sean

Will do Trunk. FYI, the time has been pushed up an hour ... Yogani will be on the air in about one hour from now. Sean

You can also buy an authentic print of this painting here: http://www.damo-qigong.net/book/painting.htm Sean

LOL! Acupuncturist is currently visiting Tibet. I did not go back and forth to Tibet every week.

Welcome. I've enjoyed your contributed articles on Chinese calligraphy and art, thanks for sharing.

I pay $70 a visit. At first I was going once a week. Did that for a month or two, then graduated to every other week, then every three weeks and now once a month. But I've been on a budget lately and plus my acupuncturist is in Tibet so I haven't gone in over a month now.

I've gotten a lot out of EFT. I do at least a session or two a week. Karen got me into it. Good stuff. Was it freeform who was saying he found something he felt was more effective? Freeform, you around?

Hey, I've been shopping around for a way to consolidate some of my high interest debt. Does anyone have any recommendations? I have about 20k in debt. I was looking at the American Express balance transfer offer - it's 4.99% APR for the life of balance transfers. But I'm not so clever with reading all the fine print on things like this. Plus I'm not even sure if my credit is good enough to get approved for this, especially for 20k. Any thoughts? Thanks, Sean PS - One of the coolest things I've found recently, sent to me directly by the Taoist bill gods, is billQ. You can stick all your bills and debts in there and when you payments reoccur and it creates a bill queue for you. Hard to explain, you just have to check it out.

Been slacking on this upgrade for awhile and I decided to just throw it together this evening. There is another layer of upgrades to be done still and I'm not finished with the template. Some cool new features in this update. I'm sure there will be glitches so please let me know if you see anything awry ... Bedtime, Sean

Happy Birthday Tao Bums! Thanks for reminding us Yoda. Sheesh, I forget my own child's birthday. This place really has been rockin' lately. I'm proud to be a part of it. And I'm still here, lurking in the corners, just in a quiet phase for the moment. Sean

Very interesting. Here is another informative page about it: http://www.chiflow.com/html/liangong1.htm Looks like the complete set of DVDs w/ accompanying book can be purchased here: http://www.chiflow.com/Merchant2/merchant....Category_Code=4 Sean

Thank you for all the valuable advice everyone. I'm printing out this thread.

I'm a big fan of your work Raymond, it's an honor to have you here. Sean

Is wind more formless than water or rock? Is a blank sheet of paper more formless than a canvas with art on it? Is the beautiful little blissful bindu you feel in your deepest meditation more formless than your loudest sneeze on a crowded subway? Is any perception, no matter how subtle you imagine it to be, ultimately any more formless than a perception filled with bold color and feeling? Relatively speaking, the concept of formless only makes sense contextually. Something can be said to lack form only in relation to something else that has particular qualities conceived of as representing form within that context. For example, improvisational dance might be said to lack form. But this only makes sense in relation to other forms of dance and only within a context where, perhaps, structured rules of dance is being used as a definition of form. In reality, improvisational dance is full of form. It has as much form as any other style of dance or anything for that matter, its forms are merely invented spontaneously as opposed to being derived from previously designed choreography. Gradients of form and the relative absence of form can be conceptualized, but, again, the absence of form only makes sense contextually. An empty pocket does not have emptiness in it. It just lacks materials we expect to find there, ie: coins, wallet. An empty vase is not filled with nothingness. It's filled with air, a very real substance in a gaseous state. It's this less solid quality, relative to the material of the vase, which encourages us to say there is nothing in the vase. There is a conception here of solid as representing form. The vase is the solid, so it's the form, air is gaseous, so it's formless; it's nothing. And deeper still, how often is it useful to discuss the air in a vase? How often do we succeed in focusing our eyes on air in a vase? These are also conceptions of form; that which is useful and capable of being distinguished. Oddly enough, perhaps it's for these very reasons that air, or more accurately, the space within a container, is frequently used as a metaphor pointing to an insight of formlessness. Formlessness is not useful in any kind of conventional sense. Formlessness is impossible to separate and focus on, since anything we can differentiate and focus on is, by definition, form. So air makes a great metaphor. But air is not literally more formless than anything else. True formlessness, like emptiness, infinity, enlightenment, Tao and God are beyond, while still including, what our mind's can conceive and grasp. Yet how often are we under this misconception that we can somehow conceptually grasp formlessness and put it to work as a means of classification? How often do we classify the forms of spiritual traditions and their practices into a hierarchy of sophistication based on an imagined measure of so-called formlessness? Really, I am asking - how often do we do this, am I just speaking for my own silliness here? Is sitting in the posture of zazen more formless than dancing? Are spiritual traditions that directly discuss an idea of formlessness as a concept more formless than spiritual traditions that do not? Are experiences from spiritual practices that explicitly attempt to experience formlessness actually more formless than spiritual experiences richer with imagery and meaning? Is Zen Buddhism more formless than Christianity? Is a stark room with no furniture, just a zafu and an austere monk closer to formlessness than a room filled with furniture, toys and a family playing? Sean

Well, it wasn't about concubines in general so much as concubines historically in China. Being chosen as a concubine to the emperor was a powerful opportunity that really has no parallel in modern times. The concubine, who may have been merely the beautiful daughter of a destitute family, would be swept into a position to potentially exert massive influence over the entire kingdom through her indirect influence on the emperor. Also, if the empress proved to be barren it was possible for the concubine to be a surrogate. Now, when the emperor dies and the concubine's son becomes emperor, guess who's word he is going to favor? Ming made a joke, something like ... for as liberal as the west thinks we are toward women in politics, and as much as we want to look down on Confucian society as repressive, even misogynist, when is the last time an illiterate fisherman's daughter was vice president? Sean

Yeah man, Happy Birthday.

Late to the party, but Happy Birthday! Is there still any cake left?

Cam, thanks for the support. Michelle, I imagine when I am in my 40's I will have ranted enough to be able to copy and paste a book together. heh. You will be the first to know. Spectrum, yes! Koans. I am turning personal koans out loud here. Nothing more. Nice one, thank you. Mbanu - when you come out of hiding here, I consider my post a great success. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I always know I can expect a unique angle from you. Wonderful wonderful metaphor with the trap. Wayfarer, very thoughtful quotes, thanks for those. Sean

There was a long thread about this back in July you may enjoy browsing: The Secret of Conscious Co-Creation Sean

I haven't forgotten about getting the twelve animals document from Ming to help explain this part of the charts, for everyone who has generated one. He still hasn't sent me the file. I don't want to bug him about it. It's possible he doesn't want to send the file. It's just rough handout notes and I think he is planning on refining them into a book at some point. I'll ask him one more time at the end of the series though. Today's class was on Polestar Astrology. Really fun talk and there are a lot of things Ming weaves into his classes that are fascinating even if you don't specifically care about astrology -- the shamanic roots of Taoism, freaky, limbless, transgendered Taoist oracles, the unique power of concubines, the average American's terror of true freedom, qi disturbances of war such as Saddam Hussein crushing Persian relics, Japanese bombing obliteration of Mao Shan, cross dressing screaming banshee shamans ... fun stuff! Check it out, here is a link to the download page for this mp3

The Tao Bums Gallery: A Crash Course

I'm willing to chip in $50 but I have to straighten out my finances first. Maybe around Christmas time? Wow! I really hope he finishes that, I would love to read a book from him. Sean

What are you clicking on to get this error?

A recent topic about the Personal Practice Discussion forum got me thinking. Do we really still need all the dedicated subforums? The original reason we started that was to give members the ability to moderate their own private journal areas from unwanted posts, spam, etc. But we seem to be co-creating a pretty friendly TTB lately. The thing is, there are some problems with having dozens of subforums. For one it's a potential security risk to have so many people having moderator rights. Also, it's not a very scaleable approach at all. The forum has been getting more and more active and imagine there being 150 subforums there. Not to mention the fact that I have to create each one by hand which involves tweaking a few dozen security settings. I don't really mind the work itself, but I'm thinking it would make more sense to just have one main Personal Practice Discussion forum where fully registered member's can keep their own running topics about their various contemplative, yogic, etc. practices. No one would need to ask me to setup their own subforum, they could just create their own practice topic(s) whenever they wanted. And no topics would be lost in this merging process, obviously, they would all just get spilled into the main PPD. So clearly I'm heavily leaning Yes. Any other thoughts? Sean

Is it blissful?