sree

Even if you don't reply, I would still like to speak my mind. I am not forcing my opinion on anybody. Worship at the Chinese Taoist altar if you want. You will neither be the first nor the last westerner to do that. This thread was started by Rene who wanted to move my discussion away from your thread which is about setting up the traditional Taoist altar used by the Chinese. She correctly sensed that I was talking about a different kind of altar which is not the kind of Taoist altar you were looking for. This thread is about my kind of Taoist altar. It is not meant for Chinese Taoism. It is meant for philosophical Daoists in the western world who have internalize their Daoist philosophy and want to experience it empirically in their lives at the physical level. It is obvious to me that doing this in a Chinese Taoist fashion is ridiculous. Living like a duck when you are a goose is unnatural as we are taught by the story about the Ugly Duckling. As you have said, to each his own. I agree with this and wish you well in your worship at your Taoist altar to the Three Pure Ones and the Jade Emperor. Your youtube didn't mention it. You may want to know that in addition to food and water offerings, you can also offer ghost money which is burnt at certain Taoist festivals.

Altars allow Daoists to place food and water offerings for the Three Pure Ones. It's pointless to vote also because the system is broke but we still do it. Take your life for example. Is there a point to it? None, right? But you still live it. Does anything in life mean anything? Being at odds with each other seem to be the nature of being human. And you are at odds with the altar that we want. I know what you are saying but why do you think it's wrong to worship a different way? There is no parallel. The Three Pure Ones comes from Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching. Christian theology is not like anything in Daoism. But who knows? If you can draw the parallel, I would be most interested in what you have to say.

It's unfortunate that you keep getting stuck with the computer (invented by Jobs and friends) I use as a "teaching" aid. I understand. Generally, nobody cares because they are content with the answers given by their priests and monks and whatever. The others are happy with what their science teachers tell them. The rest just fall through the cracks of life. I never had those dreams. I had a sixth sense that told me they meant nothing. I am glad you didn't get lost in that mess. That's not true. I don't socialize because it's a waste of my time and tiresome. It's not because people don't care about what I tell them. I don't go around talking about this stuff I am sharing with you. You think I'm nuts? I just do this on the internet. If I don't get my point across to you, I just crack open a can of beer and watch a movie. Seriously, I am incapable of being irrational. No one is. And everybody is as sane as you and I. It's just that none of us can see himself as others see him. You mean my conversation with Stosh? I think he and I are still moving along with the required rhythm. If he loses focus, I will get him interested again. That what I do in dressage. Well, if the diet regime isn't suitable then change it. It's not that complicated. Human bodies are not that different from animals that chomp the grass growing at their feet wherever they find it or chow down on anything they can get their teeth into. Just look at the strapping lions in the wild and the sleek deer that is gone in a flash like greased lightning. The trouble with people is their neuroses about eating. This is why there is a need to get back to basics. Living in the city can really screw you up. Meditation? No, no meditation. Go sell crazy somewhere else. I'm all stocked up here.

Jesus welcomed sinners but not their sins. This idea that you can waltz through the Pearly Gates barefoot and unwashed is mistaken. You wouldn't get through security (Saint Peter). And who do you think Taoist Hell is for? Water does not know what water is. You are a philosophical Daoist if there ever was one. There is no escape even in denial.

Why does Rene fight me on this? She rejects the altar I feel we need, and she sees my argument for it as insensitive and pose a problem to the status quo for not only traditional Taoism but also to philosophical Daoists of the west. Perhaps you could throw some light on this for me.

Hold on. You can worship when my altar is in place. The body is not real in the way we believe it to be. When you are "rapped on the head" and the pain you feel reinforces your belief that you are indeed rapped on the head, then that's your reality. When I am "rapped on the head", the pain alerts me to the situation for an appropriate response only. My reality - that I am the consciousness - remains unchanged It's not a figment of the imagination. It's all part and parcel of reality as conjured by the consciousness which is not generated by your head. It's the other way round. Your head is generated by the consciousness. I am seeking answers from everyone and everywhere. I believe that wisdom can only be found through talking with fools. The wise have nothing of value to me.

You mean evolution only care about the next generation?

It's not an analogy to me. I, we are this consciousness operating like a computer that conjures a space-time reality in which it lives as a person with a human body. The ever-increasing pressure to live this way - coping with health issues, relationship demands and financial needs - reinforces the substantiality of this reality. Well, isn't everybody out to find out who made us and why? This is an innate curiosity even for one who sees himself as a human being living on planet Earth. Ok, how about an example of a single algorithm change that you accomplished. I am talking about fundamental change. Tell me one mind-set alteration that you made and why? I will go first. The realization that I am this consciousness erases the algorithm that directs me to become and act as a real person. I still conduct myself as a person but for practical purposes only as in the manner I converse with you. Unlike before, socialization is no longer needed. For example, although I still like golf, I watch tournament on TV like before but instead of golfing with buddies, I hit golf balls alone on the driving range. What hostility? Cite me an instance and I will explain the reason. I am incapable of irrational behavior. . I don’t think we need to obsess over a perfect way to take care of the body. I eat food home-cooked using organic ingredients. Any diet regime in a health book or magazine looks ok to me. A half hour jog five days a week is good. I prefer working out in the gym, aerobics and weights for muscle tone and bone density. Yoga stretches in the mornings for flexibility. For bodily balance, coordination and rhythm, I used to attend ballet classes but these days I focus on perfecting the golf swing on the driving range. I can feel the Tao every time the ball is strucked solidly and sail into the sky to land on target. If I stay as I am, healthy and my teeth don’t fall out, I will be content when I check out at 75 after driving my last golf ball on target and a nice meal before I lay me down to sleep You are describing a strange situation. My memory goes as far as the point of feeling sleepy when I put the book I am reading and switching off the lights. The next thing I am aware of is waking up either in the night to go to the bathroom or in the morning to the sound of chirping birds. How important is it to live gracefully with none of the wars, the brutality, the heartless way in which we abandon and trample on one another in order to survive? It doesn’t make sense when you see the disorder in the human world. It is so out of whack compared to the haunting beauty and order in nature. I don’t know if there is a graceful way to live but I would be quite content if everybody’s fate as a human being is spared the horror that each is suffering or risk suffering in this world. Dying, as you said, is part of living. If the living is artful and correct, then the dying would not be so grotesque and fearsome. I think there is a way and I feel through this discussion, we will find it.

I am curious about your altar search that seem to have led you to the Three Pure Ones of Chinese Taoism. Embracing a Chinese religion is not the same as eating Chinese food. Any westerner can go into a Chinese restaurant and wolf down dim sum and kung pau chicken without being Chinese. To worship the Three Pure Ones is to be Chinese. Taoism is not like Christianity that anyone can embrace. It is like Judaism that is not meant for the gentiles. Since you state here that you don't belong nor desire to belong to a Taoist sect, then you are a collector, like a gun collector who owns gun with no desire to use them as weapons.

Who else? It's time we stop with the talking and start makng a commitment. ; I am not speaking for all of them. We don't want bums and hypocrites. I look at the traditional Taoist Altar for the Three Pure Ones and wonder why here in the west we don't make some effort to come to terms with and embrace reality as we see it, the way the Chinese unabashedly do from the moment they felt at peace with it. Are we like John, the closest of the disciples who denied Jesus? Why don't we step forward and be counted if we really feel what we philosophize?

It depends. Some philosophs are hypocrites, others are bums. I am thinking about something genuine. A hypocrite doesn't know he is being silly. The bum does. Is that an affectation like walking barefoot?

There is Jesus and there is the knockoff Jesus made in China. The latter lives in a world of human beings to whom he ministers. I live in a world where there is only me, and I am ministering to myself. What about you? There is no body to be left behind either now or ever. If the body is real to you, then you are trapped in and can never leave it. To believe that you can is madness. If the body is not real to you, then there is no reason to leave it. Where did you read all this? The truth about life is not something read from a book or revealed to you by another. Hmmm...did I read this somewhere?

Us, Rene. I am referring to us.

It took you quite a while to get to the point. You meant one's life is homage to one's beliefs, right? This is what our altar is for - us. We worship us who the Three Pure Ones represent in Chinese Taoism. Then you'd better be sure. As your dad might say, "Stosh, when the hell are you going to make something of yourself?" You can't be a bum all your life.

I am sorry if you find the thrust of my argument boring but I admit we are talking at cross purposes and are not connecting. The pre-supposition that what you have to say is so objective and so true that if I don't accept what you say, then I am arrogant and standing in the way of my accepting your help. The possibility that both of us are so intelligent that it causes you to rethink and re-evaluate your point of view never occurred to you. So, what happened to democracy and the freedom to be different and be heard? Do you realize that your viewpoint about death and dying is held by all mankind since Cain killed Abel? I am questioning that viewpoint because I don't think nursing homes and hospices fit in with an intelligent, artful way of life. I am not proposing that we throw granny over the cliff and do away with the elderly. I am asking you, as a Daoist, to look to nature for guidance. There are no squirrels in wheelchairs, no hospices in beehives. Can their way of life be right and ours is wrong?

Thank you for your contribution which is a teaching. May I know which Taoist sect are you from? This altar we want to built is for Philosophical Daoists of the west (not western China but the western world mainly the USA) who are not atheists and feel the need to walk the talk. Devotion is applied philosophy. Without worship, philosophy is small talk.

Suicide is as counter-intuitive as jumping off a diving board 20 feet above the water. Natural survival instinct kicks in to stop you from doing that. A diver learns to over-ride that instinct in the same way the Samurai re-sets the algorithm and stick the tanto in his belly and braces for beheading by his attendant. Ugly stuff. This has nothing to do with the Tao of dying. Choosing to cling on regardless of the quality of life imposes a burden on others. When a horse breaks a leg, it is put out of its misery immediately. Ending one's life in a state of depression or escaping responsibility does cause problems for others. We are contemplating an appropriate exit for the common good. You are talking around the problem when you should be confronting it. No one is proposing kicking the bucket without just cause. There is a noble element to the Tao of dying. I am sure of it. I wish you would help think this through.

An algorithm is a method for action which can be cooking a small fish or forming an opinion. There is nothing before or parallel to consciouness. As I said before, awareness is the operation of consciousness. There is nothing outside of awareness. But we are a truly self-aware Al. It is not mystical if you lose your belief (computer instruction) that you are a human being. Re-set your algorithm and verify the truth of all knowledge stored in your hard-drive. I have done that. Will you do it? Al One to Al Two, talk to me. What harmony with the Dao? I thought we were not going to use terms that cannot be instantly verified. Good health comes from proper diet, exercise and intelligent care of "the body". This avoid pre-aging due to careless or impoverished lifestyle. Ok, if you want to call it longetivity but don't expect to live for 5000 years.

Athough there is death OF the person, there is no death FOR the person for whom there is only dying which, as you pointed out, is still living. Lying in bed to sleep, I practised dying and intently waited for "death" to come. Time and again, I could never see it coming, and only upon regaining consciousness did I realize I "died". I will practise again tonight.. Therefore, the Tao of dying is part of the Tao of living, the last part. Unlike going to sleep. the typical way a person dies is graceless, untimely and undignified. We've got to find the Tao of dying, an artful way to go when we decide that it is time to go.

Surrender. You mean give up even before Lord Yama comes calling? Even the rabbit runs and hide.

I do care about death very much but not just to conquer or defeat it for myself but to do it for mankind. I am quite at peace with the prospect of not being to able to defeat it for myself personally and ready to meet death like every dumbshit. But I want to devote every minute at my disposal in this life to deal with this sadistic (to quote Shanlung) fate of man and hope that I can blaze the way for others to eventually find the Tao of dying. If death has no meaning, it won't drive Daoists to seek immortality and longetivity; and healthcare would only amount to dealing with bruised knees and pesky rashes. Fear of death is not only a Daoist problem on account of the belief that tongues will get pulled out by demons in Daoist Hell. Western atheists have no such superstition and are still afraid to die.

It definitely can be interpretated that way. 言 (word) symbolizes the knowledgeable person. And your value of the teacher (knowledgeable person), the seeking of whom is an imperative in traditional Chinese culture, makes learning from him an opportunity not to be missed. Being Chinese, like Gia Fu Feng and Derek Lin, and taught this value doesn't mean that it would be practised as taught. Western values play a part in shaping Chinese minds the way fine oolong tea ( a gift from me to a friend) is laced with milk (to my horror) and served (to me) in London. Let's enjoy our tea the way Chinese do, without the milk, the honey and that slice of sour lemon.

I had a better idea after spending time with the dying in nursing homes to get the feel of death. I went to spend time with the living in death row of prisons and witnessed executions by lethal injection (US) and by hanging (Singapore). Do you think I have learned enough to begin work on the Tao of dying?

I have been mulling about this and wonder if you would comment on the following: Verbatim translation That which is worthy of becoming word does not become word, lose man. That which is not worthy of becoming word becomes word, lose word. Interpretation If that which is worthy of becoming a teaching does not become a teaching, the man is lost. If that which is not worthy of becoming a teaching becomes a teaching, wasted words. I must admit that the meaning of the Chinese text is very subtle and not easy to grasp. Once grasped, it is difficult to convey even in Chinese. Worst of all, is the translating and the interpretating because that would be mutilating the composition itself. A butterfly deconstructed and re-assembled in any way is not a butterfly. This is my argument against translations of the Tao Te Ching.

Are we still a wholesome natural organism with the instinct to survive or have we become a soulless operating system in crash mode? Nuclear weapon stockpiles - like loaded guns cocked and pointed at each other's head - still exist as the hateful human condition that caused their creation and actual use worsens. Nagasaki and Hiroshima could be the initial rockfall that portends a cataclysm. The human computer does not care if it happens. Contemplating death does not invoke the panic that grips the mind at the onset of actual dying. The ability to see demise before it happens activates the will to act. Thus, the rabbit runs and we seek the Tao of dying.