Stosh

Oooo...

Who me? Um it's not a quickie thing to explain or show. You can start with the tail chi symbol, and follow the idea straight through Lao n Chuang zi... Essentially, one cannot distinguish any center. The last becomes first. The fool can be understood as wise, The leader sits looking south ,n so forth. It's seriously a huge aspect one needs to get straight in their heads , and in getting there, lots of things begin to become clear. Such as all the confusing ironies , like um the horny hunchback , Like Li Peng vs the frog in a well...and it hints at death being a return to ones beginnings. .... Of you've never seen this explained, it's because one confused dipstick teaches the next tradition rather than understanding.

This subject is quite central to actual spiritual attitudes and Daoism in particular. Certainly more so than looking through third eyes, which belongs in sci fi. 😁 But it doesn't really matter IMO, But more on subject, What would be the extreme in a circular relationship? Rather than a polarized one.

I don't think computers think well of me, what side does that put me on?

Heck! I thought I lost track of time easy ,! 😁 Add more kitten stories.

Um, Back in the old days , we had what was called a phone book, and you could find everybody who had a phone , by name. It seems to me , that right now , one really must go through one of the social media giants. Is that essentially correct ? If so then it seems that a phone book app could be made available , and everybody can make their own social networks , but still be open to 'guests',and probably dictate the parameters of their own "account",, (just not anyone elses). I don't see why anyone has to tolerate the lucrative selling of ones private information, the censorship of content , or any of it. There's money in them thar hills too But I don't have a facebook or twitter page , so I am not really sure how that crap works.

If that was true , then all the native speakers would all agree, on the meat of it, and when they wrote their translations, they would be similar and mutually supportive. Native speaking Chinese have indeed written translations , and they do not all agree, so being a native speaker of Chinese means precisely , nothing. Either one understands what they are reading , or they do not , be it a good translation , or be it in modern-rendered Chinese. To translate , modern folks draw on hundreds of sources , they put down on paper their findings, So there are many people from whom you can get a distilled version of the knowledge of literally hundreds of other authors ,and other very smart people. Who is the reader that they should second-guess one of these experts? Why should one expect to end up knowing More than an expert? Does the expert more accurately understand with each adherent reader? And if the number of adherents is not directly correlated with the accuracy of the rendering , then by what means would one determine which the one true representation of the data would be?

For crying out loud! Woo Hu said, just get the average of three and move on!

I think its called a happy meal.

Eeeeww !

It's hard to say whether you guys are of the same opinion, or the exact opposite. Like, is the enlightenment of Buddha, being considered to be ,not knowing just how wrong you really are? Or is it that you think you're right when you aren't.? Or is the duality being said, to need embracing , the monism of Tao ,or is it the dualistic thinking which allowed science to flourish. ?

True, to the point of being a little spooky, I have been eating apples this week, but, not continuously all week , and so ,me liking apples more than mangoes, would still fall under the same delusion-ary boundary that you consider would apply to the mango eating. Tomorrow , again, is still a time in the future which hasn't occurred yet ( so it cannot really exist now. )

Sort of true, ,, but , me liking mangoes, is present tense or some such grammatical thing , and someday else , is future, and I have never had too many , that is supposition. (A single point in time is never changing, because change requires either a past or future to be meaningful , at the same time the present exists.) Good try though ! I like where you were going with that.

I believe that everything - I assertively think - about facts is invincibly true. There are also things which I hold my adjudication in abeyance about, and these things I consider with doubt. And there are those things which I consider to be opinion, and these are, variable but unassailable ,conclusions. The problematic parts are the things which I consider invincibly true, since they imbue one with hubris , arrogance , self-righteousness etc; However ! these are still the most settled and complimentary items which help assure me , that I am indeed aligned with the facts of the world , that I have a knowledge base , that my experiences have empowered me , and supports the rigidness of my ego. Being well supported in the rigidness of our ego , is highly adaptive for answering the most pivotal existential question that exists. "What do I do now?". The other rigid support is our opinions about things, we can say with little doubt , that we like or dislike particular things , want or do not want certain things, and these opinions also support our egoic opinions about ourselves. As in , the statement .."I like mangoes." Again ,, this ego support is highly adaptive for answering the most pivotal existential question that exists. "What do I do now?". So I am a mango liking being, and I know I should actively purchase mangoes , so I can enjoy them , (and they are a useful source of Vitamin A ) in accord with the facts of my situation. We now have connected several aspects of mind , our ego rigidity , aligns with the universe -internal and external , helps us make decisions , and pisses off everybody who differs.

I say, Truth is true, and whilst there are many ways to get it wrong...that's not the truths fault, it is adamantine wrapped in enigma. 😁

The humble barnacle, made some evolutionary decisions millions of years ago, and stuck to them, for millions of years. Sapiens, just cropped up and we may not be 'long for this world' . It is they , who have the proven track record, and the smart one is humbled. Are you getting the idea? ☺️ The barnacles don't know, and don't care! So the anthropocentric student asks, Does that make the barnacle ,a humble or arrogant thing? And the Daoist master responds, 'Well, it depends on how you look at it , let's just move on".

True smart people know that investigation leads to the point where the answers are unknown, as just a plain fact. It's because they incorporate data quickly, and get there. Normal people don't get that far, because it takes too long, we leave uncomfortable exploration to somebody else and presume that the answers were written in stone. 😁

The daoists perspective, is that properties like humility, and smartness, when taken to the extreme, become describable in terms of their own opposite. Having an over abundance of humility, Susan didn't have confidence in her own powers to judge, from among the experts , who was correct. So she decided to 'wing it' for herself. Having an over abundance of confidence, Sam thought he had all the answers ,given to him, on a platter by geniuses.

Gotta love that Bum Fu ! 😁

Actually it was rather a sturdy steel can, cut and bent to shape , having been so.. needing to be pressurized. Proving its worthiness by punching holes all over a garage door, no assembly required . ... but not as much fun as the flooring nail blow gun, or the 'rock in a sock' Perhaps pathetically I didn't do much pyrotechnics .. I lived in the city.

I consider the use of heaven there to be associated with fate , and fate in our lives due to our passions. Heaven energetically being more yang , floating above , things becoming etc, whilst the earth would be sober , objective , restorative. Mirrored bodily ,,, 'heavens' being associated with the - mental , ethereal , brainy and 'earthly' being solid , predictable , corporeally oriented . Socially speaking- judicial lawful structured elite , vs personal individuals masses. IMO Heavens , mankind, Dao , individuals , all function in similar patterns -as above , so below, therefore to understand the heavens or fate , one can look to themselves or society or the body , nature,, or .. whatever. It just doesn't matter, they felt the theme or pattern was the enduring and pervasive thing. And so ,- whatever you're using as metaphor to understand the classics ,the Dao, .. it too , doesn't matter.

No I didn't know that ,, did you know a tennis ball can , may be made into effective Shuriken ?

I never did use that function , except to stop annoying someone... and quickly decided it wasn't for me

Well, ...nobody ever actually masters the Dao. So why require that person to be here? You master yourself, to be in accord with the Dao, and one can do that in Wonderland , or Publix, or Coney Island... Wherever there are challenges , and freedom to choose.

Abandon hope , all ye who enter here. 😉