sree

Not just titles; every move people make, every nuance is like a track on the trail in the jungle of life. I, too, am on the path and any trace left behind by other seekers of the Tao - be it a skeleton, a piece of torn clothing, a stain of fresh blood or a whole body trapped and frozen stiff in an icy crevasse - is a lesson to be learnt to assure my safe ascent up the mountain beyond the clouds to that Taoist Shrine of wisdom. Taijichuan was not mentioned in the Tao Te Ching. As a mortal, I have only one life the end of which is uncertain. I have no time to waste and must press on with my one mission in life: not to perish like an idiot on the path. Learning that does not culminate in the mastery of knowledge is like a tree that bears no fruit. Granted, there is no end to learning but this is neither an excuse for nor a defense of incompetence. "No one is perfect","we are only human" and other attitudes of this kind have no place in traditional Chinese culture that gave us the Tao Te Ching. Mastery at self-cultivation is not to be taken lightly because it is a vital social responsibility of those upon whom the welfare of their fellowmen depends. People suffer when those bestowed the public trust (which is the mandate of Heaven) won't step up because they don't demand excellence of themselves as a ruler of a nation, the head of a family, the owner of an enterprise, or a professional doing his job. You don't screw up and get away with it with an apology. Is it not obvious to you that both my attitude and my regard for the Tao Te Ching are different from yours? It is neither old nor a set of beliefs. It is the eternally young teacher of the truth. If that was an epitaph on your tombstone, what do you think it would say to a seeker of the Tao who came upon it on his way up the mountain?

Let's not get away with metaphors. They are figures of speech that are helpful up to a point. No, you didn't mention the third-eye. I meant to imply that no spiritual or mystic propositions are admissible in our discussion. I made the analogy using operating systems, and why is it inaccurate? Tell me where I am wrong in comparing consciousness to the computer operating system. I am not confusing you with someone else. Please tell me what you mean by "installing one that is almost impervious to this crap". I don't think it is possible but who knows? I am open to any better alternative to my proposal to "reset" the way consciousness works.

I think not. What's wrong with anger and getting angry? It's human nature and that's a natural reason why it exists. Does a leopard get a hang-up over spots on its coat? Spots on coat make a camoflage. Leopards don't know that and not even aware of that until some crazy leopard comes along and see those spots as blemishes. In your other thread about digging other people's eyes out, I was angry with that crazy spotless leopard ministering to you and attacked. I was "digging his eyes out". Anger is a natural impulse just as spots on a leopard are natural markings. They are there for a reason. If you feel that the Tao Te Ching has the way (Tao), stay away from crazy leopards. They have been reading what they think is the Tao Te Ching.

Why do you make him come across as an unsual freak and nothing like a normal well-adjusted person like you? He tried to dig someone eyes out. Does that make you feel good about your self? That, my friend, is really sick.

Paraphrasing an understanding we can see is all we can do. May all of us accept each other's paraphrases without malice. Personally, I feel that it is better to have each other to talk to - no matter how negative the conversation - than to have no one to talk to at all. This is why God created Eve. You have no idea how much I love you all.

I am taking your response in and sitting with it, watching my response to yours, in Buddhist meditation. What you say is true - to you. It is this truth that I must consider.

I am glad that you feel entertained. May the spirit of Chuang Tzu be with us. The only time I rode in a Rolls Royce was in Hong Kong. It was my ride from the airport to the Peninsular Hotel. I have not seen the inside of a Gulfstream. The Citation is pretty popular with the Chinese and I flew in it a couple of times out of Singapore to Shanghai to attend Chinese New Year at the invitation of someone I met. He was trying to impress me, no doubt, and I was very impressed indeed. He was only 35, and his grandmother was very happy with the Three Pure Ones judging from the way she showed the grand Taoist home altar to me. It seems like brash young multi-millionaires are sprouting like mushrooms in China while the west is buried in debt. Taoism and commercialism are compardres in China. Only the perverted form of Taoism in the west has a conflict with money.

The old farm girl died out with the dustbowl in the thirties. She wouldn't have let that racoon live. The "old farm girl" these days is Jane Fonda in designer jeans growing ranunculars and organic basil for the farmers' market two blocks from my house. I am not proposing that we all kick the bucket at 75. Having worked in nursing homes, you know it just ain't right to let people suffer and not take care of those problems that each one has to deal with on his or her own. I was watching this movie called "Amour" about a handsome loving elderly French couple. One fine day, the wife had a stroke and everything went downhill from there on in. She couldn't move her right arm and was in a wheelchair. Then, she had to be fed by him. After that, she went into depression, refused to eat and he slapped her out of frustration. And finally, he suffocated her with a pillow and killed her. And that is not the Tao of dying.

What are you implying? I came here to seek validation? This forum is like a beehive of angry bees out to kill me. Stosh is the lead bee.

You know it's who? Goddam, that old farm girl is like nothing of that kind of gal I've seen in real life. I would never have guessed she was an old farm girl on account of her amazing grasp of reality. She definitely is doctoral material. This is the internet and we are in a party with the lights out and it's pitch black. Nobody knows who anyone is. Stop groping...or is it grokking?

Let's get our analogy right. The computer operating system facilitates the running of programs. "We" (I am not defining what we are because I am "reformatted" and have no knowledge) are the operating system - this state of consciousness - and it starts running at the onset of awareness. So, explain how consciousness - prior to awareness - acts to re-install a "fail-safe" version of consciousness. You don't have to follow my line of reasoning but no third-eye rubbish, please. No crap.

Old animals? Have you seen any besides your dog or cat? I have never seen an old squirrel in my garden. Not even a pot-bellied middle-aged one. Birds too. They are all young and feisty. What I am getting at is this: they don't suffer old age. There is no old age pain in nature. This is why I feel nature-loving human Daoists who are into longetivity and immortality are on the wrong track. Part of our research into the Tao of dying needs to examine a timely exit. We should live like animals in nature and our human world should be like a well-run food market where nothing is beyond the sell-by date. Nothing is more annoying than taking stuff out of my grocery bag when I get home and find that the bread is two-days past its sell-by date. I think, if we take good care of our bodies eating organic food and regularly exercise, a good time to go would be 75 provided we are perfectly healthy; otherwise, the check out date should be the onset of a serious disease like parkinsons or cancer. What do you think?

Mr Wu, I really wish you would pay attention to your punctuation and sentence construction. You are writing English, not classical Chinese. Material reality is neither absolute nor objective but perceptual, and to some extent subjective. This doesn't mean one can walk out of space-time reality into the sixth dimension to visit with the Three Pure Ones or travel through time. The Taoist motto, to me...to me, ok? (as Bruce Lee would emphasize) is to study and internalize the Tao Te Ching and still be able to function sanely in the real world with bankers, business people, the person on the other side of the line in Amsterdam straightening out my flight connections to Shanghai. Coming to this forum to make yourself understood and feeling validated doesn't count.

Junking knowledge doesn't mean scraping our ability to think. It's like reformatting your hard-drive and wipe it clean of all previously installed operating system, programs, files with their cookies, viruses and malwares. Can you do that? If you were desanitized and wiped clean, what do you think that would feel like? As I said, there is nothing beyond the intellectual level. This means all knowledge - including superstition or mystic fantasy about the eternal Tao - is information generated by the processor. Understanding things beyond the intellectual level is the calling of fools whose heads are stuffed with junk. They can't see straight for the junk and blame it on the limitation of the processor.

Ok, ok, I give you that. I forgot and meant to include that screw-up in the design critique too. If it wasn't for the damn body, we wouldn't need to do this research project on the Tao of dying. You are pretty good. Why don't you come work with me on this either as a PhD student or I can offer you an assistant professorship position and we can write this thesis that will transform mankind.

You don't want to live in the farm. You are just saying it. There was a movie called "Lost in America" about a guy who got pissed with society and wanted to change his life. So, he quit his job and went to "live in a farm". It didn't work out and he tried to get back. I promise I won't laugh, but for you and all you on the path out there who are disaffected with society and think you can make it with the hornbills, watch this:

Why don't you feel good, K? Is it because the vibe is discordant? Life is a river with twists and turns, sometimes a fury of whitewaters that is thrilling for some and troubling to others, and sometimes placid as it empties into a lake on the way through marshland to the sea. To feel good is to be pacified. Do you know the meaning now?

Lynching is done by a mob. I do feel that I am am being heckled by a mob crying for my neck. You, apparently, are part of the mob that find what I said upsetting. What happened to debate in a free society? You do sound defeated. This is a fact to me because that is how you come across based on what you said about the Tao. Look at your signature "Idiotic Taoist". That says a lot. You have self-effacing pretensions that reflect a conflicted relationship. One is either a Taoist at peace with the the eternal Tao or one is not. Rene said she has the Tao and never lost it, and Flowing Hands practices his Maoshan Taoism with consummate conviction. But you have nothing good to say about your relationship with the Tao.

If I thought no one could figure it out, I wouldn't ask, would I? I am optimistic. It took intellect and much wisdom to make all those authoritative judgments in practically every Chapter of the Tao Te Ching. I know the prevailing and fashionable sentiment of the day is not to be judgmental, nothing is wrong and everything is right even when someone bop you on the head and kick you in the butt - be nice, let the lions bite. So, how come the the Chinese Tao Te Ching is authoritative and its western reader is politically-correct? I don't know. I could hazard a guess. When I look at nature - and mankind is included - I see an amazing set-up. If a human being created that, then a lot of thought was put into it and it was a damn good job. My critique on the design is, I see only two things that don't make sense: one is the violence prey must suffer to feed predators, and two is this ridiculous manner of exit called death. I know, I know...all you philosophical Daoists will give me that Lao Tzu wuwei and Chuang Tzu bs and tell me to go to sleep. Ok, here is my guess. The ideal exit is a fade out. Now, don't imagine this and try to fake it.

Does the rose care if you don't like the way it struts on the bush and mar the look of the garden? Screw you! I am the daffodil. Screw you too. Are you really a philosophical Daoist or Sister O'Malley?

You are making an accusation. You are calling me a liar. State the lie and prove it. Traditionally, in the west, when you call a man a liar, you insult his honor and is obliged to pay for it with your life in a duel. Does it bother you that, these days, you can go around scandalizing other people with no sense of accountability? So, you read something not directed at you personally, inserted yourself in the conversation and accuse me of mocking you. Do you read Chinese? If what I said was untrue, I could be asked to explain my point of view. It may not be convincing but only someone - like a Chidragon, Gia Fu Feng or Derek Lin - who can read Chinese can make that judgment and choose to agree or disagree. If you cannot read Chinese and not in a position to assess my opinion, then yours is an irrational emotional response not worthy of comment. You obviously have issues. This doesn't mean we can't talk this over. Why don't you calm down and state your case? We don't have to agree with each other but let's try to see what is it that you find disagreeable.

Life is great in the US for those who live in an environment that foster teenage creativeness. For the rest of America, it is one tough grind no better than life in China where kids don't gun down or blow up other people to vent rage. People steal secrets in China in order to survive. People steal insider-trading secrets in America in order to make millions of dollars off other people. I don't think you can make a case for which is the better cultural setting because the ground is shifting as we speak. At any rate, I was arguing for the need of discipline, and creativeness (Tao) does have its own discipline. That fifteen year-old in your link displayed an innate discipline, the kind that is fostered in the Chinese school. American competitiveness cannot rest on the one-off creative kid alone. Without cultural discipline, entire civilizations have crumbled. China is the only great civilization standing. Let's hope America will still be around in 4000 A.D. as top of the heap and king of the hill.

Don't be so uptight. It's bad enough out there beyond the worldwide web where life is oppressive everywhich way one turns. This is cyberspace, my space. Each of us is inside his own head which is open to the world. I can look inside your head and you can look inside mine. It's kinda neat because there is no hiding from each other. Don't blow a fuse just because you don't like what you see in my head. It's supposed to be private but you are given privileged access that no one, not even the FBI has. If you don't like what you see in my head, tell me about it but don't call me names or insist I change my mind according to your dictates. Change should only be made on a "willing buyer willing seller" basis. Is that fair? Do you prefer that I close up my head just because you cannot deal with your hang ups? In that case, we all might as well get out of this forum and walk right past each other the way people do in real life.

Why don't you phrase the question? I began with "How do I die?" "I" meaning you and everyone alive. If my question is too ambiguous, then why don't you narrow down the focus on what I perceive is a problem. This does not imply that I am passing the chore to you. A lot of you guys out there don't see it as a problem and won't be part of the investigative effort. I feel it is not only a pressing question but a fascinating one that even the brightest out there can't figure out. Healthcare is a multi-billion dollar industry not meant to keep you healthy but to keep the Grim Reaper at bay. If we can find out how to die which is not committing suicide but uncover the very nature of life itself, then dying needn't be so unnerving. Chapter 19 advocates the abandonment of knowledge. This means that to find the Tao of dying everything in our heads must be junked - no zen, no biology or pyschology, not even Taoism. I am not the leader of this inquiry. I am driving blind here. If you are not interested in the quest, you'd better jump out because we are going over the cliff with both hands free into the unknown.

Even in America, there are dress codes in places where you can't waltz in with your pants halfway down your butt. If you don't want to follow the rules, get out or security would throw you out and that is perfectly legal. Hooliganism is frowned on in any culture especially in the classroom. Egalitarians don't make it in America.