Encephalon

Whoah!! Bravo!! I knew you were capable of this level of work when you joined up! So what was all that dramatic defensiveness about? Are you doing community theater? I'm with you up to the edit, where my own path detours ever-so-slightly slightly and suggests that if "our ultimate goal is to understand our place within this universe," we will find it (understanding) by accepting ambiguity and embracing spontaneity.

I'm glad to be of help, and I'm envious! I understand he's very accessible. Nei kung is the heart of the matter. I'm moving into my 4th year of practice and it's like night and day. Best wishes.

I am heavily biased toward nei kung practice as it refines and strengthens the nervous system specifically, which is where a solution to this plight may ultimately lie. I'm a Buddhist in my moral, ethical, and intellectual life, but I need the Taoist arts for the refinement of essential bodily processes. www.neikungla.com

This show changed the life on an entire generation. I was 12-15 as the show originally aired and it was the first introduction to Asian thought for millions of people, and for kids, it was a glimpse of a healthy alternative to the spectacle of Vietnam, Watergate, and suburban sleepwalking. The first season had the richest amount of philosophical content, and then writers started depending on more action and less Taoism. Everyone involved in the production was ready for it to end by the third season.

See you in Canada by 2014, in the Canadian Rockies, no less!

Greetings - I fell under the marketing spell of Transcendental Meditation back in the late 70s and eventually plopped down the $$ for it in the late 80s. They placed a great deal of emphasis on coming out of each session as gently as possible, because the practice lowers your stimuli threshold significantly, and for some, like me, coming out too fast resulted in headaches and irritability from what seemed like a a bombardment of normal waking stimuli. In Iowa, where the TMers started a campus, we were encouraged to take naps after the group meditation cycle because of this dramatic difference in stimuli. The TM movement was created by people who were savvy businessmen who used lots of technical information to sell their product to westerners, so you can probably find their book used for cheap and possibly dig up some helpful clues. It seems like the ideal is to lower your stimuli threshold so that you don't need crack cocaine and skydiving to feel alive, while keeping your nervous system resilient and stress-free as possible. My guess is that the nei kung practitioners among us would probably vouch for their path, but in the mean time, ask Taomeow how to lower the stimuli content of your environment; color therapy, diet, music management... the woman's a wizard. typo

Somehow I learned to get by without the dubious benefit of unsolicited psychological advice from strangers like yourself presumptuous enough to render it. How many different ways do you need it explained? I wasn't raking your spirit over the coals; I was pointing out something about your writing style. It's not my problem if you can't tell the difference. We can take turns trying to out-impress each other with our grasp of the finer details of pedagogy, but I guess what you really need is a hug and an apology and a nice cup of warm cocoa. So, Aaron, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. End scene.

For godsake Aaron, lighten up. You have no need to bring the love from your family and friends to your defense. I'm sure you're lovable enough, as am I. I was addressing your writing style which you characterize as "colloquial" and I describe as excessively wordy and self-absorbed. I'm sure you and your college classmates rendered critical analysis of each other's work without precipitating emotional crises, and I'm sure you're fully capable of it in here. If you feel that clear communication comes off as intellectual elitism, then you are correct; intellectual conversation will remain a non-starter. The Taoist ethos is the fusion of the scholar and warrior. Be sure to let us know if that subject should ever pique your interest while visiting a Taoist website. Altnough I have to say, your posts on Hua Yen were crisp and reader-friendly.

I don't think so. You can search the article in LA Weekly. Amazon,and all of us who buy books online, are the fiends responsible.

There is no deep hidden truth here, that's one point I tried to make. The truth is here, we just need to know it, rather than believe it. I also apologize if this has something to do with my failure to respond to your personal messages, if so, please accept my apology, I never intended to offend you. Aaron edit- I did respond to your questions by the way, please feel free to contact me via messenger. This has nothing to do with emotionalism or feeling spurned. I have a life. I take regular fasts from this forum, but I have also benefited from participation and I value profitable communication. Not every criticism we level at each other needs to be interpreted as personal attack. Although I took creative writing classes in college, it was not my focus, but I do know that concision, brevity, specificity of terms and critical thinking remain a vital part of the creative process. They have to be. You took 22 paragraphs and over 2,000 words to make your point that we imbue life with meaning, not the other way around? Hey, thanks for sharing! Something tells me that even a creative writing professor would advise a tad of editing. Writers owe that to their audience.

Sadly, The Bodhi Tree has only couple of months left. I think i read that they'll continue to sell online. Kind of adds an addendum to the notion of impermanence, eh?

Geography. My thesis was "The Geography of Consumerism: A Buddhist Deconstruction of Los Angeles."

I'd like to respond because I do live in LA now(and perhaps I can maintain my balance precisely because I have a viable 3-year exit strategy). This city is grotesque, but it's big enough to draw experts from virtually any field of interest. I did my research and concluded that Nei Kung instruction would solve more of my personal problems and challenges than any other body/mind discipline and, lo and behold, there was an authentic Nei Kung instructor just down the street from UCLA. I'm moving into my fourth year and rank Nei Kung practice with getting sober, getting my Master's, and getting married (with a bun in the oven!) I've purchased a couple dozen books on the subject and have found Bruce Frantzis, Dan Reid, and Yang Jwing-Ming to be the most talented writers on the subject for western audiences, besides Master C.K.Chu who wrote The Book of Nei Kung along with Jim Borreli, the man who taught me. The most obvious benefit I've realized is a massive reduction in stress level. Dan Reid gives the best physiological explanation IMO. There's a point where your endocrine system starts pumping less cortisol (and fight or flight hormones like adrenaline) into your bloodstream and more of the "rest and digest" hormones. As you accrue more time with less stress, your innate talents as well as the power of your subconsciousness become readily accessible for dealing with life's challenges, which increases self-confidence, which reduces stress further...the cycle continues. But this really doesn't due justice to the process. Since it works on the unconscious level, I just have to show up for an hour a day and squeeze in some extra sitting meditation where I can and the healing takes place without having to understand all. I suppose that I've acquired an absolute faith in the process now and that probably introduces another dimension to the practice. I guess this is yet another personal diatribe about stress, the modern killer.

Twinner - Your posts always come with the same hidden caveat: Listen carefully to what I say but don't hold me responsible. In your writing you regularly come across as someone who regards his imaginitive musings as a wellspring of original ideas. You demand special conditions of your audience lest they miss hidden truths while declaring a general amnesty for any oversights that may escape your attention. You seem to be well prepared to be taken seriously when it suits you. If you spoke to fellow students in a lower-division Intro to Philosophy class the way you come off in here you'd be laughed out the door. Some of your ideas are quite consistent with major themes found throughout the world's traditions, so you're on the right track and owe it to yourself to begin your scholarly journey in school rather than impersonating one in here.

www.neikungla.com is where I was introduced to Nei Kung and the website can be read in its entirety in ten minutes. If you've given "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Taoism" a thorough read, you'll have a more comprehensive grasp of Taoism than most (I've got a copy and would not part with it). The fact that you already possess a martial discipline suggests that you are well on your way to becoming the Taoist ideal of the scholar/warrior. I just turned 50 and started Nei Kung about the same age as you are now, and I can vouch for the benefits. Your entire nervous system, including your subconscious, will take your natural talents to a totally different level. Good luck.

I saw this when it came out and thought of Arthur Schopenhauer's words. "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." German philosopher (1788 - 1860) Most people are still in Stage One (including many TTBums), like the woman I met in a jacuzzi the other night who didn't know what all the fuss over oil was about, because, after all, it's a renewable resource. She wasn't as bad as the ex-Marine who did two tours in Iraq who still thought the same thing. How can you be risking your life in an oil-rich combat zone and not connect the dots? Fortunately, you've got options. If the panhandle doesn't hold out, there's always Whitehorse! Be sure to pack mosquito netting!

this is the Buddhist spin on the steps, which just a few minor but significant changes in bold. The changes take a little of the damnation rhetoric out of the picture while still preserving the role of responsibility. A Buddhist Version of the 12 Steps Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable Step 2 - Came to believe that spiritual practice could restore us to sanity Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the power of the Dharma (the teaching). Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves Step 5 - Admitted to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our suffering Step 6 - Were entirely ready to let go of all these defects of character Step 7 - Humbly asked for our shortcomings to be removed through prayer and meditation. Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with reality and to live a life with more wisdom and compassion Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs

Of all the world's major religious and philosophical movements, only Buddhism singles out desire and craving as the root of human suffering and trains its focus on the alleviation of that suffering. There is a rich cross-fertilization of work between the western 12-step process and Buddhist wisdom, The Buddhist Recovery Network being just one of the movements. "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps" by Kevin Griffin is considered a modern classic and treated as an alternative to AA's Big Book. Addiction is the disease of self-hatred. Buddhist psychology seeks to understand the suffering beneath the storm, while orthodox AA models use the western "atonement for sin" plan. Both have their place. Good luck. http://www.buddhistrecovery.org/ http://www.kevingriffin.net/

I just recently got this material from "Self-Esteem: Your Fundamental Power" by Caroline Myss. It's a series of lectures on CD that I checked out of the library and loaded into my Ipod. http://www.amazon.com/Self-Esteem-Fundamental-Power-Caroline-Myss/dp/1591790344/ref=sr_1_18?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1297646275&sr=1-18 Eliminating self-loathing has sort of been a mission of mine this past year, so I've poured over a lot of material, but this woman gets my highest rating. She's also completely familiar with energy work and the psychology of the chakras, so that makes her one of the coolest women alive, in my opinion. Ultimately, she says you cannot meditate or study your way to self-esteem; action, as well as body-centered awareness, is necessary to re-wire the physiology. Looks like there are CDs available for under $8.

Best advice yet, IMHO, but I'd say that personal worthiness is body-based and can most definitely come from working out. Testosterone levels go up most with the Olympic lifts - squats, bench presses, and deadlifts - and deadlifts are mighty effective because they're not too technical, they make you strong as hell, and they contribute to a sense of groundedness that cerebrally straightjacketed people often lack entirely. I would say that my self-knowledge exploded after gaining about 12 pounds (took me three years) but it depended on acquiring personal worthiness first. Let's face it, self-hatred is rampant in our culture, but "self-esteem is the fuel of the Spirit" says Carolyn Myss. No healing can take place without self-esteem.

I sympathize with your wishes regarding the future but I haven't found any reason to share your optimism, so I obviously hope that I am wrong and you are proven right. The old high school biology experiment about the amount of bactaria that can live on a finite amount of agar in the petri dish remains a fairly accurate metaphor for our condition. Obviously, we don't live in an entirely closed system; we do profit from incoming solar radiation and photosynthesis, but the carrying capacity of the earth without cheap oil averages around a 2 billion people, given the most generous estimates of adequate topsoil, fresh water, and favorable climatic conditions (all of which are threatened). James Lovelock estimates that no more than 500 million people will live to see the 22nd century - http://www.uri.edu/artsci/com/Logan/teaching/html/HPR319_fall_2007/docs/lovelock_Rolling%20Stone_10-17-07.htm and when I asked the Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor what he thought of his countryman's assessment, he found it pretty terrifying, but hey, that's a whopping 100 years away, right? If virtually all the world's major insurance companies, the Pentagon, and the IPPC have declared global change and the end of cheap oil points beyond serious dispute then it would appear the most reasonable contingency for the future, social darwinism, is already going according to plan. Global sustainability is a fairy tale with 7+ billion people, but the end of the fossil fuel era, and the collapse of oil-based industrial agriculture will solve the problem with mass starvation. If resource wars don't end up being fought with nuclear weapons it is likely that those who live through the bottleneck will see the beginning of a return to ecological stability, but within a climatic condition that will bring much hotter and drier summers and much more frigid winters. Who will live? That question has already been answered, and careful attention to current global policy yields a pretty straightforward answer without having to resort to conspiracy theories. It is clear that the powers that be are banking on a major depopulation of equatorial and third world regions, mostly through starvation and loss of habitat. Mid latitudes will be subject to intense heat storms, leaving Northern European, Northern American (Canada) and Siberian lands inhabitable, (although it will be interesting to see how Russian powerbrokers react to hundreds of millions of Chinese attempting to occupy Siberia). The southern tip of South America may also make it through the bottleneck. The Haves will maximize their advantages at the expense of the Have-Nots - no surprise there - but there are several things people can do to increase their chances of seeing their families endure into the deep future. In the absence of wealth and power, the most obvious course of action is to prepare. Make yourself into the most useful person you can be and accept that communities will survive, loners won't. I've written in here before about the ancient Taoist village model, based as they were on independence and self-sufficiency. The technological level of the 1850s - think pre-mass production, post-oil - will be the most useful. Food production, medical chi kung, animal husbandry, carpentry, weapons, etc. People might want to familiarize themselves with the eco-village movement, transition towns, and permaculture projects. But as much as my heart yearns for egalitarianism, at least in the sense of social justice, these movements will be occupied by the Smart Ones. There ain't no gettin' around the fact that intelligence and ability is not evenly distributed throughout our species. Beautiful models of green cities full of artists and poets living in harmony with nature presupposes a far more exalted state of human nature than we are capable of any time soon. The literature on starting eco-villages and other forms of small-scale communitarian movements are very clear: members must be selected according to strict criteria of emotional maturity and skill level. Eco-villages for the masses? Ain't gonna happen, not even if an intergalactic super-tanker drops anchor on the moon and starts pumping us free fuel and cheeseburgers. The most likely rebuttal to all of this will be the usual: the carrying capacity of the earth is 20-50-150-200 billion people all living driving advanced, pollution-free Hummers to Black Angus... Peak Oil is a myth... there's more oil off the Atlantic coast of South America than the in all the Middle East... Human beings are infinitely wise and we'll just figure it out after the Superbowl... yadda yadda... That's my take on it anyway. These aren't my ideas. I simply threw them together into a master's thesis, a Buddhist critique of global consumerism. Cheers!

I had myself voluntarily banned about four months ago because I just found the whole TTB experience too dreadful to endure. The intellectual level seemed to have bottomed out and the threads were no longer a battle of wills or intellect but mere exercises in egocentrism. I was ceasing to become a better person for participating, and through my nei kung practice I finally acquired the self-worth to stop wasting my time and concentrate on realizing my life-long goals. I meditated a lot more, wrote a lot more, worked out with my wife, became a better cook, and a better husband. I had myself unbanned today because I feel a need to rescue Buddhism, and mutual causality, from the tortured and unrecognizable carcass they have become (responsible parties will go unmentioned). But a part of me is very wary of getting sucked into the fray. I'm having shoulder joint replacement surgery on Tuesday followed by a plentiful supply of Vicodin, so there's no telling what the hell I may do in here in the weeks to come!

I'm putting it on my reading list.

Any medical professionals with TCM background care to chime in over my lipid panel... before I drop dead? CHOLESTEROL 263 <200 mg/dL TRIGLYCERIDE 278 <150 mg/dL HDL 47 >/=40 mg/dL LDL CALCULATED 160 <100 mg/dL CHOLESTEROL/HDL 5.6 <5.0 5/15/2006 CHOLESTEROL 235 <200 mg/dL TRIGLYCERIDE 137 <150 mg/dL HDL 53 >/=40 mg/dL LDL CALCULATED 155 <100 mg/dL CHOLESTEROL/HDL 4.4 <5.0 11/16/2006 CHOLESTEROL 243 <200 mg/dL TRIGLYCERIDE 148 <150 mg/dL HDL 66 >/=40 mg/dL LDL CALCULATED 147 <100 mg/dL CHOLESTEROL/HDL 3.7 <5.0 5/2/2008 CHOLESTEROL 303 <200 mg/dL TRIGLYCERIDE 137 <150 mg/dL HDL 67 >/=40 mg/dL LDL CALCULATED 209 <100 mg/dL CHOLESTEROL/HDL 4.5 <5.0 8/19/2010