Apech

I can't understand why you keep trying to impose concepts on yinyang like 'channels'. Right and left brain functions are not the same as conscious and unconscious. Wuji and Taiji are two sides of the same coin, so to speak. Non-duality is not abstraction, it is realising what is real.

something you don't like

https://legacy.ymaa.com/articles/2015/3/basic-taiji-theory (The origin of your quoted text.) The reason for the white dot within the black and visa versa in the Taiji symbol is that they are two-not-two. That is when stillness is attained they become wuji (without polarity) - in fact this is not time dependent - taiji and wuji are continually co-dependent. Wuji is not the head of a series of which taiji is the next - that is the linear way of looking at it. Potential to move and movement are always present in every moment,

four is now sulking cos you didn't mention him.

I think the terms deluded and illusionary should be expunged. It all depends on what you mean by 'exist' - but to say there is a 'chair' is perfectly accurate descriptively - but to ask what exactly a chair is, is another question. Nothing is independent according to the Buddhist view.

I didn't say that. I said that not all Buddhist school are non-dualist (e.g. Sarvastivadins) - I just thought that his training in Zen monasteries would have explained the status of yogacara in the history of Buddhist thought.

I've googled around a bit to see if there are any good definitions of non-duality out there - and I can't find any (beyond the 'one without a second' business). So I think this might be the problem as it has become a bit of a buzz phrase like 'energy' and 'consciousness' which people throw around willy nilly. But because it is profound in nature you can't really do that. It's also the reason people read 'non-dual' to mean 'monist' or even doubting the presence of duality in the ordinary sense. Properly used (in my opinion) non-dual is not referring to a transcendent higher truth which reduces the ordinary world. Actually it is saying in every normal sense there are subject/object, yin/yang and so forth - this is ok - but if you examine the essence of what those are they can be seen to be mutually interdependent. As in the TTC where it says without ugliness, beauty does not exist and so on. They are relative - but then relative truth is not untrue or false. It is true but so is absolute truth. Both are true that there is subject/object and yin/yang etc. and at the same time there is not. This is in effect why it is called non-dual and not mono. This takes some time getting your head around - that there is a cup and yet there is not, that there is a self and yet there is not - it doesn't make an immediate appeal to the intellect and so is puzzling and paradoxical. But we don't live in a world of pure essences. We don't ordinarily perceive yin/yang at work directly - we infer their presence/activity. In alchemical processes it is indicated that you work with the world of mixed elements. That is the ordinary world/perception of it - to perform certain transformations - such as purification, distillation, circulation and sublimation - to first realise the pure yin/yang (or in this case heaven and earth) and then to realise their mutual interdependence and their unpolarised (wuji) essence. In our ordinary state which is mixed or combined (like metal ore) our LDT contains 'water' which is yang but sandwiched in yin. This element is considered dangerous/perilous because the power/intent is hidden in softness. In the MDT the fire element is an inverse of this as it is yang on the outside and yin inside. So like a flame it is outwardly bright/'hard' but inwardly yielding. So we have in this arrangement a certain instability, perilousness (we don't know ourselves), an outwardly focussed mind actively seeking but not finding. The alchemical process is to circulate and refine these elements until the yang in water recombines with the heart/fire and forms the pure yang of heaven and the yin lines combine to form earth. This is a return to original unmixed purity. Not the end of course but something of a beginning.

Well just a detail but not all Buddhist schools are non-dualist. Given according to his biography he spent a long time in Zen Buddhist monasteries you would think he might know this. But then again maybe not.

I'd rather just talk about what I want to talk about.

Yes I can.

That last post which I won't quote/copy cos it is so long is the most ill informed thing I've ever read, it is so full of mistakes and false assumptions that I don't know where to begin.

The image of the sunlit hill is from Chinese accounts of the nature of yin and yang - and indeed the derivation of the terms. It's not something I have made up. It has nothing to do with 'brain level functioning'. If you want to understand Yinyang then I can recommend 'Yinyang - the way of heaven and Earth in Thought and Culture' by Robin R. Wang pub. Cambridge. I don't know which reports you have read of non-dual states - but I would discount many of these accounts as being just some kind of subjective experience - and even just emotional/psychological reactions and not the real deal. It is however true that some people glimpse the non-dual only to have the effects of their own obscurations intervene again. This is not because the non-dual state is temporary but because those people have just had a momentary and partial experience of it. Some other people however are born with non-dual awareness and never lose it.

yes and no.

The quote you give is an exposition of yin-yang which is itself a non-dual position. If you look at the Yijing you can see that even the most complex situations and the specific moment in such situations can be expressed as 'layers' of yin-yang. Just as with your computer everything it does can be reduced to a series of 0 and 1. This is based on electronic switches which either allow a current to flow or don't, if there is a flow its a 1, if there isn't then its a 0. So the 0 and the 1 are not things in themselves but can be universally applied to describe everything (that happens on your computer). This universality of the application of yin-yang is not however a basic dualism - since as in the classic illustration of a hill with a sunny side and a shady side - if you bulldoze the hill these two qualities which define the spatial geometry of the hill disappear - as they are mutually dependent. This is why it is saying that they are 'not absolute' - so it is not a dualism. I think you may have a wrong understanding of what 'non-duality' is, as you call it a state that can be experienced for any given period of time. If you think that is what it is - then I can see why trying to achieve it in your view would lead to stagnation - as any 'state' is as its name suggests static. And the idea that it is temporary is also inherently self-limiting. However non-duality is a liberation from these constraints (of space and time). But then I have no idea why you have come to your conclusion, you don't tell us, so it is very difficult to tell why you are saying what you are saying.

and trance states by music, dancing and so on. some are psychopomps psychopomp is one of my favourite words (ever).

OK I phrased my question badly, I wasn't being critical just trying to understand your point of view. You say yourself 'less mix the better' and actually I think it is our all to simplistic notions of how these things happen which leads to this. For instance the Buddhism which came to China was not unmixed in some sense itself - and the Daoism it encountered was not unaffected by for instance Confucianism (and other Chinese schools of thought). Indeed it is possible, even likely, that some of Buddhism which entered China was already affected by Daoism. So I would see more a pattern of changing thought and experience extending back maybe even 200,000 years (first modern humans - or even before if you count in Neanderthals and Denisovians) which weaves its way through history. People of different generations and cultures try to express and 'fix' these ideas/insights/realisations in cultural forms - but these have a limited shelf-life and need periodically to be reformed and revived to make sure they have effect. I would question the idea of original 'pure' anything in the historical period (and indeed before). I think the move from seeing things as operating by way of spiritual influences, noetic powers and so forth, which was certainly the view of the Bronze age diviners and so forth which pre-date even the Yijing, to it being more about internal processes (and these processes being more neutral in the sense of energy not spirits) is a phase shift in human thought brought about the conditions in which they lived, the stage of human evolution and indeed practical issues of what seemed to work most effectively.

Are you of the opinion that Daoist schools like Complete Reality and the masters therein were contaminated/duped by Buddhist influence? Do you think Ch'an and Zen Buddhists were duped by Daoist influence?

Neti, neti is not Buddhist. Buddhism is a sramanic tradition (like Jainism) and is not reform Brahamism (as they co-existed9).

Historians of this kind of thing usually assume 100 - 200 years before things are written down - but of course that depends on the period. For instance nothing expect the Ashokan pillar epigraphs was written down in Buddhism until the 1st century BC, while the Buddha lived in the fourth century (because it was a pre-literate society). My definition did not say 'exclusively' - and so any kind of practice in which subtle energy body work was included could fit the definition even if there was not a separate tradition, sect or school which was devoted exclusively to this practice. So I don't agree that you can necessarily leave out shamanism from my definition.

Oh ok. Actually I think my definition is fine. There are just two questions. 1 ) how long before the written texts of Nei Dan did the practices exist and 2 ) can you count in the older 'shamanist' traditions and so on.

The earliest mention of qi as a philosophical concept can be found in the Book of Changes, one of the oldest books in existence. It is a key concept in Chinese medicine as well as in Mencius' idea of fulfillment and happiness. Mencius makes it clear that this vital force is nourished through the steady accumulation of righteous acts. http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/mencius/ Mencius (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) - Mencius (fourth century BCE) was a Confucian philosopher Any mention of DanTiens, channels, jing/qi/shen and so on?

is that the get-go for you? and what is your evidence for this? do you know of texts or other evidence from 500 BC which talk of internal alchemy?

Hi Goldleaf, I have some lucid dreams but don't actually practice it. It hasn't really helped - though some dreams predict things which become significant later - so I guess they are a confirmation. I am sleeping ok thanks. How about you?

MILF religion!

Inner Alchemy - working with subtle body energies, rather than either deities or material substances.