Zhongyongdaoist

As a person who seriously posts, serious posts here on the Dao Bums, I started a long time ago to use a word processor for keeping track of posts and replies, this allows me to keep track of everything and while it requires some extra effort, it has allowed me to accumulate a large amount of written material and resources. I also don't have to worry about losing all of the work and effort that I have put into the Dao Bums over the years if, heaven forfend, it should ever go offline permanently. I use OpenOffice for this purpose because it is free and a very powerful productivity suite. You can check it out here: OpenOffice Home If you are not familiar with it already. As a starting point, to address your immediate issue you might want to start a Dao Bums Diary and store in it the URL of your posts which can be found at the top of the post window by the number of the post in the thread. By clicking on this, the URL will come up and can be copied and pasted anywhere you would like it in cyberspace, including your Dao Bums Diary where, if you are using Open Writer it be stored safely as an active link that you can click on, and go right back to that post on the Dao Bums. Kinda cute huh?

There can only be two interpretations to people who take this "sound bite" out of the context both of Descartes writings and the time in which he wrote them. Brian is correct, and the general train of thought is the beginning of Descartes answers to complete skepticism about the existence of the the self. It is however, as Brian points out, just the beginning. It is not however "physicalist" in Descartes system, as Descartes considered Mind and Matter to be two different substances and this dualism is one of the hallmarks of his thinking. The context in which he was writing was the Sixteenth Century revival of Skepticism beginning with Agrippa's The Vanite of Arts and Sciences, continuing through various authors such as Montaigne. About 1600 Epicurean materialism also experienced a revival, largely championed by Pierre Gassendi, but quickly taken up by such thinkers as Hobbes. A lot of useless speculation could be avoided if one simply took advantage of the internet, Wikipedia has a whole article on this very quote, as well as its development in Descartes works, and its meaning and influence. I quote from the first two paragraphs: I hope this is helpful.

One thing that I discovered during this enforced break from the Dao Bums was that I could set the Dao Bums tab to "auto refresh", so that I didn't have to keep coming back and checking all the time while online. I use FireFox and this may be a feature of one of my "tab extenders", but others may want to check for this feature on their browsers as it make the whole business a little less annoying for me, because I simply went about other online activities and the color of the tab text changed when there was a refresh. And have you also been following for years the discussion on the new software version and how it would change things on the Dao Bums like owner's permissions, personal practice discussions and other features and why this has made the owner and staff hesitant to upgrade? Is this an offer to volunteer your basic programming skills to help with the problem? If not, what is it?

Stomach Meridian:

I am glad to see that you have made this decision, and I hope that you will make good use of it.

It is not exactly stylometry, but as an amusing aside, in High School, oh so long ago, I managed to astonish one of my English teachers by writing a perfectly formed sentence that was more than a hand written page long. She said it was like reading Aristotle. I hadn't even thought about how long it was when I was writing it, but I guess all that sentence diagramming paid off.

This is an amusing little hobby you have found here Brian. A curious application of the serious science of Stylometry For the fun of it I put in four of my posts from Dao Bums and ended out with four different authors, ranging from Daniel Defoe (from my writings on Agrippa) to A. C. Clarke (my humorous improvisation on the "ineffable"). For what it's worth we also share Cory Doctorow. Basically the size of each of the writing samples analyzed is relatively small, and thus can be misleading. Which is why my first two choices, the Agripp excerpt and my "discourse" on the ineffable were written in very different styles. For what it is worth, my post on the "ineffable" is far more like how I am in person. Really, I am a very funny guy, all appearances to the contrary.

The people who are espousing ideas like this do not understand the limits of computability. Simply put, neither neither consciousness, nor intelligence are computable functions, and if they are not computable they cannot be written into programs that can be run on computers, even the "brain as computer" model fails for this reason. While it may be a necessary presupposition of reductive materialism to think that "machines" can think, it is not one necessary to any "spiritual" approach to life, so why anyone is bothering with this is beyond me. This presupposition is shared by both commentators in the original interview, and thus it is largely a waste of time to listen to it, because neither of them really questions it as they proceed along their merry way. Here is the abstract of a nice technical paper that summarizes some aspects of this: This and articles like it, just scratch the surface. At best, what is touted as artificial intelligence is imitation intelligence, something that can be passed off as intelligence, like cubic zirconium can be passed off as a diamond, to the unwary, but while there can be, and are real, artificial diamonds, there is not now, and cannot be, artificial intelligence. For a less technical discussion, you might want to start here: The Brain is not Computable, MIT Technology Review I am sorry to be so short about this, but I really don't have time to enter into a longer discussion now, or in the near term.

A fair summary of some of the good points in the past few points, perhaps if we did have a special hidden area for topic controversial by nature, but not unsavory per se, some extra rules beyond common rules of the site may be necessary, a "Marquis of Queensbury" set of rules for a more civilized punch out, but beyond that a would rather that such divisive issues were examined in a way that could shed light on them, and not obscure them in clouds of choking smoke, and perhaps help us all to see them in a new light.

First of all, you are not stuck in a "hegelian dailectic", you haven't made made it past "Kant's Antinomies", which frankly arises because like Kant, you never really made it out of the Cartesian mind-body dualism. If I have time, I will post a second of all, and maybe even a third of all. Don't worry, you are not alone, regrettably there are no support groups, because this condition is pandemic to Western Society, so people don't recognize it as a problem, but like most Westerners you suffer from "Closet Cartesianism", which is the root of a diverse set of symptoms, and while you work your way through it, your inner brat is just going to have to be patient, or maybe you can even talk it into being helpful, kind of like, the adult equivalent of your inner brat taking out the trash.

As it turns out I received a copy for Christmas, I am doing my preliminary look at it today, and will report more, though since it is off topic I will probably open another thread and post a link here. More in a few weeks.

I got to the end, and I do appreciate the candor and goodwill of your post. I am glad that you posted it, and hope that will stay around here on Dao Bums. ZYD

Actually thanks for the site reference, the author seems quite interesting and has even written a book on Chinese Talismans, which judging by its table of contents looks very complete and interesting. Also like me she is very cross cultural, with an interest in, and apparently some practical skill in Western traditions. Book on Fu, or Talismans: Her Site: Benebell Wen Having just discovered this today, I can only say that it looks good, I may have more comments later.

Yes, Mermerism. It actually predates hypnosis, and hypnosis originated as the "scientific" explanation for what was happening in mesmeric phenomena.

Awakening to Reality, Translated by Fabrezio Pregadio

Regarding this: What you don't realize is that in deity yoga these are not separate, or even separable goals, they are are parts of a whole that is realization. So the Buddhist teacher doesn't care if someone comes to them seeking only power, because as long as they follow the Buddhist methods they can't just gain power, they will gain all of the others also, and they even have a story to illustrate this, which I read a long time ago, 35 to 40 or so years ago, so I will reconstruct it as best as I can. Well, that's the story as best as I can reconstruct it, and I am sorry that, offhand I cannot give a source for it, I've read too many books and this was a long time ago, but that is my understanding of why Buddhist don't care whether people come to them seeking power.

A lot could be written about this, the root of evocation in Western Ceremonial Magic is an ancient Roman Military rite: And the military aspects continue into the Middle Ages, where key magical paraphernalia, such as the magic sword is of military origin, and some of the Spirits of the Goetia, give soldiers and raise armies. In his works on Daoism Michael Saso talks about Military Magic and the Dao of the Left, and describes how works on Military Magic were obtained in mainland China and brought to Taiwan by Master Chuang's ancestors, The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang. Weather control was considered an important part of Military Magic, which is why a lot of information about Thunder Magic, the main form of Military Magic appears in Prof. Jerry Alan Johnson's book Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui. However, all of this was transmitted with a great deal of secrecy, and was not always approved of, by the highest religious authorities. For example his superiors in the Zhengyi sect disapproved of Master Chuang's practice of Military Magic, among other things, considering it Heterodox and denied him higher levels of official status because of it. In any case the traditions go back centuries have survived here and there, and were an important part of the more ancient practices where they had official sanction, such as the Roman Military rites, but as the major modern religions took over, with their emphasis on peace and non-violence, such practices fell more and more into disfavor. Just some short quick notes, which I hope are helpful. Edit: Added clarifying statement "In Western Ceremonial Magic" to first paragraph to read "the root of evocation in Western Ceremonial Magic"

As I have pointed out in a couple of places, long before "pop-buddhist" notions arrived in the West, there was already a strong cultural meme based on Christianity: The "pop-Buddhism" merely merged with this meme and gave it the faux respectability of "Eastern Wisdom", and Westerners end out with a double dose of it.

It has a "halting problem" of sorts. I'm afraid so. How about this, "The Dao that can be computed, is not the eternal Dao", and thus the Dao has a halting problem of sorts also.

It has a "halting problem" of sorts.

I haven't reviewed all of these posts, so I hope that by posting I am not repeating anything. The Wikipedia article on Yidams is a fair point to begin on Buddhists aspects of the practice, and yes in "self Generation" you imagine that "you are a Yidam", but there are a wide variety of practices, and the practice is not exclusive to Buddhism. Doing a search for "deity yoga", the name for the discipline as a whole, will produce a lot of information. As I said the practice of assuming divine forms, or transforming into a deity is actually common, there are Hindu forms, Daoist forms, ancient Egyptian forms, and practices in Western Theurgy that involve such procedures. I myself practice the Ritual Daoist form of "Transforming into a Deity to refine Qi". Professor Jerry Alan Johnson has several examples of Ritual Daoist procedures for doing this in his books on Daoist Magic. ZYD Edit: Slight reformatting and replaced a wordy repetition of practices with procedures.

This is a good idea Aetherous, I have long advocated the study of logic in relation to esoteric subjects. Here is a post that I did a while back on some games, many around since the Sixties when I first heard of them, that can make proficiency in thinking fun: Some discussion of these might be useful to this topic. Also, a while back thelerner had the idea of using the Chat Room for investigation of the Socratic Method, a way of using logic to investigate belief structures, an investigation which I have called in several places on the Dao Bums, the most important form of self inquiry: This is an interesting suggestion, and for those who want to know more about "The Socratic Method", without buying a book, this site is virtually on online book on its history and uses: The Socratic Method Research Portal It is very well written, and useful resource for understanding what is really at the root of Western Philosophy. Though people might still object to chat being taken up in a such a single issue way for long periods of time, so maybe this is another good reason to investigate the possibility of multiple chat rooms. You might want to look at the site I mention for further ways this can develop. Good luck to you, and all others who join you, in this most noble endeavor.

Since this whole business seem to be continuing, and I have had some time to think about the matter and its wider cultural significance, it is definitely not a new a new thing, but goes back to the older sense of "science" as "knowledge", from its Latin root scientia, which originally meant knowledge in general and survives in such terms as "occult science", which most American English speakers, and a lot of British, would consider an oxymoron, and goes back to the Nineteenth Century. The German Wissenshaft is a useful comparison: Even the the early Nineteenth Century what would now be called "science" was "Natural Philosophy", and I suspect that the problem arose with Hegel, who considered that his Hegelian "Wissenshaft" made philosophy obsolete. The so-called young Hegelians, the most influential of which was probably Karl Marx, tended to leave out Hegel's metaphysics, and replace it with the revived Epicureanism championed by Diderot and Baron D'Holbach in the previous Century. In the U.S. the misconception mentioned above led to the separation of the "Sciences", in particular Physics and Chemistry as "hard" science from the Humanities. In the U.S. the study of Asian religions would be in the Humanities department, such "soft" sciences as Sociology and Psychology being uneasily in between, with Biology, especially as it has developed in the Twentieth Century, like the bed which Goldilocks choose, somewhere in the middle of hard and soft science, originally starting as purely descriptive, with the addition of genetics, etc. it has become more like the "hard" experimental sciences. So really it seems that the modern use of "science" in English is the result of a more recent constriction of its meaning, and its application to other types of "knowledge" being the older and wider usage. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

Actually, they are probably referred to by a Russian word that can be translated as "scientist", but does not have all of the connotations that "scientist" does in English in general, much less American English specifically. Whether it is a holdover from the older Czarist era, or a Soviet innovation, only a Russian could tell us, perhaps a Russian Social Scientist. (Damdao made his post while I was writing the above, I had already made the suggestion of a Social Scientist, in regard to such fields as anthropology, etc., and based on what he says it may be a wider convention, but here we get into the whole business of connotations of words, and their sociatal contexts, too big a subject to deal with here.)

Just some quick notes: Your first link, http://imgur.com/a/bqOMz, look like the results from the Questionnaire in Between Heaven and Earth, which I am quite familiar with. You have severe yin deficiency, which has led to what is called "false fire", not so much an excess of heat, but heat symptoms because your cooling system is not keeping fire under control. In TCM, "yin" is not "energy" it is bodily fluids of all types in the bod, and while drinking more water may help with thirst, is not necessarily helpful in general especially with what looks like Spleen weakness, indicated by your low physiological earth score. Judging "by the numbers", you will probably need to take herbs in order to deal with imbalances on this level. In most cases Chinese herbal formulas can be very useful in restoring a balance of the elements, which will result in the disappearance of the symptoms. Your second link, http://imgur.com/a/xD1Tz, is harder to interpret, because I am not clear what questions were asked, which is important, but I would tend to trust the first one more than the second and trying to put them together, if you have an excess of Yang, it is more a matter of Yin Deficiency, again your Yin not being able to keep the yang in balance. I hope this is helpful. Unfortunately I don't have more time right now. ZYD