Apech

Where do you get the unchanging idea from? Is it the word 'complete' because I think this just means that you don't have to add anything or take anything away from the Tao. I suppose its a bit like an ocean where it changes constantly form being calm to stormy and so on but never stops being an ocean. I agree about the God thing BTW. Cheers John PS I just got a copy of Cleary's Golden Flower delivered by Amazon (I ordered it on Sunday so that's pretty good). I will soon be enlightened .

Aha! I don't like that translation much as it seems to say that the Tao was formed out of chaos which goes back to the JK thing ... so I looked up other translations and they put it differently: These just seem to say that the Tao was there before Heaven and Earth and that it was amorphous and yet complete ... which makes more sense to me in relation to the rest of the TTC. Cheers John PS. Excellent thread!!!!!

Some excellent rambling Latest Freed! I think the son thing and the creator thing are like rhetorical questions ... like - 'where did it come from? I don't know but I reckon it was there before everything else.' The Creator if you want to bring God in could be God as the demi-urge but that's Christian metaphysics, maybe you could say the Tao precedes all the hierarchy of powers in the universe?

Ok I read the book, it says: or either version the Tao comes before the creator. What is your next instruction?

the glass is half-full 'cos I drank the other half like an optimist.

Ahem. At the risk of being a smart-ass .... In relativistic theory if you take the water as the frame of reference then the bridge is moving. There is no such thing as a stationary position because there is no absolute frame of reference - all are equally valid - as demonstrated by the Michelson- Morley experiment. John B.Sc. (Hons) Physics 1974 Manchester University.

Relativity mate ... Mr. Einstein was hot on this subject and was a scientist.

The Tao was created was it? By what or whom?

No need to apologize. You are right ... the amount of discussion about Taoism on here is limited ... most of it is about Qi Gong or alchemical techniques as well. Otherwise it seems to be endless threads about Buddhism. Who knows what we will be in our next lives ... I think I know where I'm heading and you must promise not to swat me when I'm buzzing round the room.

Marblehead, It might be an idea to put the original reference (section no. or whatever) as a footnote so people can look up their own favorite translations as well.

I have to say I find it very helpful to have extracts from original texts on here - there's a lot of debate, opinion and interpretation floating around but the clarity brought by these short extracts is exceptional. I think to suggest that Marblehead is being anything other than helpful is ridiculous IMO.

Goodbye and good luck. John

The Devils Rides Out was a great movie ... in my day those were cutting edge special effects - with the big spider etc. ( the book is good too) ... who needs acting when you have pentacles on the floor?

I agree - that was spot on Marblehead.

Hi Mr. M F, I've written up the first part and I'm working on the next bit. Its here: Pyramid Texts I'll let you know when the next bit is ready - it will deal with the akhet chamber which is about going across the sky to the East and climbing the ladder of Horus and Set. Cheers. John

Thanks - there is more but and its coming slowly.

No idea who this is - its was on my youtube recommended for you list - but its quite nice in a plinky plunk kind of a way.

Of course it is up to you what you believe and how you practice - and I wasn't suggesting anyone was going to be hunted down. I wasn't coming from that sort of thinking. I was stressing that taking refuge in the dharma means that a person is stating that liberation comes from that and not from a God. Buddhists may be tolerant as people and its a shame that Islam is not really reciprocal - in the 10th Century (I think) Islam drove Buddhism out of India - but this does not mean that they are prepared to dilute the dharma to the point where is would become, in their eyes, ineffective. BTW I am not a Buddhist I am just commenting.

Guidance yes, but you have to do it for yourself otherwise its not really worth much and certainly not liberating (IMO). What I like about Sam Harris is his hard headed challenge of the monoliths of organized religion but not all his conclusions.

I would defend V's right to post as he does and I have not seen anything where he claims to be enlightened or similar - in fact to the contrary. I think it has to be understood that Buddhism generally takes the view that its View is the superior one. This can be misleading because Buddhists generally are gentle and easy going and in some people this gives rise to the impression that it might be possible to be eclectic and still Buddhist. This is not so. In taking refuge in the three jewels a Buddhist is saying that they exclusively go to the Buddha, Sangha and Dharma. It is not really possible to be Buddhist and Christian or Muslim, say because those religions tell you to appeal to God for help while Buddhism says that any such deity cannot give you liberation. For instance while it might be possible to say that Jesus displayed many of the characteristics of a Bodhisattva it is not possible to say that he was a Bodhisattva because he did not teach dharma or uphold emptiness and so on. Within Tibetan Buddhism there are further developments of the Buddhist view especially in the 'higher' teachings such as Dzogchen where the View developed supports the realizations of emptiness, luminosity and so on. This View is seen as superior to all other views and is one which refutes the existence of any absolute ground or cause of reality - hence dependent origination taking center stage. When someone adopting this view looks at other non-dualist but non-Buddhist systems it seems that name is given to that which is beyond duality e.g Brahman, Tao etc. and because of the great stress in Buddhism on not making this into some kind underlying real substratum or cause - these other systems appear to take an inferior or incomplete view. V is simply taking the view of his school of Buddhism and arguing it. Its true actually if you read the TTC while it starts by saying the Tao cannot be named (defined) and so on - it does elsewhere talk about it as a source or 'mother'. While I would take this as just a way of talking about the the ineffable, some might say that this makes the Tao into an underlying absolute real 'thing' - from which other things emerge - rather than the mysterious Way. Even in Buddhism there are disputes over all this - the Zhentong and Rangtong views which have actually led to physical fighting between Tibetan sects in the past - so it is not surprising that it becomes heated on here. I think it is always a problem for non-Dualists to express some of these things because the human mind always wants to resolve the mystery - often by creating a kind of hidden monism - a kind of eternalism - or otherwise by throwing the whole problem out with nihilism. I think what is important to us is to hold the paradox, hold the dilemma in our minds without trying to resolve it - or perhaps trying to resolve it but knowing that this is impossible. For instance we have a self and yet there is no self - both one and at the same time - this is far more enlightening than one or the other. See what I mean?

The original subject of this thread was quite interesting especially as the 'End of Faith' man still had time for genuine inquiry into the nature of our selves or perhaps the nature of being. But the last few pages seem to have reduced this debate to some kind of squabble. Give me spiritual maturity over point scoring any day - the point of Buddhism is to be a better person, more compassionate, more generous and so on and Taoism takes us (hopefully) beyond relative dualism. IMO being smarter than everyone else is not the point. And before anyone says it - I am not anti-intellectual I think it is important to formulate the path for ourselves but we shouldn't be fooled into thinking that this formulation is the path.

I did it in church! It was come all ye faithful Old time agape.

Full of miracles Water ... wine, wine to water, Hey did you see that!

My spies say he is still around

gold transmutes within and with envelope supplied becomes ready cash. (inspired by day time TV adverts )