Encephalon

Greetings, Mr. Compton - Now you've done it. You've given a couple dozen of us yet another frenzied opportunity to indulge in the competitive practice of giving the Taoist lowdown to newcomers. You're about to get a great deal of advice. My advice will be best. Everyone else's will be inferior. Just kidding. Like you, I know vastly more about the Judeo-Christian tradition than I know about Taoism, but clearing up the Big Differences is really helpful. goes a long way. As you know, our western tradition demonized our physical selves; Spirit good, body bad. Heaven for souls, Hell for the sins of the flesh. There are many interesting reasons for this that we needn't get into here, but suffice it to say that the ancient Chinese of the Yellow River Valley did not make that fateful split between body and soul. Taoists embrace the physical and realize that a healthy mental and spiritual life begins with the body, not by taking shortcuts around it. (Obviously, there are Christians who exercise; we're talking about seeking your salvation via the body, not by marginalizing it.) Aside from the issue of Heavy Spiritual Matters, the question of which physical practice to begin is just as contentious amongst us all. You've actually joined up at a good time, for their has been a robust discussion of specific practices best suited for beginners. Bindo and I both practice Chu Nei Kung - www.neikungla.com - and I would heartily encourage you to explore the information for a few good reasons: It's much simpler than Tai Chi, even simpler than other Chi Kung practices. It lies at the root of the Chinese energy arts, be they medical, spiritual or martial. It can be practiced in Omaha with a minimum of instruction, but I bet this guy is qualified to check your basic postures, and he's right in town. - http://www.pinpointmedicine.com/ I can feel the wind of esoteric and philosophical advice already beginning to blow, but let me just conclude with the bottom line - There's nothing mysterious about Chi kung practice, at least in the beginning (plenty of opportunity for heavy experiences as you progress. It's really about using breath, postures, and movements to shut off your "Fight or Flight" hormonal condition and turn on the "Rest and Digest" mode. Your blood chemistry will literally begin to change, your stress will be reduced dramatically, and your immune system will shoot through the roof. Soon you'll be able to get so relaxed that you'll start sensing energy moving throughout your body. With Nei Kung practice you'll be able to manipulate that energy at will. Then the cool stuff kicks in, which is just where I am now at three consistent years of practice. Please watch the video below (it's not me) for a pretty good explanation of the most basic posture. Scholar/Warrior by Deng Ming-Dao, Opening the Energy Gates of the Body by Bruce Frantzis, The Complete Book of Chinese Health and Healing by Daniel Reid, and the aforementioned 365 Tao by Deng Ming-Dao are all great resources. If your sales manager told you to give a ten minute speech to your co-workers on Chi Kung and Chinese Medicine in a way that they could understand, I'd definitely go with Reid, only because he's a westerner and a really fine writer. Best of luck. Oh, Seeker is right. Ya gotta grab the bull by the horns and get the sugar out of the diet (that's another ongoing discussion we're having in here). My guess is you're a red meat eater, which ain't too horrible, but it means that your system is very acidic, like most westerners who eat steak and donuts. So you'll want to alkalize your system by getting on a first name basis with home-brewed green tea. Oh, lord.... I can't stop.... so much to say....

I've been interested in food politics since well before college but studying the subject matter through the lens of Taoism has made the global even more personal. I've witnessed a lot of wisdom in here on the subject. I'm on Day 7 without sugar. Seems like the quality of one's spiritual progress can ultimately depend on how much sucrose is pumping through your bloodstream. And in the case of this article, how much estrogen and Bovine Growth Hormone. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/female-infants-growing-br_b_676402.html People are very upset about this, and with good reason. Female infants in China who have been fed formula have been growing breasts. According to the official Chinese Daily newspaper, medical tests performed on the babies found levels of estrogens circulating in their bloodstreams that are as high as those found in most adult women. These babies are between four and 15 months old. And the evidence is overwhelming that the milk formula they have been fed is responsible. Synutra, the company that makes the baby formula consumed by these babies, says it's not their fault. They insist that "no man-made hormones or any illegal substances were added during the production of the milk powder." Then what is the source of the hormones? A Chinese dairy association says the hormones could have entered the food chain when farmers reared the cows. "Since a regulation forbidding the use of hormones to cultivate livestock has yet to be drawn up in China," says Wang Dingmian, the former chairman of the dairy association in the southern province of Guangdo, "it would be lying to say nobody uses it." Bovine growth hormones are used in China, as they are in the U.S., to promote greater milk production. An extraordinary number of food products sold in the U.S. today come from China. Could some of this tainted formula be making its way to the U.S.? There is currently no way for consumers to know whether infant formula they might purchase has been made with milk products from China. If this problem appears in the U.S., who will be held responsible? The retailers? The importers? The Chinese producers? Will anyone be called to account? As I describe in my books The Food Revolution and Diet For a New America, and on my website, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. In the 1980s, doctors in Puerto Rico began encountering cases of precocious puberty. There were four-year-old girls with fully developed breasts. There were three-year old girls with pubic hair and vaginal bleeding. There were one-year-old girls who had not yet begun to walk but whose breasts were growing. And it wasn't just the females. Young boys were also affected. Many had to have surgery to deal with breasts that had become grossly swollen. Writing a few years later in the Journal of the Puerto Rico Medical Association, Dr. Carmen A. Saenz explained the cause. "It was clearly observed in 97 percent of the cases that the appearance of abnormal breast tissue was...related to local whole milk in the infants." The problem was traced, and found to stem from the misuse of hormones in dairy cows. When Dr. Saenz was asked how she could be certain the babies and children were contaminated with hormones from milk rather than from some other source, she replied simply: "When we take our young patients off... fresh milk, their symptoms usually regress." Along with China, the U.S. is today one of the few countries in the world that still allows bovine growth hormones to be injected into dairy cows. Though banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and most of Europe, the use of these hormones in U.S. dairy is not only legal, it's routine in all 50 states. The U.S. dairy industry assures us that this is not a problem. But there is a very real problem, and its name is Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1). Monsanto's own studies, as well as those of Eli Lilly & Co., have found a 10-fold increase in IGF-1 levels in the milk of cows who have been injected with bovine growth hormone (BGH). Why is that a problem? A report by the European Commission's authoritative international 16-member scientific committee not only confirmed that excessive levels of IGF-1 are always found in the milk of cows injected with BGH. It also concluded that excess levels of IGF-1 pose serious risks of breast, colon and prostate cancer. How serious is the increased risk? According to an article in the May 9, 1998 issue of the medical journal The Lancet, women with even a relatively small increase in blood levels of IGF-1 are up to seven times more likely to develop breast cancer than women with lower levels. IGF-1 that is consumed by human beings in dairy products is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. It isn't destroyed by human digestion. And pasteurization is no help. In fact, the pasteurization process actually increases IGF-1 levels in milk. What's a consumer to do? If at all possible, breast-feed your babies, and support breast-feeding friendly workplaces and other environments. It's hard to overstate the health advantages of breast-feeding for both mother and baby. They are enormous, and particularly so today, when the possibility exists that commercially available infant formula could be contaminated with excess hormones. If you are going to buy dairy products, try to get them from organic sources. Organic milk products by law can't be produced with bovine growth hormone (BGH). Or look for dairy products that specifically say they are produced without BGH (also called recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST). Starbucks only uses dairy products that have not been produced with the hormone. Ben & Jerry's ice cream likewise uses only milk and cream from dairy farms that have pledged not to use BGH. If you're going to eat cheese, remember that American-made cheeses are likely to be contaminated with BGH and excess levels of IGF-1 unless they're organic or labeled BGH-free. Most cheeses that are imported from Europe are safe, though, since much of Europe has banned the hormone. Have you ever wondered why dairy products made from cows injected with the hormone aren't labeled? It's because Monsanto, the manufacturer of BGH, has aggressively and successfully lobbied state governments to make sure that no legislation is passed that would require such labeling. As if that wasn't enough, Monsanto has also insistently sought to make it illegal for dairy products that are BGH-free to say so on their labels. How does Monsanto justify such a ban? They say that allowing retailers to tell consumers that a dairy product is BGH-free shouldn't be allowed, even if it's true, because it unfairly stigmatizes BGH. Monsanto acts as though accurately labeling products would make them the victim of some irrational cultural bias. But the company's products are, in fact, responsible for untold damage to human health. My compassion is not for Monsanto. My heart goes out to the babies in China and their families, to the children in Puerto Rico and their families, and to the millions of others who have been or will be adversely affected by the abuse of hormones in dairy production

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You're confusing me with the renowned planetary ecologist James Lovelock, who made his prognosis in "Revenge of Gaia." I understand. People regularly confuse me with celebrities, heads of state, scientists, and Taoist sages.

Ooops

So true. I've always believed that the misfortunes suffered by men vastly outweigh those suffered by women. After all, they're just chicks. Femalecentrism = the new fascism!

Maybe we could blame Calvin?

Since you've exemplified yourself in this forum as someone who values reason and skepticism, I'll just leave you with this. I've pretty much hunkered down in the eco-psychology/Paticca Samupadda/Santiago Theory of Cognition camp and feel like I could spend the rest of my life opening up to the ecological realities before any heavy spiritual stuff kicked in. http://combusem.com/CAPRA4.HTM Yeah, okay. I saw Avatar too.

I would think a trained psychologist still has a formal means of evaluating the progress of his clients. Even the metaphor of a portal connotes a purposeful trajectory. I wouldn't disagree with the value of immersion in esoterica, but for people just starting out, or, in the case of many Americans, those who have serious emotional issues, speaking to their own paradigm and native tongue plays a critical role in the beginning.

Danielle Steele and crack cocaine.

This is a keeper. I'll be sharing it with several people. Sure to ruffle some feathers of the goal-intentioned. My favorite passage is here - "Whatever the level of aspiration, the intent (of qigong)is to add something that is missing. Yet, the central tenet of Taoism warns us that this is an illusion. How can we become that which in our essential nature we already are?" My personal Nei Kung experience and my earlier orientation toward the practice probably embodied some of this sentiment, but I now perceive it (accurately, I think) as a process of refining my own natural talents and abilities, while witnessing my self-defeating habits and thoughtforms slowly sloughing off. (This could be due in part to the general lowering of stress that a steady practice supports). I perceive continued progress as a means to more refined heights of empowerment, not as a means of acquiring a skill that is apart from my own nature. I also think that articles like these are vital for westerners. I am reminded of a point made by Michael Fordham - "Psychology on the one hand and religion on the other use two means of approach to a common subject-matter... We need to realize that psychology leads us sooner or later to religious experience, while religion can only brought home tot he individual through essential psychological facts." I think this might be a tad more applicable to westerners, and I would substitute Fordham's use of the word 'religion' for 'spirituality' and still find it pertinent.

This is Day 5 without sugar. I would have to go back a decade to my fasting days at the Hot Springs to find a similar personal victory. I must say, I never had to struggle with the "One Day at a Time" phenomenon when I quit drinking, stopped doing drugs, or gave up cigarettes. I was lucky enough to have family members involved in the alchohol rehab business so I had a pretty soft landing. But sugar has been an entire different ordeal altogether. I was able to market myself as a personal trainer in LA a few years ago because I worked out at the gym for 4 hours a day (under the influence of ephedra, Red Bulls, and reefer) and didn't have to control my carb intake to get lean. My my... what a difference four years can make. Since it no longer makes sense to lift heavy, I'm taking the dietary route to getting cut once again. When I'm 130 and 9% bodyfat I look like I'm 145. When I'm 150 @ 18% bodyfat I look a slightly pregnant pig; not a powerful marketing tool for a PT business in LA. Like marijuana, sugar sits atop an American cultural faultline. There are those corporate and industrial elements in our society that believe that there should be no limit to the amount of sugar that is introduced into the American food supply. My personal experience tells me that every life goal I have for my second 50-year stretch depends on a pristine diet that categorically denies every component of the American diet. Wrestling with the political ramifications of all this has been a fun study, but actually having to modify my diet the way I have been instructing my clients for so long has been a real eye-opener. Anyway, Super Colon Cleanse, a ton of water, and two large sprouting jars of lentils going full time has been a lot of help. But this whole ordeal is nothing less than a vast commitment to training of the Will.

http://brucemctague.com/smartwater-and-vitaminwater-advertising Have you seen these ads for the sugar water? To my horror, I actually discovered that my wife was buying this crap for her 13 yr-old.

Can any fellow Taoists come up with a more enlightened respone to this event? Just another example of trigger-happy jackbooters (in my pissed off, not-so-humble opinion). Anne Arundel County police, facing public criticism, announced Wednesday that there will be a full investigation into the killing of a Siberian husky in a Severn dog park by an off-duty federal police officer. When news of Bear-Bear's death first became public, a police spokesperson said that the matter was closed and that investigators found no evidence of criminal activity. The county's top cop called the matter "a priority" Wednesday, and County Executive John R. Leopold says he was "outraged" and "deeply troubled" to learn about the shooting. Leopold says he contacted Chief of Police James Teare on Wednesday morning and demanded an investigation. "This investigation is far from complete," Teare said Wednesday afternoon. "The Police Department takes this very seriously and will continue to investigate all aspects of the case." Since news of the shooting broke, people from across the country, many with dogs of their own, have flooded online forums and showered officials with complaints. Television stations all but camped outside the home of Bear-Bear's owners, Ryan and Rachel Rettaliata. Animal advocates created Facebook protest pages with names like "Justice for Bear-Bear," while others started legal defense funds for the Rettaliatas and sought help from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A federal police officer, who's 32 and works at Fort Myer in Virginia, shot Bear-Bear, a 3-year-old Siberian husky, Monday evening at the Quail Run community dog park, which is in a residential area. Bear-Bear was playing off-leash in the fenced-in park when the officer arrived with his wife and leashed German shepherd named Asia. The husky's owner and the federal police officer have offered differing accounts of what happened next the officer told police that the husky tried to bite him and his dog, but Bear-Bear's owner says the dogs were playing. The officer pulled a gun and shot the brown-and-white husky, who died from his injuries a few hours later. Neither the officer nor his wife reported any injuries to Asia, according to police accounts. Teare said the story of Bear-Bear's death "hit home for a lot of people" and prompted his department to reverse its position on the case. He said he now had numerous questions about the shooting, including whether the officer was legally allowed to carry a firearm, whether the gun was discharged in an appropriate and lawful manner and why the weapon was used at all. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-08-04/news/bs-md-ar-dog-shooting-20100804_1_dog-park-bear-fenced-in-park

You won't get any argument from me on the devastation of authoritarian regimes masquerading as champions of the proletariat. I'm not sure by what margin global capitalism exceeds the moral leverage of collectivist experiments, but I do know that the 3.0+ billion who subsist on no more than $2/day do not support the triumphalism of laissez-faire. 85% of the people in S. America would've considered Eastern Bloc collectivism a significant increase over cardboard houses and meals culled from urban refuse piles.

Sorry, but you've been out to lunch with your political ideas for quite a while now. Assigning the same definition to communism, socialism and fascism fails to acknowldege the simplest conclusions we can all draw about the contemporary political spectrum and how and where theories are plotted. And I've heard and seen the "National Socialist German Workers' Party" reference dragged out by more right-wing wingnuts that I could shake a stick at. The Nazis structured their title as a shrewd but ultimately transparent attempt to patronize and deflect criticism from the left-leaning German working class. Hitler killed all of the socialists and communists very early in his campaign and followed through with every anti-labor crusade the corporate class asked for. It's astonishing how simple historical facts can escape seemingly intelligent people living in a relatively open information universe. But I think more specifically, it is a testament of the Right's ability to cast all "isms" of political thought (except capitalism, of course) in a perjorative light and cause these essential truths to disappear from the public conscience in a single generation.

Bless you. Situational awareness, without and within.

Oh JFC, it gets even better!! Have you heard about Coca-Cola's new problems with VitaminWater? They're being sued because they spend millions on an ad campaign touting the health benefits of the product, and now in court, the nutritive properties of VitaminWater have actually changed. They now argue that the suit should be thrown. "At oral argument defendants suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage or was composed only of vitamins and water because the sweet taste of vitaminwater puts consumers on notice that the product contains sugar." In other words, Coca-Cola's lawyers told the court vitaminwater drinkers are stupid if they actually believe Coca-Cola's health claims about vitaminwater. Full article here http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2010/08/05/vitaminwater-is-healthy-except-in-court

How dare you even bring up this subject. You've created an unprecedented risk for a slippery slope. The moment you begin to even question the wisdom of impugning American culture, the most privileged in human history, you invite criticisms that could disrupt the entire natural order. It is our birthright to consume resources above and beyond our survival needs at the expense of other cultures for it is only by sheer priviledge, comfort and natural advantage that we acquire the elbow room to give birth to loftier ambitions. Sure, a few forests get scorched off the face of the earth, but you can't build mountains without a few volcanoes. I trust you will be more restrained in your unfounded criticisms in the future and practice the obedience that is expected of you.

I guess I'm ultimately responsible for intellectual level of this thread, since I'm the one who posted it. I was most curious about how people, ostensibly modern warriors with some semblance of martial training, internal energy, and a well-developed reverence for life and non-violence could imagine alternative scenarios, given that fact that American culture is becoming more violent and trigger-happy. The onslaught of emotionalism, stream of consciousness writing, false generalizations, irrelevent comparisons... We all have our reasons for continuing to participate in this forum. I frequently question my own.

I mourn the obscenity of industrial meat production but I still find room in my heart to mourn the loss of the dog's life. I know I would be crushed if it happened to my animal, but my intention for this post was to solicit feedback on how others would have responded if they were in the off-duty officer's situation. Every day in America we are treated to another story about policemen being put on administrative leave for hasty shootings or unwarranted tasings of children and even the elderly. I have cops in both sides of my family, but many cops are the bullies we knew in high school who just wanted to go on in life throwing their belligerence around. And what's really frightening is how this has become the "new normal" with some uncomfortable parallels to the Wiemar Republic.

Greetings - We are in accord on a number of issues that really matter, and Buddhist metaphysics is not a subject that matters to me, nor did it matter much to the Buddha. I have read your counter-arguments and I sympathize with your sentiments, although I would encourage you to at least take a peek at the agnostic Buddhist movement and some of the writer/scholar/practitioners who inform it. Stephen Batchelor started a firestorm with "Buddhism Without Beliefs," sort of primer on agnostic Buddhism that really explicates early Buddhism minus the trappings that accreted centuries later. His latest, "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist" I haven't read yet, and it doesn't excite me as much, simply because I feel that agnosticism is the most cognitively hygienic. "Money Sex War Karma" by David Loy is right up your alley, and although he's an ordained zen priest, his work is deeply steeped in the western humanistic tradition and resonates very well with Buddhist psychology, modern psychology, and the postmodern realization. I share your frustration but there is a deeply rational side to Buddhist psychology that possesses a powerful diagnostic. I think you'd be pleasantly surprised. There are many of us "Buddhists" who don't even recognize it as a religion, more as a philosophy of mind. All the best.

I'd describe it as hopeless, but not serious.

Okay... now that's a stretch. Vajrahridaya, we're back to the same cognitive stalemate that existed over a year ago. I thought we shared some resonance over the subjects of dependent co-arising (paticca samuppada), general systems theory and cognitive science, and I heartily encourage you to move back to our old stomping grounds of Bezerkeley, rich with friendly Buddhists and the UC Berkeley Cognitive Science Dept. and start grinding out your formal ed. Your practice of indulging in self-referential truths while deflecting independent corroboration is still in evidence. It would be disturbing indeed if you were to acquire a genuine proficiency with your chosen material but lost the ability to be taken seriously by your peers because of a fundamental error in "closed-loop reasoning." Your experiental studies/practice will bring a great deal of maturity to your academic career, while your formal college studies will render your spiritual universe with an even sturdier integrity. Best wishes. (PS - rents may be cheaper in Pleasant Hill, and DVC is a great campus to crank out lower div. stuff.)