Zhuo Ming-Dao

I just read Taoist Yoga recently and having listened to your conversation, I was wondering what your thoughts on out-of-body experiences or astral projections in relation to this topic. Specifically, I practice the methods of Robert Bruce and Robert Monroe to initiate a projection into the six realms. Would you say that what is being generated through this practice is the ghost immortal? And if so, will this practice make it more difficult or impossible for me to later attempt to do alchemy? Any advice would be appreciated. Unfortunately, I do not access to a teacher where I currently live.

Taoism is not a prescriptive religion. It does not tell you that you must eat something or most not eat something else for taboo purposes. Rather, after you go to a tradition Chinese medical doctor (acupuncturist) they can give you dietary advice that will increase your health, your chi, and your lifespan. It is not religious as much as it is just doing what is best for your body. Out of curiosity, why are you interested in Taoism? Your questions sound like you are coming from a very western religious background. Most eastern religions are much more of a blend of philosophy, personal physical and spiritual development, and cultural practice. It is much more based upon personal experience and direct contact with the divine than on faith (unless you are doing bhaki yoga or Pure Land practice ).

As I am sure you would see if you spent some time on these boards, Taoism is a very loose term that means different things to different groups of people throughout Chinese history and today. To philosophical Taoists (and others), there is no god to worship. The Tao is an impersonal force of nature with which we try to align ourselves. No personification or prayer involved. Folk Taoism and certain forms of monastic Taoism accept the existence of spirit beings (immortals, fairies, fox spirits, dragons, ancestor-heroes) or even gods (the Three Pure Ones, Guan Yin). For those who believe in spirit beings, it is akin to wildlife in the forest: most people just try to avoid trouble rather than trying to make friends with the lions, tigers, and bears. Some sects believe in spirit beings but not cosmic gods, some believe in both categories but worship neither. It is a mixed bag. Mostly, if you are looking for who you would pray to in religious Taoism, the answer is largely contingent upon what your problem is. You would not ask the immortal of scribes and academics for protection in a dark alley. Also in Folk Taoism you will see a lot of ancestor worship. So, if you have been burning money for your grandpa' ghost to spend in the afterlife, he might be inclined to help you out with something when you pray to him. And he might also get pissed when you do something that is not in the best interest of the family, in his opinion. Of course, most non-Chinese Taoists do not subscribe to this folk belief, or practice it even if they do believe.

If you have any interest in a Buddhist look at the Dark Night of the Soul phenomena, take a look at Daniel Ingram's free book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha. It may or may not be what you are facing right now, but it is an interesting read on the topic. And his approach is to approach the problem directly through intense insight meditation rather than any form of rationalization, visualization, or otherwise. You observe every moment, sensation and fluctuation of your current state in the moment without any mental interpretation, explanation, or excuse. http://www.interactivebuddha.com/Mastering...e%20Version.pdf Hope this is helpful in your continued explorations.

What are they considering to be animism for this study? How would animism not fit in with traditional Chinese folk beliefs? Are they insinuating shamanism? Because that should also fall under traditional folk beliefs. Such a strange distinction!

My wife is currently about a week overdue with our wonderful, healthy baby. So far we have not seen a huge amount of progress and our doctor is already starting to talk about induction for the near future. We are currently against the idea of pitocin or artificial rupturing of the waters, but are curious to hear others thoughts on the more natural induction methods. We are just waiting now, but if things don't pick up in the next week or so we would rather have some more natural methods than having to do a c-section eventually. So any thoughts or advice is welcome - herbs, energetic practices, pressure points, wives tales, and what-have-you. Even if you are particularly for or against inductions (medical or otherwise) I would love to hear your opinions. Thank you everyone!

Thanks for the advice everyone. My wife was chemically induced last night, due to low fluid, and so I now have a beautiful baby boy.

In Taoist texts, cave are very often represented as being symbolic of the womb. You therefore return to the cave to gestate before being spiritually reborn into the world. You see this symbolism with particular strength in the Japanese Taoist traditions, in which the hermit would cast a long staff into the cave before entering it for extended meditation. Also, there is a strong belief in Taoism and Chinese folk belief that caves represent the passageway between the normal world and the spiritual underworld. There are many fables and poems to that effect in Chinese literature, where a hermit went into a cave and his spirit descended into the other world to visit spiritual beings. Finally, as others were saying, caves very strongly represent the feminine (yin) energy. They are quiet, dark, damp, cold, deep, etc. - all of which are physical manifestations of yin energy. And as we all know, Lao Tzu exhorted us to cultivate the feminine.

Here is a list of charter schools in Louisiana. Charter schools are public, and therefore free, and can sometimes be radically superior to traditional public schools. http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/uploads/3389.pdf My recommendation to you is that you do your homework. Look into the schools near you, see what their graduation rates/state test scores/etc look like and see what their curriculum looks like. Also, charter schools are required to let you see all of the teacher's resumes, so you can get a look at what kind of background the teachers have. Finally, charter schools will almost always let you do tours of the campus and let you sit in on classes. Bring your child to these tours (of several schools that you already would be OK with) and let them help you in the decision making process. Although it is private, a Waldorf school sounds like it would be right up your ally if you are living in the New Orleans area: http://www.waldorfnola.org/

Thanks for pointing this out to me. If they can make this kind of technology cheaply, which measures your ability to hold single pointed concentration, they really should market something to meditators. It could just be a simple readout or a glowing light that changed colors as your concentration deepened. Also, it would need to be much more silent than this current toy. Also, if this thing was made for normal kids, than many of us would cap it out too easily. Very cool!

To get closer to the original, I would translate this as, "I am without a single division of mind; what purpose is there in even a single division of the Dharma?" I chose division, but I prefer the original Chinese "cut." I could not think of a clean way of using the word cut as is, without otherwise altering the exact pattern of the quote. If you don't mind loosing the literal translation, you could say, "My mind is totally uncut, so why would I cut up the Dharma?" Altogether, it is a very cool quote! Here is another Zen quote: "The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time. Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way. Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time." -Dogen Zenji from the essay Being Time (Uji)

I think that you have a fundamental misconception here about the nature of Taoism. Taoism does not equal "the teachings of Lao Tzu." Lao Tzu is not the Buddha or Jesus of Taoism. If he was a real, singular person (which is doubtful) he was still not the founder of some new religion. Taoism is a movement that contains both religious and philosophical elements, of which the Tao Te Ching is one thread in a very complicated tapestry. Granted, it is an early, beautiful thread. But definitely not the earliest (Songs of Chu, Nei Yeh, and several others are older) and not even the most profound (I personally think that Chuang Tzu gets that title). Perhaps you should think of this more like a single book of the bible (maybe Genesis) than like a single, unified holy text with a founder that we can easily point to.

First, make sure that you are not resting your upper leg on your lower ankle. The lower leg should have the foot resting against the upper thigh, not below it. This will cut off circulation pretty quickly. Other than that, you just need to power through it and ignore the asleep sensation. A half hour or even a full hour with your leg asleep will not actually hurt anything. If you are not feeling sharp, shooting pains, then just turn your attention back on your breath (or whatever your focus is). Eventually, things will become more flexible, meridians will clear, and your legs will just stop falling asleep. It took my legs about seven months of daily zazen (with them falling asleep every day at about the 20 minute mark) before they just stopped falling asleep altogether for me. But if you start squirming at this point, you will miss out on a great experience to build will power and to strengthen your chances at achieving access concentration. Just stay still and breath through it. The sensation that your legs are like dead wood is a common one for everyone on this path, even if you are naturally flexible. Edit: Good point CowTao, I missed the lack of reference to a zafu.

They are using the traditional meaning of the word vulger - from the Latin word vulgaris, which means "coming from common, ordinary people." In modern English it is also often used to mean, "coarse, low, or ill-bred," which is where you got the idea that it might mean swear words or something. I think Marblehead is absolutely right to point you to the Confucian perspective to see what he is trying to criticize. Chuang Tzu uses Confucius and Confucian logic very often to act as a foil for his own philosophy. And in that same section, when music is invoked, it is supposed to remind you of Mo Tzu, and it critiques his desire to utterly get rid of music rather than trying to understand the role that music serves. It is very helpful in understanding Chuang Tzu to know some of the other major philosophies that he was responding to. You will also find many references to Yang Tzu's hedonist philosophy and the logicians (such as Kung Sun-Lung) who argued such things as how a white horse is not a horse. Many of these sorts of references will only make sense after you have read a handful of Warring States authors and can get down all of whom had which arguments. Looking back at my post, I realized the irony of my advocating more learning for a passage that advocates unlearning... oh well. Edit: Switched to the correct "coarse."

In China and Japan you are not supposed to give a gift of a clock to someone, because it would decrease their life expectancy. Also, you are not supposed to give four of anything as a gift, because the word for four (shi) is a homophone for the word for death (shi). Because of this, most major hotels or large buildings will not have a fourth floor in the same way that Westerners often do not have a thirteenth floor.

Most of the advice given to you by a Chinese medical doctor might be seen by some as superstitious, particularity those things relating to what you should or should not do or eat during certain seasons. When my wife was in China she would be constantly criticized for preferring cold (or even lukewarm) drinks over warm ones because it would be hard on her system. To an outsider this sort of thing seems like pure superstition, even if it has logical reasoning behind it. Similarly, you could throw all of feng shui into this category.

If you get the opportunity, scholar Victor Meir (who also translated the Chuang Tzu), hosted a great Nova episode on PBS titled Mysterious Mummies of China. It explored this phenomena in Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese ascetics. They found that the big thing that linked all of the mummies that they studied (and x-rayed) was that they were each undergoing some pretty harsh fasting at the time of death, possibly having died of self-induced starvation. Meir theorized that at least one of them was attempting the rainbow body technique (the others were more difficult to be certain about).

It seems that today is a day for such things. My parents also put my old family dog down today. He had cancer that had gone to his brain, causing a neurological spasm this morning that made him fall down the stairs and break his hip. If my parents had chose to continue his life, he would have lived out his last few months in pain, unable to walk, and unable defecate on his own. My parents felt that it was their duty to him, as his guardians, to make this decision for him from a place of compassion, even though it hurt them to do so. For the Buddhist perspective - good deeds (such as not killing) produces good karma, bad deeds (such as killing) produces bad karma; but pure, selfless actions (be it killing or not killing) produce neither good nor bad karma. Meanwhile, you can also generate bad karma while following ahisma. If you spared the dog because you wanted to avoid bad karma for yourself (a selfish motivation) then you would of course generate bad karma. And if you killed the dog because you choose compassion even though it was difficult for you, then you generate good karma. Remember the example set by the Buddha. When he was given bad pork in his bowl, he ate it even though it was meat and even though it would kill him, because he had compassion for the layman who had given it out of kindness.

My abilities to astral project and lucid dream are the direct result of energy work and practice with Robert Bruce's techniques. The friend that I was referring to gained the ability to naturally astral project after a near death experience that he had when he was ten years old. His heart stopped for almost three minutes and he was declared dead, during which time he went done the tunnel to the light and saw Jesus and several angels and a bunch of happy loved ones in a beautiful white place. I highly suspect that he would have seen someone other than Jesus had he been raised in a different culture, but that the general feelings of love and comfort and support would all still have been there. This is a good summation of my thoughts so far, though I am a little hesitant to use the phrase "out there," just because it tends to move the locus of the phenomena away from the observer and I do not know if I am confident enough to do that yet. But there is defiantly something going on.

I am sorry for moving the conversation back a step, but I just wanted to make my position a little more clear. I do not know the truth, and I never claimed in my post or in any other post to know the truth about what is "real" and what is illusory. I do not even have enough evidence to convince me beyond any doubt about the objective existence of waking reality (at least as I currently perceive it). I think that exploring the boarders between states of consciousness is a fascinating study that everyone would benefit from exploring. I will follow up on my previous post somewhat: I regularly do astral projection/OBEs and lucid dreams and in my explorations I have traveled to many heavenly realms. I have never experienced a hell like realm before, but then I have never actively perused such an experience. A very good friend of mine previously did a good deal of astral projection as well, but he recently stopped after he found that every time he left his body he would be in a hellish place filled with fighting, where he would constantly be chased by monstrous creatures. At the time, he had been spending a lot of time in the hospital battling sickle-cell. In this case, I think that is is obvious that his mental state was directly influencing the material that he experienced when astral projecting. You could say that his mind was generating these images in the same way that it generates dreams or you could say that he was experiencing some aspect of the collective unconscious, or you could just say that he was flying around outside of his body in another dimension. I do not know the answer personally, but I think that it is very important to explore and to see these relationships between mental state and what is experienced. In the case of entities, I have woken to robed praying mantis men waving their hands over my body and many other strange experiences, both waking and asleep. I am not denying these experiences at all. But I also think that even with these, your unconscious mental state plays a role in what you experience, how you interpret those experiences, and maybe even in what is drawn to you (if you think that the entities are discretely separate, independent beings). Even a negative entity that is attacking a child, I suspect is drawn in and empowered by the mental conditions in the child's surroundings. I do not say this to blame the parents for not being so highly enlightened as to purge the sounding area of any possible negative atmospheres, as that would be a totally ridiculous expectation. I hope that this helps to somewhat clear up my rather unclear position on the matter. In the end of the day, I think that I believe in the existence of such things, but that I think that ones subjective experience influences their surroundings so profoundly that there are few experiences of this nature that we could agree are purely objective.

Granted. Now onions taste like chocolate. Unfortunately, their texture and pungency have remained unchanged. So now, because of the cheap supply, women eat unions during their period and men the world over have to deal with extra tears in addition to their regular fluctuating hormones. I wish my students would be more well behaved in class.

I would like to end the derailment of this fascinating tread by posting something on topic... I don't think that we even have to go so far as to bring entities into the discussion. Lets just talk about dreams for a moment. If something in your attitude or daily life is causing stress or pressure on you, this will often manifest in the form of nightmares or even night terrors. Your normal mental attitude has a direct effect on the images that your mind conjures up at night and forces you to struggle through. This category might even include dreams where you are having to do some unpleasant or repetitive or uncomfortable task. Again, you are creating this unpleasant or even torturous reality for yourself and making yourself live in when you just want to be resting peacefully. But because you have not cultivated a peaceful mind or body, you are incapable of producing that reality reliably in your dreams. This is truly a dilemma, since having nightmare filled dreams will inevitably lead to a more stressful and unpleasant daily life. If you are happy, pleasant, carefree and positive throughout the day, you are then more likely to have sweet dreams that reflect that state. And if your mind is quiet, clear, simple and still throughout the day, you can cultivate a situation where the dreamless sleep that Chuang Tzu spoke of is possible. Without all of the chatter and stress and worry and even ambition to occupy your mind at night, it too can become still, leading to more stillness and calm in your daily life. So without even invoking an afterlife we can already see a heaven, hell, and nirvana manifesting themselves for you every night. You have almost no choice but to be lead along into these different worlds based on the karma that you created in your waking life and reinforced again and again in your dreams. Even if you do not believe in an afterlife, it is hard to deny hell. And the experiences that many people gave of travel in the astral planes or entity attacks in the liminal states are just extensions of the above mechanism. They are subjective, so they may or may not have any ultimate reality, but they do testify to this basic principle of how we reap what we mentally sow.