sree

I know everything now. Thanks for the lead anyway. 道 in Chinese means Way. 真 in Chinese means authentic or true. 派 in Chinese means School. Literal translation of 真道派 means True Way School. 派 aslo means clique or faction and the Chinese triads use this word to identify their respective gangs. You have not answered my questions but you seem infatuated with the Chinese style. Are you good in Zhen Dao kung fu? Maybe we can spar and find out if Zhen Dao can block my Eagle Claws (鹰 派 拳).

I am trying to know the Zhen Dao teaching as you understand it with regards to getting a better life next time around. Are you working towards planning a better next life? Better in what sense? What is better to you may be different for me. This is why I asked you about your life now. Do you work for a living? Do you like to work for a living? If not, then for your next life you may want to be born in a wealthy family so you never have to work. Then again, you may like to work for a living but not in the present job. So, next life you may want a job you like. This is why I asked you what is your trade. Do you understand now? By the way, I checked the internet for Zhen Dao and found only Quanzhen Dao. Is that it? 真道派 means "The One True Faith". This will cause controversy as we live in a world of many "One True Faiths".

Do you work for a living, Vitalii? What is your trade? And what do you plan for your next birth?

If you do, then the dump can't be good. You're constipating. Watch out for blood. Do you find my kind of spirituality painful to take in? It has nothing to do with your kind. It has no ghosts, no spirits, no afterlife, no fancy stuff but solely focuses on this life - the human condition - which includes spiritualists like you and materialists on Wall Street. It's a sort of a balanced-diet.

Yes, the nuclear family is not good for kids. It is not good for anyone because it polarizes people into separate units. Mom suffers when dad gets violent and neighbhors are not suppose to interfere. This is how those three women were kept chained for ten years in a basement by this one guy in Cleveland, Ohio. It's not good even for good men too when they are forced to support their respective families on their own in a tough world. You outlined great points about problems with the nuclear family. This to me is true spirituality because you feel the pain, the way the Buddha felt the pain of being human.

So, what are you thinking? Help me to see your perspective the way I helped you see mine. The point is, the girl will not die like a whore the way all females in her world die. This is what you see in your life – life starts, life ends; and all that duality crap – the way girls are brought up to see the fate of females in their world in Manila. If the Tao of Dying was a book one of those girls wrote, it would be a book on how to live without having to die like a whore. As you said, in writing that book, she will learn to live differently. Now, if the Tao of Dying is a book written by you, it would have to be a book about how to live differently too so you won’t end up dying like a bozo, wouldn’t it? You know what bozos are? They are like guys who fly in an airplane that they know will end in a mighty crash - when either the fuel is gone or the plane malfunctions and falls apart – and yet won’t try to figure out how to save themselves. They feel smart knowing they don’t know how, can’t know how and can never know how. It won’t even occur to them that there are parachutes under their seats. You would have to strap their parachutes on for them and kick them out the door. Planes have been crashing with no survivors. As long as we want to be bozos, God will keep practising wu-wei.

How many social revolutions does it take before you see they bring about new forms of the old way of enslaving you? I meant that Richard Wolffe was blaming the rich for the misery of the poor. Ok, so you are saying that dad chooses other than to conform with expectations of mom and the kids and thereby exempt himself? Isn’t that called reneging? If marriage/family as an organization is an abstraction and doesn’t really exist, then every party to the deal is just faking it? What does this tell you about the integrity of the individual who forms relationships he knows is real only to other people, and who reserves the right of exemption from honoring mutual promises if he so chooses? As long as you are part of the organization, you shall be compliant without exemption. This is why organizations like the USA have laws, penitentiaries, and capital punishment for individuals who have opinions of their own at the expense of others in society which such individuals would deign to deem an arbitrary abstraction. The only opinions you may have are on sodas and candy bars in vending machines. And mind the security cameras as you exercise your choice responsibly. How can you say the nuclear family works if it doesn’t happen as much as anyone ever thought? A similar failure rate would spell doom for the model at any business enterprise to stop cash burn. What is preventing you from exercising a definitive opinion in this case? Hitler was a guy who had your feelings about the right to one’s own opinions, and it wasn’t just talk because he acted on his own opinions and made definitive choices. He was an individual and acted like one. He had integrity because he was true to himself: he said what he thought, and did what he said. It wasn’t just the autobahn, there were other innovative ideas he had for the modernization of Germany and those ideas formed the template for post-war modernization of Europe and the USA including the modernization of China today. I don’t think we are allowed to discuss Hitler, so let’s drop it. You were offering criticisms of the family structure and the questionable attitudes that might be bred by the non-traditional (Hitler-youth) way of raising kids. Isn't a collective responsibility for raising kids properly more effective in ensuring a level playing field for all? Every individual leaves the same starting gate at the same time in a race to the top. The Tao of Dying cannot exist in unwholesome societies in which babies are brought into the world to die of AIDS and other diseases, to suffer the sins of their parents. Do professors of economics - like Richard Wolff - factor this into conclusions about poverty and not just use the poor to advance social agendas? The organization is you, the individual, even if you don't see it. It is reality in abstraction. Society is the individual. If society is sick, individuals are sick. Is there a cure, a way out? I forget. You did say there is no way out. Everybody dies. And that is an opinion keeping us all in prison.

All organizations are of no individuals. YOU don’t count. How many roads does a man walk down, before you call him a dumbass? How many social revolutions does it take? Just this morning, I had to listen to some nutty professor blaming minimum wage on American capitalism Social deviants exempt themselves? How do they do that? The organization either exists or it doesn’t. If dad cheats on mom, he doesn’t have a marriage. If mom isn’t devoted to her kids, she doesn’t have a family. Let’s keep the organization’s concept simple to avoid bifurcation and forked tongues. As I said, evil destroys the organization. The nuclear family is based on a collective morality. If dad considers fooling around with an intern is OK, then he needs a head check. If we consider evil is an arbitrary term, then we need a head check. Charles Manson does consider evil an arbitrary term and that we are pointing fingers at him without just cause. He needs his head checked. I was talking about a nuclear family comprising dad, mom and kids. Perhaps, the concept is unrealistic in expecting dad to be faithful and compliant with mom’s ridiculous idea of monogamy. I would support junking the suppositions of human conduct prescribed for the nuclear family which is ill-conceived. What is a reasonable alternative? As Daoists, we could look to nature for inspiration. Bugs such as bees and ants live in large, social colonies like humans. If they can form stable harmonious societies that way, why can’t we? In this regard, Hitler was headed that way but we didn’t give him a chance to try it out. I understand what you are theorizing but it is not the way organizations work in the real world. Your theory works only for a collective comprising you and yourself provided you don't have DID (dissociative identity disorder) like Norman Bates.

Yes, most definitely! Look for signs and start with the body. Is your body out of shape and unclean? Is it uncared for and abused in anyway? Is it healthy and free of disease? If you answer, yes, yes and no, then ask why the mind is out to lunch? A mind that does not care for the body as a first and only priority, is like a mom who does not see that her role is to be devoted to her kids. Such a mom is a cracked mom.

The markets (not just the stock market) affects me as long as I live in a reality driven by money. But man cannot live on bread alone, said Jesus Christ. Quite right. I need to know where I am going after the body dies. He said that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (not after the body dies); seek and ye shall find. Thus,I am seeking the Tao of Dying that bypasses the bodily suffering and death of conventional spirituality Market forces move the world and price every necessities of material reality. If you think the stock market is BS, then you are viewing it as a means to make easy money without having to work for it. The likelihood is, you also seek the easy route to spirituality. Life is both material and spiritual. When one separates the two – pick one and diss the other – then, the life one lives becomes unwholesome. And one's mind is cracked, and a cracked mind is a devil’s workshop.

And this is what you have learned? So, it’s all wrong. If there just isn’t anything anyone has ever, or will ever, be able to do anything about it, why even bother to unlearn? Especially, when you don’t see what good ingenuity is?

I know. You are zero looking out for himself.

Sorry, pal. I know it's boring to look at the harsh realities of life. I can't move away from it to stuff that fascinates you. I need to focus on picking this damn lock to find the Tao of Dying. Bye.

Coffee? That’s a luxury even if it is not from Starbucks. Coffee costs money. What’s wrong with tap water? Even that costs money. And don’t flush the toilet. Water costs money. Don’t try dumping in the park because you will be arrested. Move to India and do it in the Ganges. The point is, it costs money to stay alive. I am not addicted to money. I am addicted to our way of life which costs money to live. Money’s powers are not illusory. Money empowers you to drink coffee which is traded on the Commodity Exchange and imported and shipped to where you are. Are you cognizant of reality? Are you living in small town USA or a rural commune of like-minded spiritualists? Forget about friendships and love. Without money, you won’t be able to stay alive unless you free range in the forests with jungle tribes willing to take you in. Don’t for a moment think that you will have friends and love should you fall ill and become disabled in the city. Helpers on this side of reality need money to live on too. You are missing the point. Money is your safety net. I am not talking about the intrinsic value of cash in your pocket or bank account for you to splurge on fun and toys. I am talking about our way of life that is driven by money. If you don’t have money, you stop living unless someone else is paying for your tab. People who live off other people’s money without pitching in their share are not cognizant of reality. The Tao of Dying cannot be a part of the way we live because it is dangerous. Dependency on money is dangerous. To be blind to this dependency is as crazy as playing on the high wire without a safety net. The truth is, money does rule over every aspect of your life. You are not cognizant of this reality. As I said, money has no intrinsic value. Water has intrinsic value. But you cannot get water without money which has become our bridge to every essential thing in life like water, food, clothing, shelter. Why do I even have to explain this to you? Just because you are content with a dollar cup of coffee doesn’t mean that no one else should have a $2,000 bottle of Chateau Latour. Just because you are happy with your address cared for by friends free of charge doesn’t mean no one else is entitled to be content with a multi-million dollar mansion on a private island watched over by personal security guards. It’s all relative. In our world, if there is a last source of clean water and I am holding all the money, guess what? That clean water you are sitting on will be going to me. This is the sad truth. You people just don't get it even when you are the poor victims of the power of money. You are not cognizant of reality.

Deepak Chopra?

Ok, so you feed yourself. With what? Yeah, you can say that. I do have a dependency problem with regards to money, like a serious dependency problem with regards to air....and water, food, clothing and an address...you know what I mean by address? I need a place to sleep, wash and shave and cook a meal and get my mail. I can't live in a neighborhood where the gangs come out when the temperature is 85 degrees to shoot the place up. So, it's costing me $10,000 a year village taxes just to have safe neighbors. The only way to get rid of this dependency is to bungy-jump Home. Too much money drowns you? What lengths would you go to justify failure in life?

No donations. Donations by those who are cognizant of reality go to enable those who are not. Those who WON"T pay their way are unconcionable thieves and robbers. Those who CAN"T pay their way are also unconscionable thieves and robbers. Each must pay his way - no more, no less. Then, and only then, it is possible to rule a large country like cooking a small fish.

Money is meant for paying my way in living this life. I can’t get through one day without money. This is our way of life. We need money to keep our bodies fed, clothed and sheltered. Money defines my self-worth in society. It doesn’t make me smile to point this out to you. It makes me sad because you are not cognizant of reality. Monks are not cognizant of reality. The only way to make monks cognizant of reality and keep them honest is not to feed them. This is why it is important for people, who are into spirituality, to be cognizant of reality. Earn your keep and put your money where your mouth is. I think each of us should pay a fee for using this forum. This will keep out the monks and other freeloaders.

Then, individuals don’t count. They are like bees that populate the hive which is the organization, the abstract entity. Deviants are individuals, within the organization, who cannot measure up to the expected norm. Evil done by members is not arbitrarily judged to be so. Evil is a direct cause of the demise of the organization. Such expectation, as in keeping the faith, is the foundation of social relationship in organizations. Dads are supposed to be faithful to moms, moms are supposed to be devoted to kids, and kids are supposed to be filial to parents. It is not individuals’ opinions but the stability of the organization that determines right and wrong. Here are two grains: When a cop lets you off on a violation, that’s mercy. If he doesn’t and you pay the fine, that’s justice.

I come away from your response with two judgmental labels: "askew" and "fairly". I don't see Leadbeater's orientation - in every sense of that word - askew in anyway. I accept that everybody is entitled to an attitude and none has to lean my way. And it is not a question of him having no truths. Even Charles Manson has some amazing truths to tell. What does "fairly" mean to you in a world of leaning towers where - to you - everyone is slightly off his rocker?

Look, your book-writing analogy works if you equate the Tao of Dying with the Tao of F*cking. But this is not where I am heading with this thread. You were thinking inside the box when you came up with your analogy. Inside your box, there is sex which is part of a way of life that is marred by suffering: poverty, disease, dying and death. The Tao of Dying has to be outside your box (i.e. not part of the way of life you know and are living now). The point is, I don't want anything to do with death which you seem to accept as part and parcel of a life of suffering. If you accept this way of life, then death awaits you. Look, you are talking like a whore who makes a living as a prostitute. And you ask, how can we "know" something like AIDS without any experience of it? I don't want to live like a whore so that I won't have to die like a whore. For some girls In Manila, prostitution is a way of life for an entire community. Grandma is a prostitute, mom is a prostitute, aunts are prostitutes, older sisters and cousins are prostitutes. Dying from sexually-transmitted disease is the fate of every female. Therefore, if the "Tao of Dying" is a book, then it would be like a book on wholesome living written by a healthy virgin girl who doesn't want to die like her grandma, her mother, her aunts, her cousins and her sisters. Do you get it now?

It would be like a book on celibacy written by a virgin.

This has nothing to do with Krishnamurti’s behaviour. The heartbreak comes from finding out that he was handpicked by a crackpot (Leadbeater). I make no such distinction. The vehicle for the teaching must live and embody the teaching. A good man cannot do bad things. If a man does bad things, he cannot be good. True. Krishnamurti is not my teacher. His life did not impress me but he did have remarkable things to say about the self.

I am not maligning Leadbeater. My research on him was quite extensive to prove to myself that the allegations against him were unjustified. He was credited with the discovery of Jiddhu Krishnamurti whose teaching made a deep impression on me. To this day, I cannot reconcile Krishnamurti's amazing utterances, which I rank right up there with those of the Buddha, with Leadbeater whose life, as recorded, was that of a cult leader. I wanted desperately to prove that Leadbeater was good because I believed that Krishnamurti was good. I am not happy that Leadbeater was no good. Do you understand my heartbreak, Cat?

I was not promoting the Pope and the Dalai Lama. I was stating that they are educated people who can deal with philosophical questions and hold their own in discourses with the best in academia. Therefore, it behooves you to stand back and consider this fact before dismissing them as idiots you can stomp on, intellectually-speaking. As for the religious organizations they head, I have no comment. Organizations are societies of people, and history does not have a good record of what people - which are made up of guys like you and DragonNectar and Stosh and me - are. So, why are you lapping up stuff written by a peddler of nonsense? I don't bathe in negative layers. I am pointing to the water which you say is dirty and yet swim in.