sree

You do fit my description of the philosophical Taoist who is content with your Taoist philosophy and are not religious. There is no disagreement here. Nobody is forcing you to seek anything. Don't get upset. You are correct. I am not all philosophical Taoists but just the devotional kind which is a fact. I am not boxing you into anything. You stay in your own box. Not all men relate with women with the same intensity also. Some are content with a non-exclusive philosophical tie-up and sleeps around while others, like me, are devoted and pair up for life with a soul-mate. Why do you feel I am mocking anybody? Please frame your charge clearly and give me a chance to answer it. You obviously are offended by what I said. I can see that. My statements displayed in this public forum define me in the same way the black garb of the Hasedic Jew defines him in Yonkers. Do you think it is fair of me to tell that Jew that by dressing the way he does he is mocking me? It's true as far as I am concerned. It may not be true to you. Just because it is not true to you, I must stop saying it? I am aware that this is the internet and that you may not share my American values of freedom of expression and multi-culturalism. Be that as it may, I am quite prepared to defer to your sensitivities and won't speak my mind if my convictions incense you.

This is not the Chinese tradition that has a high regard for learning especially in olden days. Even today, in China, respect for learning is evident in schools. The classrooms in China are nothing like the lack of seriousness in American high schools. My first encounter with the absurd happened on my first day in university in America. No one bowed when the professor, clad in blue jeans, entered the classroom. He placed his briefcase on his table, sat on it cross-legged, looked at us and said "hi". And that was supposed to be the beginning of my education in one of the best schools in the world. As long as I am conducting this class, you will have to change your attitude and cut out this self-indulgent behavior if you want to contribute to the learning of anything serious. Rocket science is easy compared to what we are doing here. We are studying how to die and no one since the beginning of the human race has gotten a passing grade. Why do you say death and life are the same thing? Please understand that when you make a submission make sure you can validate it. A lack of seriousness in dispelling ignorance is a lack of regard for mankind.

True. But the Tao Te Ching is a simple book made complex by foreign wind-finders and shadow-hunters. Thus, the philosophical Daoist do not rely on hearsay and seeks direct divine revelation from the Chinese text without intermediaries be they deities, priests or translators. Worship is an act of devotion, an expression of love. Unless it is real, don't do it.

It depends on what you mean by "true self". Rajneesh,if he is alive, would agree with you. The Pope too. Also, it also depends on what your existential needs are. Can we discuss these things? Have you realized your "true self" and how do you get money, if this is necessary to meet existential needs. You need to define spacing out. Conversing with you here, to me, is spacing out. I won't die if we stop talking. Spacing out means not being focussed and engaged in doing a job or attending to practical matters at hand. I am losing you here. You said earlier that realizing the "true self" is not separate from existential needs. Now, you say there is no true self to realize and it's all a distraction. Why do you say that learning how to die is a distraction? Do you think getting one's affairs in order like making a will to ensure the family is provided in case one should die is a distraction? Making a will is like preparing for departure. But no one knows anything about departing because it is as undesirable as being forcibly pushed off the rooftop by a couple of Taoist thugs called Cow head and Horse face.

The word - worship, inspiration or celebration - is not important. The empirical act of devotion that is experienced at the physical level is a tangible affirmation of the internalization of the Tao. Without this, philosophical Daoism is hearsay and just a bunch of information gathered by one person from another person concerning some condition or thing of which the first person has no direct experience. For the genuine philosophical Daoist, worship has to be more than burning incense and ritual offerings of food to the Three Pure Ones. Ritual practices of the traditional religious Taoist are symbolic and not acts of real worship. All things being equal, symbolism, at least, has more skin in the game than hearsay.

Picking entry or exit points and timing market shifts are exciting for making bets. I don't do this for three reasons. Firstly, I don't like gambling. Secondly, I don't take risks even if they can be hedged. Thirdly, high-frequency trading has taken over the market place and is the game-changer. Trading the markets using technical analysis these days is like making chess moves against IBM's Big Blue. There is no way possible to understand things beyond the intellectual level. Don't cheat because you would be just fooling yourself. I never cheat because self-deception is deadly when making investment decisions, and they have real painful consequences. I apply the same discipline in studying the Tao Te Ching. Never cheat. This is why Taoist deities give me a wide berth and Tao Masters on this side of Taoist Hell cannot penetrate my defenses. Losing your mind is a lot more sad than losing money.

You are not paying attention, rene. Instead of fooling around in class, you need to help us think this through. Samurai is trying.

I would like to space out and realize my true self too but my existence needs to be funded. What do you do to fund yours assuming you are not living on public financing in a nursing home, medical facility or prison?

What aspect? No aspect. That's cheating. Everything - that makes you - dies.

You know what? There must be millions of Americans out there who want a Home Taoist altar and don't know how to go about it just like you. Such an Altar set can be put together, packed and shipped for $19.99 and if those who "order now" get it blessed by our resident Maoshan Shaman, Flowing Hands. Just two bucks profit per altar would make you a multi-millionaire. With the money, you can build a Taoist Temple in Florida for Flowing Hands.

This is the question I want to investigate. Right here. I came up with this question about the Tao of dying right here in this forum. It's not a concept. It's a challenge to confront this question about our mortality. You as as well as others won't deal with it. If this was a school exam question, you all failed. Dying cluelessly doesn't solve anything. You get reborn to die again the same undignified way. I am not talking about Buddhist rebirth. I am talking about the human race, people dying every minute, every day for generations after generations the same clueless way just because everyone, like you, feel it is a pointless question and won't confront and deal with it. Who was the fool who did this translation? I do wish foreigners never set eyes on the Chinese classics.

The problem is that it just doesn't make sense. You accept that you will die and you don't know what nor how you will handle it because you can't do anything to avoid it. That would be like standing as a dumb deer frozen in the headlights of an 18-wheeler semi bearing down on you and you are bracing for the blood and gore. Do you realize how crazy that would sound coming from a guy who wrote the Tao Te Ching? Seriously, do you think Lao Tzu would know how to die? Or do you suspect this guy who wote this Dao book is as dumb as a deer like the rest of us? It's not arguing. I love to shake you up from the frozen state. Standing in front of trucks is just too silly a proposition for making an exit even if that can't be avoided.

Ok, buddy. Enjoy your drink and your peanuts.

I have been earning a steady living doing this for the past ten years ever since I quit my job. It was a crazy move at that time but I felt compelled to do it to prove to myself that I was serious about my convictions about doing the right thing. I couldn't go on reading the Tao Te Ching and telling myself that it made sense but go on living in a way that contradicts the principles it expounded. My girlfriend at the time who was quite happy being a Daoist (like Rene or the other females forummers) thought I was going mad and getting spiritually radicalized. We shared a lovely apartment in the Upper West Side of New York City and were living a pretty fancy life. What are you getting at? Are you an Occupier Wall Street conspiracy theorist who believes some big players are manipulating the small guys? I am not a day-trader darting in and out all day scalping pennies for a living. But I do track my investments sitting at my computer screens displaying live feeds from newswires, forex and securities trading platforms, and cable TV business channels. I wish I don't have to do this but I can't stop if I want to maintain my freedom which cost money. There are no market-makers. Nobody knows what's going to move the markets. Haven't you learned from the last financial crisis how complex and unstable everything is? Like I said, there are no market makers. Everyone is up to his eyeballs in debt and nobody is telling. I am just a guy with a stash riding the Titanic that has struck the iceberg and water is filling its hold. My mission is to sense where that water is going in order to move my stash away from the lowest point of the ship and not end up like the rest of the world drowning.

What is holding you back? The Three Pure Ones and the Jade Emperor are culturally quaint for an American home environment. Does it have to be traditional Chinese deities? If an American believe in spirits, aren't there equivalents from western culture? The Taoist altar has powerful Chinese imagery based on the traditional model. It forces the devotee to go "Chinese". Admittedly, it would make a fashion statement in your home like a 道 tattoo on your arm.

The sequential order is correct only because life is real and something you can deal with. Deal with life correctly and death will take care of itself. So, what do you mean by preparing for life? Are you prepared based on the way you are living now? Let's suppose you and I are asking this question. We are two passengers riding in an airplane which is in perfect shape but over time will gradually disintegrate. As it loses structural integrity, it will come apart and we are all going to die. It is going to be a plane crash with no survivors. Other passengers don't care. Some are asleep, some are watching movies, some on their laptops, others are at the back of the plane chatting with drinks in their hands. So, how do you prepare if, like me, you are not a westerner into the eternal Tao or a Chinese Taoist bracing for entry into Jade Heaven?

I am able to refute anything that is untrue and irrelevant. I earn a living trading the markets and anything to do with them is relevant to me. Out-of-body experiences, sutras and vedas, second deaths, eternity - all that are not relevant. I need to stay focussed on real things. Emptying my mind of irrelevant psychological clutter keeps me sharp like an eagle. Animals in the wild don't mess around. Their senses are keen and their reflexes sharp. They are true Daoists. You are stuffed up with knowledge that has no relevance to living a sane life. Chapter 19 - abandon knowledge. Not all knowledge. Just the irrelevant crap.

We do die, all of us. And we all die horribly because no one knows how to die. The Tao of dying is key to the art (Tao) of living. Longevity and immortality are delusions inconsistent with the cyclic nature of life. What you are advocating here is to ignore the situation, avoid the problem and just focus on having a comfortable ride. But that ride must end sometime. You don't know how to get off. No one does. So, you accept that eventually everybody get thrown off unceremoniously. Where is the wisdom in this? People get burned out one way or another. Given the choice, I would rather earn a good living as a race car driver than suffer the karma of a trucker.

Are you going for it? I really like the owner of that altar and she makes a good presentation. In another youtube clip, for busy Daoists, she recommended using miniature plastic food items like beer and baguette. The Three Pure Ones and the Jade Emperor are now part of her American life. What's wrong with the Holy Trinity and the Pope?

There must be some kind of virtue in the Tao Te Ching equating to human goodness. After all, it is a human book written by humans for humans for the biased purpose of living wisely. Even the warlike Sun Tzu dealing with the conduct of human conflict embraces the virtue of the Tao Te Ching for the human good. I daresay that goodness is the fundamental rationale found in all the Chinese classics. There is no objective Tao devoid of human connection. Such a concept is foreign to and contradicts the basic value that inspired traditional Chinese scholarly pursuit. This was why the goodness ideal ( 聖人) was always central to the self-cultivation of the noble man (君子). Philosophical Daoists, including me, must import the authentic Tao from China and not fashion a knock-off perversion of the original for western consumption.

An altar may be necessary to keep you centered. Regardless of how in sync you are, you still need to relate with guys like me who can catch your drift. Philosophical Daoists of the west live in cities and need a setting to join in celebration. People typically gather by the fireplace which makes a wonderful altar. Why would that be limiting or containing? Religion doesn't have to be doctrinal or ceremonial. Spirituality doesn't need to reside in or inhabit anything. And devotion has nothing to do with devotees when worship is not a thing you do. It's a state of communing that comes univited when there is togetherness. Is that natural enough for you?

Hey mythy, you ok?

The body is not a mere vessel. It doesn't exist. Just because you see it in the mirror and you pat yourself on the head you believe you have a body. Just listen to yourself. If you talk like this at my dinner party, no one at the table would say anything. Nuts. You need to get a grip of yourself. I have no interest in the Christian afterlife, Buddhist Nirvana or the Taoist Jade Heaven. I have to make a living with one foot planted on Wall Street and the other in this forum to take the pressure off. A second death is a bit too far out for me even after the market closes here. Money never sleeps let alone die. I just placed some trades in Asia.

I am not afraid of death. My problem is being alive. What's the point? It's like being asked to report for duty and no one comes forth to present me with an assignment. Here I am standing around waiting for instruction or some explanation why I am in this world. I want to get on with it. Volunteer at a hospice? This whole world is a hospice. I was put in this hospice of a reality the day I was born. And no one wants to die because none knows how. Do you get me sweetheart?

What did you edit out? Come back.