Zhuo Ming-Dao

Its a good thing that Buddhism doesn't have that problem... I would also add that Buddhism also has Consciousness Only, Madyahmaka (Middle Way), Tantra, Pure Land, Hua Yin, Nichiren, Shugendo, and on and on. Each of these has very different interpretations, and sometimes even the core assumptions about the nature of reality and the self and the goals of practice are wildly differing. Sorry for the slightly sarcastic tone of this post. I will do my utmost to abide by these principles at all times. "I agree in full with the above principles and practices of interfaith dialog and promise to apply my best efforts to upholding them whilst ever engaged in interfaith dialog (or in fact any dialog) here on The TaoBums. If at anytime I should fall short of these guidelines I am happy and willing to receive respectful reminders of these principles and practices from other members of The TaoBums."

Binaural beat programs are wonderful and highly effective while you are using them, but it is very easy to develop a dependency on them for achieving altered states of consciousness since they do nothing for building up the kind of discipline that is required to get there normally or to get to even more advanced states. So use them, but just keep that in mind. Eventually you will hit a brick wall and will need to go back to square one to build up your natural access-concentration without the aid. And believe me, it can be disappointing when you have to just sit with nothing happening for several months in basic training, while knowing that a program could shift you into a jhana in a few minutes.

I think that it is excellent that you are bringing up such an important Shugendo text, given all of the discourse that has been going on between the Buddhists and Taoists on this site lately. Shugendo is a Japanese tradition that skillfully blended Vajrayana Buddhism, Onmyoryo (Ying-Yang school techniques), and indigenous practices (which are typically referred to as Shinto) into a single unified and coherent school of thought. They took the best of all of these philosophies and spiritual/energetic technologies to perfect themselves into an immortal, enlightened being in "this very body." The Shugenja (practitioners, also sometime called Yamabushi) would retreat into the mountains and practice intense asceticism, which included fasting, chanting sutras, meditating under waterfalls, energy work/inner alchemy, kuji-kiri and kuji-in, ritual magic, and so forth. Then they would come out of the mountains periodically to help ordinary people through exorcisms, energy healing, ofuda (charms or Fu), spells, and by providing shakipat-style transmissions to others. Also, it is said that they could see the kami (nature spirits) with their spiritual vision and use that knowledge to communicate and otherwise help the villages. At yearly festivals they would come down from the mountain to walk on swords and fire, holding the breath for hours, do katsura (spirit dance), and do other superhuman feats in order to spur the general populous on to support practice. Most of the Shugendo tradition was made up of loners and individualists who were willing to try any technique in order to build spiritual power, help others, and further their own enlightenment. They are the perfect model for us modern Tao Bums. According to their philosophy of honjisuijaku, all of the kami are limited manifestations of the Buddhas (for example, the son goddess Amaterasu is a worldly manifestation of Mahavairocana, but from her more limited perspective, she might not realize this. It was through the syncratism of the Shugenja that Buddhism was able to spread from the elite court officials to the ordinary people of Japan during the late Heian/early Kamakura periods. This Buddhism, though, was equally mixed with feng shui, 5-phase theory, inner alchemy, immortality, chi kung, three worm, yin-yang-style Taoism. Of course, formal Shugendo were utterly wiped out during the Meiji restoration in the 1860s (stupid National Shinto...), but their influence and impact lives on in modern day Japan, and hopefully in our own syncratistic practices. I would love for us to talk about this kind of synthesis of ideas and techniques, in addition to having us think about this particular sutra. Thanks Nameless! Shugendo is one of my favorite topics (I wrote my honors thesis on them in undergrad).

This would be a really great thing to see more of, and I would imagine that it would have great market. I know that I usually go to Chipotle when I need fast food, for this exact reason. It is the only fast, cheap place that I know of that has healthy, high quality food. And this is a resturant that is pulling in some pretty good profits. More options in this vain are a very very good thing. Any way that the healthy option can also be the convenient option means that more people will benefit from it without having to rely on ill-conceived government intervention.

My interpretation has always been that we should sweep with the yi mind from the bubbling spring up into the microcosmic orbit with every breath. After I did this diligently for a for a number of months it would only take one sweep and the chi would automatically start flowing up and in and circulating with each inhalation. This was after I had already spent a few years clearing out my feet, legs, and opening up my microcosmic orbit with deliberate neigong. Also, if you become too mentally or emotionally distracted, the process will continue for a few more breaths before winding down. The longer that you allow it to continue, though, the longer that it will linger after you return to normal activity levels.

Whose definition of healthy food are we planing on using? Do you mean organic? This is actually a very important question, because most healthy food (ESPECIALLY ORGANIC) is completely unsustainable. It is wonderful for groups of people to eat healthy foods, but if you got everyone in the country off of all of the corn and soy food "products," away from food that uses heavy pesticides and petrochemical-based fertilizers, and off of food that uses sophisticated preservatives, we would not be able to support our population in the United States and feed everyone. Your proposal would create mass starvation across the world (the U.S. exports huge amounts of its surplus, which would not exist if even the majority of Americans were eating healthy). We saw this happen when the U.S. decided to start giving tax breaks to farmers who produced ethanol. Those farmers stopped making surplus corn and soy for export, and within a couple of months, hundreds of thousands of people in 1st Nation (3rd world) countries suffered and died of starvation because of it. The truth of the matter is that it takes almost 10 times as much land to produce food organically than in the "normal" way (due to crop rotation and soil nutrients). If everyone in the U.S. ate organic, everyone in the world would suffer, not to mention the fact that food would be so astronomically expensive that the economy would collapse. Then there are just supply and demand problems. Here is an example: The head chef at McDonald's R&D wanted to make a more healthy sandwich that included a slice of avocado. After he submitted his new sandwich, he was informed by his numbers people that if McDonald's launched this burger they would have to buy up the entire world's supply of avocado, leaving none for ANYONE else. We just have too many people in the world and even in the U.S. for absolutely everyone to eat healthy food... If by healthy, you just mean to limit transfats or something small like that, then the implications would not be quite as world ending

I agree that the U.S. could go a very long way towards rectifying its health care just by removing some of the open disdain that the American Medical Association has for traditional approaches to health and health care. Since the AMA's opinions largely drive state and federal policy over what procedures must be done and what a person can or cannot do with themselves, their opinions contribute greatly to the problem. For example, the AMA is strongly opposed to natural childbirth and even normal medical childbirth in which the interventions are limited. If you look at a state like Illinois, where their grip is the strongest, you will find that it is an illegal CRIME to have a home birth that comes with serious fines for the family and jail time for the midwife. I have know people in Illinois who have to temporarily move out of state just to be able to have a birth without such serious, "necessary" interventions from the hospital as internal fetal monitoring (screwing an electronic sensor into the baby's skull) during perfectly normal, rapidly progressing births. Each one of these unnecessary interventions costs huge amounts of money. Also, the U.S.'s c-section rate now accounts for over 33% of childbirths! The World Health Organization has repeatedly shown that no population should have higher than a 12% c-section rate. Doctors in the U.S. regularly perform unnecessary, major surgery merely out of convenience for them and in order to cover their butts for perceived liability reasons. And yet, this problem does not exist in most European countries, where there successful childbirth rates are perfectly comparable to our medical intervention based system. This is just one example, but their are many other potential examples of this kind of financial wastefulness due to the fear and hatred of traditional or holistic methods that exists in the medical world today. I will never understand why seemingly intelligent and highly educated adults (most of the medical establishment) would think that expensive cortisone shots (pain killers) for back troubles for the rest of a person's life are somehow better than using chiropractors, medical massage therapists, physical therapists, or the like to try and correct the problem.

I think that the "opiate of the masses" argument put forth by Marx and Engles was made pretty much worthless after we got a chance to see what communism did with their atheist states. The situation was and is absolutely no better. In fact, I think that it is worse in many ways, since people tend to not have strong sources of hope and they have no basic ethical model to guide their lives. Like it or not, socially proscribed ethics and morality is very important for societies to run smoothly, even if these things can sometimes be restrictive for the spiritually inclined minority. I would personally be terrified to live in a country made up purely of existentialists, even though I love the study of existentialism and personally believe in many of its tenants. I just do not have that much faith in the masses, I guess, to suggest that everyone think that there is no absolute right or wrong. Maybe this is just the high school teacher in me. Totalitarian governments exist plentifully in countries with Christianity, Buddhism, Atheism, and practically any other -ism. Even an (agnostic) democratic state can run into some pretty horrible tyranny of the majority. This is a universal societal problem that every group most fight to counter, no matter what the predominant religion or belief might be.

This is true, but those same Zen practitioners have still listened to hundreds of teisho (formal Dharma talks) from their teachers. I would think that these are the equivalent.

My wife, a medical massage therapist, was just telling me that while carpal tunnel surgery has a 99.9% success rate at first, it falls to an abysmally low percentage after about five years post-op. She said that the nerve typically will get impinged again on other things even after the offending fascia on the wrist has been severed. With that out of the way... what you describe just sounds like good old chi to me. As long as it is not the numb, super prickly sensation that comes with a pinched nerve, I would not worry. Chi can have a variety of intense sensations, especially when you are opening up the flow in a new location, but it rarely feels like a pinched nerve. Also, when you allow your limbs to become paralyzed or stiff through relaxed concentration, the chi sensations can sometimes leap up to unbelievable or even uncomfortable heights and pulse or flow however they want.

Why get the various collections of his words when you can pick up the whole thing http://www.amazon.com/Long-Discourses-Budd...0536&sr=1-1 http://www.amazon.com/Middle-Length-Discou...pd_bxgy_b_img_b Sure, it is a lot more reading than just the super slim Dhamapada, but then you have basically the whole Pali Cannon at hand whenever you need a reference or advice on something specific. Besides, Amazon has an amazing price on the Long Discourses.

I basically agree with everything that you have said. Meditation will not guarantee success and will not by itself give most people enlightenment. But I do think that it is a major component for setting up a situation that increases a persons odds for enlightenment. As they say in Zen, "Enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you accident prone." Most of the people that you listed used meditation as a tool for development prior to their enlightenment. In mean, what do we really think that Jesus was doing alone in the desert for all of that time before returning to spread the good news. I think that meditation plays a role in the enlightenment of most masters (though maybe not all), and because of that, it is often offered as "an important thing to do" in addition to the cultivation of virtuous thoughts and activities (dharma/good works/etc.).

Here are the lines from chapter 8 in Chinese: 居善地心善淵 與善仁言善信 正善治事善能 Each three characters make up one of the sentences that we saw translated into English. So: 居善地 = Residence/reside + is good + earth = When residing, (near/on) the earth is good. 心善淵 = Heart/mind + is good + abyss/depth = When mind-ing, depth is good. 與善仁 = Together + is good + benevolence = When being together, benevolence is good. 言善信 = Speech + is good + truth = When speaking, truthfulness is good. 正善治 = Rectify + is good + order = When rectifying, orderliness is good. 事善能 = Business/affairs + is good + ability/skill When doing business, skillfulness is good. As you can see, the first word in each of the word groups is acting as a verb. Therefore, in the case of 心 xin, or heart-mind, we have to turn the noun into a verb. This also would not be referring to thoughts, as it would have been easier for Lao Tzu to just use the character for thinking then to try to turn heart-mind into a verb. So the question is, what does it mean to "do" your heart or mind in an abyssal or profoundly deep way? Here is the link to the book, The Original Tao: http://www.amazon.com/Original-Tao-Foundat...9059&sr=8-1

While you are, of course, absolutely correct about the lineage of Chan from Mahakashyapa and Bodhidharma, there are still many very strong academic arguments for Taoism as being a prime influence on the development of Chan once it was in China. I recommend taking a look at The Tao of Zen for more information. Basically, though, many of the philosophical concepts that you see in Hui Neng, and even more in Hung Po and Lin Chi (Rinzai), look quite different from the more Indian conceptions that Bodhidharma brought with him. By the time that you look at the Chan that Dogen sees when he is in China during the late Tang dynasty, the tradition has become quite different from its roots (Koans and strange stories of masters, new terminology, shouting and sticks, shock techniques, tearing up sutras, killing the Buddha on the road, and so on). Bodhidharma laid the foundation for these developments, but Chan's interactions with Taoist teachings and practices allowed them to be absorbed and to be created along side of the Taoists.

Japanese Zen is very strict (Rinzai, even more so than Soto). It will force you to sit upright and push yourself long and hard until your mind becomes clear, quiet, and luminous. Zen does not play around with lots of fancy techniques (other than koan training), but causes you to master your concentration and look deeply upon your original face, your innate enlightened nature. But this is difficult. As they say, Zen is not for the curious or the tame of heart. That said, Zen was wonderful for me. For many years I did a lot of Taoist energy work, healing, and martial arts, but in a very undisciplined, haphazard way. I would frequently try different forms of meditation or trance work, but again, I was too scattered. I turned to Zen because I could not force myself to sit for long periods on my meditation pillow and just be with myself. Daily Zen meditation and biweekly time at the local Zen center strengthened my mind and will like nothing else I had ever done (including vipasana retreats and the like). And Zen and Tao work very well together. Although Zen itself might somewhat discourage the alchemical approach, it complements basic energy work and Taoist martial arts beautifully.

I would read the Original Tao, which gives a translation of the Nei Yeh and a commentary on the implications of the text. It is perhaps older then the Tao Te Ching, comes out of the same tradition, and is exclusively on meditation. Also, the Chuang Tzu, the second most important Taoist text and also nearly as old as the Tao Te Ching (or older) mentions both meditation and energy work ("breathing through the heels," "the sage eats chi," and Master Chi of the Souther District, who "staring up at heaven, breathing evenly, in a trance, forgetful of all around him.") Chuang Tzu gives a huge number of explanations of the necessity of meditation for followers of the Way and those who wish to live effortlessly in we-wei. For the Tao Te Ching, how about poem #8 There are plenty more if you look. Also look at #12 Sounds an awful lot like a basic call for meditation, no? I could keep going all day. Sometimes it is just in how you read the poems (since it is not nearly as poetic to break for and start giving meditation instructions directly, when these were probably reserved for students).

I think that you would be very hard pressed to find any overt Shinto influences in Japanese Zen. What you do see in Japan is a further refinement and purification of the Chan tradition to its absolute most essential elements. This austere transformation was influenced greatly by the samurai culture that was simultaneously developing along side of it. And from this interplay, you see the rise of wabi/sabi ideals, tea ceremony, Noh theater, flower arrangement, gardens and bonsai, house design and furniture arrangement, martial art principles (archery, sword play, hand-to-hand), cooking techniques, music, etiquette, and so on. It got to the point where Zen minimalism/essentialism became practically synonymous with Japanese culture.

I understand your point, but your example does not really make sense. Do you think that Chinese speaking children learn the spoken language any differently than English speaking children? Just because their spoken language is framed around syllables and ours around phenoms does not really make all that big of a difference. Are you suggesting that the increased occurrence of homonyms plays a part in cognition or perception? If so, I would like to hear more because that is a linguistic theory I have never heard before. As for written speech, you also do not really see much practical difference. Especially when you consider that most modern Chinese people use simplified characters, which are not really pictographic in the slightest. Even traditional characters stopped being pictographic (except for a few dozen out of ten of thousands of characters) almost 4,000 years ago. Traditional characters are mostly ideographic with a phonetic component, and so they capture nearly the same range of words (minus foreign import words) as any phonetic language. As soon as you move away from pure, primitive pictographic language, you move into the realm of the increasingly abstract and belief based language. Rectifying the Names (Chinese language) so that people could simply and directly say what they mean was actually one of the big things that Confucius argued for over 2,500 years ago... and never achieved. Sorry for the little rant. This is one of my pet peeves. Chinese characters =/= hieroglyphics

Here you go: Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History by John Lagerwey is a heavy, academic, and thoroughly detailed text. Chapter three of this book has more info on the topic of Taoist alters then you will find anywhere else that I know of. And he explains all of how to arrange alters through feng shui, to seal them through ritual, and many other wonderful magical proscriptions and invocations. If you are interested in serious Taoist magic (and not New Age masquerading as Taoism), then you should defiantly pick up this book. http://www.amazon.com/Taoist-Ritual-Chines...7168&sr=8-1

I have always rather liked Watson's translation. He has a good feel for the flow of Chuang Tzu, while still maintaining solid clarity. He sometimes missed the lyrical mode the Chuang Tzu wrote in, though. Jame Legge's pioneering work brought the Chuang Tzu to the west, but it is often often simply lacking. Legge misunderstood a good number of Classical Chinese constructions (particularly when they differed significantly from modern usage). It was necessary to have someone open up the discussion, but there have since been a lot of work in the field of Classical Chinese (and the crazy ways that Chuang Tzu sometimes used it). One of the great things about Legge, though, is that he always includes the Chinese and he walks you through many of his translation decisions. Martin Palmer's work captures a lot more of Chuang Tzu's linguistic idiosyncrasies, his puns, and the strange ways that he switches between poetry and prose in his writings. While I still sometimes prefer the choices that Watson made, Palmer had a slightly different focus and did a pretty great job with it. Plus, Palmer translated everything, while Watson only did the chapters that were most likely to have been written by Chuang Tzu himself. A.C. Graham is a consummate scholar, so his translation is one of the most technically precise available. While is literally accurate, it often misses the mystical implications that the Palmer translation opens up, and it is not quiet as evocative of a read as Watson, Palmer or Meir. Victor Meir has a wonderful translation, which really captured some of the borderline insanity that Chuang Tzu often employs to push his readers outside of their comfort zones. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Meir worked closely with a modern Chinese Taoist and with the classical commentaries when he produced his translation. If you only had one translation and you were using it for your spiritual practice, this would probably be the one I would recommend. These are probably the most common and well know translations, though there are a few others. As with all of the great Taoist writers, Chuang Tzu was a master wordsmith and as such, he is very difficult to translate. Also, he was writing multilayered allegory in a language with countless homonyms and possibilities for word puns, which he made great use of. Reading from a few translations, in addition to looking over the Chinese, is very helpful in any search for deeper penetration of a Taoist text as rich as this.

According to whom? The other chapters were written by a variety of authors centuries after Chuang Tzu, but modern scholarship has given absolutely no reason to doubt that the stories in the Inner Chapters were not transcribed from the words of Chuang Tzu by his direct students or friends. In fact, modern scholarship thinks that it is more likely that the Inner Chapters were the genuine and consistent ideas of a man named Chuang Chu than that the Tao Te Ching was written by a single real man going by the moniker of Lao Tsu. There is no academic or archeological reason to doubt the validity of the Inner Chapters and there is also no real evidence of corruption in the Inner Chapters. Also, I am very curious how you think that the Lao Tsu is clear, while the Chuang Tzu is obtuse. I have always found the exact opposite. But then, Lao Tsu speaks better to people who respond more to poetry, while Chuang Tsu speaks more to people who respond well to prose (and stories). Both are equally cryptic and equally profound. To be honest, the Tao Te Ching did not really do all that much for me the first time I read it, but the Chuang Tsu flipped my neat little world upside-down.

I am so happy that I was convinced to watch this show. I particularly enjoyed Iroh's explanation on how to receive the lightning technique into the dan tien in order to ground it before turning it around on his enemy. I would love to see them make an Air Scroll (extra season or animated movie) to show Ang rebuilding the Air Nation and training new air benders.

Thanks for the advice. I will happily look into this book. When you say "persevere and meditate," is there anything in particular that I should do in addition, like directing chi through my legs while sitting, or should I just keep with my zazen and hope it clears on its own?

I can do the bound lotus comfortably, and I have done it for extended periods of time. For me, it was not hard at all. Some one told me about it after seeing me sitting in the complete butterfly pose (butterfly with both knees flat on the ground, heels to the groin, and head on the ground with back straight). He asked if I could do the bound lotus, explained it to me, and I did it easily. So the question on difficulty really depends on how flexible one already is in their hip joints. All of that said, I have not noticed anything special about sitting in any of these positions, even for hours at a time. Sure, it alters the energy flow, but so do plenty of easier asanas. I use full lotus for 25 minute or shorter zazen sessions, because after doing it for a few years I found that I prefer to save my legs and use the half-lotus when I want to sit for long periods of time. I just got tired of having my legs fall dead asleep during those longer sessions and having to spend so much time waiting for them to come back to life. The bound lotus, I think, is just more of a party favor. It doesn't even give a good stretch really... and if it did, it would probably mean that you are not ready for it because it would be putting too much pressure on your knees. Use the butterfly if you want to build flexibility in the hips. In short, I do not think this made me particularly "strong like iron inside and radiant like the sun outside," but then, maybe there is supposed to be some special energy technique to go along with it that I am missing out on.