jeshopk

Yes, I tend to agree. The premise of the Tao Te Ching is not that he really wanted to advise politicians, but that he was stopped as he was leaving to write his wisdom down for politicians. If you follow the advice to its conclusions, it would mean: no forced association between strangers no forced taxation no forced conscription no retributive justice spontaneous conflict resolution without a standing army What could even the smallest government hope to achieve, with the initiation of force being the base requirement for affiliation with a state? Lines on a map are illusions.

When I am awake to the truth, it strikes me as banal. When I am waking up to the truth, it strikes me as profound. I think we all "traverse the two worlds" to some extent. As we permanently learn, what once felt profound become permanently banal.

Humans may acquire instincts that reject any sort of law enforcement or government whatsoever. They are very dangerous poisons to society, yet the majority drinks them as though they do more good than harm. The invention of government has only been digested for a few thousand years. From time to time, humanity improves by rejecting detrimental developments.

Regarding Falun and Li Hongzhi: They don't follow the way described in the tao te ching. They may perform some actions derived from qi gong, but other than that, it has nothing to do with taoism. I'd add, it's directly counter to the useful taoist way in major aspects. Really only useful if you want to suffer. As for which is more of a cult, the Chinese government or Hongzhi... they both are. Chinese government exerts forceful jurisdiction over all in the land, while Falun uses the softer control tactics of doomsday prophecy, psychological tactics and shunning. At least you can ignore Falun if you live in China. All forms of government seek to gain control at the expense of compassion.

Hi everyone, I have looked on the forums for a while now, and I think it would be a great place to hear about personal practices. My own personal experience was that during a hard time in my life I decided I needed to shed some ego in order to handle the judgements of others, but the judgements of others were so crushing without that hard shell to protect me, I didn't know how to protect myself from my thoughts. I knew I wanted to find a way to escape the suffering of self judgements that resulted from others judging me too harshly, and so I delved into The Book of Five Rings, which helped by suggesting to "get into sickness to get out of sickness". From there, I searched for more Eastern philosophies, and I finally discovered the Tao te Ching, which I could accept more readily than any Buddhist/Zen texts and so on. The first reading of the tao Te Ching had such a profound effect on me, that I was able to let go of a lot of self destructive thoughts right away. In western thought, we are often taught to fall in line with group thought. Reading the Tao let me know it was ok to dismiss the judgements of others and follow a natural morality of compassion, something which I had done except for instances where I was directly confronted with judgement. Instead of beating myself up when people judged me, I felt that I could dismiss or accept their critique without depending on it for a feeling of self worth. The night I read the Tao, I felt a bit odd, having been an atheist all my life, that I was buying into something quasi spiritual. At that moment, I remembered the beginning, that the Tao that can be named is not tao. I was able to let go of my own dogmas and compartmentalizing. At this moment, I felt a *ping* sensation on the top of my head. Electrical impulses flowed down from my crown to my temples, neck and chest. Electricity danced on my forehead. I was stunned, and have been learning the mysterious ways of Qi since the year 2000, when this started. Happy New Year Jesse