ThisLife

Boomp ?? What a perplexing reply. It certainly has the great benefit of being brief,.... but the complementary quality of 'clarity' seems to be missing. I do like the sound of it though. It's just that I feel somewhat boomphed as to its meaning. Any helpful clues you can give us ? ThisLife .

. (1) Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut The book that way back in 1972 first shifted my traditional stiff view on a subject that I had never even realised it was possible to think otherwise about,..."time". Once opened, that doorway into enquiry was never able to close again (2) I Am That, by Nisargadhatta Maharaj After many years spiritual searching down many pathways, this book finally freed me from theistic thinking by introducing me to Advaita. A major turning point in my life. (3) The Acceptance of What Is, by Wayne Liquorman The best exposition of Advaita I can possibly imagine. This book also made the necessary human connection for me since it contains much of Wayne's background 'life story'. His talks and his books, while deepening my connection with advaitic thought patterns, also finally freed me from the long-standing delusion I held that any 'genuine' spiritual teacher had to be a traditional Eastern guru-type. Wayne is a 58 year old American living near Los Angeles. If anyone is interested, he can be checked out at : www.advaita.org ThisLife .

[2] I don't think "repeatable" spiritual paths are just myth. I believe in the concept of "Spiritual Technology" wherein tried and tested techniques are given to aspirants to develop spiritually. I find real-life situations such as the above really intriguing,... where a seemingly random sequence of unconnected events end up unintentionally working together to form something quite different. The two previous and sequential posts by Bruce and Spiritual Aspirant,, (which I have quoted in this post above), at first glance seem to be taking the exact opposite stance on the idea of whether spiritual attainment is dependent on the path and practices a person follows. My feeling is that they are actually only opposites in the same way that the head side of a coin is opposite to the tail side. Yes, they are opposites from one point of view,... yet equally, they are both simply essential parts of the same coin. Without the head and the tail,... you have no coin. And yet, looked at individually, they quite clearly face in opposite directions. I wish I could speak from direct personal experience in this, but unfortunately my point of view on this is just a mere intellectual playing around randomly with pieces of a spiritual jigsaw puzzle. But what I find myself believing from patterns I've seen made out of similar pieces I've looked at in the past,... is that genuine spiritual development seems to happen by the seeker first finding a path he/she truly believes in. They then follow these teachings and practices till, one day, they unexpectedly come up against what often seems an insurmountable obstacle. A situation where one is faced with two opposing points of view. Then, since a person can only follow one branch of a path at a time,.... a decision between the left or the right fork seems essential if one wants to continue to 'make progress'. But I think that these spiritual dilemmas in life are actually like Zen koans. And, (though I am not a Zen practitioner and am not speaking from personal experience),...my feeling is that the way through the seeming obstacle of a paradox is not by solving them,....but by transcending them. Or, (putting it more visually instead of into new age airy-fairy language),... by stepping out of the process of inwardly listening for one's own preference, or inclination to become clear, then following it. Perhaps the way to resolve a paradox is by mentally finding a viewpoint above the situation, i.e."transcending it". From outside and above a difficult decision, one can finally understand. One can see through, or encompass, the paradox of how two sides of a coin can be both an opposite and a unity, at the same time. One can see how the left and the right fork of a path are actually just leading around different sides of the same mountain. So, with regards to this discussion, Bruce's quote saying that "Enlightenment has nothing to do with the practice that brought you here",... and Spiritual Aspirant's conviction that, "tried and tested techniques are given to aspirants to develop spiritually",.... are both part of a unity. What unites them is that it is the same Tao working through both individuals, giving them each their own particular convictions. And yet, the Tao has no preference. There is no connection to practice , 'and' the practice is vital to attainment. Because the same Tao is the source, substance and activating force within every point of view. Even more abstractly,... the appearance of these two views being opposites,... is also created, activated and sustained by the Tao. These attempts at seeing an all-inclusive points of view I find that I can only mentally imagine for very, very brief glimpses. Because my conscious, or rational mind just cannot live there. There is nothing familiar for my mind to sustain itself with. Our mind needs 'food', just as does our body. Nevertheless, I think this inner mental striving to stand on one's tiptoes to see over the fence, is part of the same compulsion which drives people to find out what life on the ocean floor is like, or to see how it is in outer space. But, always, the reality of our human body-mind apparatus and its needs, draws me back to life on the earth's surface. I think that at heart, everyone attracted to sites like this, is trying, via their own nature and inclinations, to satisfy this same strange, inner compulsion "to know". That, as seemingly varied and often completely opposed as the thousands of views expressed here often appear,.... somehow, they are simply the thousand and one faces of the same, living Tao. ThisLife .

Thank you for a very thought-provoking reply. It's very short, yet contains two thoughts which are written as part of a whole,... but personally, I think one is correct, and the other just doesn't go deeply enough to approach a 'truth' about existence. When you say that "there isn't such a thing as 'ugliness' from the point of view of the Tao",.... I think this is simply a product of not having thought carefully enough about our attempts to conceptualise the Tao. I know 'conceptualising has a bad name for all of us seekers who are striving to understand/experience 'Reality' without the intermediary of concepts. But, without creating a name and a concept, nothing can be even thought about, let alone discussed, studied, contemplated etc. I think part of seeking is in gradually refining our concepts through the dynamic interplay of our life experiences with whatever store of concepts we hold that make up our mental continuum. This dynamic process carries on at every moment that the 'life experience' is happening through us,.... from our birth till our death. So, we cannot do away with concepts, yet need to always update and refine them. With regards to "the Tao", I'm sure it would get a pretty unanimous agreement to define one of its qualities as "the source and substance of all points of view". Therefore, as a single trivial example,.... my finding of the above photo of a mountain as "beautiful", and a pile of dog shit as "ugly",... cannot be separate from the Tao's point of view. These concepts of 'beauty' and 'ugliness', have their source and substance in the Tao. They were created by the Tao, and are inseparable from it, as are all points of view. Regarding your second statement, that my very judgement of something as 'ugly', indicates my "dwelling in the illusion of being split from the One",...here I think you are completely corrrect. I think that this paradox comes as close as my mind can approach to the limits of rational thought. This is the chasm that separates this dualistic consciousness we are obliged by our body and mind to experience existence through,... from what we can only intuit via the experiences of others (whom we often think of and label as 'realised beings'),... and which we then conceptualise and name, "the Tao". So, to summarise all these ramblings,.... dualistic appearances like 'beauty' and 'ugliness' occur constantly to my mind because that is the way the Tao functions through me,... 'created me', if you will. They occur only because I am 'inseparable ' from the Tao. And yet, my experiencing of these Tao-created opposites, is the unmistaken sign that I am living in the illusion of separation from the Tao. To me. therein lies the essence of this paradox of our existence. This is the problem I am trying to resolve, and which has led me to many places over the years, such as this forum just now,... in the hopes of resolving. ThisLife

. Thank you, Cat. Point well taken. You are exactly right. It seems to be the unconscious 'hard-wiring' for most of us that when we find a philosophy we're attracted to, we always want to see it dressed up in a pretty package. But, even that one-sided attraction to beauty, is equally the face of the Tao. To be completely correct, the person who posted the lovely photo of the mountain as a reminder of the Tao,... could with equal validity have posted a glossy colour photo of a fresh pile of dog shit to remind us of the many faces ot the Tao. But,..... .

. What a staggeringly impressive photo ! I don't think I've ever seen a picture that so perfectly conveys the power, the presence,... the sheer essence of a mountain. For someone like myself who has hiked through the Himalayas many years ago, this photo brought back a whole flood of memories that I was unaware I had stored upstairs in the dusty shelves of my 'hard drive'. Thank you for this perfect visual reminder me that this is the face of the Tao,... and not words, ideas or concepts on computer screen or paper. Cheers, ThisLife .

. Dear Lin, I read with interest your explanation of Mao and the Red Guards. From your 'extreme' softening of reality I can only assume that you must be of Chinese origin and for nationalistic reasons feel compelled to defend what occurred during that period of history. I always remembered reading a section of the Guiness Book of Records about tewnty years back that was talking about the biggest mass murderers of all times. Until I read their figures I had always assumed that Adolf Hitler held that dubious distinction. However, the book of records quoted staistics to show that though Hitler had organised the systematic murder of some 12 million people, he nevertheless only held the 'third' position. Joseph Stalin had been in charge of the Russian government when over 16 million people were murdered, (putting him into the number two position). But the biggest mass murderer of all times,... throughout the entire history of humanity,... was without any doubt Mao Tse Tung. Well over 20 million people were killed as a result of his policies during the Cultural Revolution !! The reason Hitler looms so high in Western minds is that the people he killed were predominantly from countries other than his own,.... wheras Stalin and Mao Tse Tung killed almost entirely their own people. Plus, both those states were almost completely closed to Western knowledge, behind very powerful secret police organisations and what was then known as "The Iron Curtain". So, it took a long time for news of the extent of these crimes against humanity to become known to the rest of the world. Therefore, in the light of all that I find it quite extraordinary to read your description of the Red Guard as simply behaving like "bratty teenagers", and Chairman Mao just being blissfully unaware of what was going on at lower levels of government. Surely, if one's aim in following teachings like those of Taoism is to know the Truth underlying wordly existence,.... surely we must not be afraid to look at the comparatively far simple truths surrounding the loathsome, but easily visible and verifiable actions of mass murderers ? Peace, ThisLife .

. An interesting article, but too technical and too long-winded for my tastes. I always find the most interesting posts are those where people write of their own experiences and what they've felt about them, often years down the line. Living enough years always adds perspective to an experience such as hallucinogens taken in one's youth, that wasn't available at the time. I think it would be interesting here to do one of Stigweird's famous 'polls',... to see how many Tao Bums did try out and enjoy some of those fascinating drug experiences which were everywhere available from the 60's onwards. For me, they were part of my youth,... and I feel they opened doors in my perception that directly led to the last 35 years of undiminishing interest in striving to find answers to spiritual questions. From this point in time, I personally feel that it was only the various 'hallucinogenic' drugs that had any value with regards to spiritual insights,... but perhaps others had different experiences ? I no longer take any of these artificial 'doorway openers' for reasons that become obvious to most people who have gone down that road. But that doesn't mean that I feel they were in any way without value at a time in one's life. Perhaps the current illegality makes this a forbidden topic. But nevertheless, I venture to guess that if everyone were honest on this site about this controversial and sensitive topic, you would find that hallucinogens played a significant part in the lives of quite a high percentage of people here. .

. I found all the posts above very interesting. They were, for me, a further stimulation on a subject that has somehow sounded'right' since I first came across mention of it in Elisabeth Kuhler-Ross' book. She was a doctor in a New York hospital who, through her personal experiences with the dying, first brought NDEs into the scientific world, But there are other necessary and counter-balancing components in life which I find emphasize the opportunity we have each moment to experience the enjoyment of living while it is present in this body. (There's plenty of time for experiencing death when my time comes,... but at this moment, now, I'm undeniably here. Alive). So, since a lot of Taoism is about maintaining one's balance, I thought I would add a touch of humour into a subject which has a fair amount of potential to make one forget the joy of laughter and living. The following is an anecdote on an NDE by Kurt Vonnegut : "Dr Kevorkian has just unstrapped me from the gurney after yet another controlled near-death experience. I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolph Hitler. I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course, were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million citizens of the Soviet Union, and so on. "I paid my dues along with everybody else," he said. It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889 - 1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German : "Entschuldigen Sie." Roughly translated into English, this comes out, "I Beg Your Pardon," or "Excuse Me." ThisLife .

This post asked for parable illustrating virtue,... but since virtue cannot exist without its complimentary 'non-virtue', (as the Taoist Yin-Yang symbol clearly illustrates), I thought I would give a modern day parable of 'non-virtue' by my well-loved Kurt Vonnegut : "Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a million bucks ! Starting when I was only twelve years old. I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown and Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon." ThisLife .

. This is an anecdotal experience Kurt Vonnegut had when he was a young man trying to earn a living as a carpenter. I've always loved his sparkling combination of humour with a deep and profound relevance to life : I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things." "Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God, "I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand." She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing. .

. One of my favourite excerpts from Kurt Vonnegut : " I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly. She could not understand why anyone should be puzzled about what had been or about what was going to be. And yet, when I showed her a blueprint of the doghouse I proposed to build, she said to me, "I'm sorry, but I never could read one of those things." "Give it to your husband or your minister to pass on to God, "I said, "and, when God finds a minute, I'm sure he'll explain this doghouse of mine in a way that even you can understand." She fired me. I shall never forget her. She believed that God liked people in sailboats much better than He liked people in motorboats. She could not bear to look at a worm. When she saw a worm, she screamed. She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing." .

This is my first post on this forum. I came across it apparently quite by accident while searching out an entirely unrelated topic on the web. Anyway, in this lobby the expected thing to do seems to be to introduce oneself, so, 'when in Rome',... Since my early twenties, I've been increasingly drawn to trying to either understand, or experience, the hopeful 'reality' behind my conviction that everything that exists is spiritual. My current beliefs are that it is only some kid of mis-perception by our human mind that prevents most of us from seeing, or experiencing that awareness. To my eternal frustration, I have not yet had so much as a glimpse of what is often called a "realisation", with which to confirm my beliefs. The closest resemblance I have to any tangible support to hold on to are the intriguing chains of spiritual logic that I find myself drawn to. But whenever I look closely into them,... they're about as substantial as clinging to a rainbow. Those chains of logic have often enough changed and gone off in different directions over the 35 years or so since I first noticed my attraction to them. The strongest, longest-lasting, and most recent was a 20 year connection with a very worldly-successful, Western Mahayana Buddhist group. However, recently I have irrevocably split from that path. My feelings are that, (in an oft-recurring tale), they were 'victims of their own success'. I think that with groups striving for Buddha, or God-like perfection,... very often the shimmering attraction of their mind-created dream makes them forget that their feet of clay are firmly here with all the rest of us living beings. Very often, that ever-present subtle delusion of spiritual pride slowly cuts them off from the genuine compassion for others which had initially given their original founding members such seemingly un-stoppable vigour. But as my personal connection with Buddhism was in the process of breaking down, I was extremely fortunate in that I made connection with another non-methodoligical spiritual path,... Advaita. In conjunction with Zen and Taoism, I believe they are the only three major pathways that practice the 'method of no method'. After my experiences with the spiritual bureaucracy of a large Western Buddhist organisation, I am very, very drawn to a spiritual path with NO doctrine, NO dogma, and NO special, intermediary, priveledged collection of priests. Anyway, there's my situation in a rather long-winded nutshell, (if I may be allowed to so mix my metaphors) The title I used for this intro is because of the frustration I am experiencing trying to load an avatar image onto this forum. Perhaps someone can help me with some purely technical information ? (I am not very computer literate). I have used this photo from my own computer before as an avatar so I know it works. But on this forum, it gets squished and distorted into a square that it says is 125 by 125. The image I want to use is 416 X 300, a JPEG, and 16.1 KB. I have seen many beautiful, interesting and complex avatars on this site, so I know I am missing some basic steps in the process. Undoubtedly, that is why I keep ending up with this squished, distorted and thoroughly unsatifactory image. (Perhaps it's a parallel for my spiritual endeavours !!) Can any one help me with some basic computer advice ?? Spiritual matters later.

Dear Brad Pitt,, Thanks for the welcome. I tried to follow Mal's advice but didn't have Photoshop. Tried Picasso,... but that did other kinds of mysterious things. Finally, I gave up and decided to try a stock avatar. In the process of trying to find one I liked, Google came up with a simple site that offered to resize any photo to avatar size,... and Presto !! - it worked ! So, what you see before you is a cyber-modified, stripped-down-for-action, turtle. I'm quite happy with the result. From your reply I see that you also had some similar problems, and some different ones. I'm sorry to see that whatever program you used seems unfortunately to have left the top shell of your avatar in exactly the same condition as that of my turtle. Mal did say that the Tao works in strange ways. Synchronicity ?? Cheers, (and thanks again for the welcome !) ThisLife

Dear Mal, Thank you very much for the helpful suggestion re avatar photos. I'll try your idea out tonight when I'll hopefully have a long enough stretch of time to engage in a wrestling match with the mysterious mind of a computer ! I certainly agree with your statement that the Tao moves in mysterious ways. Through this unfathomable contraption of plastic, wiring and silicon I now find myself conversing instantly with a boomerang throwing Austalian completely on the opposite side of the world from myself. The early Taoists would have spent a lifetime striving for such a feat. So we Westerners have got instant communication down. Have you had any success with Immortality yet ? Cheers, ThisLife