Easy

When I read Derek Lin's translation/interpretation I can see how he arrives at a contemplative based self-refinement take on the chapter. It sheds some light on the two contrasting perspective I wrote of in my first comment. On the other hand, a reading of Cleary's translation prompts me to see it through the lens colored by Taoism's foundation in a shamanic, nature-based ontology. The line "Returning to the root is called stillness; stillness is called return to Life..." is particularly to the point when the "root" is seen as rhizomatic or a type of clonal colony in which the source of the life lies, for example, in a single organism that is 80,000 years old. Carl Jung wrote that instead of being a deterioration the movement from middle age into old age is a "return to the rhizome." Likewise, I think you can see that the theorizing of Gilles Deleuse and Felix Guattari regarding the rhizome as a philosophical and sociological metaphor contains distinct parallels with aspects of Taoist philosophy. I am certainly no scholar of the ttc, but I think it is clear that the book did not rise sui generis from the poet's mind but is a compilation of wisdom from a variety of authors who had differing vocabularies for similar concepts. The "this is that is this is that..." device is found in other texts of the time as well. I have two guesses as to its use: 1) The authors who use the device are trying to achieve a teaching glossary that unites a variety of metaphors and alchemical codes into a single image. 2) A reverse process where the author laid out a sequential list of single-term concepts from other sources like a paper chase. I think this guess applies more to chapter 16, keeping in mind that the ttc was not written for the layman (because laymen in those days could not read) but for adepts who were expected to be fairly well versed with the topic and should be able to recognize that "that" was from such-and-such a source and this "this" was from another. It is not a whole lot different than how academicians write today. Now down to the last two lines. Anyone who has tried to eliminate an aspen knows that it can be a pretty futile task...it keeps coming back up even when the trunk is dead. The fact that the source of life is in the root (rhizome) and it continues even past the appearance of physical death might have made the root a great metaphor for The Process.

Twinner writes: Twinner, Hey, Slick, Buddhism is metaphysical, the Taliban dogma is metaphysical, the Snake Handlers are handling snakes on the assumption of metaphysical protection. Can you prove to me that at its base metaphysics is anything more than superstition? Superstitious people come in all colors and sizes and varieties but those differences count for nothing when one asks "metaphysics...yea or nay?" And I say nay...the world no longer needs those kinds of weak-minded subordinates. I set up that post to draw someone in who did not see the overarching connection between all three superstitions. You know it was like one of those tests that determines the level of intellectual development. From my perspective the aggregation of the three is not a stretch and it certainly is not absurd nor unrealistic. The question you charged in to answer so as to look grand and to help convince your mother to stop dressing you up in those Tweedlydum/Tweedlydee pinafores was kind of a sucker bet to take this conversation to a more intelligent level. Hey, Slick, I'd give unequivocal thanks for your participation here and maybe look through my recycle bin for a consolation prize, but you did not answer the question that truly holds my interest: "If I admonished you for letting your mother dress you in silly clothes, would that mean your mother dressed me all silly-like too? I want to see how you figured all this out, not just your answers." Could you get back to us on that one? You can take your time. And then Kate, in a charming, wry and deftly written post, asks: "More importantly, can anything be done to reverse this process?" Yes, Kate. All you have to do is invent a perpetual motion machine and we will all live forever.

Hey, I have a couple of thoughts here by way of replies: 1) Kate seemed to have a problem with my humans as cancer statement. If you look at it from the earth's POV, there is a unique form of life that is expanding and consuming its host's resources and the living environment around it in an unchecked and unbalanced surge of growth that threatens the existence of all asap and eventually itself. If this were happening in a human body that form of life would be called malignant. That is not a scientific perspective, but one from an old artist who doesn't think any more highly of scientism than religionism. Both of those perspectives, as far as I have experience in almost 70 years, are little more than pastimes by which their practitioners entertain themselves between feedings. (This morning I awoke beside this beautiful woman who murmured..."I've been meditating, repeating over and over: Everything is vanity. Everything is vanity. Everything is vanity...." She is as wise as beautiful.) 2) And then comes Aaron Twinner and he sez that I am admonishing someone for being an absolutist in a particular post and while I have combed through my post to which he refers at least four time I cannot find anywhere a place where I admonished anyone except for the gentle nudge I gave ralis for not knowing about Open System Thermodynamics. Twinner, old slick, are you doing a bit of projection here? Can you point to the chapter and verse? Are you reading more, assuming more, as a way of levering in you comment? I don't know what is going on here. Hey, Aaron, are you thinking about another post I put up? In the meantime would you say that one who admonishes another for being a fascist is therefore a fascist? Would the Democrat who admonishes his neighbor for being a Republican become a Republican by so doing? If I admonished you for letting your mother dress you in silly clothes, would that mean your mother dressed me all silly-like too? I want to see how you figured all this out, slick, not just your answers.

No, I'm a polymath artist and private investigator. There is a good book on the issue called Into the Cool. If you have sufficient non-deficit attention you can read more here on my blog. What I am wondering is why engage in any argument with the Buddhists or the Taliban or the Tennessee Snake Handling Christian fundamentalists for that matter? It is just all the same absolutist pie in the sky snake oil bait for weak egos to control. Buddhists or Taliban...birds of a feather on the Rockwell Scale. Second rate stuff that need not dirty one's hands, mind or spirit.

Ralis, I really hate to interject a little incidental reality into this profound and oh-so-mature discussion, but as far as this totally incidental conglomeration of probably cancerous cells called the Human Race is concerned, the universe is an open system and there is such a thing as Open System Thermodynamics.In the early 1940s Erwin Schrodinger proposed (in a series of lectures that he gave in Dublin, and which in 1944 were compiled into a book entitled What Is Life) that life itself existed and was advanced through the absorption but also perpetuation, of "free entropy" from the surrounding environment. This was not just insignificant theorizing in as much as the entire theory hinged on the assumption there was a self-replicating aspect of all living cells. This assumption led directly to the discovery of DNA. Most open system systems are self-organizing (like hurricanes) and to some extent the human body, and will engender and re-engender themselves back into the living environment as free entropy long after (to human sensibilities) they are viable entities. Perhaps in time (50-60 billion years) the free entropy in this incidental quadrant of the universe will dissipate and the surround will collapse into some rendition of a closed system and die off, but what will that matter to you or I or any Buddhist or Taoist or Christian or Jew or Muslim or Hindu who are still lurking in the cosmic weeds and claiming to be the supreme poobah in the spiritual food chain. Yum! And then there is this post about an aversion to Buddhism and I have to wonder why anyone would give a rat's ass either way. On a Rockwell Scale I generally find Buddhism to be about the same hardness as the United Methodists...boring...while the Reformed Lutherans seem to be marginally more interesting.

Hey, I can understand that. But if you look closely enough you will see there is no beginning and no end and no frontier between what is the fantasy of rising and the fantasy of falling. Hohoho.

Hey, Some thoughts on Chapter 15: 1) The first line has always bothered me a little because of the reference to the sages of antiquity and the fact they are described in the past tense. Mercia Eliade, an excellent scholar, coined a phrase for this perspective: "nostalgia for paradice," a sort of romantic illusion that there was a legendary time when people were wiser and magic was afoot. It makes me wonder if the author or authors of the TTC and all the translators and interpreters since were wise in their decision to bring that illusion forward. For me the first line contains a major flaw in "production values" because it causes me to stop immediately and challenge the image as a counterproductive fantasy. The author/interpreter loses credibility for the entirety of the chapter even though there is wisdom throughout. But that might be a minor and purely personal point, perhaps I am being too exacting. 2) Re: "Meek" and "Timid" equaling the state of "Egoless." This is certainly not the time or place for this debate but elsewhere I will contest the lionization of egolessness every time. For example, although he is a romantic legend, I see Zhongli Quan as first among immortals and he was not an egoless sage. If egolessness is a paramount quality than the traditional portrayal of Zhongli constitutes a fundamental inconsistency in the primary canon. 3) It appears in the versions of Marblehead's opening post and elsewhere that the most difficult part of the chapter to translate is the last two lines. By putting the variations intuitively into a much broader context, I would guess that the Henricks translation comes very close to a valuable contemporary meaning: 15. The one who preserved this Way does not desire to be full; 16. Therefore he can wear out with no need to be renewed. But it is bettered by the Thomas Cleary translation that is found here: 15.5 Those who preserve this Way do not want fullness. Just because of not wanting fullness, it is possible to use to the full and not make anew. I put that forward as a guess because it seems to describe in properly veiled poetic style the importance of the cyclically balanced cultivation of qi. 4. Manitou wrote--I think the concept of meekness goes to humility. This is true but I am not sure these are the qualities that one would want in a sage. It is my experience that humility is acquired conditioning just as much as arrogance. A balance is more in order. I would guess that a judicious and circumspect application of neutrality, or either one or the other depending on the circumstance would be a sagacious model above a simple dialectical negation of both into total lack of affect. 5. Having just checked into this subforum and having just read the pinned Please Read page, the part that said the discussions of the TTC's day to day application was just as welcome as hermeneutics on the text is still fresh in my mind. In that light I want to say that Chapter 15 reminds me of what I once wrote concerning contemporary sages I have known. It was quite brief, almost an aside to a blog post on a different topic: "I have found in a few rather rare instances people whose autonomy of mind is as well developed as their level of self-awareness. They seem not to have any need for belief. They seem whole in both heart and mind. Next to their qualities, belief appears to bespeak a failure of self-reliance, a failure of will." Later I was asked to expand on those four sentences and that essay can be found here. (It is a little lengthy so those afflicted with the common syndrome of Internet AADD need not attempt it.)

Hey, I think 3bob is on to something and, yes, thanks Gerard for posting a possibility for a little self-examination through discerning what one projects upon the photos. When I was an 18-year-old university student I was asked what I wanted to be when I got out in the "real" world and without thinking I said, "A wise old man." I was talking about the wisdom derived from the cult of experience not the cult of transcendence. And that was the quality I projected onto the third photo. I saw some compassion in the man's eyes and a little bit of worry for another. I realized I should have been looking to see if I saw skepticism in him too when I caught myself mentally framing a first draft of this reply that went something like this: "The difference between the third and fourth photos began with one of the men being born a Brahman in the latter part of the 19th Century, India. A man who was privileged enough as a youth to remain in school at the age of 16 in that place and time and to know that for his high caste tradition temples were a refuge of protective custody where a young devout Iyer could quickly cultivate profound loyalty in a devoted servant who would beg alms for him, cook his meals for him and change his diaper when he was too screwed-up on the divine "I" to do it himself... Alright! Now there's a real connection between the first and fourth photos...." But then I though better of pursuing that particular drift because one can get "time out" from this sort of tight-ass forum for being too explicit. Plus that draft was a little too cynical...is there cynicism in the face of the third man? Maybe cynicism comes from knowing that in the prisons where I have worked (stories found here) the peace of protective custody is a wonderful preservative of the innocent gaze, that and being professionally photographed enough times to know well how to pose. (Try "Ramana Maharshi" on Google Image Search.)

I've seen dragons, the inspiration for dragons, and they scared the hell out of me. It was at the close of a bad winter and I had a camp high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of northern New Mexico at least a month before the Floristas opened the gates into the forest. Four p.m., I was standing on a rocky point at 10,700 or 11,000 ft. elevation and the weather was coming in below me. Above me the sky was clear, below me the clouds looked like a tumbling sea across the Rio Grande and against the peaks along the Jemez. The northwest wind was pushing out storm dragons in sinuous tendrils. They climbed up through the canyons toward my point...they always kept to the canyons. The word "writhing" comes to mind. And when they slipped into a warmer layer, yet untouched by the wind, they disappeared and then they twisted out of it when they reached the cold and formed themselves again for the next advance. Western dragons can't fly like that, western dragons are not a half-mile long and growing. Finally one pushed up through the canyon on my left and whipped around my point with an impossibly cold breath and a flogging of snow...and I got the hell off that mountain because they wanted to kill me that night and could very well have done so had I stayed. Its a story. It's all a story. Starjumper7 tells us a story. It sounds like a little bit of unbidden shamanismo to me. We get a call about mid-afternoon that two of our circle were missing in the Yucatan. No word in three days and they should have been home yesterday. One elder asks us to journey out to find them. I am not such an alarmist...wait two days like the cops always do...but still I start to journey and for nothing such a long, long time. I hang there above the roof. A week before along the acequia de comunes I had found what was left of a great horned owl that had been ripped apart by a red-tailed hawk. I had bound what were the last four feathers along the wing into a fan and tucked two of the breast feathers, those not coated with blood, into my hatband and thanked whatever spirits there were for the right to take such liberties...but that was just for insurance because I never believed an iota of this about spirit, or that about spirit, or any preaching whatsoever about The Spirit...and WHAM, it was like being blindsided in a hockey match, and whoa, I'm off the roof and hauled down the Gulf Coast by an owl to where I can see the two of my people standing on the beach on Cozumel waiting for god knew what. That was the report I called in. And that was journey stuff, but yeah, the two were on Cozumel in daylight reality and bad weather had kept them stranded and they were home in less than a week. Good on the Owl. But I have no proprietary interest in the bird, nor she in me for she was just an expedient tuft attached to a level of embodied instinctual imagination that without her might have been impossible to access. If I identified in any way with that owl...she's with me, I'm with her--just as if I identified with a god or a guru or a master or a lineage, or if I fell into the Romance of the Mystical Beast--the Mystique of The Other--in short order I'd be sounding like a fool.

The wise and insightful Sage knows this is not always the case and in fact it might be read as more than just a little semi-wise condescension. A knowingly honest sage will understand that her fear of another stealing from herself and her mother probably arises from an instinct; an awareness that instincts are the first responders that tell the intellect that something in the environment is wrong. Anger is likewise an instinct and likewise valuable. Now if these instincts result in nothing more than the Sage obsessively zoning out in revenge fantasies while at work or pacing the floor at night, tearing her hair and rending her garments then the issue is, as Vortex says, probably a projection from her shadow and she should step down from Sagehood and sign on with the first Jungian shrink who comes her way (all the while knowing that in one's life nothing is merely a "merely ..." no matter what someone else might write).

Like M-head I had a similar situation when my mother came to the conclusion that she no longer had sufficient faculties of memory to take care of her own affairs. She immediately gave my older sister (who lives in the same community and who is the executor of her will) power of attorney over her assets. At the same time there was mutual agreement between the three of us that at the first opportunity (I live on another continent) my sister, mother and I would amend that POA to include me as an equal signer and the back-up executor...it was a two-day process in which we all had to be present and attuned to thinking like The Law wants its minions to think. (And every 10 minutes reminding my mother what we were doing and why we were doing it...her genius comes in 10-minute bursts and then she's adrift.) I say it is similar in that the legal/financial facts more or less match. What doesn't match is that it is not "a whole frigging situation," and no one did anything clandestinely. Everything was done in an atmosphere of respect, responsibility, maturity, openness, intelligence and love. Those qualities, after all, were the original ground for this family's existence and perpetuation. The Sage knows that all movement flows from an original ground and if the ground is not healthy or remade to be healthy nothing healthy will flow from it. If that fails the next solution is the private application of coercion, guilt and shame. Plan C: Lawyers, Guns and Money, or the Sage can wimp-out and suck her thumb.

Edited by moderators for X-rated content

.

I have read runes professionally for at least 25 years, read them on psychic hot lines, read them for $100 an hour. Like any other form of divination they are a medium between the one who seeks and the one who tries to show them the way. Anyone who reads the runes for themselves is like the one who represents himself/herself in a court of law...they have a goddamned fool for a lawyer. The value in any divination is the psychic connection between the seeker and the reader. The runes, the tarot, the hexagrams are only the linguistic medium between the two...a language that seems to transform itself into a language that is solitary for those two and only for one place and one time. There is nothing of truth inherent in the runes or the bones or tea leaves or the cards or three Chinese coins or in the yarrow stalks or the lines in your palm. Everything that is supposed to be magical is in the non-magical, non-dual connection between the one who asks and the one who says.

Hey, It has been awhile since I posted here, I only lurk a rare time to time; however this Kundalini thread lured me from the weeds. I have only sampled the thread here and there so some of the content might be a unacknowledged repetition of someone else's thoughts. My comments are based almost entirely on my own experience which is the only thing in this world I really trust. So out of that trust I have to say I agree in part with Goldisheavy because if some fraction of kundalini energy is not always present one is going to be awfully sick or really dead...the stuff is too basic not to be present in healthy living. The dilemma that kundalini poses is that it is not always needed to meet the exigencies of a moment and it is damned near impossible to know when's the moment kundalini is the energy that needs to rise (i.e. awaken) into dominance within one's own self, and beyond impossible to know that moment and need in another. I would guess such knowledge rests solely in the energy itself and its full and seamless consolidation with the other factors and forms of mind-body accord that provides one with exactly what one needs when the time is right. If kundalini seems a spontaneous reception to external circumstance or a sudden in-sight, or the result of a long alchemical grind it doesn't matter. My thoughts on kundalini are more fully expressed here in the last post on my blog, the politics of which recommended that I use the word "flow" instead of "kundalini event". But the idea is exactly the same.

So I'm outta here...have finer folks to talk to. Y'all have nice lives, y'hear? Hahahahaha!

Hey Marblehead, I used to watch those and the last I knew the BB started from a very dense and very small piece of physicality. That was what I was asking: how did that piece manifest? I read through Wang's site. Has there been a discussion of his theory and project on TTB? If not, why not? Since you are more familiar with the guy maybe you could see fit to start a thread because I would like to take a shot or two at him but it would be off topic here and there might be others who would be interested. Luego

I was one of the initial 11 test pilots for this fairly famous study which was designed (among other things) to see if DMT could help advance one on the spiritual path. Rick Strassman, who conducted the study, wrote the book and is featured in the movie, concluded (among other things) that spiritually you get from a drug experience exactly what you bring to it. I am familiar with ayahuasca and I would say Strassman's conclusion holds true for it also. If given the chance to do it again, I'd turn it down. Most of my work in this regard is done through dreams and I have never had a drug experience that could match the finest features out of 33 years of dream cultivation. Plus dreams don't taste bad or cause you to throw up. Ciao

Ah ha, it was not passive aggression, it was a manipulation! On principle I should back out of this discussion right now. But I won't. That is a little too airy for me. But I have no problem with you entertaining yourself with that notion. Do you have a picture or a narrative as to how physicality came into being; a little something you could write up yourself, perhaps? That is an interesting hypothesis and when I see the needle moving on the futuristic "CHI (a.k.a. DARK ENERGY) METER" then I'll be able to say, "I do believe I just saw the needle moving." Until then I'll keep my thoughts on the matter localized to those things that I can perceive directly through the senses...clarifies the mind. Ciao

Or you don't even have to do that. Just trust your instincts and your power. Christ! Don't you know a teacher is just a middle man with begging bowl? Find instead an angry dog and shield yourself with only your off hand outstretched palm...relaxed. Use that space between your palm and the dog to gently push it back, and then back a little more...feel the push, don't show it. That dog will not come through your power because you are stronger than any dog. Don't look at the face, look at the tail, don't look down. That dog's only chi is in its eyes...don't engage! Talk alpha dog through the palm. There are no words to that talk, its just a power coming from the gut. Do the same thing , gently, gently, across your girl friend's belly and you will find which one of her ovaries will be active next. If you can't trust your hands you can find the same thing with a pendulum, or a feather fan. Chi...who needs belief? Jesus, don't you know that your statement is an implicit argument? It looks like passive aggression to me. So I will direct a few thoughts toward your passivity. 1) First of all, if there is no life there is no consciousness and without consciousness how can anything know chi? 2) A little methodology as to the successful investigation. Start with the basics and stay with the basics and when things start to blur...stop! All those who know chi can agree that it functions within the body and around the body. It is not so mysterious...it is a bodily function like catabolism and perspiration. There is nothing to believe in here because chi falls within the realm of consensual reality. Anything else beyond the functions of the body are conjecture, theory, imagination, metaphysics, religionism, the subordination of intelligence to superstition. Now all of those can produce: 1. The nice warm fuzzies that come from attaching one's self to THE (unverifiable) TRUTH! 2. The easy way into some dogma that will tell you what to do with your life without having to think about it. 3. A common kind of follower/disciple/student/sheep life...up there in the warm and fuzzy air. Hehehehehe.

Without life there would be no Chi.

I know jack about Buddha and prefer to keep it that way, but based on 15 years as a national class investigative journalist and another 18 years as a private investigator (criminal defense, civil rights and assorted craziness) I have concluded that those who believe in anything at all are fools. Belief slows the instincts, limits creativity and demeans one's humanity. A little essay on the topic. Easy p.s. I just got an error message that says in essence that the server is too full of posters and can't handle the traffic. Is administration considering an upgrade?

The word "ego" here is the problem. Of course one has to have an ego, otherwise one is autistic. The other problem word is "confidence." Perhaps the last part of the sentence should read "...I think you need expertise but show the expertise with humility." Promotion, "promoting yourself or teachings" edges toward arrogance. One should always keep in mind that "those who can do, and those who can't teach" so it is best to just keep doing and if someone else is impressed they can ask questions and follow along.

These are the most intelligent five words I've read on this site so far!