JustARandomPanda

Yes...attacking another person's character *directly* as I said earlier in the examples I gave. Impugning, insinuating, condescending statements may also be attacking...but are not done *directly*. These tactics fly under the ToS radar as it's currently stated. Which is why I mused with the other mods maybe we should add condescension to the ToS to try to address it. And Cat equally pointed out that would be opening a whole can of worms...do we really want to go down that road when quite a few here dislike any decisions we make even now? It's curious you state that ad hominem happens frequently here. Had this board included "no impugning, insinuating or condescending posts" in it's list of ToS "thou-shalt-nots" you yourself would have been suspended quite often given how many reports we've received on your posted replies to others here....because...those posts of yours typically fly under the radar. And the mod team is often accused of showing you favoritism for not taking any action. But we also take into account does this person have a post history of making useful contributions to board discussions. Which you have. And so we've leaned in the direction of little to no action. In fact...nearly every person in this thread accusing mods of being consistently biased and showing favoritism has had other TTBs reporting them - and yet we did not act because their posts - while condescending and typically not addressing the actual argument did not fall under the ToS as it's currently stated. (Besides...how many forums have you all been on lately where all the members stick to logic rules and converse with others like members of debate teams?) The majority have over and over said they don't want mods coming in being the board judges and executioners. They want us to intervene as little as possible. We try to respect those wishes as best we can. Hence the vote system and no mod having any greater power than any others. Hence the 'if we can't get a quorum vote' the default is no action will be taken. We are not perfect. There is no mod on the team who 'sees like a Bodhisattva' or Celestial Taoist sage (alas). We just try to stay out of the way as much as we can.

You just made a judgement call - same as everyone else here - mod team or not. Ralis if you can convince Cat and Taomeow or even Sean (good luck with catching him..he usually disappears several months at a time) that Luciferian is actually ad hominem - well I'll be outvoted - then it moves to the next step. Go for it. Convince them. You have that right. You'll be waiting for their judgements but hey...that's democracy for you...or in this case - modding via committee - which is what vote-modding on this board is since there's no "head mod" that acts with veto President or Prime Minister powers to overturn this board's "legislative body" votes.

Edit: The above is for the entire board. It is NOT meant at Ralis. It's to demonstrate. ********** The above is exactly what I was talking about earlier that is difficult to moderate. Is 'ungodly liberal' or 'Luciferian' showing condescension or is it an outright hostile ad hominem? The general sentiment is that it would be seen as possible condescension but not outright ad hominem. Not like "you're an a-hole" or "shit-for-brains" etc. And so we'd let it slide. Even in the latter case - in order to preserve the light-on-moderation atmosphere the default is to ask the person who called someone an a-hole or shit-for-brains to edit out the post. Failing that then discussion moves to whether this or that person deserves a suspension. The more that person has a post history of doing the above with a correspondingly low "helpful contribution ratio" the higher the likelyhood of everyone agreeing it's time to hand out a suspension. The idea being we want people to contribute meaningfully. Not to suppress speech. Or try to always make the board all happy-happy-joy-joy circle of regulars massaging each others egos. The above procedure - evidence plus debate plus timezone differences - is why mod response is often painfully slow. This is also a big reason why it was finally decided TTB might not be a place to have a separate "Teacher's Section". They'd have to be able to take criticism (Even possibly unjustifiable criticism had the posts been presented in a law court) and just let it roll off their back. Because there is NO WAY to NOT make a judgement call of when condescension crosses the line to become 'outright disrespect' and ad hominem. That last one is critical to why the mod team mods as we do. You think we show bias now? I promise you you haven't begun to see what bias is if we will be required to start stepping in to adjudicate as to what crosses the line. You can not even decide amongst yourselves if there was hate speech in that thread or whether it was unpleasant fact. TTB is not a law court and we do not have a long list of thou-shalt-not rules in place. We have to make judgement calls all the while knowing somebody is always going to see us as biased, having agendas, playing favorites and unfair. The majority of members have consistently and loudly told us over and over to 'butt-out' of their threads and not turn into hovering nannies or thought-police. The board gets what it has consistently told us it wants.

Cat consulted with a former mod who is more familiar with the LGBT thread posts and whom advised us no hate speech was posted in that thread. Since no other mods are speaking in favor of taking action I'll unhide it.

I hid the LGBT thread temporarily while waiting for the opinion of other mods to see what kind - if any - action needs to take place (I've never modded hate speech before). If I just acted on the spot that's being a bit dictatorial and as Apech himself knows that's not the way the modding has evolved at TTBs. Any mod who does act on the spot without further input from other mods had better be ready for a shit-storm coming their way from the other mods unless the evidence is blatantly clear it was a ToS violation (someone posting porn, actual threats of violence - very obvious stuff like that). And as we can see from the disagreements within this very thread the posts in the LGBT thread are NOT blatantly obvious. There's genuine disagreement as to whether it was 'hate speech' or whether it was posting unpleasant data. There's a reason the modding evolved the way it has. Most of all it's to try to prevent the very thing this thread is all about. Dictatorial modding. It's meant to preserve as much freedom as possible by the mods having a light hand as much as possible. Believe me...this is very much a case of be careful what you wish for. Because right now if we started to mod the way some in this whole thread say we are being derelict in doing the atmosphere here would change. Big time. And I'm willing to bet a lot of people here would be hugely unhappy with the way it would change. Let me give you an example I had of a discussion within the past 3 weeks with the other 2 mods over a TTB who's posts are strongly disliked and even hated by a rather consistent round-up of the same other TTBs. It's instructive because it follows a consistent pattern that goes on here by many TTBs...not just the one in this particular example that sparked the discussion. Condescension Let's look at what Meriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as and here's how Dictionary.com defines it In both cases the real idea behind the word is that someone is 'talking down to' someone else with the implication that other person is inferior. This word describes quite well actually what most posts that the mod team doesn't act upon are doing. But you'll notice that word is not in the ToS. But most passive-aggressive posts from one TTB to another are described by the above word. Note that such can be attacks yet not fall into the category of ad hominem. Ad hominem may be condescending but it's not always the case that condescension is necessarily also an ad hominem. Condescension attacks fly under-the-ToS radar. So I wondered if maybe the word condescension should be added to the ToS. Cat then pointed out (and I agree) that the majority of passive-aggressive attacks from one TTB to another fall under this very word and that if we added it to the ToS we'd all have to give up our day jobs to start modding diligently to make sure no one was posting anything that could be interpreted as being condescending. The tone at TTBs would change. But it wouldn't be an organic change. It'd be a top-down change. Something I'm not in favor of. And it'd still be a top-down change that would rely upon mod judgement calls. That part can not be gotten around. If you don't like office politics and you don't like what your own governments are doing and you don't like the judgement calls often made by your supreme courts why in the world do you expect you'd like what is essentially the same thing here at TTB?

Has anyone here had experience in both the Complete Reality Lineage and the Pre-Celestial Way lineage? What are the differences between them? Also...are there any lineage-holders of either in the U.S.?

I assume that question is meant for Jeff?

Getting complaints from other TTBs about you GMP. Think long about what you post, eh?

This sounds identical to what's done in Mahamudra and Dzogchen.

From the Huang translation Analect 1.3 Note: One has to understand Confucius' teaching of humanity itself before one can begin to make out why Confucius said what he did in the above quote. In the Confucius tradition "humanity" is a very high level of self-development. It was a subtle (but imo accurate) commentary that the mass of humans react to their internal-life far more than they're willing to concede. Today there are scientific experiments that are only beginning to scratch the surface of what Confucius was trying to get at. For example...the body begins to react before the areas of the brain that 'have a reason' for the action even activate. If that's the case then just how 'self-developed' are we really?

You need a good translation of Confucius to see the depth of his teachings. Most translations don't provide that. I've had a few but the one I really rely upon is the following: The Analects of Confucius by Chichung Huang Each Analect has notes explaining what's behind it. Mainland Chinese who've studied Confucius in-depth already know this stuff but lay-Chinese and of course foreigners don't. After reading this and several other books on Confucius I now see why his works were among the most studied/esteemed for centuries of taking the Imperial Exams. It's the Chinese equivalent of a Westerner who spent their life studying the depth of Plato, Kant or Hegal's works/thoughts, etc. Try the following books to understand better why the Chinese revered Confucius and his school for so long Zhu Xi's Reading of the Analects:Canon, Commentary and the Classical Tradition and The Four Books: The Basic Teachings of the Later Confucian Tradition p.s. For a 2nd more in-depth treatment of The Analects try the one by Arthur Waley

Agree with Mal. You could get a reply in a matter of a week...or what's usually more typical...it can take months (not kidding on this folks) to get a reply from the board owner. In any case...HHC study doesn't necessarily need a 'leader'. Aaron's been posting the chapters but he doesn't need to be the only one. And as Mal said...there really aren't any kind of forum rules other than the usual ToS and that it in some way relates to Taoism (or at least Chinese spiritual traditions history...which to my understanding is not unified). Indeed...if TM were to have her understanding of Taoism enforced in this forum HHC would be in General...not here.

Well judging from the NY Times article it sounds like the Chinese Government has discovered Taoism can be very profitable. If letting Westerners become Taoist monks or nuns brings more money to the Chinese economy (and more tourism) I'm sure they'll indulge.

Perhaps this article from the NY Times published Nov 2010 will help? China's Taoism Revival Abbess Yin Xinhui in the Hall of the Jade Emperor on Mount Mao, built at a cost of $1.5 million.

This thread was split off from the Taoist Lineages thread in the Taoism forum. DB kept diverging the topic into discussions of seeing your "original nature". And while that is an interesting topic in it's own right that's not what my original question was about. Also there started to be some rather heated exchanges and so to keep the peace I decided to split the topic so it could be more fully explored. That's when I noticed DB had already created this thread in the articles section. So I merely merged those split posts to this thread.

What is the most accurate (most 'chinese-like' the way Chinese understand it) translation of Chang Tzu? Can someone link me to it on Amazon, B&N or ABE? Thanks

Ditto. I wasn't able to find any clickable link on that database either.

Just wanted to thank Konchog for the OP link.

Two good references for anyone to use for practicing meditation is the Abidhamma and Visuddhimagga. Pair either one of the above with The Diamond Sutra Explained and The Shurangama Sutra and you have most everything you need for practicing meditation safely.

Please take the talk about "seeing one's original nature' to another thread respectfully. Any more discussion about 'original nature' and I'll cut and move to a new thread. TM may decide to do that anyway...and I'd back her up.

Actually...I think you're the only one left who does MB.

Should anyone in the future complain about why the Mods don't do their job I'll just refer them to this thread. The unanimous sentiment of 'leave us alone' in this thread is the reason a lot of the just-under-the-ToS-radar brawls go untouched.

It is not unreasonable to want to see the basis of someone's claims of expertise. It might actually lead to some interesting TTC chapter discussions and show why translating is not as easy as one might think. I'm guessing even some Chinese argue with some other Chinese as to what Lao Tzu really meant when it comes to the text. I've never yet seen a civilization be unanimous in its assessment about what this or that text (or laws for that matter) "really" means. But in any case - this board is primarily for english speakers. So far - despite TTB having a Chinese language forum - it's not had an influx of currently in-China Chinese signing on and participating. Therefore english speakers have a right to discuss what the english translations mean for them. Indeed...ultimately it's the only thing that really matters - whether in-China Chinese or native english speaker.

Sean is busy working with the software that runs the forums. He's still got lotsa stuff that needs fixing so you'll likely notice all kinds of whacky things going on over the next few weeks. Maybe even the next few months.

Unfortunately I do not know anything about the Pre-Celestial Way school. The only reason I know about it at all is that one of Eva Wong's books states that she is a student of both of these two schools. One of her sifu's is a lineage holder of the Complete Reality school and the other a lineage holder of the Pre-Celestial Way school. It doesn't state where each of these schools has a temple located. Only that she has been a practicing student of these 2 lineages for quite a long time with the Complete Reality discipleship going back to her early adult years (early 20s I presume).