Maddie

True yin/yang did not originate from Taoism, but are a central theme in it. Much like karma, Samsara, and liberation didn't originate with Buddhism, but play a central role in Buddhism.

I can't say as much about the Taoist concepts as I am less familiar with them, but in regards to impermanence from the Taoist point of view if one looks at the model of yin/yang it can be seen that yin and yang are always in flux each becoming the other and always in motions which to me seems to illustrate well impermanence.

Obviously there are many types of ways to cultivate and practice which makes sense since there are many different and various types of personalities and situations. What I would like to know is what are your favorite and preferred methods of practice and why? I'm fairly certain that some of the most common ones here are Qigong, and meditation, as well as yoga, and mantra. I'd be interested in hearing about some of the less well discussed methods as well. Does anyone do recitation of texts or scriptures as a practice? ( This is one I don't really understand well as a practice but would like to try to make sense of it better. Reading and study? Maybe devotion to an altar or deity? I suppose there are a lot of options out there. What are your preferred methods and why?

The Diamond sutra is about emptiness. Nothing is substantial. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is ultimately satisfying.

I find personally that mindfulness is one of the most useful and miserable practices there is.

What I found is that doing so makes them more of what ever they are. Thus having said that in the past when I did this sort of things, things could often get quite dramatic. If they are a little crazy, they become a lot crazy.

I guess that would mean what you define as "real". Part of me thinks its interesting on one hand. Another part of my brain does not understand how hunks of rock and gas in space affect our lives here on Earth?

https://youtu.be/TgbIhdvviBU

I suppose there's a lot that could be said about trolls and trolling on internet forms but there's something I noticed about the energy aspect of trolls. They are almost always younger beta males. They typically also lose a lot of jing through excessive solo ejaculation. Because this loss of kidney water essence doesn't leave much leftover to nourish liver wood in the five Element cycle of generation they unconsciously seek to compensate the deficiency through energy vampireism. Anger is the emotion of the liver and wood qi. Therefore they do things to upset other people and once the person is upset with them and directs the wood anger qi at them they are making up for the lack of kidney water qi in their livers. Since they are taking in a dirty type of qi and absorbing the anger qi of another person into their liver wood as opposed to the cooling calming kidney water qi of their own system they become continually more angry and thus the cycle becomes very difficult to stop.

I'm not lost I'm right here... hee hee :-). I do love a good Beatles reference. We are because we were before, and we will be in the future because we are.

Yes Hallucinogens do target the mind. In TCM the heart houses the mind. So if we are talking about Hallucinogens we are going to look at the heart/mind. If we are talking about schedule one drugs we are going to look at the kidney/zhi/jing. Hope that clarifies things.

The Buddha would say you become now because of past conditioning when you became before. Simply you're here now out of habit. You're here because before you were there.

Schedule one is the hard stuff like meth, crack, morphine, heroin, the stuff that makes you feel really good but is really bad for you. Hallucinogens would affect the Heart Xin more.

No, mostly the schedule one type stuff, hard stuff.

I didn't say this was the reason to read it. Basically in a nut shell the heart sutra lists the five skandhas and explains how and why each one of them is not substantial, is not self. The conclusion it seems to reach is that once you understand this, you understand everything you need to know.

In some of the practices and meditations that Mantak Chia teaches you're supposed to channel energy from the big Dipper and the North Star. I guess my analytical and amateur astronomically literate brain always had a problem with that realizing that it's just an arrangement of stars that appear to form a Dipper shape from the Earth but there's not really some Dipper thing out there on a two-dimensional Black felt board.

The Buddha said not to believe what someone says based on their reputation but if what they say makes sense.

If I understand correctly today there's the Star of Bethlehem where Jupiter and Saturn are aligned and it's the solstice what does this all mean?

Good question. The primary reason drugs make one feel good is because they initiate a very large and unnatural release of jing from the kidneys. So yes this has the same effect as too frequent ejaculation. This is also why hard drug users age faster... loss of jing. In regards to addiction it is a tricky cycle. The Kidneys house the Zhi or the will. So the more one weakens the Kidney Zhi the more one weakens the will, while at the same time developing attachment to the pleasure of the unnaturally large jing release. So yes very much related to the kidneys. This is one of the main approaches I use to treat someone that has addictions with acupuncture and herbs for this very reason.

I was recently watching a talk by a monk on youtube and he had read a lot about St. John of the Cross and he had mentioned that a lot of the stages he described going through were the same as developmental stages in other meditative traditions. Like I think the stations of the cross as he explained were various achievements energetically.

I am not but that sounds very interesting.

This might seem like a funny post for someone who has been on this forum for so long, but I wonder, what exactly is the Taoist religion? When I initially started my spiritual path I began with Qigong. I liked the health benefits, and sense of peace it brought and most of all that it was not a religion. A few years prior I had left evangelical Christianity and was rather burned out on the notion of religion in general and was certainly not eager to join another one. That being the case the secular nature of Qigong suited me just fine. As time came to pass though some of the more philosophical aspects of the Taoism from which Qigong draws from like Tao, Yin and Yang, Wu Wei, began to raise questions with in me. I began to want answers but found finding anything definitive was very difficult. I found the well defined question and answer system of Buddhism to be very satisfying but still find myself wondering how someone "practices Taoism"? I realize there are different schools of Taoism and different methods of practicing, but not sure what the basics of being a Taoist and practicing Taoism are? Especially as a religion.

Icons are interesting as if you look closely they tell a lot of the oral history and tradition that you won't find in the texts alone. I find the frequent halos interesting on icons of the saints as one commonly reported effect of having the crown chakra opened is a halo.

As far as I know there is only one, and I think he was before the church split into east and west.

Yes good point. Lao Tzu didn't invent the Tao, he just was one of the first the describe it.