Apech

(bold text) really? I thought it went like this .... Man follows the earth. Earth follows heaven. Heaven follows the Tao. Tao follows what is natural.

Skull discovery suggests location where humans first had sex with Neanderthals http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/28/ancient-skull-found-israel-sheds-light-human-migration-sex-neanderthals ... hey I know what you were doing 55,000 years ago

I wonder if he's as manly as Homo Erectus ...

Us Europeans are always ready for some interbreeding! Seriously though its nice to think we are to a certain extent a hybrid ... so much for the racists amongst us ...

We can't wait till next week.

Well I'm basing dates on standard version of history. Those dates would put the Vedas before IVC which doesn't make sense ... but if you can justify (?).

sophistry ... I'm done with this.

I didn't say or imply that they were the same. Things don't have to be the same to be assimilable. My very point. But this is turning into one of the usual non-productive TB threads so I am bowing out.

Good quote! I think Buddhism would not see things this way ... it might 'refute' if you were attached to or clinging on to the 'mother' as a conceptualisation. But as I said above somewhere just because Buddhism and Taoism have different views does not actually make them refute each other. Compare, contrast, synthesise and so on by all means ... but I think the idea that a Buddhist can wander up to a Taoist and say you are wrong, or visa versa is a non starter, and a kind of immature way of thinking. I'm sticking with Wang Liping on this one

He was also a neo-Daoist ... and as you point out he died very young ... in that short life he achieved greatness ... think what he would have done had he lived ... and I imagine his ideas would have developed and matured too.

Wang Bi (Wang Pi), styled Fusi, is regarded as one of the most important interpreters of the classical Chinese texts known as the Daodejing (Tao Te Ching) and the Yijing (I Ching). He lived and worked during the period after the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 C.E., an era in which elite interest began to shift away from Confucianism toward Daoism. quote from the same site. ... so no he was not a pure confucian and indeed according to the site he is responsible for the idea of 'philosophical Daoism'.

I was under the impression that it was the concepts of philosophical Taoism with which the Chinese were familiar which made the assimilation of Buddhism easy. ... just in case you thought I made that up ...

Real shame the antagonism continues. I've been enjoying rereading Wang Liping's bio again and found this paragraph today: I think that just about sums it up for me.

A continuum has no parts. THE CONTINUUM

I've been reading a lot of academics (mostly Gombrich) on early Buddhism and the Vedic Period so that's where I was coming from. They focus a lot on the fire ceremonies of the Rg Veda and how the Buddha drew on the Vedic imagery in his teachings. (Need to point out that it is understood that early Vedic does not equal modern Hindu). Probably need another thread to discuss the ins and outs of this. Would be nice to have a discussion which does not involve antagonism and 'superiority' one over the other as I hold Vedanta, Buddhism and Taoism all in the highest regard.

What I liked about this thread was the lack (up to a certain point) of the antagonism Taoist vs. Buddhist that you some times get on here. people gravitate to the system which helps them or calls out to them most. that's it really.

I practice medicine buddha sadhana from time to time. It's a very pleasant practice.

You are probably right about the significance of water, in fact I could point to many ancient systems where water is the primary substance of reality. However the point I was making was that Buddhism is not a fire worshiping system as suggested by TM ... in fact Nirvana means extinguishing fire, the burnt out fire. This is in contrast to the primary rite of the ancient Vedic system of the fire ceremony where consciousness is seen as a consuming fire.

Interesting article in the Guardian about how scientists are trying to come to terms with consciousness - the so called Hard Problem. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

This is called mulher clitoris morango ... mulher means woman, morango means strawberry ... but I have no idea about clitoris ... I asked my girlfriend and she agreed that I had no idea what a clitoris was.

_ _ ___ _ _ ___ _ _ ___ ... if you get my meaning.

That's interesting ... and has already evoked some response. Having just read a lot about this I would like to comment that the worship of light/sun/fire is actually Vedic. The primary rite of the Vedic religion was the Agni fire sacrifice where often many animals were offered up to the sacred pyre in the hope of eternal life with brahma. The Buddha actually was totally opposed to all this and subverted much of the vedic terms and imagery converting it into something quite other. He used Vedic terms like karma etc. because the people he was teaching people versed in that tradition. He never used the term enlightenment only awakening and didn't particularly use the image of light and only fire as a bad thing. I accept there are now schools of Buddhism which like to present the Buddha as a light, shiny kind of thing (like Pure Land Buddhism for instance) but to characterise Buddha as part of the fire lineage is I think pushing it a little.

Donald and Nikolai, While I agree essentially with Donald's analysis of what went wrong with Western Philosophy, if I can characterise his post like that, what encouraged me about the article I quoted in the OP was that even the pragmatic empiricists (or materialists) recognise they have a problem (or at least some of them do). And it is possible that as they are engaged in the 'project' of scientifically testing things, sooner or later the continuum they are trying to dissect will turn round and bite them. I think there may be two ways of looking at this .... one is hylozoism i.e. everything is aware or sentience is universal and the other similarly is to argue that all that we are engaged with is mind itself anyway and that matter is just a projection by consciousness of consciousness itself in the mode of appearing passively responsive.