Zhongyongdaoist

Nungali, Thanks, I almost missed this. I have used up my allotted time for long complex posts on the Tao Bums for at least several days. I look forward to reading almost anything you care to post. I would probably pass up something on earwax.

I don't usually talk about my experiences, but I will make an exception here. I have had a similar experience in a completely Daoist context. Golden Light I might have expected, but to have it pouring down in a thick consistency like honey, no, I didn't expect that at all.

BaguaKicksAss and Nungali I don't wish to derail this interesting thread and I appreciate both of your fascinating contributions to it, but the following exchange leads me to believe that neither of you understands the position of the Golden Dawn in the Western Esoteric Tradition and the unique and important contribution that it makes to it: Ha! Had to put my glasses on to check ... RUDE evocations ... okay ( Phew! ... nude Victorian GD magicians evoking nekkid - YOIKS! ) Certain mindsets require certain ceremonies ... or are invented by them.. 'GD style magic stuff' is quiet Emperor / mars / martial / forcing style ... one can (again, depending on the mindset and development), approach the subject and/or practice from an Empress / Venus / persuasive style ...( or just drug them with a magic potion so they cant help themselves { venes, venenum, venom, poison, charm, magic philtre } no offence to Venusians, but anyone who has been 'shot with Cupid's arrow' will agree, or those who have had another shot with cupids arrow with their name on it The following is a quote from the Fourth Book attributed to Agrippa as it appears in Barrett's The Magus: I chose The Magus because it would have been more readily available and thus influential during the 19th Century than the original. It can be seen within its wider context here: http://www.esotericarchives.com/agrippa/agrippa4.htm#chap12 I will note that I am familiar with Wierus' statement that Agrippa did not write the Fourth Book, but I am also aware that he then stated that it was otherwise worthy to be included with his teachers own works, a judgment without which I would be much more hesitant to cite the Fourth Book, and I am sorry that I cannot now readily reference that now. (Too big a memory, too many books!). A far too influential example of these types of 'rude evocations' can be found at the end of the process of the Goetia, which can be reviewed here: http://www.esotericarchives.com/solomon/goetia.htm With this type of information available to people several centuries before the inception of the Golden Dawn, why should such 'rude evocations' be blamed specifically on the Golden Dawn? And more importantly what about them can be specifically tied to some aspect of the Golden Dawn ritual system? And by 'ritual system' I mean the Golden Dawn initiatory rituals and the magical procedures derived from them and not some ancillary material, such as the rituals of the pentagram and hexagram. The Golden Dawn ritual system provides a specific context for ritual within a very powerful formal system. Within that context it is possible to perform a wide variety of traditional material, some rude, some sweet as honey, it depends on the operator and the needs of the operation. This ritual context also changes the meaning of certain aspects of tradition that may appear within it, and so it is not possible to make superficial comparisons. By the way medieval evocation is the Western counterpart to Daoist military magic, of which Thunder Magic is the fundamental component. So such martial 'rudeness' is not limited to the West. Even the name 'evocation' comes from an ancient Roman military rite in which the Gods of a besieged city were 'called out' of that city and invited to join the Roman side. Finally I wish to make clear that in general based on your posts I find both of you interesting and well informed, but based on the above I see no reason to think that you are well informed about the Golden Dawn, I could be wrong about this and welcome correction, I am only basing this on the above exchange and some things BaguaKicksAss has posted before. Nungali you are new here, but you are obviously an interesting and valuable contributor to the Tao Bums. BaguaKicksAss, has of course shown her value here many times before.

This quote is taken completely out of its context, which is Plato's account of Socrates trial and Plato's dialogues are not philosophical treatises in the modern sense, they are rather initiatory dramas of which this one, the Aplolgy is both protreptic and cathartic, protreptic meaning a call to philosophy by the dramatic example of Socrates and cathartic means of ritual of cleansing of the conceit of knowledge, which is the case of just about everyone is mere belief masguerading as knowledge. More about that in a moment. Thanks Stosh for bringing this up. Plato deals with the difference between 'knowledge' and 'opinion' in the Meno and makes a good comparison there, that the difference between knowledge and belief is like the difference between having a map and actually having gone on a journey. He also make a distinction between various types of belief, right belief, belief in which the belief corresponds to knowledge, just like an accurate map might, but which since one has not made the journey lacks the confirmation of direct experience. Then there is good opinion and bad opinion and worse opinion, etc. all of which are more or less misleading. The closes example to right belief that I can think of is the present model of the Solar System, and example of good belief would be the Newtonian model and an example of 'better' belief would be the relativistic reframing of the phenomena. Worse belief would of course be the Ptolemaic models of the Solar System which these replaced. For Plato 'knowledge' is the direct apprehension of reality, of which the realm of sense experiences is a representation, or reflection, and as true a representation as can be made within the limits of sensations, images and appearances. Thus the realm of sense can be used as a starting point on the journey to knowledge. He outlines such an approach in his Symposium as rising to the vision of the beautiful itself, which far from being an abstraction, or a set of abstractions, is the reality of which all beautiful things are the reminders. It is this rising to the direct experience which is what Plato considers to be the purpose of Philosophy. It is a journey of exploration in which making the map and going on the journey are the same things. I wish I could say more about this now, but that's all I have time to say today and at least for the near future.

This reminds me of what I said here: A little ignoring goes a long way too.

His principle books are: Initiation into Hermetics The Practice of Magical Evocation The Key to the True Kabbalah Good luck.

I don't see any reason to set up a system in which a public posting becomes private property. A little editing goes a long way. Aside from the fact that hand offs in topic can be handled very well, my thread Theurgia-Goetia, on Gods and Demons (http://thetaobums.com/topic/27141-theurgia-goetia-on-gods-and-demons/?p=405616]) being an excellent example of a good hand off from Apech's thread on Ancient Egyptian symbols. Obviously such matters can be handled well if both parties are willing to act respectfully toward each other. As for what I said about a little editing, if someone comments in a way that leads to a serious loss of the topic, one can go to ones own comments, post a reference to the most intelligent 'on topic' post after yours and to your own response to that. In that way one can skirt around some of the borderline 'nutcases' who sometimes derail otherwise interesting topics and so can readers who are interested in following the discussion, at the same time legitimate criticism can also be maintained and people can have a chance to read it for themselves. Since what the 'nutcases' want most is attention, when they don't get it and see that they are being worked around, maybe they will let it drop, if they continue, then maybe the Mods should step in. You don't have to respond to everyone who posts. It is always possible to just ignore what someone has said, none of us have enough time to answer every question or comment thrown at us, especially if we consider it not relevant. We can say so and move on. Part of my reason for joining this forum was to get intelligent feedback on some ideas. If all I wanted to do was to post 'original content' without any dissent, there are other places to do that, and if I wanted to control the comments, so that only ones that agreed with me and praised my deep and wonderful insights appeared, there are places to do that also, but I don't think that the Tao Bums should become one of them.

Reason is part of the divine understanding, in God, it exists in absolute perfection, the path of man is to find that perfection within himself. See also one of my signature quotes: '... I oppose not rational to spiritual; for spiritual is most rational: But I contradistinquish rational to conceited, impotent , affected CANTING ...' The difference is between being rational and rationalizing, but to explain how that works takes more time than I have right now.

Just a quick note: there are other abstract deities above him: To describe Yuanshi Tianzun (Chinese: 元始天尊; pinyin: Yuánshǐ Tīanzūn) as 'abstract' is a real mistake. As the absolute 'he' is the most 'concrete' of beings, it is the realm of sense which we foolishly confuse with 'reality' which is so much clouds and mist which swirl around his feet.

It's a funny hobby some magician's have, like stamp collecting only . . . different. I had noticed that discussion. You have a very broad definition of demon which can easily be misconstrued. A little terminological neatness might avoid misunderstandings. Iamblichus De Mysteriis covers the hierarchy of spirits as it was conceived in his time in great detail. rather than 'no energy' which sounds kind of Christian: The metaphysics and ontology are fundamentally Platonic, though Christianity certainly assimilated them. In my posts on demons, which I attempted to put in a useful form here: http://thetaobums.com/topic/27141-theurgia-goetia-on-gods-and-demons/?p=405616 I analyze the evolution of the concept of demon and how it developed from antiquity. I was not able in those threads to actually get to the notion of demon in its modern sense as a basically malevolent being, but some of the important points were introduced. Interestingly I don't think that demons in this sense have a place in the hierarchy that Iamblichus outlines, nor in the later Platonists, such as Proclus, but rather I think that it more derives from 'gnostic' reworkings of Zoroastrianism, wars in heaven and that sort of thing. I would probably lean towards thinking that they have the energy of harsh extremes: This is why they are, to use Greek terminology, in Tartarus and not Hades. They are kept in confinement on a low energy diet because when they get out and run amok, well . . . all hell breaks lose. Your body, by the way, doesn't have its own energy, but must derived it from sunlight stored in various foodstuffs. Why should the demons be any better than your body? My own thinking it is all tied up with 'the Great Chain of Being' (The title of a wonderful book by Arthur Lovejoy by the way) which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_chain_of_being and the notions of Cosmos, in which there is a place for everything, even completely malevolent beings. In particular the discussion in Plato's Laws X. I don't have time for much more now, but I hope this is helpful. P.S. Just noticed Seth Ananda's reply to turtle shell, as I was finishing the above, my own is, of course, intended as humorous.

I wish that I had more time to address this matter, but: Such beings have no energy of their own, they need energy to manifest. Heat is energy, literally electromagnetic energy in the infrared spectrum or such energy stored in the electron orbits of atoms. In order to manifest they absorb energy from the air. In many of these ghost hunting shows they document temperature variations with infrared cameras and with portable thermometers. Angelic beings are powered by 'divine' energy, they have no need to absorb from the atmosphere. Both of the above suggests are substantially correct. It is the popular view of demons that is misleading at best, hell has already frozen over.

If one limits oneself to the Confucius of the Analects, yes such similarities would be shocking because they are almost nonexistent. Such similarities may exist between Sufism and Mencius, but as the Wikipedia article you cite mentions: As far as I am concerned any similarities arise because both are describing a fundamental reality which is part of human potential to experience and know, though also as far as I am concerned Ibn Arabi's knowledge of such matters comes from the Neo-Platonic content of Sufism: I would no more recommend Sufism as an account of Neo-Platonism than I would recommend that one learn about Plato from Philo of Alexandria. The Platonic tradition stands on its own and is not in need of help from either. I will return to posting on the Confucianism of Mencius and the Zhongyong shortly.

Sorry to be so long to get back to you on this. I have been very busy and have also been doing some posting on other threads which are of greater interest to me. You may find them interesting if you haven't noticed them already, they are Confucian Qi Gong and Platonism and Hellenistic Spirituality. Almost all modern numerology goes back to the work of Walter Gorn Old who wrote under the name of Sephariel. You can read a little about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepharial This also has a list of his writings. He was probably the first occultist to write a version of the Dao De Jing. Dion Fortune chides him for translating Laozi as "the Old Boy", which she considers to be disrespectful. Laozi as "Old Boy" is perhaps a little overly literal, but a suggestive translation nonetheless. I am sure Gorn Old meant no disrespect by it. I always liked his Manual of Occultism. It covers a lot of ground including from astrology and numerology, to alchemy and magic and his ideas are an interesting take on all these subjects. I hope this is helpful.

One of the conclusions that I that I came to after decades of study was that in the general population, Platonism was one of the single most under appreciated influences in the formation of Hermeticism, Christianity, Esoteric Judaism and other movements that developed during the Hellenistic period. Granted that this position is more or less scholarly orthodoxy it is generally dismissed by people who don't know enough about Plato to see the influence of his Gorgias in the "Sermon on the Mount" or who who don't realize enough about the technical language of Greek philosophy to see that Hermes Trismegistos was kind enough to speak to the barbarous Greeks in their own technical language and address issues in terms that they had formulated. I am not a person who believes in the "Greek Miracle", as if there was something special about the Greeks, but some of the ideas discovered by a few of their thinkers are so powerful that they changed the way people thought about almost everything. I don't intend to enter into long arguments about the sources of Plato's thinking, but I will post some ideas about them that most people will find surprising, such as the proposal of E. R. Dodds that Plato was attempting to defend a position that was derived from Shamanism. This many years before the supposedly ground breaking work of Peter Kingsley. I will put forward Ideas, directions and sources. In particular I will not engage in discussions with people who have not read a jot of Plato and who cite secondary sources that line up with their own personal prejudices, but are unwilling to open their mind to alternatives. My first post after this will be about my personal journey to my understanding of Plato, which involved a great deal of rethinking and open minded examination. Edit: Italisized Gorgias and put quotes around Sermon on the Mount.

I am going to quote the last three paragraphs of Plato's Gorgias. I would like to say more about it, because it became a personal favorite of mine, but I will keep things to a minimum. In the dialog the participants examine rhetoric and its uses, in particular as a source of power, because of its ability to sway people or its use in the law courts to save one from being punished for wrongs which one may have committed. The final interlocutor is Callicles, a prominent citizen of Athens who chides Socrates that he had better not disdain rhetoric because he might find himself in court someday and not be able to defend himself. Plato's Dialog's The Apology, The Critio and The Phaedo deal with Socrates trial, his reasons for refusing to escape and the discussion that he had with his friends and students the day of his execution up to and describing his execution. The drama and irony of some of the Gorgias within this context is very powerful, as Socrates over and over returns to the idea of practicing virtue, maintaining justice and keeping oneself unsullied, because it is a greater evil to commit an injustice than to be the victim of one. At the end Socrates addresses Callicles as follows: Not your typical philosophy 101 stuff is it? Let's look at some lines from Matthew 5 and see what they indicate: Certainly Matthew's 'but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek' has a correspondence to Plato's '. . . if he has a mind; let him strike you, by Zeus, and do you be of good cheer, and do not mind the insulting blow, for you will never come to any harm in the practice of virtue', though Matthew perhaps being in 'cheeky' mood suggests offering the other cheek also. Someone might say that this is not enough to link it to the Gorgias, but as I said the Gorgias deals with law courts and trials and the passage about turning the other cheek immediately talks about lawsuits. Also it is important to remember what precedes these texts: Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth A statement which is an Old Testament rule of Justice. It is here explicitly rejected in favor of a text that echoes an important theme of the Gorgias, lawsuits and legal issues.. 'And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat', Again Matthew must go further and says: 'let him have thy cloak also.' Having lawsuits and tolerating physical abuse so closely linked can certainly be taken to reinforce the reference to the Gorgias, but why the extra of turning the other cheek and giving up ones cloak as well as ones coat? Let's go back to two lines which bracket the text in question: In other words one needs to exceed both the regular Jews and the Gentiles. The Sermon on the Mount is trying to 'one up' both their rivals. This theme of one upping the competition is a recurring one to which I will return. So that is how you can find Plato's Gorgias in the 'Sermon on the Mount'. If it was the only mention of Platonic themes in the Gospels it could be dismissed, but it isn't and also the fact that two Platonic themes occur in two lines, that Matthew specifically mentions what 'even the Gentiles' do and that one must exceed it and the echoes of Plato are juxtaposed to a standard Old Testament pronouncement on justice all taken together cannot easily be dismissed. An overview of the Hellenistic influence on Judaism and its influence in the Gospel period can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_Judaism I will be examining this in more detail in future posts.

Väinä Thank you for your interest. Had I read something other than the first book of the Republic my response to Plato might have been different, but as I have said the position of Thrsymachus appeared so absurd, and the whole business so ludicrous, that it did not seem worth pursuing further. If I had read something like the Gorgias my response might have been different, but in general I prefer expository prose. Now I understand that Plato had in mind a type of initiatory drama, even following the arguments and thinking about the speakers tends to awaken one to new levels of insight. The Gorgias, for example, when I started actually reading the dialogs quickly became a favorite and helped me understand Plato's dramatic quality and his comedic one too, in a way that other dialogs did not. It was to help me to understand the functions of the dialogs in Plato's overall plan. As for what one can do with Plato, well, one can understand Plotinus. There is a regrettable tendency among occultist and other spiritually minded people today to view Plotinus as the Great Mystic and Plato as a mere philosopher, no better than an Athenian Kant. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is really impossible to follow Plotinus and his reasoning without a thorough grounding in Plato and a familiarity with Aristotle and the Stoics. Then you can see that Plotinus is writing an internal dialectic in which he puts forward arguments from the Stoa or Aristotle or both and then refutes them, to follow them with what he considers the true position, that of Plato. If you have read the dialogues you can go through and say as you read, 'Oh, that's the argument from the Gorgias and this one from Repulic Book 7'. Suddenly what seemed meandering and confusing is lucid and informative. Plato and Plotinus should be read together. It is definitely not like Zhuzi's 'Four Books', where you can almost ignore the Analects as too bound to a time and culture long past, no, Plato still speaks to the present and has a great deal to say on his own, when his more secret doctrines are expounded with the skill of Plotinus, the two of them speak a rhapsody of the mind. More along this line will be forth coming. I hope that this is helpful.

rethinking and open minded examination: There are several reasons for this, not the least of which was that my first encounter with Plato was so negative that I could hardly imagine how anyone could take him seriously, but more of that in moment. my personal journey to my understanding of Plato: I think about myself forty-five years ago and I know that if someone had come to me and said, "I am a great seer and I will tell you your future, mmmm... in your late twenties you will make a serious study of Plato, around thirty, you will adopt Platonism as your fundamental worldview ...." I would have looked at my copy of Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice in one hand and the Tao Te Ching in the other and I would have burst out laughing so hard that I would have been bent over with laughter. "...hold it, don't laugh too hard, there is more...further around the age of fifty you will read a book that will have a profound influence on you. You will suddenly see the value of Confucianism and more importantly create a profound synthesis of Platonic and Confucian teachings..." That would of been it, I would have rolling on the floor. If I could have organized my thoughts long enough I might have been reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes (senior, the poet, not Junior, the jurist) charming poem 'The Height of the Ridiculous' (Curious? Read it here: http://elfinspell.com/WitandHumor1Holmes.html), but I don't think I could have composed myself enough for several hours at least. Obviously I was not your average seventeen year old science nerd of the late sixties, though my understanding of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and my emerging model of what science was did contribute to my acceptance of the Tao Te Ching. So, how did Plato fail to make the cut? Part of it was an encounter with Book One of The Republic. The rest was a set of culturally accepted memes about reason and irrationality and how mysticism and magic were irrational. Untangling these memes was to be an important part of the journey, but one that is too complex for one posting, saying why I thought the First Book of The Republic was ridiculous is easy. Here were these two sock puppets one named "Thrasimokus", that's how I pronounced it at the time, and another named "Sockratease" and Thrasimokus was saying that Justice was the advantage of the strong, which everyone knows it isn't and Sockratease was saying no it isn't and pointing out how silly Thrasimokus was for saying so. In the end Socktratease says well maybe Justice is the advantage of the strong anyway. Hmmmm . . . seem terminally lame to you? It sure did to me. Years later I was to realize that Thrasymachus, probably probably pronounced more like Thra-sim-ah-khus, and Socrates (sorry, not So-crates, but not Sock-anything either, on the authority of one of Plato's dialogs, it would be something like So-cray-teez, but the tease is in there somewhere.) were not talking about Justice at all, but 'Dike' (to avoid embarrassment it's pronounced dee-kay.) and the reason why it seemed so silly to me was because Plato had won the argument that was raging in Athens at the time, so that the word Justice now means pretty much what Plato thought it should. What Dike really was had become very controversial at the time and traditionally meant something to the effect of "the way of things". Everyone knew what "the way of things" was, if you were bad the Goddess Dike would be offended and bad things would happen to you. The new view was that "the way of things" is that the strong rule to their advantage to exploit the weak. The goddess Dike, either didn't exist, didn't care enough to do anything, or didn't have the power to do anything, even if she did care. Today we might say that Thrasymachus idea is the sad reality, but it is not justice. That sure is what I thought and I thought it because, like I said Plato's idea of Justice has become the accepted view, so much so, that looked at in that light, Thrasymachus just seems like a clown for saying what he does. Socrates' lame sounding ending is why his opponents called him, "Socrates of Foxtown", because what he really meant by saying that Justice is the advantage of the strong, is that it is to the real benefit of the strong to rule justly, to create a society in which the real needs of all citizens are met and there is no exploitation. Such a society would be to the real advantage of the strong, not to the false appearance of advantage which greed and foolishness present to the "strong", but I didn't know any of that at the time, so Plato was out. The realization above was a long way off, though I started part of the journey that summer of 1968 when I began to read Mouni Sadhu's Tarot. I have realized that this personal part may take too long, so I will intersperse it with what this thread is really all about, Platonism and Hellenistic spirituality. So my next post will be how to find Plato's Gorgias in the 'Sermon on the Mount'. Until then, I do hope that I have made it perfectly clear how stupid I thought Plato was, until I was forced by circumstance to study and understand him.

Sorry about the delay. Thanks to everyone who has expressed interest in this thread. I have been posting some information which I consider important on another thread and as I noted in my post in the Christian Mysticism thread: I consider my posts on Confucian self-cultivation to be extremely important as I noted here: I have finished up with the aforementioned post on Mencius and having given people something to think about in that thread will be working here for a while in order to get things going. I extend an invitation to anyone here who might find the idea interesting to visit my posts on Confucian self-cultivation. On a philosophical level I call my basic position Confucian Neo-Platonism, for want of a better term, so as far as I am concerned these threads are linked on a very profound level. I will be devoting my posting time here for the next several days.

Two quotes from Mencius in particular awakened my interest in Mencius. This first one is this: I have quoted the Chinese Text form Muller's site and a translation from D. C. Lau because Muller's rendering "All things are prepared within me", while a possible translation of 备 (bèi) is not as clear as one might wish. Comments from people whose Classical Chinese is good are welcome. All the ten thousand things are there in me: This is about as clear a statement of the Microcosm/Macrocosm relationship as one might wish. This primciple existed in the West as 'All is in All' from antiquity to the 'Scientific Revolution'. It has recently re-emerged as the self-similarity of fractal mathematics and and as the 'holographic principle' in modern physics. To find this so clearly stated in a Confucian text was very unexpected and was an important part of my revaluation of Confucianism as a profound source of fundamentally mystical doctrine. I am true to myself: Another important aspect of this text is the introduction of the concept 诚 (chéng), a word usually rendered as sincere or sincerity and above as true in the translation above. The Zhongyong has to principle teachings, one on 'zhong' which I have referred to here: And the other is on chéng which is one of the most fundamental and profound concepts in Classical Confucianism and the subject a large section of the Zhongyong with which I will deal in subsequent posts. To draw this to a close, I will post the other quote from Mencius, which was also a great surprise to me: To discover that Mencius viewed the end of Confucian self-cultivation as becoming a 'shen' or 'god' was quit a revelation, but this passage in Mencius is only part of the picture. How it relates to the teachings of the Zhongyong on chéng (诚) will be the subject of future posts. For now, I think I have given everyone plenty to think about. Edit: added note about emphasis to first quote.

he may have been a Rabbi: Many authors have tried to domesticate him as a 'Rabbi', I am doubtful about it. I first came across this tack in Maccoby's The Myth-maker, an interesting study in which Jesus is portrayed as nice Jewish boy and the onus of creating Christianity is shifted to Paul, the myth maker of the title. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Mythmaker-Paul-Invention-Christianity/dp/0062505858 My personal favorite portrayal of Jesus is Jesus the Magician by Morton Smith. This is as close to a must read for anyone interested in Gnosticism and the magic of the period as it gets, and also, a compelling portrait of the "historical" Jesus. I don't accept it either, but I consider it a more likely approach than most. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Magician-Charlatan-Son-God/dp/1569751552 Neoplatonism plus Jesus: Slight anachronism there Seth Ananda, technically it would have been Middle Platonism plus Jesus. That still leaves him in very good company. The life of Philo of Alexandria for example, perfectly brackets the life and ministry of Jesus, as well as the period of the Pauline epistles. You can read about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo One of the reasons why I haven't posted more in this thread, after giving it an enthusiastic welcome, was I noticed a tendency to treat Platonism as a late and extraneous interpretation of the Gospels. As far as I am concerned this is basically Protestant mythology, created as part of Reformation anti-Catholic rhetoric. I started to review my research in the 70s and 80s that lead me to this conclusion and to collect material to correct this, but did not have time to organize and post them. As my thinking evolved and this thread grew, I decided to put that material in its own thread, one which also addresses wider issues. That is why I started "Platonism and Hellenistic Spirituality', which I hope to get back to shortly. I am also posting on Confucian qigong in the General Discussion Forum and so my time has to be split between them.

Thank you for your kind words. Thank you mjjbecker, an interesting lead. I have more that I intend to post in this thread to take advantage of the opportunity to present aspects of Confucian teaching which are part of the metaphysics and cosmology of Confucian qigong. I have started another thread on a subject dear to my heart, in the Hermetic and Occult Discussion Forum, called 'Platonism and Hellenistic Spirituality'. I will be dividing my posting efforts between this thread and that one, so if there seems to be a lag between my posts here, that is the reason. Anyone who finds the idea of my other thread interesting is invited to follow both of them. Right now I am working on a post of two Mencius quotes that I think people will find interesting and I will apply them to the Zhongyong

As I have noted, I will post as time permits and I don't have a lot of spare time right now, but the following is one of the earliest surviving mentions of Qigong in Chinese literature and is from Mencius, the 'second sage' of Confucianism: I found a translation and text for a "Zhengqi Ge" and I assume this is the one to which earlier reference was made. Compare the bolded text above with that below: As I said the Confucian's were very subtle and hid the key to the secrets in plain sight. The 'Four Books', which I have mentioned in previous posts, were the basis of Chinese education for 700 years and the Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese followed suit. Everybody knew them, not everybody understood them. On page 110 of the book I cited about Confucian 'Qigong' there is a poem by Ming Dynasty Confucian poet, Gao Panlong: Silent sitting is one of the primary forms of Confucian self-cultivation. The poet wants to make the point that it is not borrowed from other traditions, but is native to the the Confucian 'Dao'. The last two lines reference the teachings of the Zhongyong on Zhong, as the root of personal and cosmic existence: Muller's translation is very good and anyone who wants to get some idea about the depth and profundity of Confucian doctrine will find this a good place to start. I hope that this is helpful. I will post more as time permits.

In The Art of Chi Kung by Wong Kiew Kit (Element Books, 1993) there is a short section on Confucian "Chi Kung". Chapter Sixteen, 'Improving Academic Performance Through Chi Kung', he cites in particular Mecnius, about whom you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mencius And Shao Yong, one of the founders of so-called Neo-Confucianism, about whom you can read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shao_Yong The Confucians are very subtle about about their mind training techniques, but it is obvious reading the Mengzi that Mencius had a profound insight into qigong and even more importantly shengong. I don't have time to expand on this now, but it was reading about Mencius and the Zhongyong in Tu Wei-ming's Humanity and Self-Cultivation (Asian Humanities Press, Berkeley, 1979) in late 2000 that lead me to understand the value of Confucianism. Before that, like many Westerners I had no idea of how profound a teaching it was and is. You can read about Tu Weiming here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Weiming I will post more as time allows.

exorcist_1699, Thank you for starting this thread. I have often thought of doing so myself, but have never found the time. I think it is important to emphasis the importance of Zhuxi and his selection of the 'Four Books' as the core hermeneutic circle/cycle from which the type of understanding which is demonstrated by Wang Yabgming grows. Your quote comes from the Zhonyong, the 'Doctrine of the Mean', one of the Four Books from which I took my Tao Bums name. People who are not familiar with him can read about Zhuxi here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Xi If I find time I will write more. Final note, as an American, whenever I bring up Confucianism I am immediately reminded about bound feet and the evils of Patriarchy gone wild in China, supposedly all due to the evils of Confucianism. From there it is very much an uphill battle.

What is really meant is a transliteration system in which the sounds of Chinese, which does not have letters like European languages, are represented as closely as possible in European style letters. In the old style transliteration, there was not just "t", but "t'", and the apostrophe following the "t" affected the pronunciation, thus old style, T'ang Dynasty becomes pinyin, Tang Dynasty, and old style, Tao, becomes Pinyin, Dao. There was a similar distinction with some other letters like K/G and P/B. Thus Kung Pao shrimp becomes Gongbao shrimp. Most non-academic publishers did not understand the importance of that little apostrophe and left them out, which created even more problems. The pinyin seems simpler and more in line with European pronunciation, but it is still not perfect, because there is a whole series of accents, which again are usually left off, but are necessary for distinguishing words that without the accents, which are necessary for correct pronunciation, are otherwise spelled the same in unaccented pinyin. This can create a very real ambiguity in an unaccented pinyin text. I don't have time for much more now, but I hope that this is helpful. Edit: added ', are represented as closely as possible in European style letters'