Stigweard

Bumpity bump

Hang on to your hats folks ... if you have your own Practice Page you automatically go in there as a Moderator because you are in fact the moderator of your own section. That's as far as it goes lol

Excellent points raised Creation.

Good to see you again Master Yoda ... I hope all is well

Bump ... need to get at least 50 votes...

Yup cheers for that Pietro

Thanks for all your thoughtful comments. Part of my attendance at the "International Summit on Laozi and Daoist Culture" is to write an academic paper and I will be using the results of this poll. The paper will be about the challenges we Western Taoists have and this is an opportunity to deliver a message to the contemporary luminaries of Taoism to help us have better access to Taoist teachings here in the west. I have also started this poll on Facebook: http://apps.facebook.com/opinionpolls/inde...?pid=1252376482 If you can publish/share this poll with your friends over there I would be very much appreciated.

Not enough English translations of Taoist texts Not being able to personally study with authentic teachers Taoist teachings being diluted by Western marketing Unqualified teachers attempting to teach Taoism Balancing Western life with Taoist studies Not having the money to travel to and pay for tuition

Not sure where this is in the text but I remember it saying that attacking an opponents "cities" are the coarsest level of warfare; that it was preferable to defeat their armies without destroying their settlements. Applied to interpersonal communication it is to deal with their words without making personal attacks.

So if I was to paraphrase what you said into a short point it would be: Compatibility challenges between traditional Taoist and modern Western cultures Nice point It would be probably best we do not overlap my friend

Part of my invitation requirements to this event is to compose and present a 5-10 page academic paper that is in tune with the overall theme of the Summit. I am choosing to write about the challenges we modern Western Daoists face in getting to the "heart" of Daoist Culture and what solutions could be found to overcome these obstacles. So.... "If you were standing in front of a hundred or so of leading Daoist teachers and luminaries from China and across the globe and you had five minutes to give your suggestions on how they could make the authentic Daoist teachings more accessible to us in the West, exactly what would you say?" I would love your contributions to this so that I can represent us all as best as I can.

Cheers for this If it did become a moderating team of say 3 mods then it would be good to see a TaoBum lass to amongst them. My initial votes would also have been Rain or Taomeow but they have not been active for awhile now. So I cast my vote for Kate.

If things go the "Jedi Council" direction then I'll put forth the suggestion of possibly creating a "Moderator's Forum" where any and all proposed actions can be voted on. I would also suggest a 100% consensus policy amongst the moderators where no actions are taken unless each moderator agrees in full. This way the moderation would remain as hands off as possible. We are fairly well self-regulated as it is so ideally the moderators would have very little to do. I have seen many times in discussions where fruitful outcomes came out of conflict and premature moderation would have denied all parties the results. So I agree with the overall sentiment of as little moderation as possible.

If I can raise the funds for the airfare I will be going across. One of our new bums, Jessinchina, put me onto it (I think it was her invite on Twitter). Jess will be definately attending as she is one of the presenters. I am sure she will give us an expose on it seeing she has a journalist background.

Welcome to The Inaugural TaoBums Moderator Elections !! Seriously though ... I really don't want to "compete" for the position. I would be happy to provide the service and I think my moderator style would be more like this: I would also be very happy with the idea of group of moderators.

I hear what you say and am willing to abide by this if that is the decree

I understand Sean's need for extra assistance. I do however also highly value the self-moderated nature of TTB's. We have very much become a living organism with it's own nature and it's own evolving consciousness. We even have our own "immune system" wherein, in the presence of foreign contaminants, members will step up and perform their "white blood cell" duty of effectively dealing with the source of the problem. I have enjoyed Sean's Wu Wei style, regardless of how unintentional it was, and would hope that whoever donned the moderator's mantle would continue in this manner. A government should be passive and invisible and should not interfere in the normal activities of it's community. It should only exert itself in times crisis. So to should be our moderation team. And yes, where the blazes is Yoda? Last I saw of him he signed up with Mak Tin Si and the he was never seen again.

You know I have always been willing to help Sean.

Have I mentioned before that I love you guys Anyways... Casts a pearly light Sun streaming through mountain wall lighting up the depths

Yup LOL ... Tell me about it!

Heya Folks, I have created an Excel calculator for the Celestial Stems and Terrestrial Branches: http://www.taowizard.com/Celestial_Stems_a...al_Branches.xls Would love to get some feedback on this. Also, Master Ni makes a strong point that by working with this system you can tune your cultivation into the universal energy more efficiently. He even goes on to say that without doing this the full potential of Taoist cultivation will not be attainable. I would love to hear if anyone knows of which activities and cultivation practices are most appropriate for each of the 60 phases.

You might also be interested in this article: < http://www.theadvocates.org/celebrities/lao-tzu.html >

Cheers for that