Apech

I agree about the Sphinx - but what I was trying to say is that these skills of large stone working existed among human communities before we lived in settled communities - I think this is the exciting thing. The deliberate burying of the site is certainly very significant and interesting as it suggests a specific purpose which ended. And this in turn suggests not only planning over very long periods of time but a level of knowledge which we can only guess at.

I think Nagarjuna's Middle Way is quite difficult to understand and that it is not really about avoiding extreme views it is more about not taking any view at all. Usually when I say this people remark that this sounds like fence sitting. But that is not correct - it is actually a very radical and profound thing to do. While I would agree that Nirvana is perfect peace - the way to Nirvana is not tranquil - I think it is quite a struggle - or rather quite a challenge is perhaps a better way of putting it. The process is a dual one, as I understand it (which may be not very well ). The saving grace is that the goal is just simply either seeing things as they actually are, or to put it another way one's Buddha nature. So the achievement of this could be seen as a letting go falsity - that is of attachment to incorrect views, attachment to things you desire and so on. This is usually approached by shamatha style meditation where you just allow thoughts, feelings and so to come and go while focussing gently on breath or other object. Its like a return to to your fundamental state. the other side to the coin is to examine precisely and carefully your mind and it's contents - looking for the substantially real. That is by asking does this idea, thought, feeling or thing exist in and of itself independently and enduringly. After some practice both these two can be done at once without break. The emerging result is the disclosure of Buddha-nature or dharamakaya. The intellectual position jumps (if you like) to this final realisation which is seen as that which the Buddhas perceive in calm equipoise. And what is said about that is that it is not possible to take an intellectual view which is its equivalent. So whatever is proposed to the seeker to be fundamentally true - actually is not. And this is why Nagarjuna refuses to take any position. This is usually expressed in negative terms such as not eternalist and not nihilistic. But this leads to the mistaken view that Nagarjuna is being negative. He's not, he's just saying that the ultimately real is beyond conceptualisation. So whatever you tend to say about it degrades it to that position. This is intellectually quite scary because the human mind wants the security of knowing. It's a tough position - tougher than say the Yogacara position. Nagarjuna builds on the Perfection of Wisdom sutra http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/heart_s2.pdf and as far a Tibetan Buddhism goes the best book I have read on this is http://www.amazon.com/The-Center-Sunlit-Sky-Madhyamaka/dp/1559392185 .... but it's pretty heavy going. ... as ever the usual advice is that you need a teacher skilled in the View if you really want to understand. Hope this is helpful and by caveat this is my own meagre understanding and nothing more.

Yes about six or seven hundred years It's true of course that Nagarjuna would have considered himself to be explicating the Buddha's teachings for which the term Middle Way was used. But the centrality of sunyata in the madhyamaka makes this Mahayana school distinctive. It's really about what is the 'view' in right-view I think. Is it the view of the nature and cause of suffering? or is it the view of dependent origination as contained in the sutras or is it the view of emptiness as taught in the mahayana. You could argue of course that the latter is merely a development of the former - in the sense that all Buddhist thinking is a kind of abhidharma project developed over the years.

It's unfortunate I suppose that the term Middle Way often sounds like the mediocre way - neither one thing or the other. Possibly because it is often defined by negatives of saying what it is not - i.e. its not asceticism nor is it hedonism, rather than what it is. To me it means a path of cultivation which does include rules for conduct (precepts) and so may appear to have aspects of asceticism (especially if you are a monk). However this is really in support of the cultivation of inner realisation through meditation and the cultivation of understanding by study of the view. Because the inner realisations are profound and induce complete change in your being - if you attempt this without addressing conduct and also 'mind training' to refine the subtle aspects of your mind - you can get really unstuck and just swing between extremes, or just get lost, rather than making sound progress. Obviously also just reading about the view without some process to embed the ramifications of the view in your life becomes just an intellectual exercise. By following this way your attitude to others for instance rather than becoming more severe (like an ascetic) you become more relaxed, tolerant, forgiving and kind. In this way an aspect of free flowingness becomes a naturally emerging part of your personality. This might get misunderstood as being just carelessness but of course it is not. It is simply the effect of the growing realisation of emptiness and non-attachment. There is also of course the madhyamaka 'middle way' of Nagarjuna which is something slightly different, being the middle way between eternalism and nihilism. Just my thoughts of course

Gobekli Tepe doesn't really revise the dates of the earliest settled civilisations (Sumeria, Egypt, Indus Valley) as these are agriculture based communities based on river valleys (hence fertile and trade) having towns and cities. What Gobekli Tepe demonstrates is that humans even when still living as pastoralists had both stone working skills and the organisational skills to undertake major construction works. And this undermines the idea of the superiority of 'civilisation' in the sense that it was held that to have the ability to do large and complex construction works it was necessary first to have the social structures that came with the settled communities. It also goes against the received wisdom of 'progress'. As modern humans (according to the standard model) have been around for about 200,000 years, the idea is that we did more or less nothing interesting for most of that time and only in the last few thousand years suddenly became the intelligent, creative being we are supposed to be now. This way of thinking is to support a distorted idea of evolutionary theory which suggests we were once lowly and dragged our knuckles on the earth until we stood upright and invented the iPad or some such. Why anyone would cling to this way of thinking is beyond me, since particularly evolutionary theory suggests no such thing. All ancient cultures suggested the reverse - that we are in a process of decline not progress - that is a decline from our connection to spirit (or Dao) - and our supposed progress is actually compensation for our loss of our innate powers.

It's all spin.

Thanks SC fascinating (but rather too short) video in OP. I have been thinking recently about the physical body as a community but was just thinking of the community of cells but if you add in commensal bacteria it becomes even more fascinating. I suppose partly because we tend to take our bodies for granted and also more importantly act as if we know what they are. Familiarity breeds contempt as they say. So often we might even spend more time thinking about our energetic subtle bodies or our minds and so on ... forgetting that our physical bodies are a ) miraculous and b ) a mystery. I completely avoid antibiotics and have not taken any since a child. I guess I've been lucky not to be in a situation where it was 'necessary' ... so I guess I would in extremis if it was life or death. But I have a friend with a three year old child who became infected during labour and both mother and baby had antibiotics repeatedly since then. I have tried to encourage the mother to go for TCM but I don't think she believes. The idea of a gut as a second brain is also of course familiar and a few years ago I found the book 'Unwinding the Belly' to be quite inspiring.

By the way I've just upgraded to OSX El Capitan (stupid name) ... it's faster than nasty Yosemite but I guess someone is going to tell me that all my data goes straight back to NSA or GCHQ in UK or something.

I have a new question: Is the Earth profound/farcical? Answer yes, no, yes and no, no and yes, neither, something else, or what earth?

Just visited this site http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/portocromleqdosalmendres.htm called Almendres near Evora Portugal. The earliest parts are dated to 6000 BC and its the oldest stone circle in the Iberian Peninsula. Thought it was about time we had a thread on ancient sites on TBs so here it is. ... pics I took of this site. Post something about a site that has impressed you.

You shouldn't go googling penis enlargement

Are you sure that's a hose you're using?

I clicked on some of these flat earth vids and now my recommended for you list on youtube is nothing but this stuff. I have watched some and all their arguments that I have seen so far are not only wrong but laughably so.

Underarms.

That's dirty.

You know, maybe there are days when the earth is as flat as it feels.

What would nice DaoBums like them be doing in a place like this?

Hey we're wasting time here let's go hover in the female sanctuary.

posting dragons is a bad hobbit

... no particular reason just liked it.

Hey give me back my avatar

Double entendre. HA!

They may be bees buzzing round the honeypot.

There's another thread on this somewhere. ... found it http://thedaobums.com/topic/38792-alchemical-instructions-of-the-immortal-of-green-florescence/?p=633510

Everythings weird ... strange ... abnormal ... oh hang on I'm on DaoBums ... this is normal ... phew!