sent there by the government, often after being disenfranchised and removed from their own homes. They often (maybe even usually) have little choice and I know that many Han do not want to be there, and move away when they can for various reasons. Nevertheless, it is well-established (and recognized by PRC denizens themselves, with whom I have spoken about these things many times) that the government does intentionally mobilize vast numbers of Han migrants to move into places like Xinjiang and Tibet in order to alter the ethnic composition of these areas. That is part-and-parcel of outlawing the teaching of their languages in school and giving most government posts and lucrative government contracts to ethnically Han officials. I do not think it is a stretch to say that the CCP is involved in a form of cultural genocide, and that Han chauvinism is a major motivator and tool in these efforts. That said, most Han who take part in these things are themselves powerless pawns, and ironically (given how much jingoistic nationalism and we-5,000-year-old-Han-are-the-greatest-ethnicity-that-ever-lived nonsense there is flying around these days... it has really ticked up since 2013) they themselves were dragged through a terribly destructive round of CCP-inflicted cultural genocide not long ago. In other words, I do not lay the blame for suppressing the Uighurs at the feet of rank-and-file Han Chinese PRC citizens. They have little to no say in these matters, just as the unfortunate Uighurs who have been pressed into becoming snitches, concentration camp guards, and secret police also have little to no say. I don't know if that is inexcusable. Perhaps. The article did, in fact, mention the deadly knife/sword attack in Kunming as well as the terrorist vehicular homicide on Tiananmen Square in 2013 (a day I remember well, as I was in Beijing). Given that there apparently being Uighur terrorists in Syria does no justify throwing law-abiding Uighurs in China into concentration camps and erasing their culture, I am not sure that failing to mention this point constitutes a great bias or oversight. After all, nobody I see eye-to-eye with thinks that the war in the Pacific Theater justified the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Actually, I feel quite strongly that you are wrong about this one, for three reasons: First of all, it is well known that the long arm of PRC "law" reaches deep into Kazakhstan, which may lack the power (or will, you might say, given the way in which the leadership in both countries have leaped into bed together to keep the One Belt One Road renminbi flowing) even to prevent its own nationals from being rounded up and interned in the Xinjiang concentration camps, and I am not sure how much it is cooperating with the PRC by acceding to deportation requests (1, 2, 3). As we have seen in Asia in recent years, CCP secret police have renditioned dissident targets from both Hong Kong and Thailand back onto Chinese soil. Thus, a recently-released Kazakh-Chinese woman on Kazakh soil could very feasibly worry that being too outspoken could bring a direct threat upon her person. I would if I was her. Secondly, I do not know how much reading you have done about PTSD and trauma-recovery in general, but it is absolutely par for the course that people who have been afflicted by violent trauma may not be ready to speak about it for months, years, and decades after the act. Trauma is an issue of great interest to me and I read quite a bit about it--I think a couple of weeks ago I read an article stating that the average timeframe it takes for male rape victims to talk about their assaults is around three decades. Leaving aside what I just mentioned in point one, I would consider it totally normal for a woman who witnessed everything you described above to be truly incapable of speaking about it for quite some time. PTSD is some real shit. And I don't mean "real" like "real-fake;" I mean "real" like "that shit fucks people the fuck up." She has the benefit of my doubt. Thirdly, given how thoroughly documented it is that the PRC government conducts widespread torture for years. In a land building concentration camps for at least a million people that compels Uighurs to eat pork outside of the concentration camps, I do not find it hard to believe that they would do so inside. As for the torture, alas... I don't know if I wrote about this here or not but I know a PRC government official who was once a cop who narrated to me in detail how his education in torturing inmates began on the second night of his career, when he was 18. I know people who've been through PRC torture and, well, my opinion is that there are many in that system who understand the science of PTSD as well as if not better than many of the best shrinks in the world, except they view it not as a disease to be cured, but a weapon to be used to subjugate entire populations. That is not uniquely Chinese or even CCP thing--US police in ghettos do this stuff, too. But that is a sad topic for a separate thread. Amen.

Shame if we lose yet another experienced practitioner here because they don't want to deal with the madness. I don't know why The Rabbit Hole has in its description "reactionary trash will be kicked to the door" but Gendao gets to flit from thread to thread to drop his little bigoted poops everywhere. At this point Gendao is so unchained that he's actually gone full-incel, rehashing the "I can't get any sex because women are fundamentally not what they should be" talking points of broken, dangerous men. Which goes to show that the left-to-right spectrum may be circular instead of linear, and if a person on the fringe left goes flying off into the world of deranged conspiracy theories, sooner or later where he ends up is the same place people on the fringe right go. Last summer, @sean, you said you were finished a long phase of excessively laissez-faire non-management of this site, and made an impassioned and clear case for why that was a necessary change. I think we all benefited when the alt-right disappeared. Now we are learning that the alt-left can be just as sick. Sean, is it your intent to do nothing about Gendao? If you think his highly prejudiced views of Christianity and women who will not sleep with him are okay, can you please explain why?

Reported for anti-Christian hate-mongering.

All you magi In your stupid robes To us plebs A terror of upskirts blotting out the sun Bunch of damned Dao bums

Hmm, would these be big enough to plug your psychic black hole? If not, we could always go bigger, but we might need a special permit to chop down a redwood to make one of these:

I don't know. But he is the master of anal flexing and wooden butt plugs. Don't get the wrong idea. These aren't sexy fun time wooden butt plugs, they're just there to stop you from farting. Now I don't know why a person who practiced anal flexing all day would not be able to hold his farts in without the help of a wooden plug, Unless he ate a lot of beans. So the $20 question of the day is: @voidisyinyang, approximately how many beans (and of what type) do you consume per meal? Of course he will not answer, and I will not pay for an answer. That is because I already spent my $20 buying not one but TWENTY of these delightful "customize OEM hand made wood anal plug butt insert beads wooden adult toy wholesale sex products nature elegant design" on Alibaba.com. Note that they're customizable. In honor of this website, I got the manufacture to inscribe them with the words: "The Dao in Your Bum." and "A Little Ying-ying-yang-yang to Fill Your Void"

Well, make sense. Even drinking from cups and riding bikes is taught. Easy for a small child to find a "master" (usually mom and dad) who can teach how to use cups or ride bikes. Not so common these days to have a mom or dad who can drag a kid out of his or her body to learn to fly! (Hell, half the parents around these days don't even seem capable of dragging their kids away from their iPhones...) I'm guessing this means accumulating a huge amount of qi once one has learned the technique? An unfortunate end!

@gendao I have just reported you for harassing me with more or your bigoted anti-Christian conspiracy mongering and also for your racist use of the term WASP. Stop derailing threads with your obsession. Stop pretending to be some enlightened, open-minded defender of homosexuals and women when yesterday you compared my agreeing with somebody who you don't like to performing fellatio and dragged Monica Lewinsky's name through the dirt, thereby acting both as a homophobe and a chauvinist. You are a hypocritical, deranged incel fool. Like a leech or tick you attempt to suck attention towards yourself. In fact you have more in common with the bigots inside of Christianity than you do with the saints in any tradition. People have begged you to stop this harassment. Just stop. Leave us alone. Shut the fuck up. Get a fucking life.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/29/glenn-greenwald-david-miranda-brazil-bolsonaro

This is now. NYTimes:

I think you are misinterpreting Luke's post... I don't see any blame anywhere, or playing of the victim. He was asking why you say this is so. What are the mechanisms that make it easy? Obviously 7+ billion people cannot levitate, so to us it does not seem easy. Usually "easy" means things that everybody or nearly everybody can do after a little bit of study, like drinking a glass of water or riding a bicycle. Since levitating is not easy for 99.9+% of humanity, what, specifically, are we missing?

I see. Thank you for clarifying. It is indeed widely known and undisputed that the Quanzhen school of Daoism has had monasticism at its backbone ever since its founding. I hope that you will read this free sample entry from The Encyclopedia of Taoism, edited by your acquaintance, Fabrizio Pregadio. I know you say it is your habit to "usually forget whatever is not found practically useful, theoretically compatible with my 'bigger picture,'" but that strikes me as a dubious approach, lacking the rigor you typically seem to require of yourself, not to mention those who seek to enter into discussion with you here on this forum! I know you are busy and that is a long-ish entry, but simply doing Crtl+F to search for "monast" will call forth the evidence of the central import of monasticism in Quanzhen teachings. I see. While Longmen self-cultivation techniques have always been available to students who are not monks or nuns, I think there is wisdom in knowing where they come from. I do not suggest this simply so that you can fill your head with more ideas, or so that you can change your opinions about monasticism as a whole (although I think your ideas are excessively pitched towards seeing the negativity--which I am certain appears in all monastic traditions--at the expense of a more comprehensive and, therefore, accurate vision). Rather, I say this because, as a student of the Longmen in any way, shape, or form, you are a descendant of Wang, Ma, Qiu, et al.; a recipient of their gifts; and a beneficiary of their efforts. It seems to me to be a part of the jibengong of studying to at least be open to learning more about one's ancestors, not simply out of some sort of filial respect, but also because you never know what further gifts await you if you spend time getting to know these ancestors through their writings and their stories, and how those gifts may prove to deeply improve and accelerate your cultivation in ways that could be totally unexpected and unpredictable. To restate the point of the italicized portion above in different terms: there is qi in the teachings of those masters. It can and does interact with "on the cushion" cultivation of Longmen teachings. I'll say no more than that, the rest is up to each individual to access, or not, as is his/her wont. If that is a recurring problem, there is always the option of saying nothing at all, and in fact it is widely suggested for those who wish to avoid getting pulled into things, especially if a lack of qualification is part of the problem. To me, while I may be acting like a pedant and just offered a link to a book written by professors, this is not a scholarly argument. Everything I have written in this entire thread I wrote because I care deeply about how non-Chinese-speaking westerners' misunderstandings of what the name "Quanzhen Longmen" really means can easily harm their ability to receive, and then embody and realize, the teachings of this great lineage. In other words, while I may one day write a dissertation about this topic, even if I do, my motivations are strictly related to the core of what Wang Chongyang clearly stated he set out to do in his voluminous writings. I understand deeply. Please contemplate how all of that makes you feel next time you get ready make strong statements about Daoist monasticism, especially if you haven't read up on the topic and (even better) spent a good deal of time with Quanzhen monks and nuns beforehand. I do think your verdict is wrong. Everything you listed ("tax exemptions, land ownership, accumulation of wealth in the hands of the leaders, the resulting political influence, the resulting control of the masses") has been a part of Quanzhen history from the start, going right back to Qiu Chuji himself. This is actually clearly explained in the encyclopedia article. Some years ago (and perhaps to this day, as well) there was a special "Daoist tea" being sold on Wudang Mountain, that had the interesting effect of leaving a special sweet after taste that would make is so that, after drinking this tea, regular water or even a cheap Chinese cigarette would all taste sweet. In 2007, after trying it while sitting shivering in a temple-turned-teashop on Wudang, I bought two canisters, one for me and one to send to a Daoist teacher who I to this day deeply respect. When the tea finally reached him in the mail he tried it and sent a glowing review. In 2010 I returned to Wudang again and this time bought quite a few more canisters, as my bargaining skills had increased considerably and I now had more people to give gifts to. This time I also gave a canister of the tea to a "tea master" who is quite well-known in China and who insists she has "internal vision" which allows her to directly observe her body's qi and to be able to tell whenever she has consumed anything remotely tainted with chemicals. She's quite a remarkable cultivator and I think she may have this ability, at least to an extent. She, too, was deeply impressed with the tea and showed it off regularly to visitors to her home. I told her I'd get more the next time I was on Wudang. A year later, in the summer of 2011, I was back on the mountain once again. My Daoist nun friend, who knew that I liked that tea and had bought quite a bit the year before made a point of bringing the tea up and warning me to definitely not buy it again. I was shocked, wasn't this the special Wudang Daoist tea, after all? She sighed and said, "yes, even we were fooled for years and used to drink the stuff. Actually that effect with the sweet aftertaste is due to some sort of chemicals that are sprayed on those leaves, which aren't even tea at all. I'm really sorry that I helped you find it last year when you came, but I'm telling you, it's a scam, we figured out where they make it off the mountain. That plant doesn't even grow here." I was a bit speechless. How had I, my Daoist teacher in the US, the tea master in Shanghai, and all of these monks and nuns--what with our qigong and meditation and sensitivity and refined tastes--all failed so miserably to be able to discern between an all-natural plant, and just some bland leaf with a chemical sprayed on it? Ever since then, while I do pay attention to my taste buds and intuitive reactions to foods and drinks (and generally avoid regularly consuming the things that strike me as toxic or tainted), I also remind myself that it's really hard for people to know what's "all natural, " what's got "additives," and what's downright "contaminated." Personally, I really don't have a problem with the task you have set for yourself, and I think that to an extent all cultivators should similarly decide for ourselves "whether to like some of it, all of it, or none of it" when it comes to the teachings we receive. But, perhaps, with regular reflection upon the reality that we might very well be making the wrong decisions. First of all, I must harp once again upon the undeniable fact that the blending of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism was not just seen as positive by Wang Chongyang. Rather, he actively taught and promoted this mixing. So did Qiu Chuji, as well as many important recipients of their teachings who went on to pave the road that allows us, in 2020 on all corners of the globe, to have the good fortune of meeting teachers who can pass bits and pieces of their legacy to us, sometimes improving our lives in truly profound ways. Secondly, if you get the opportunity to spend more time wandering in the world of Daoist temples and folk religious temples, you may see that there remains plenty of room in many settings for the "native proto-taoist shamanic tradition." I have written elsewhere in the recent thread on fox spirits about the presence of shrine halls made to host these beings in mainstream Quanzhen monasteries in NE China. You may be interested to know that in such temples it is also common to see shrine halls dedicated to a female spirit called 黑老太 ("Black Old Granny," I guess), and that the explanations written outside of such halls openly explain how she is an ancient spirit who is deeply important in local shamanism. In your words you leave open the possibility of there being positive aspects of the blending of the "three teachings," but giving this a monster's name and even illustrating your point a picture of a terrible beast makes it clear that you are really focusing on the negative. It is fine to focus on the negative, if you can honestly say that you have done the homework that you would have to do in order to make an honest assessment of Quanzhen teachings, but as you have said, you didn't even know the Longmen were monks until today! So... please endeavor to keep a more open mind, and be a bit more reticent before pointing a finger and calling things you have scarcely familiarized yourself with either in book or in person monster's names! I hope that what I'm about to say about the two paragraphs above will make you think again about the story I just wrote about everybody's failure to notice the chemicals in the "Wudang tea." Anyway, forgive me, but I cannot help but find your invocation of Han Yu and Zhu Xi here to make your point, well, laughable. First of all, yes, I am aware of the illustrious Han Yu. Off the top of my head, I know that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Confucian who famously wrote at least one polemic railing against Buddhism. What you may not know, though, is that later in his career he ran afoul of the government (maybe, actually, for pissing the emperor off with his polemics, I can't remember) and was banished somewhere far away from the capital--I think it might have been to Canton. There he found himself very lonely, as he was an over-educated fellow used to being surrounded with all his loquacious literati buddies in the seat of the empire, and now he was alone in the countryside, with scarcely a literate person in sight, to say nothing of people who could sit and chat with him about philosophy and governance. Finally he heard that a local Chan Buddhist master was quite an erudite scholar, and despite his longstanding disgust for Buddhism, in his loneliness he sought out the Chan monk. Perhaps to his pleasant surprise (since evidently Han Yu loved arguing with people), not only did he find out that the monk was indeed a brilliant scholar, but he also quickly learned that the monk was also quite willing to get involved in Han Yu's never ending Confucianism-versus-Buddhism debate. They decided, therefore, to formally have a debate or debates about Buddhism's virtues or lack thereof. The result he could not have predicted was that, in the end, he could only admit being soundly defeated in the debate with the Buddhist monk, and being the good man-of-letters that he was, Han Yu left behind a written mea culpa in which he admitted for posterity that he had been bested by the Chan master and had been wrong about Buddhism. He did not convert to Buddhism, but he ate his words--the ones he was writing when he penned the famous polemic you mentioned. The other thing that makes me laugh about using Han Yu to make your point here is that he wasn't just anti-Buddhism... he was also famously anti-Daoism. And I'm not talking about monastic, Quanzhen-style Daoism, which was not established until centuries after he died. No, I'm talking about free-wheeling, happy-go-lucky, totally uninhibited Tang dynasty style Daoists and immortals. I can't remember exactly what the piece of writing was (and I'm not gonna Google it otherwise I will never finish my real work today, which is sitting ignored in another window), but the key is that he had a nephew who shared his last name, none other than member of the Daoist Eight Immortals, Han Xiangzi! Well, back in the day old fuddy duddy Han Yu thought his Daoist nephew was just as stupid as those damn Buddhists, and made no bones about letting everybody know. His nephew wasn't the least bit phased, and one day left his uncle a calligraphic couplet. Han Yu received the gift and, as was his wont, he scoffed at it. Evidently he thought it was a shitty, nonsense poem! Fast forward a couple of years (in fact, perhaps to his journey away from the capital after he was banished--I am not 100% sure), Han Yu got lost in the mountains during a terrible snowstorm with white out conditions. Well and truly fucked, he stared to realize that it was time to make peace with death. He was already beginning to freeze and surrounded by such deep snow that there was no way he could find the road or expect to see any humans. Just as he was getting ready to give up, he saw a human form. Lo and behold, it was none other than his damn stupid Daoist nephew, out there the cold in just a thin robe, grinning ear to ear, and laughing at his uncle's predicament. His uncle--I'm guessing and embellishing here--didn't know whether to yell at the kid for being such an upstart even in these dire straits, or thank his lucky stars that the guy really was a Daoist master. My favorite part of the story is that before saving his uncle, Han Xiangzi first humiliated him by saying, "hey, remember that poem I gave you that you thought was sooooooo stupid?" His uncle did remember, and Han Xiangzi made him recite it aloud. As soon as Han Yu finished his jaw dropped--the poem's previously senseless-seeming language, it turned out, contained the name of the mountain pass where he'd gotten lost, an allusion to the snowstorm, and the prediction that he would be saved. Being a nice guy, Han Xiangzi really did save his uncle, who was thenceforth forced to acknowledge Daoism, and apparently also did so in writing. As for Zhu Xi, I will spare you and me another long piece of writing and just say, uhhhhhhhh, why are you quoting Zhu Xi to make points about monasticism, when Zhu Xi is in fact widely known to have had opinions about women that encouraged their repression? In fact, why invoke two Confucians at all? These guys are, in many ways, the epitome of those who promote the slave-like post-metallurgical- and post-agricultural-revolution societies you lament so forcefully in your thread on Sumer. This is not a rhetorical question, although I don't mind if you don't answer it: do you really think these guys points are all that valid? And anyway, if post-Sumer societies are as fundamentally corrupt and corrupting, then how is "promoting and engaging in escapism from the world, state, and family" anything other than fucking great!? (That is a rhetorical question haha). Meh, that logic is spurious, and I don't mind telling you, because I really don't think it's up to Taomeow standards. There's a huge difference between the special type of gratitude one might have for the founders of the lineage one practices in, and the more general gratitude for everybody else who's ever been circumstantially involved in getting us to where we are today. Sure, I am thankful for anybody who ever did something in the last 2,500 years that made it so that in the 1990s I came across the Daodejing. But that doesn't mean all those people are Laozi. Finally, no, I don't think you are "under any obligation to emulate the whole developmental history of his ideas, preferences and beliefs." But as is probably infuriatingly clear by now, I think you are under obligation to first learn about these things before sharing your opinions on them. That doesn't surprise me. But I would be quite surprised if they believed that Wang, Ma, and Qiu's decision to found a monastic lineage was a "fuck up." If you suspect that, for instance, Wang Liping would hold that opinion, and you ever get the chance to ask him directly, please do and let me know what he says. Wikipedia says that cargo cult means: "A cargo cult is a belief system among members of a relatively undeveloped society in which adherents practice superstitious rituals hoping to bring modern goods supplied by a more technologically advanced society." If that is what you mean, I think your opinion is wrong. Were you to do some serious fieldwork with vegetarian monks, nuns, and hermits of the Quanzhen tradition and come back to report on your findings about the problems of vegetarianism in this area, I would be very interested in reading what you have to write. But barring that, I'm afraid I'm just going to have to say I'm not at all convinced you know better than Qiu Chuji. You are welcome, and thank you for reading all of the above. I have made my point as well as I can, both as a response to your ideas and in order to make my perspective available to whoever might read this thread. I can do no better than I did above and barring a sudden revelation I don't think you are going to win me over to your viewpoint, so I suggest that unless I have said something that intrigues you and you wish to hear me say more, we let this rest for now. (Of course, if you have strong objections to something I said above that you feel it is important to express, please do, I will read them carefully and respond if I can)

What do you mean by that?

This is not RFA propaganda. The Chinese media openly admitted the "sewer oil" problem exists in 2009 or so, and back then under different leadership the CCP allowed a reasonably free press, so long as the party itself was not criticized. There was for years extensive investigative reporting into sewer oil manufacturing, as well as countless other disgusting things that would shock you and which I don't care to list. (Sadly, since Xi Jinping aka "Xitler" took power investigative journalism has been gutted, because now the media is only allowed to report on "positive things") Not only did no Chinese person I ever met doubt the veracity of the sewer oil story, all of my friends took it as a given that it is probably impossible to avoid sewer oil in the country at all, regardless of whether you eat street food, fancy restaurant food, or cook for yourself using supposedly imported oil. I personally always considered this a trade-off I was willing to deal with. Chances of eating sewer oil in LA? Pretty low. Chances of having somebody point a gun at me on a street corner in BJ? Pretty low. Then again, now I live where I don't have to worry about getting shot or eating french fries deep fried in poop oil. Much prefer that. On the one hand, this is a testament to Chinese folk wisdom, which contains a lot of good advice for maintaining good health which people integrate with their diets, sleeping habits, clothing choices, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if life expectancy begins to drop there again. Cancer rates have risen considerably in a very short period of time, along with obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illness.

Before I reply to anything else I'd like to check something. By offering this definition of "monasticism," are you implying that Wang Chongyang (after he left solo cultivation and began founding the Quanzhen movement), Ma Danyang, Qiu Chuji, and Qiu Chuji's disciples were not monks?

@virtue Holy. Christian. Colonial. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jesus. Greatest post all time! This shit rises to the level of literature. I am humbled. (Too bad Gendao won't be, but hey, every village needs its volunteer laughingstock brigade, so as long as he's ready, willing, and incelibate...)

Right, and the vows of Quanzhen Daoism were codified and prescribed to disciples. Whether Wang Chongyang was a hermit, a monk, or both while he was practicing alone in the Zhongnan Mountains is an interesting question, but it's not really the crux of this. When he concluded his (mostly) solo practice and began seeking disciples for his Complete Reality movement, mostly in Shandong and Shaanxi, he was most certainly initiated the ones who 出家/chujia/"left home" into a monastic life. Ma Danyang, who was the leader of the Quanzhen movement after Wang's passing as well as Qiu's primary teacher (Qiu Chuji was very young when he joined Wang Chongyang and barely exchanged words with his master, who viewed him as far from ready for real spiritual cultivation) was heavily into asceticism and promoted the monastic life, going so far as to come into disagreement with one of the other seven main disciples who founded a major monastery, which seemed to Ma as too luxurious (the other disciple--I forget which one, and I'm too busy to look it up, answered that this kind of fancy monastery allowed them to help more laypeople). When Qiu Chuji, who was much younger than all of the other disciples, completed his long period of retreat he continued the monastic ways of his two teachers, Wang and Ma. In part because of the influence he gained as a result of his visit to Genghis Khan, his sway over Daoism in the northern part of the Yuan dynasty was enormous (in the south, Zhengyi and a Zhengyi-derived movement called 玄教 were both powerful--Quanzhen monasteries could not be built in the southern reaches of the Yuan without Zhengyi approval). Thanks in part to Qiu's influence, the monastic Quanzhen lifestyle became widespread. Going all the way back to Wang Chongyang, the Quanzhen masters tended to be lovers of letters, and they left behind poems and essays that made explicitly clear their thoughts about monasticism. Because many of Wang's first generation disciples came into frequent contact with the Jin and Yuan courts in order to secure the right to promulgate their movement, there is plenty in the written record from governmental sources. Local gazetteers also contain a wealth of information about the early masters' biographies and religious activities. Taken as a whole, a clear picture is left behind of an institutionalized monastic movement. To this very day, in monastic Longmen Daoism, the requirement for monks and nuns is to eschew many things lay Longmen disciples are not prohibited from partaking in. Marriage and sex are prominent on the list. Those Longmen Daoists who wish to be married and/or have sex are either laypeople, or monks and nuns who violate their vows. That is one way of interpreting events, I am not sure where it comes from. My understanding is that it is often painted as a mutual decision made by Sun and Ma after Wang Chongyang impressed them with physical bilocation, a series of cryptic teaching poems, and the symbolic cutting of pears into pieces for several weeks, which eventually Ma and Sun understood as meaning "to leave [marriage]," as "pear" (梨) and leave (離) are homonyms. There are also androcentric-sounding versions of the story in which Ma makes the decision and a disappointed Sun asks him to reconsider. Regardless of brought up the word "divorce" first, the two of them entered into a monastic life and, so far as we know, remained in it until they died. The use of the word "petrified" here seems gratuitous. Living in a monastic setting might not suit you at all and might feel very petrified were you to be in it, but that is not how it feels to those who have an affinity for that path (which predates the Quanzhen movement by a long time--Daoist 出家 living with monastic strictures began to be codified centuries earlier in the Tang, I believe). I say this having lived with such people and being student and confidant of such people. Wise Daoist teachers I have met recognize that some aspirants have affinity for a monastic path, some do not. For those who do not, there are teachers like your own, who are lay people who inherit Longmen teachings and transmit them to other lay people. This is a statement which only makes sense when talking about traditions like Zhengyi and Lingbao, which are called 火居/huoju, "living near the fire/hearth," which refers to being a married householder. In the Quanzhen, there is no provision for huoju daozhang. That is not true. To the contrary, an argument could be made that Chinese Buddhism had vegetarianism forced upon it by the emperor who required all Buddhist monks and nuns in China to abstain from meat (I think this emperor was Liang Wudi) due to Daoist influences. To be certain, ancient Daoism did not require full-time vegetarianism, but strict abstention from meat for periods of time prior to major jiao rituals was common. So strict was this abstention that the entire community hosting the ritual could be prohibited from eating meat, as well as slaughtering animals, hunting, and fishing altogether during the lead up to the ritual and up through its conclusion. This is such a deep-rooted tradition that local McDonald's in Taiwan have been successfully prohibited from serving meat patties for this reason. By contrast, ancient Indian Buddhists were not vegetarians. They were, to use a modern term, freegans. They ate what they were given. Abstaining from alcohol is certainly a requirement of monastic Quanzhen Daoists. This is well-documented. Laypeople may drink. External alchemy was not a part of the Quanzhen monastic regimen. If there were (and I suspect there were, because this was such a syncretic movement) Quanzhen monks or nuns who dabbled or specialized in external alchemy, this would not have been to get high. And yet on the first page of this very thread you talked about Daoists "embracing syncreticism." Like it or not, cross-pollination is more the rule than the exception, everywhere in the universe. This does not mean all cross-pollination is good, and that it cannot lead to the death of a species (I would argue that the cross-pollination of modern Quanzhen Daoism with modern PRC consumerist culture and CCP United Front Work Department nationalism, for instance, is strangling that spiritual path). Regarding the second part of this comment, perhaps your eye is somewhat jaundiced regarding this issue. You certainly make your distaste for monasticism clear quite often. And to be certain, monastic life can be about subservience to power structures with all of the attendant large- and small-scale catastrophe that comes from that. But also, monasticism can be about personal choice, responsibility, and accountability coming to the fore of one's existence thanks to the way in which a monastic setting can allow one to cut away nearly everything except for those three things. I personally know people who have been touched by both sides of that coin. As the world is a very complicated place, sometimes it is the same person who has seen both sides of the coin. I don't think you have enough "on the ground" experience to say "always" here. Even within a single small monastery with fewer than 10 monks or nuns within one finds a complex blend of patterns that defies easy definition. Finally, while there is merit in all of the negative assessments you could levy at monasticism, please try to remember that had the monastic Quanzhen Longmen not existed, there could never have been a Wang Liping in your life. If what he inherited truly traces back to Qiu Chuji, that means he inherited something that came from elders who felt very strongly that monasticism should be established, nurtured, defined, and maintained. I respect their thinking on these matters, not blindly, but for the very same reason that I defer to the teachers when they tell me what the teachings are. After all, if I know better than Wang, Ma, and Qiu did, why the hell am I wasting my time and my teachers' by coming to them for instruction?

Oh, I see, I see. You got jealous because we stopped talking about you and now we're talking about the other kid. Ok, ok, let me read all that. Ah, ah, I see. Right, I had almost forgotten, that's why Earl Grey can't stand you. And just imagine, you made it all so clear, he didn't even have to come back here and explain it all over again! People may say many things about you, Gendao, but don't let them ever say you're not a Helpful Harry.

Yep. Luckily he's almost certainly very young. Plenty of time. I don't worry about him being an arrogant little shart (why, I might have been one myself, not so long ago). The part about being arrogant, thinking he's very humble, and reflexively playing the wounded victim? That will take him some time to work through. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. Oh, well. I shan't be holding me breath, nor placing any bets in his corner. Time will tell, though. Any "ability" I have gained is very mundane, limited really to the realm of vastly improving my own health and being able to help others do the same. Even for these things I spent years (and still am) wandering, spent obscene amounts of money, and indeed neared death and faced serious betrayal more than once (I once had to kidnap a corrupt Daoist and his minions after he tried to steal $8000 US from me--this is a true story, and crazy enough, another Dao Bummer was there to help me! Although I haven't seen him post here in years... I guess he's smart enough not to hang out in this hive of scum and villainy ). Actually, it was fun, I enjoyed the adventures, at least in retrospect if not while they unfolded! But it is true, the chances of any of us getting the things this forum is dedicated to from YouTube are... low.

Oh gawwwwwd, you're acting like a kid who insisted on playing rugby with the big kids and then threw a gigantic purple tantrum because somebody tackled him. If you want people to talk to you like you were a nice, respectable gentleman, don't be such a sniveling little Proud Boy asshole.

Oh, well I never! Well, since we're sharing our feelings, I think think it's ironic how you cast insults left and right simply so you can have a showy little personal pout parade of Glenn Beck-y butthurtedness about it the moment any of it comes back atcha! Kinda laaaaaame for an aspiring immortal flying around the galaxy for all eternity, but hey, maybe when you run into the Annunaki you can defeat them with your petulant, witless snarkiness and your teenboy sneer. I hope you have bangs, they make the sneer soooo much better, plus bangs will look totally kewl when you make your first Daoist Thundermagic Cosplay YouTube vid. First one to 40 views wins!

Amazing! Literally giggling out loud. I need that thing! "Doodle-blue" also happens to be Boerwors' permanent mood. Coinky-dink? I don't think so! Lol, it's an accent that was designed for caricature! Oooooooh, did I make you P at a D? I just love water sports!

You are a student of Wang Liping, right? Can you rephrase your question? I'm not entirely sure what those question marks indicate you're asking.