metzu

It is in this mingling of cultures,and philosophical ideas that we truly attempt to learn about one another ,any construed inadequacies in interpretations can only come from they who are attempting to set things correctly as they see it. That was a very impressive array of knowledge, even so it is the words that cause the confusion...too many words, to much studying not enough living, too much practicing too much meditation, again not enough living. Too many scholars ,too many interpretations, too many opinions. To be lost in the words only seperates us more from that which we say and think we are seeking. It is in letting go of what we think we know each day that we will come to our destination. Minding our own business, living life at peace with our own self. Scholars, masters,teachers,gurus,jesuses,buddhas,just can't help but try to alter natures course, thinking they surely know the better way and want to make it happen in their own way in their own time, and their followers are all in a hurry to get there so they can do as their teachers taught them. All this pretense where does it come from? So what pretences still remain in me?

Brilliant, Jing Attig Even so can anyone be more or less on the same pathway, isn't all of nature moved by Tao, and ultimately moving toward the Oneness we search, appearence say the world as we perceive it outside of ourselves is in utter chaos, and confusion, doesn't nature appear to us as same when a monsoon, or hurricane rampages its way through lives, are we better off for consciously searching for purpose and meaning, then they who appear not to be as we. Are all the practices we do to control and manipulate our thoughts,and feelings setting us truly free or are we actually the ones imprisoned by our ideas? Chuang Tzu spoke of the illusion of a dream he had wondering was he a butterfly thinking he was a man or a man thinking he was a butterfly. Our universe is but a drop of water with us wandering aimlessly along our way, some of us with such grandiose ideas that we are there, we are it. We have finally reached our purpose our destination, and we have to communicate that to others, so we can all be in the same boat in this drop of water. So we talk ,we discuss, we search the what is called the ancient wisdoms, and from those ancient scripts,others will come along to express just how they see it themselves and write new books, the old books will be translated by so many others that soon the ancient wisdom isn't even wisdom any more. They are just words written in the wind In this short period of time we are here in this form and shape we, here in the western world have thought we had true freedom, because we had most things needed to make ourselves comfortably numb. Certainly some of us rebelled against our upbringing ,our religions, our parents, everything because it didn't feel right to us personally. For some of us it took us far away from what others did ,thought and beleived, we actually became alliens in our own bodies. So we began our search, we became nomads traveling through every denomination of the religion we began with, still dissatisfied we took a chance and went to a different religion only to end up just as disenchanted, we moved on to another philopshy and another program that said...this is really the way. For those of us who could not find satisfaction we eventually arrived at the door of Lao Tzu, so different from our western thinking, thrilled by the words we dug in, for me then came Chuang Tzu, at this point I stopped to return to my beginings The Christian Bible, with my new found freedom to inspect and explore, that which I had challanged , I finally asked the question, who really compiled these books, chose the books that would be acceptable and discarded those they found unfit. You see for most of my adult life I accepted blindly on faith they were the inspired words of god, even though I felt that no matter how hard I tried I had to fail and wind up in hell, so I kept digging and search. Well as it turns out some ruler took control of what they say jesus was about, and created a new religion, and it was he and a cohort Jerome who put there heads together and the bible as we see it in uncountable different versions has been destroying humankind ever since in the name of the god they created. Having reached this conclusion and come back to Lao TZu and Chuang Tzu after reading and searching and turning their ideas all around and upside down, for years,I come to the same conclusion, I arrived at with the bible. In somewayThe government of China, or India, or Japan,created that which best full filled their own mission to control and manipulate their own people, to the western mind, the ideas are magnificent , so freeing up after being confined to a god who was going to judge and condemn his own creation, when I say it now it sounds ludicrious, that for 1700 years they have been able to control and manipulate with fear. Can it be any different in any of the other cultures, as the world gradually becomes capitalistic, which government will reach the pinnicale of deception and wind up being the world government. So here I am and I have heard what you said Jing Attig, and it sounds awesome, we humans are great for performance and drama, look at jesus they gave him a script, all he had to do is follow what the prophets,(who by the way were all derelicts living isolated in caves, eating locust and wild honey,) said the messiah was going to do. When they created the bible they had it all their own way they could say anything they wanted 300 years after the supposed happening, if it ever happened at all, and they made him in to a god. And their god has been attempting to control and manipulate the world with war ever since. More of humankind has been destroyed by their creation then anyone in all of history. Now do you really think it would be any different with any other religions the states adopt and promote. So we talk about oneness, we are all one, and I honestly believe that is true only because of the concept of quantum and that we are all connected no matter whether we want to or not, we talk about dao, and argue back and forth or we discuss how we see it, or we ridicule one another because we think we know morethen the fool who just spilled his guts out, and my friend in the end it all winds up just entertainment, because we are so bored with our existence the way we created it that we just have to look for more and stir up more trouble. I am not even going to try to edit this or read it over Just going to hang it out there to dry. Tell me my bullshit don't stink, and I'll tell you "come on let us all get honest" joe

"the most difficult person to get an appointment with is my self"

Thank you Thank you

Nice tree

and the king follows earth..............yes....i like the before and after chopping wood and carrying water There has to be a before Tao...........no matter what it is a concept and an idea and a word. Maybe that is why the ancients never told others about it in the first place,they didn't have a word for it so they didn't have to talk about it...they just enjoyed it. They didn't need a word for it. They were happy to just chop wood and carry water, to see the wonder of nature ,to lay down with their old lady ,smoke a cigarette, pee on a tree,watch their children grow, and play, playing along with them, they grew a few veggies alongside they grew enough rice to get them thru whatever was necessary , laid out in the sun and played with their animal friends , had the neighbors over for a cup of tea, rising with the sun ,because it was such an amazing time of day,speaking to the birds, bees...talking to flowers and bugs alike....... watching the squirrels race around looking for chestnuts, soaking in a pond, and just breathing deep the beauty that surrounded them, not a care in the world and a big smile upon their face. Thank you Stig, you were most helpful.

Co..in...ci.dence I take it to mean what happens coincides with where the mind and feelings are taking us when our thinking and feelings are as one. So that we are aware of things at that particular level, we naturally see, feel,and are aware of things at that time that in the past we would have just ignored as meaningless, walking by without even noticing.

My experiences with trees, are many over the years. At one time when I thought christianity was the way, I had this thought that it was actually lightning jesus swallowed and not a dove that came down,when his cousin John baptised him in the jordon, and thunder had been the speaker, so I got this idea I wanted to catch lightning. We had this old tall rag palm tree that had grown wild,thick and tall in our back yard and it had grown way above the house, during storms I would climb out the 3rd floor window, shimmy off the roof onto the tree during thunder and ligthning storms and hang on, as the wind whipped me back and forth praying our fathers'. I was in my forties when I moved from that house,and stopped climbing trees to catch lightning. As a child of 5 I once climbed to the top of this tree, and a limb broke and I came plummeting down to the earth, and I just laid there, the kid I was with thought I had died and ran home and told mom. A pallett was on the ground that broke my fall, just scared and knocked the wind out of me. There was a time in my 50's when I was member of Narcotics anonymous and I would walk to meetings by way of the Jones Falls river, there were trees lining the path I walked, on days I was frustrated and angry, I would pick up fallen limbs, and bang them against trees, untill the limb shattered and became a stick in my hand, and natuarally I felt better. Oh yes then there was the pear tree at a military boarding school I was going to when i was 9 years old, I had one of the old coke hard glass bottles and I wanted a pear and it was to high to reach, so I threw the coke bottle up trying to knock down a pear. The pear didn't come down and neither did the bottle right away, I looked up and I couldn't see the bottle anywhere, but when I looked down here came the bottle and banged me right on the head. Hey this is fun, just remembered when I was 5 or six years old, we lived across the street from this great Herring Run Park, trails and trees, swimming holes, and the day after a particularly violent thunder storm, I was walking down the path along the water, and this huge tree much wider then I was tall at the time, had been uprooted and laid across the stream from side to side and this huge turtle was walking across it, I mean this guy must have out weighed me by a hundred or more pounds. Another time just maybe 10 years ago(by the way I am 68 years old), I know I am jumping around as I recall these incidence in my life. I was circling the huge wooded area that surrounds one of our reservoirs, I had many times stopped on the drive by side to get out by the Loch Raven Dam, on this day I circled the entire area maybe 15 miles around and when I came to the other side of the dam I wanted to climb up and walk out to the end where the water rushed over, there were no steps so I had to literally shimmy myself up this wall to get to the concrete walk way. I made it up and stood momentarily watching the pressure, of the falling water and the dizzing height it was dropping . As I turned around to leave all these snakes were crawling around , As I stood startled and wondering what I should do, I heard this tremendous crash. This magnaniumous monster of a tree had fallen down right across the path I would have been walking by had I not gotten hung up by the snakes. When I scared the snakes away and climbed down the trail leading to the fallen tree, I could barely climb over it to get on with my walk. Thank you for this post, it was great remembering and sharing those neat experiences Joe

(lol)

I have only been here a short while and it appears from the numerous posts I have read everyone is attempting to follow teachings of others, be it from books or from teachers, sages, masters, it sounds strange coming from those on the wayofthedao. Discussions seem to be about what some third party told us is the way it is supposed to or can be, words seem extremly important,defining magical experiences some have had when experiencing some master or teacher,or groups experience ,again still third hand information. It could be my own ignorance that brings me to this conclusion, even so, let me further explain. I have gone no further than Lao, Chuang, Alan Watts Watercourse way, in the 20 years since I found the Taoist ideas illuminating. Also for longer I practiced the I Ching. Over and over countless times I scoured these books for more ,I read and practiced these ideas, until it came to the time(oh yes I visited another forum when it was in its prime on the computer"Daoist Discussion Forum" for nearly 5 years) though they were all wonderful ideas, my longing was to get to that time when like the ancients, I wouldn't need to save or fix any person, place, or thing, and could trust nature to take the course that was natural for all nature to take. Does nature meditate or contemplate its next action,does it need to practice being itself? Does it attempt to control anything? Then why, we who are no less or more nature then anything else in this comprehendable universe, think that mind control or practice can get us to the place we think we want to get to. So I see the Dao as the last step before reaching enlightenment, I see enlightenment as walking away from all discussion and others illumination, the realization that all my questions are within me and all the answers are there as well,at this point I see myself walking away from the Tao as another strawdog in this journey to the inner self that will be enlightened, and naturally I will be minding my own business, doing only what is infront of me to do with family and friends I know and meet ,as I stop looking for trouble I will have reached non action and non being. I believe I would be at that same point they say Lao was at when leaving, doing what the gatekeeper asked of him,leaving his own opinions in what has been passed down to us. Only at that point tempted by fame and fortune, I would believe I could just smile and walk away. I honestly believe that behind every book we have been taught as the wisdom of the ages some governmant has edited all information to control and manipulate the people, and as good as these ideas sound to ears who have never heard them, the bottom line will always remain. The answers we seek can not be found outside of our own being. It will always remain an inside job ,anything else is simply entertainment until we are able to walk away from it all.

Unconditioned, thank you for the story; For some reason it reminded me of another Taoist story, I picked up from Alan Watts's "The Watercourse Way" A farmer whose horse ran away, was sitting back that evening having a smoke, with his tea, and all his neighbors gathered to commiserate with him,since this was such bad luck. He said, "May be". The next day the horse returned but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came back exclaiming at his good fortune. He said " May be ." And then the following day his son tried to saddle one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said.............. " May be "..............The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize men for the army, but because his leg was broken, the farmer's son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunate everything had turned out, he said "May be." Joe

Don't you think if Lao tzu could do it you could do it as well, or anyone else could do it as well? To answer your question: Yes I am very close, and you are helping me right now, to open my mind to see a little more of what is necessary. Thank you, Li Jiong. Joe Thank you.

certainly you are corrct in your assumptions of how you percieve things. From the One came... two... heaven and earth or for the purpose of arriving at my point of view the yin and the yang...same difference... and from that eventually came mass confusion of thoughts and ideas, concepts be they illusional or delusional......now in returning to the One.....do we eventually let go of all the ideas and concepts and thoughts that seperate us from the One......which could actually mean letting go of the idea of The Tao?

to coin a phrase from Lao Tzu, I can see the entire universe ,without leaving my room I apologize if I have offended you with my sharing , I see you are from China, so your circumstances of perception naturally will be somewhat different then my own here in America, and naturally your experiences in life will have carried you down a different path then the necessities of my own path. Possibly it is controlled illusion and I have not become aware of it yet, certainly now I will be able to check out how I feel about what you have shared. Thank you for sharing. Joe Forgive me for not answering your question, I have arrived here, along the way, to check out what I have learned from having been involved with daoism over the years ,to see if there is something I missed , or still need to learn. Having taken a sabbatical as someone suggested earlier on a different post, I have returned simply for the purpose I shared with you above. My intention is not to cause contention or to look for followers of the way I am on.....nor to create a discipleship of some kind. Just one person in the billions still asking questions ,and making statements of how I personally experience the philosophy of Taoism or Daoism working in my own life. Again you are possibly right everything I percieve could be an illusion. Not knowing whether I am a butterfly or a human being.

Xuesheng, Actually this is true, I needed to experience everything I went through in order to arrive at this now experience, and at this juncture of the journey, I have no regrets ,shame, nor sorrows for all I needed to experience over and over sometimes, I see the necessity for this individual wandering,and also realize everyone else needs to follow their own experience on their own individual path where ever it carries them,in returning to innocence. So why does Joe say and write these things,simply because in tmy head and unexpressed I can not go any further,it isn't for those I am responding to, or the post I make,it is simply to be reminded of my own limited ignorance along the way to enlightenment. When I hear myself back after making myself vulnerable to exposure, it carries me deeper within to check myself out internally with what fits there and what is just entertainment, pretence or just plain old bullshit of being something I truly am not. So Xuesheng, you returned me the favor, of turning myself around to see where I have come from and just how it was in order to get here. Sometimes I lose touch with all that it has taken to arrive at today, mainly because my focus for the most part isn't in yesterday or tomorrow, only here and now matters. I have never had a master or a teacher of human origin, unless we count jesus, buddha, lao,chuang, as human beings, even so ,I have only met them in words from books..............having watched the media and how directors edit everybodies works for movies and publication, could it be any different for what we all thought were books of wisdom passed down thru the ages of antiquity, to fill us with illunination and enlightenment..............maybe in the end all winds up bullshit and just entertainment as we mozy around the mulberry bush............but the adventure , the high drama..........I have found nowhere else ,so for now.....this is all very exciting, it has been quite awhile since I have been to a forum such as this where I am free to express the thoughts and ideas that come and go, I have been on let's call it a sabbatical, for a few years,accumulating more pain ,in order to turn it over and see the flip side, and necessity of stepping away from everything sometimes for awhile, so I can have a fresh view with new eyes and ears turning the outside ....inside. Yes , it is beautiful to have arrived here at this time after having gone back thru lao, chuang,and the watercourse way, and have let them all go again...........so that I can express myself freely so I can see where I am ,what to keep , what to let go of. So yes thank you I will be here for awhile, who knows how long it will take before I no longer need the entertainment from outside, or maybe this will be as far as my journey takes me, even so is wonderful finding you guys and being able to spend time with you all. I needed a destination beyond heaven and hell that had been given to me in my childhood, after much heroin and LSD some 12 years in prison along the way sparodically, I worked myself out of the hole that had been dug for me, returning to old places of information over and over again until I saw a way up and out of the "hole "of my own creation. Finding the dao has taken me beyond heaven and earth to another imagined place of origin the Tao Way all strawdogs of my imaginings. Placed me right smack in the middle of responsibility of choice I have made all of my adult life. Realizing it all is about the choice I make and need to, feel, not think, I am worthy of this self and magnificent creation that surrounds us all, making us One complete Universe, with what appears to be billions of individual universes within it(be those universes people ,places,or things) So thank you Steve as you have allowed me to open myself up a little bit more at 5 AM, to take another look and to see a few other things I had not realized yet. Joe Yes, a bird of prey. The music was new age, instrumental. Very Daoist in its instrmentation, very nature oriented............they did another around the same time "Natural States" you can check them out on You Tube go to Dave Lanz and paul Speers and type in the name of the cd's if you care to. Desert Vision and Natural States of course cultivation is how it maintains itself or even the attempted civilization of nature itself

This thought came to me as I was reading thru all these posts again including my own ignorance. Quite possibly there are no secrets in the universe, even though humankind is constantly digging deeper and deeper into things,looking under every rock, looking into space, diving deeper into the oceans. Quite possibly keeping still and watching nature respond to it's elements, components and forces, gives us all the internal answers we seek, we are just so busy expecting some other human bean to give it to us ,obviously ,because we don't trust or think we have it within ourselves alone, we miss it all completely.

All very true Michael,after delayed gratification, comes big heavy laughing ,soaring with the eagle, rebirth as the phoenix, freedom and abandonment, I don't see The Tao as a destination,simply another strawdog along the way , important only because it freed me to think outside the roll call.......and realize that I have been through so many transformations within ,in this lifetime and every dead end I reached always returned me to me, to find the truth within my own self.......so once again I repeat, the only trustworthy teacher is Nature itself. And all questions are internally within our own self and within our own selves are also our individual answers,no matter how hard we look and train and practice all those ideas passed on by another ,it all just takes us away from finding our own self. outside ourselves for what we are seeking we can't find it what we percieve as outside is all illusional, every individual lives in the universe they have created, how many billions of universes are there in our world= with every atom of our being we have created in the image and likeness of ourselves The necessty to clean myself up with this edit, you are right Michael, I needed to go thru all I went thru to get to today as everyone else must do the same, we all arrive at the now from differing points of vision, though sometimes when we are discussing how we got to now they all sound the same, our individual experiences in life are different, not so much in the things we have done, but how we think and feel about the things we have felt and done.

Not to get away from the topic...Secrets of the Universe.....this is a secret I discovered along theway....if anyone took the time to investigate how the bible came about, besides someone saying it was inspired by god, they would surely come to the conclusion that the book of bull shit was a creation of Constantine when he created the roman catholic church and we who have been through the christian experience and came out the other side, relize christians have slaughtered more people then Hitler Stalin or any one who has ever lived, and are still doing it, even today 1700 years later. After they produced and directed the bible They called it holy,and set us up with the boogieman. When Constatine called the council of Nicea together he had stacked the deck, to accomplish his whim. Jerome was truly Constantine's messanger, naturally constantine was its editor. It was only a short matter of time before the idea of killing in the name of jesus became popular, as the crusaders baptised and confirmed became The Crusades.........and crusaders have been bustin our balls ever since.........whether it be a religion, a government ,a corporation, or the medical professors... these are the commitees that take up space in our minds creating chaos ...confusion and anti-depresants to hide us away in creating the fear that attempts to control and manipulate humankind......to believe in a god that is so inadequate of a creator that he actually judges his own creation, and in so doing judges his own self inadequate. So we have these thousands of denominations of christians all reading out of the same book, believing in a judging god who is going to kick their butts if they don't shape up, they are everywhere, threatening with Heaven or hell concepts that are so vulnerable to the truth if they could get out of the way of there fear. C heck it out go back to the computer and ask google to guide you. The pharisees are alive and well ,there high priest sits on a throne and dictates his infallability given to him by an inadequate god,who can manipulate and control anyone who buys into the okeedoak he is dishing out, so all their followers live in bondage to an illusion. I would not be the lest surprised that The Dead sea scrolls, and the Nag Hammadi books were held by the Catholic heirarchy and released to the public at times of crisis with what they think their mission is to create more confusion and controversy. Let's see Dead sea scrolls took people off of the pope's possibly helping the Nazi's? Nag Hammadi is more recent, any suggestions of a purpose for it's being revealed when it was? Okay I revealed my secret, and what has brought me to you guys once again . Actually finding this out about the bible, brought me to questioning where Lao, Chuang, and the entire premise of the Tao really came from and knowing the shrewd and patient mind of the chinese philosophy, I can't help but believe all information has been edited by the government and presented in such a way as control and manipulate. Take the ideas of non action....or non being.....these are pretty tricky things to accomplish . Take the idea of alchemicalist, a very entertaining and impressive handle to think we are doing. It is as simple as christians saying this bread is the body and water and wine the blood of jesus, and if you honestly believe it, a transformation takes place,within the person, the only trouble comes when you have been doing it for so long you actually think you are the second coming of jesus, and longing for the transformation to end the suffering and pain of the world. Sorry been there and done that........I am thinking that the entire jesus thing may have been a creation of imagination and applied to emotional fear, destroyed our ability to think and respond honestly to life,for fear we may do something wrong, and the boogieman would get us. Didn't realize all of that would come out when I started this response. Even so ...for that matter............Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu certainly could have been from the imaginations of another illusionist, such as buddha and jesus..........all who were considered powertful in their individual messages.

All I can respond to that is "judge nothing and, nothing, will be able judge you. Doing time is a prison of it's own History is anything anyone wants to say happened,so why pay attention,to the gossip passed on by someone who doesn't have a clue beyond living in the past. Are not teachers and masters and those who think and believe they are sages anymore then straw dogs.

Personally I like the quantum theory better than anything I have ever heard, our entire universe is connected to each other by tiny atoms, which makes nothing seperate, we are all and everything, One ,whether we like it or accept it or not. As for the past what was or wasn't is vapor in the wind, it honestly has nothing at all to do with here and now.........just entertainment" along theway" which ever way anyone happens to think they may be going.

I honestly believe faster doesn't get it,more effective won't get it,and redistribution is actually 3rd party politics. There is no good or bad nature, nature is as it does. As for the challange of deciphering the information that is surely corrupted in some way, I believe all the information we have accumulated over the years of wandering looking for the truth, the honesty ,kindness,joy,or whatever we have been doing, has always been within ourselves, the only problem we have is getting an appointment with that beautiful person within each of us(it is not a seperate individual within,it is the non being within wanting to manifest itself), and trusting that person within longing and trying so hard to come out, but can't because we are so entertained by someone elses bull s--- ( pardon the expression, I can see it at this point in no other way)we just can't stop allowing new entertainment to carry us away from that self within we have been chasing down for as long as we became aware within that things just ain't the way we feel they should be. By the way I love your handle Desert Eagle..........have you ever listened to Dave Lanz and Paul Speer They had a cd out in 85' called Desert vison...my favorite song on it was Eagles Path You are right Desert Eagle I did have to go thru all those place ,people and things to get to here and now, and everyone else must go thru whatever it is they are going thru to get to their own here and now. As you can see I to am new here. Apologize should i have hurt you, in my own ignorance, and maybe attempting to be impressive. It has been a long time since I have had the freedom to express all that has happened within in the years of my seperation.

My name is actually Joe. Even so what you have shared is on time,the only thing I would change is "we deal with it as we learn more about nature's ways. Reality is an individual thing and there are many billions of individuals all going there own ways no matter how they may think otherwise. We are not capable of doing otherwise because no matter the circumstance it always comes down to we make all our own choices, even when the guy infront of us has a shotgun to our heads.

I dis agree with the premise of sin, as I see God as another strawdog,and this is a created word confering judgement of a god concept. Even so Dao is....... just a word and another straw dog. Maybe the question we should be asking is "after dao what"?