Apech

oh I deleted it cos it was meant as a joke but came across a bit harsh !!!

Then you will never leave the temple grasshopper.

I think both the DDJ and Chuang Tzu are helpful to read but I am unsure that they are really the core texts that we are led to believe. Although there is some dispute aas to whether it is Daoist at all I think that understanding the changes (Yi Jing/I Ching) is the most important step in getting close to what the Dao is all about. Perhaps I should have put this in Unpopular Opinions?

A lot more than is generally accepted.

Make mine a large one, said the Russian’ Try preserving your jing, said the Dutch.

One Russian, one Dutch, a Mexican and American walked into a bar ....

It's the one next to @Cobie would like to meet you for drinks after the thread.

This is TheDaoBums where anything is possible.

You have constructed an etymology from a derived language (Hindi) - maybe you are right but also your second link gives the other derivation so ... but sweet and sour/bitter is helpful I think.

Suffering i.e. dukkha has three forms. Suffering of suffering i.e. pain or discomfort Suffering of the ephemerality of phenomena (nothing lasts) Suffering of conditionality (even if the first two are absent your mind is still conditioned by ignorance of reality). 'Suffering' is a bad translation of dukkha - which originally meant a defective axel hole on a wheel. The wheel doesn't turn properly and wobbles shaking the cart. So dukkha could be better translated as unsatisfactoriness.

you never ask how old I am!

When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

It was about State's rights OK!

Well I just had to read the thread.

Are you projecting your own failures onto others.

“How to get triggered by Buddhism without really trying to understand it.”

Never jump in a dark cave - you could hit your head.

that is something of the meaning of the three kayas in tantra - that the body, subtle body, and awareness body become aligned/ integrated … ( can’t think of the right word)

I think in some ways the physical body is the greatest mystery of them all - and this is partly because people assume they know what it is.

sure but my point is he didn’t refute them or say they were imaginary etc. I wasn’t saying he invented them somehow.

I don't understand your point.

That's the kind of spin that Western scholars try to put on it. Here is a yakshi from the Eastern gateway of the Sanchi stupa:

By causes do you mean the results of unresolved experiences, traumas and so on? My sense is that there is a collection of usually bypassed ancestral material which is energy/feeling/form mixture ... which through affecting our current feeling state and interferes with our freedom to act or be as we would wish. I think the Buddhist view of this is that these are karmic seeds in the 'alaya' which is a base or storehouse consciousness. The kind of ultimate view from Buddhism on this would be to allow them to arise, see them for what they are, and allow them to cease. The Buddhist world is far stranger and multi-dimensional (for want of a better word) than is usually supposed. For instance it contains all kinds of unembodied beings, ghosts, yakshas, betali, dakinis, gods and demi-gods - all with their own intents and purposes. It is far from the abstract 'everything is empty so float around on a cloud' which you hear from others. There are two things to be addressed here I think - one is your own 'karma' or your own state of being, happiness or otherwise. The content of your own being and what you do about it. The other, which is related is a kind of search for the answer to 'what is this?' - the life we have been 'given' and what is its nature and why. So I believe there is a continuity between wanting to feel better, freer, less disturbed by things and so on ... and answering the big questions about the nature of reality. I ama firm believer in all this that each of us must follow their own heart - and while, yes, we can learn a lot and get a lot of help from systems like Buddhism or Neidan - in the end we make it our own. This is especially true as there is an enormous amount of b/s out there trying to tempt us into some kind of diversion. It is possible also that different cultures, times and even dare I mention it ethnicities have different ways. For instance it might be that Westerners (by which I mean generally Europeans) tackle things differently, with different emphasis than Easterners. Also in the past life was much tougher than it is now. I am reading a biography of the Buddhist master called 'A Saint in Seattle'. He was born sometimes around 1900 I think and lived in Eastern Tibet. When he was five years old his parents noticed that he liked playing at being a Lama. They took this as a sign and decided he should be a monk. His father took him at five years old to his uncles retreat house - which was so inaccessible that you had to climb down a ladder to get in through the roof. The uncle was in permanent retreat sealed off from the world, there only being a tiny window through which people could pass food offerings and so on. His father literally took him there, down the ladder, dumped him on the floor and left without a word. From that day for at least five years the boy never left the retreat and never had any contact with his mother except through this tiny window. Imagine doing that today! Call Social Services!!! Those old style Lamas did things with extreme intensity and endured great deprivations for the sake of dharma. Their natural inclination on becoming inspired to follow the dharma was to go into retreat and do nothing but practice for decades. In terms of the subtle body - what the Tibetans call the winds, channels and drops (tsa-lung etc.) in the practice I do (Mahamudra) this is seen as connected to speech (they talk about body, speech and mind). In a revealed or purified state these become the three kayas. While the mind-kaya, the dharma-kaya is seen as the closest to fundamentally real, in Mahamudra there is something called the Svabhavikakaya which is all three together and this relates most closely to the ultimate realisation. So the subtle body is part of it, together with your actual body and your mind. I don't know if this makes sense.