GrandmasterP

We kinda tiptoed around that Abyss didn't we?

I quite like white raisins. Those make for a sweet, tasty and energy-filled snack when out on the bike. I'd not get 72 virgins in my panniers.

Same here when I was a kid. Dinner time was mid day and tea time was half five-ish. We're posh now hence 'Lunch & Dinner' but I still like to call it Teatime.

No, you've summed it up nicely.

That lad eats well and enjoys his food.

See post 4 and please, don't shoot the messenger before apprehending the message. We're not at home to Mr. Snippy.

Tiny Tim? This one?.... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N_PLWqnfFgU Isn't he dead? Just checked... He dead... 1996 ( RIP).

Half a brick in an old sock will seldom let one down in a brawl. Bit heavy to carry around all the time though. Running away really fast works well too.

Yep fresh fruit 'offerings' are a tradition in some places. You can eat the fruit afterwards. Some burn incense too. Flowers never go amiss ( real ones). It's up to you and that's a nice Buddha. The cosmic mudra way his hands are held indicates left handedness and the black Buddha can imply impermanence or it may just be they made it black as a nice contrast to the gold robes.

"Our teaching is based and follows the curriculum of Dao De Daoist Center, founded in Russia in 1993 by Dmitry Artemyev." 21- years old. Venerable. How those long Russian winters must simply fly by. Canada too, they've a place in Vancouver. That can be chilly there.

Expert help please. Can anyone highlight some texts in TTC that directly suggest Wu Wei (non doing) as a meditative practice? Not so much as 'inferred' but more specifically 'referred'. I can only read English translations of TTC and the more I do so the more I 'intuit' that I may be missing something. Many thanks in anticipation.

That's better. Ta.

Paragraphs mate. Try 'Edit' then re-post. If you wrote it in paragraphs it'll come up as such. If not have a go at using paras because few bother to read block text.

They do say that there's a 'discernment'. Along the lines of... " When the student is ready, a teacher appears." I tend to agree with that transaction. A seeker intuits when s/he has found the right teacher and the teacher soon enough knows if the student will make it. The MoPai lads who post on here can never have that whereas the proper MoPai out in Java can.

Oi! Mediums have to eat. "Do not muzzle the ox that treads the corn." (I read somewhere).

Well there are ways and means of saying something. Trouble with posting is we can only read the words and never the face. That can compound unintended offence.

Checking out the earlier pages on this thread I got to wondering what some of those posters with their opened third eye are doing nowadays? ' Hat Lad' ( not his real name) who used to post on here is, by all accounts; now 'Pastoring' a small storefront Pentecostal Christian Church.

Boredom maybe. Backsliding is a sticky term though. It comes with baggage from Evangelical Christianity via the Temperance movement.

Contradiction in terms. 'Daoist' and ' Call to Action' in the same sentence. Nah.

How would anyone know then?

Today. Brekky: Mashed Pilchards on Brown Toast. Lunch: Some cake. Tea ( Dinner): Baked Cauliflower cheese, fresh spuds ( just dug up) and runner beans ( just picked). Choc Ice for afters. Supper: Some biscuits. Beverages. Yorkshire Tea. Water. Maybe a cuppa cocoa before bed.

Yep. Apart from the seniors who are really 'faithful' at keeping it up - we churn cultivators because folk get bored and stop coming. I don't think that will ever alter because there is just so much nowadays for people to do. If they get bored with one pastime there are hundreds more out there for them and all easy to get to. It IS bleddy boring sometimes but those boring times tend, to me anyhoo; to be the most productive as far as results go. That sheer 'grind' of doing it when you can't almost be ersed to do it. Having cultivated 'against all odds' - that's a real buzz for sure. Those athletes who want to do well are down the gym every day seven days a week come what may It's no different with cultivation, if it isn't 'done' then it can't 'work'.

It's such a big area is 'New Age' and for sure it influences what we do. You never heard ' Chakras' and ' QiGong' mentioned together in the same context until the hippie days. In Spiritualism you would never see a card reader at Tea with Spirit meetings nowadays it's almost all card readers and they are very popular. " Let a thousand flowers bloom' somebody ( Chairman Mao??) once said.

Fact is Ken for the likes of anyone west of Java with MoPai there's no teachers, no dojos nor much at all beyond SoTGs useful website plus Jim n Kosta's elderly ( nowadays) books and some shonky old footage on YouTube. Beyond that there's a handful of you lads posting about MoPai online. It doesn't add up to much compared to paths with accredited teachers, lineages and dojos or centres where people can get together to learn and practice with coaching and mentoring from recognised and non-contentiously qualified teachers. Seems to me that you MoPai lads have made a bit of a rod for your own backs really. You can't 'know' for sure that anything you do have is kosher but you do know for sure that whatever it is that you do have - you have contrary to the wishes of the ( closed to westerners) MoPai lineage. I've said before... Whatever floats anybody's boat that's what floats their boat... But for anybody wanting to learn and progress internally or with an external form then most everywhere BUT MoPai offers those opportunities.

You got that right. Every other teacher and his guru-uncle is out there online flogging a patent cultivation system these days. It's created a lot of 'butterflies' flitting from one thing to another and never settling on anything for long. We're pretty well media saturated and even here on TTB what passes for threads are sometimes covert advertisements for someone's 'product'. I'm still of that mind where a real teacher beats any and all 'media' be those books, DVDs or Online clips. Only a real teacher can observe you cultivate 'there and then' and correct mistakes as those arise. Books and DVDs, good as some are; can never offer 1-2-1 coaching and mentoring. Only a real teacher can do that. Having said that maybe Skype type teaching could work where the teacher is online and can see what the student is doing. I wonder if anyone does that?