Astral Monk

Anyone else find this to be a weird statement? What is the name of your system and school? Those simple non-personal questions are 'too personal' to answer? even though she did moreorless answer them later...lol Hey awaken, still waiting for you to explain what you meant when you said you realized the right way in 2010 and proved it. If youre going to make statements like that you should be able to clarify. I cant be critical about it myself, just interested what is your explanation. thanks! 8)

Actually 'basic logic' tells us that we cant make inference on the state of wholly other things based on observation of one thing--thats a fallacy. The step from reasoning about the individual case to the universal case is invalid. check and mate lol 8)

lol 8)

lol, the end! any good basic logic course will tell you truth is not covered by logic--that is, truth values are assumed but not discovered or assessed (other than by testing formal deductive structure which is not additive to knowledge). Classical logic looks at validity only. Semantic logic is truth preserving. Lets continue next year. Maybe I'll even dust off my logic text shelf lol. 8)

The 'fake news' meme is yet another way to marginalise alternative and independent media sources. However, 'news' itself has always been a product sold in our capitalist society. It was never about integrity or representing 'truth' or 'facts' but about selling papers, books, adverts, etc etc. To hear 'real news' you need to listen to whistleblowers. Or just look out your window and see whats happening in your city yourself. 8)

Awaken, If you've already shared this story, plz post a link, thnx! 8)

What do u disagree with, the post truth world? I thin they said it on Fox news so u know that right. Meanwhile...yeah I dont see how you can not be interested in discussing truth when your thread suggest logic is the prerequisite of it. We need to know what truth is if we have any hope of discoving whether that claim is valid. Unfortunately, again, logic doesnt investigate truth nor define it. At best it preserves it, where possible. And if logic is looking to preserve truth then obviously truth is not determined by logic because logic merely plays with it. Hence logic cannot be a prerequisite of truth--this implies a necessary connection. Partner in truth maybe, a contingent corollary. 8)

I'm curious--how did you prove the way is right in 2010 and to whom did you prove this? 8)

No, more like the plain fact that most ppl are not experts so it is hard to make accurate objective judgments and they need to rely on others for guidance. And how do they know such ppl are not fakes? They cant, at first. Dont be naive. The news feeds abound with stories of astute hard working professionals who get scammed because they dont know any better. Its not so clear cut, esp at the outset. It takes most ppl a good deal of time to see fraud. Its not a scarlet letter. 8)

No, most people cant. That's why most people are at risk of getting scammed. At least at the outset. How can a person, a beginner, know the difference between something that is authentic and something that is totally fake? At the starting line they all looking like potential winners. It is only time and experience that enables us to see or get a sense of how well things fall out. Again, going with the trades allegory, there are lots of guys out there scamming the shit out of people, and avg Joe, who isnt knowledgable in the trade, falls victim because the guys seem to get things done. And Joe gets gassed up by his equally ignorant neighbor who swears by the scammer. Only when a problem later arises and Joe gets a second opinion from, this time, an authentic tradesman, he will discover how shoddy the original work was and marvel at how such a guy could get work when it is clear, to the authentic tradesman, that the guy had little or no knowledge of his craft, save the ability to put a nice coat of paint on the problem and bugger off with the money as quick as possible. Unless youre already in the know, how can you know? The world of qigong is infinitely more complex and ridiculous. When I said its not helpful to say some schools are real or fake, I mean that in the ciritique of schools in general, that there is no guarantee of legitimacy or the knowledge or skills therein, the idea of judging the authenticity of schools takes us back to how are we supposed to judge the authenticity of schools, which means how are we supposed to judge the veracity of the things they claim to teach? What is the standard then? If a school preserves skills and knowledge for a domain of discourse, by what standard are we able to discern its authenticity? Shall we accept the cry from the wilderness of the singleton who says THEY got the 'right' answers while the domain of discourse the school preserved was wrong from the start? And then how do we evaluate the authenticity of that cry from the wilderness? We cant take them at their word. I guess it comes down to results. If a school teaches economics, we would expect them to produce economists, not sociologists or baseball players. But in the case of neidan, because the domain of discourse is partly closed, because the results are not discussed openly, we cant even use that standard to evaluate different schools (from the outside). Then we have sects arguing over the correct use of texts that are open to the public. Again, if youre not in the know, how are you supposed to know? Arguing the meaning of Chinese terms is exhausting. It is because schools have preserved the teachings that gave life to those texts, or that inspired those texts to be written in the first place, that we dont have to be hamstrung by texts alone or wait for a super-genius to reinvent the internal dan from their own intuition and a casual reading of the classics. A school is just a bigger version, a more extended version, of teacher-to-student transmission, or 1-1, heart to heart lineage. If we accept this, if we accept that there are teachers who have learned from teachers who learned from teachers...etc...who preserved, adapted, and tested methods over time to get repeatable results, we should accept schools as being a more robust structure for this transmission. For me the nature and value of schools is not in question. The only question is what standard can avg ppl use to judge the legitimacy? It may even be that this is impossible--that such judgment cannot be made until one has some already well-developed idea about the nature of the domain. 8)

What is truth? Truth is a value that judges the fitness of a concept within the structure of the language and domain of discourse in exists in. For a concept to be 'true' is must at least be wholly consistent with that structure and coherent within that domain. Further, its contradiction cannot be simultaneously accepted in the domain. The function of cognition is to divide the world into units for linear processing (in time). When we encounter a situation where a concept (or statement or whatever) and its contradiction (opposite) are both accepted in the domain, it means cognition hasnt finished; that is, there is no judgment being made, but merely a holding of opposites in juxtaposition, a suspension of valuation. Hence, it reveals a state of uncertainty which directly reflects on the process (or lack thereof) of cognition. It doesnt mean that reality is weird and contains contradictions. If you want 'truth', a feature of language, to somehow take you to reality, the suchness of being, well, good luck. It wont. Moreover, such a connection is not found through logic whatsoever. Logic only operates on content, on a specific domain of discourse and a specific language. Because cognition is necessarily the imposition of a dualism (of awareness), logic, as the formalization of that process, reflects duality. But reality in itself is non-dual, and hence to 'see' such reality one must abandon logic entirely, just as one abandons cognition. Its a post-truth world out there. 8)

The rose is. But if I keep looking at it, it ceases to be a rose. In fact, there is nothing there whatsoever that is 'rose'. It is everything BUT rose. The rose isnt. 8)

Also, as a passing comment (again) on WLP and Daode school, the latter being accused of greedy marketing, that hasnt been my experience. On the contrary, I think Daode is seeking out authentic students to impart teachings to, rather than just broadcast to the whole world without concern. This is the opposite of 'greedy marketing'. If you want to see marketing, check out virtually any contemporary qigong. For instance, while much good might be said about Chunyi Lin's Spring Forest Qigong and its mandate to create healers, you cant deny that the system is being marketed to the western public. Everything goes through Learning Strategies, which is a classic American marketeer where every little thing has a price tag and every need slip of paper is worth a dazzling annoucement. The connection is a bit off-putting, tbh. I dont see that kind of motivation in Daode school. But maybe someone else has different experience. Its easy to get wound up by text online, but reality is usually quite different. 8)

Again, which carpenter will you choose? Sure there's no absolute garuantee that the carpenter school is 'legit'--they might be fly by night, but you have EVEN LESS with they guy who says he's 'self taught'. And with this last guy there's absolutely no recourse--you get scammed. At least a school, legit or not, is part of the larger structure of society and can be held to account, if people take steps to do so. No 'broken logic' here, but maybe you're not using those terms correctly. However, to contrast 'human schools' with XYP and its 'divine mandate' is kindof ludicrous and undermines your point. If we can't have any confidence in schools and their teachers how on earth are we supposed to swallow the idea that XYP has a divine mandate that human greed cannot penetrate? Unless XYP isnt a school. Or if it is a school, then it too is subject to your criticism. You cant have things both ways or criticize the concept of schools while simultaneously upholding one single school as a shining example of how schools should be. It isnt helpful to say 'some are real schools while some are fake', because then we're right back to the start again on why we need schools and why and how a school can give legitimacy to a body of knowledge and skill. Or, again, it gives us a better chance at mitigating the risk of being scammed and learning nothing. Consider--if there werent any schools of any kind preserving knowledge and skills across generations and being tested practically by their results (in any field you can imagine, not just neidan) what would be the state of human culture today? Very low, I reckon. Just having texts preserved isnt good enough. 8)

When discussions degenerate into sectarian shouting fests it is quite disheartening and serves to dispel confidence in honest seekers, especially beginners who cant tune into the fine details of the arguments. We each have a path to follow for our own individual lives. I mightve simply read books by Kant and Hegel from the library and thought myself a philosopher, but that sort of armchair work doesnt lead to results, unless you are especially gifted. Instead I went to school and learned the craft from academics who spent their whole careers even lives at work with the material. That experience increased my precision and deeply developed my ability to work through and create structure in the often abstract world of philosophical concepts. When I learned of DaoDe school and saw that it was an opportunity to get into a stream of education that could take me into traditional Neidan work, I figured, as a westerner with little desire to go to China, this might be as good a chance as I will get to maybe peel back the curtain and gain some understanding of what internal work is all about. They say that it is destiny for a person to discover neidan and gain a teacher. Sortov like how just having a copy of some Buddhist sutras is good enough to clear tonnes of karma, because it suggests that this life is reaping good seeds that have been planted through many lifetimes. I'm not sure if I will ever enter on the neidan path formally, but so far working with Daogong has been satisfying. Its clear to me how Daogong can help develop one's skill in internal arts. My desire has been to improve my taiji and bagua zhang play, and I feel that Daogong has already helped in this regard. But its not so specific as that either--since Daogong is part of my path now just like many other elements are and have been, and they are are working together in the unique person that I am to produce a unique result. Evrything builds on what came before. Yes I can be part of a school or learn a special technique, but those things dont make me me--I am the totality of all those elements, and they must work for me in harmony. However, I know that if I were just to cuddle up with my massive collection of IMA books and stop seeking actual instruction from real teachers my forward progress would halt to a crawl, and probably never go anywhere significant. I can see that opendao has to walk the tightrope somewhat, because many teachings are not public, and moreover, many results need to be experienced by students through their own practice first, then later examined by teachers. Otherwise if we think that a result will happen only one way we might end up generating imaginary results rather than experiencing changes, as is the common complaint against many forms of qigong. 8)

Why do we need a school? Pretty simple really--it gives us a better chance of finding legitimate, authentic information and experience. A 'school' is just a collection of teachers and students--teachers who, hopefully and provably, are part of a long and well-documented lineage. Why do we want this? It gives us more confidence at the start that the information and experiences taught are derived from solid sources and are backed by time-tested methods. It is the same in any profession or religion. To truly learn a trade we need authentic apprenticeship. The master mustve had a master who had a master who...etc. Almost no one re-invents a whole trade on their own out of thin air just be grabbing a tool and tuning into their intuition until their body moves the tool in just the right way. Tools are designed for very specific uses, some of which are not self-evident but must be demonstrated by authentic experienced users (masters). Having a school that has persisted and been successful through time also gives us a better chance of not falling into dangerous deviations. Now, if you are building a house, would you rather have a carpenter who 'discovered wood working' on his own from scratch through intuition or a carpenter who has been given his Red Seal or Journeyman certificate from established industry sources who have taught and tested him in the best practices of carpentry, building on hundreds of years of human knowledge and experience? Its not impossible that someone could on their own come up with carpentry in all its modern innovation, but that type of event is so remote and unlikely as to be something very, very special and worthy of notice. Why does Zen place such importance on transmission? It is said the line of heart-to-heart transmission reaches right back to Shakyamuni Buddha who imparted something profound in what would otherwise be an incidental action, and it was picked up and passed on again and again. Teachers might only pass their zen on to one true student in a lifetime! This is all to mitigate the problem of deviation, which increases the further in history we get from the 'founders' of whatever tradition we are looking at. We can argue about which school is better or worse, which is true or false, but generally speaking, if you start with a school you are going to be much farther ahead than anyone roaming about in the wilderness coming to all sorts of interesting conclusions and asserting 'schools are unnecessary'. Even so called 'clear instructions' written in texts are never really clear, because language itself is problematic, and we are already having to perform many cognitive feats just to read text, let alone unfurl its meanings into something concrete that we can confidently practice. 8)

Is logic true or not-true? Logic is not and never has been the basis of truth. Truth is assumed in logic and defined outside it. Logic, as a reflection of an idealized cognitive proces, acts as divider and synthesizer. The state of judgment is a moment of holding two categories juxtaposed--either they will separate or coalesce. Truth is a value. Specifically a value related to language. Only language can be true or false, not the world language represents. Being 'true' means in part being non self-contradictory. But that only applies to the idea; when we seek further we want to know the fact of the matter, not a trick about its formal structure when represented linguistically. The search for 'fact' is NOT an enquiry of logic. 8)

I'm confused about this marketing meme Taoist Texts keep talking about viz Daode school. Personally I dont see it. But maybe I'm missing something? Or perhaps immortals are giving free lectures somewhere? If so we should all be informed, as that would be a great learning opportunity! Are there any immortals on Daobums? Or anyone who has experienced them? If so, as OP suggests, there must be objective signs of said experiences. What are those signs? 8)

Without a doubt, Paul Reps compilation Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. This opened up a whole new mind for me..and still does. I cant leave out W.Sommerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. The path of the seeker is solitary, but honourable. 8)

A zen story: Kasan was asked to officiate at the funeral of a provincial lord. He had never met lords and nobles before so he was nervous. When the ceremony started, Kasan sweat. Afterwards, when he had returned, he gathered his pupils together. Kasan confessed that he was not yet qualified to be a teacher for he lacked the sameness of bearing in the world of fame that he possessed in the secluded temple. Then Kasan resigned and became the pupil of another master. Eight years later he returned to his former pupils, enlightened. Here is a tale about achieving sameness of being in all circumstances. Is there something analogous in Daoist practice? If so, how is it achieved? In Kasan's case it came as the fruits of zen style meditation. 8)

oh, I want to come back to this, but toobusy atm. Thread resurrection in 5...4...3.....

Basically, Rand hasnt improved on Hume. Whereas Hume pointed out that we cant observe causality but nonetheless we make practical use of it, any philosophy grounded in tautology is in the same boat. A is A is practical because it fixes our attention on one level of abstraction, but it simply cant reveal knowledge about reality, that is, about individual 'things'. Why? Because a true analysis shows that concepts of 'things' are artifical impositions. What does this mean? It means as part of our cognitive processing of raw reality we force stop at a certain level of abstraction to play the 'thing' game. If we followed tbe process to its (infinite) conclusion we'd see how provisional and relative our thing-concepts are. There is absolutely no separation in fact between the land and the sky, yet we say there are two 'things', we talk about two things separately, then later try to cobble together an external relationship between them. Its the same way with any argument about responsibility. There is none that does not call the whole fabric of spacetime together. Yet we speak of this man and this woman's 'responsibility'. Provisional practicality that purposefully avoids the ontological fact of impermanence and interdependence. And here's where I go Buddhist. Kant was trying to overcome Hume, but Rand just reiterates that the billard balls hit each other. That just shows she understood neither Hume nor Kant nor the project of modern philosophy. Certainly its hard to take a 'critique' of a philosopher by someone who admited to never having read his work. Well I think Wittgenstien was an ass. Never read Tractatus. LOL 8)

Lots of good talking points here, but just one thing for now... Doesnt seem all that different from Kant. In both cases reason is being used to go beyond what is possibly knowable by concluding a necessary relationship as existing and underwriting. As someone with empiricist and phenomenalist leanings I cant justify that extension, because the 'answer' is not accessible via experience but rather only through judgment--which we know is a construct or structure a mind or cognitive process builds through increasing levels of abstraction *away* from direct experience. What does direct experience reveal? The primacy and utter inescapableness of consciousness. The entire 'world' is completely 'within' consciousness. There is no connection to the 'outside'--there IS no 'outside'. Call me a Leibnizian on this. Does consciousness need to be conscious of some 'thing'? No. Consciousness is pure precence. Awareness of differentiated 'things' is a cognitive process. Consciousness IS NOT cognition. Cognition creates/reveals objects. Consciousness is conscious of cognition. Again, it is all 'within' consciousness. There are two very different levels here. Berkeley where art thou?? 8)

"Objectivism views primitive states of existence as being "savage" and marred in mysticism, fatalism, ignorance, superstition, poverty, passivity, and collectivism. " Quite correctly too. Can anyone deny this assessment? Of course there is a moral judgment here--that those paths lead humanity nowhere but into further barbarity, and history proves this correct; if there is a way out it at least starts with reason and critical thinking. Now I dont care for the Rand comments below but not because they are dismissive of native tribes, but because they overreach with the concept of 'rights'. Her position is just another form of might makes right. Neither the mystic nor the objectivist are superior paths--each has their own fruits. We simply choose which one we want to back, then gather enough friends to force our way to a favorable outcome. There is no essential difference between Socrates satisfied and a pig satisfied. If we suggest otherwise its not a function of empirical observation tempered by reason, but a personal choice to place more value on the one than the other. We choose to be 'righteous' over others because it serves us. But as a moral question, looking at the fruits is a good way of helping us choose. Rights are not natural laws. The are constitutional provisions designed to help keep the peace in large societies, and they are ONLY backed by THREAT OF VIOLENCE, same as all notions of 'property'. So when someone suggest some group (lmao) has a 'right' to, for example, land occupied by other people, it just means that someone supports the violent subjugation of others for the benefit of themselves (and by extension their 'group'). That isnt reason, folks. 8)

Seems to me that the socialist complaint about capitolism leading to oligarchy is just a way of people bitching that others are better than them, and demanding that such success be thwarted so we can all race to the bottom in fairness and equality. Oligarchy happens because people are both dishonest and willfully ignorant. And because of the constructs of money and economy and taking these to be natural or necessary features of human existence. Politics in the end is about good governence and community decision making. If we hand our decision making power over to bureaucrats and complain about the 1% running everything who is to blame? We give them the cake they eat when we should give them the guilotine. 8)