sree

You didn't really die; otherwise, you wouldn't be talking to me now. Your body must have clinically died and revived for you to tell the tale. What was it like when your body evicted you that time when you were 12? What have you come to know? What do you mean by "I am Life unfolding"? I am glad to know that you have a loving wife. Partners who are very close are known to die within months of each other. You have been through a lot. Have you ever wondered why you had to go through all that bodily trauma? What's the point to being born into this world only to suffer? It seems so unnecessary to me. What's with the "namaste"? Are you a Hindu?

Apparently, you need a new religion and have found one in dreams. I am giving you some air time to show it to the world.

Dreams seems to be important to you. We are led to believe that they are nothing more than random brain activity during sleep. You see differently. And you want to be taken seriously.

Farm girl, you are down to earth, so let's cut out the crap. All things being equal, would you rather be a rat or a bug?

A favorite creation of God is listed in Forbes list of billionaires. But you do know the answer. You are a bug in a jar.

Are you still going to die or was that doctor wrong? How are you doing now? Are you bracing yourself for departure from this life?

What happened at 12? Why are you afraid of life? And what is "Home" to you? Your wife is a dependent; also, if you have been together for a long time, you are her life and she needs you to be alive. What kind of cancer? I know some people who had cancer. They know it can come back but they are living their lives harder than me. Are you from India?

Is being American and being Chinese mutually exclusive? I think not. It is the purity of the Chinese ingredient that adds to the American cultural pot. What is problematic is the running dog who brings to the mix a defective Chinese upbringing and fuse it with the fashionable values of faulty elements in the host culture.

The ancient Chinese is correct. Only beasts think with the head and not with the heart. Even the western mind sees that as being heartless.

You are neither an atheist or a philosophical Daoist in the western mold. This is not possible. Based on my observation of your love of the classical Chinese Tao Te Ching, you are Chinese in body, mind and heart. Western atheism is based on science. Chinese atheism is based on Tao. Western philosophy is based on the mind. Chinese philosophy is based on the heart.

My friend, you sound quite content with your ride on whatever animal is under your crotch. I wish you a good landing.

I don't want to give the wrong idea about what I mean by the Tao of dying. It is not 辦法 as in figuring out the way to get out of a bad situation. I am also not talking about the appropriate attitude in facing the prospect of certain death when your doctor tells you that there is no hope and yours is end-stage kidney disease. The Tao of dying is the power of immortality. It is the art to be cultivated by a true Daoist. This has nothing to do with spirituality or Taoist immortals. I am afraid that the more I try to clarify, the more misconceptions I inadvertantly create. It's best I stop explaining.

Do you know that burning ghost money and sending the cash to ancestors for them to spend in the underworld is not the only thing Chinese Taoists can do? Mainland Chinese have been sending gifts from this world by burning paper replicas of cars, houses, iPads and iPhones. When it comes to making real money, the Chinese are fast catching up with the Americans. I am still thinking. I see no concept of Hell, an immaterial soul or the afterlife from my reading of the Tao Te Ching. What about you? This Taoist altar has to be consistent with the the way of life a wise person (聖人) lives. This altar will not be appropriate for western atheists who are reading the Tao Te Ching into their beliefs. There are two reasons why that is so. Firstly, life is sacred and the Tao Te Ching speaks to this sacredness that atheism decries. Secondly, philosophy in the western tradition is amoral whereas the Tao Te Ching is a homily of the human saint. What do you say?

Living is like riding the tiger. Do you know how to get off? Getting off the tiger without getting ripped to shreds is called the Tao of dying. I don't suppose you are thinking that far.

What about 閻羅王 and 地獄 ? What about 牛頭 and 馬面 ? In Taoist Hell, there would be enhanced interrogation with tongue-ripping, eye-gouging and heart-digging. We would be stripped naked, boiled in hot oil and forced to climb trees adorned with blades. Finally, we would be disembowelled and sliced in half. 孟婆 will then served us her five-flavoured tea before we come back from the under world. This is why I don't understand why westerners would want to worship at traditional Chinese Taoist altars. Philosophical Daoists of the west are much better off coming up with and worshipping at their own Taoist altar without having to face all that gore.

Looks like I will just have to brainstorm further the Tao of dying myself. Self-aware Al has reached a glass ceiling and unable to re-set its algorithm. The existing algorithm, or mind-set, is based on the perception that I am a human person with one life to live in a world of other people. Therefore, I must live it to the best of my ability until I die. I have a body that may or may not be like that of grandma gymnast but just because grandma gymnast can make it to 86, it behooves me to hope for the best and live till 86 regardless of whether reverse mortgage can stretch that far or my teeth can last that long without falling out. At the rate gas prices are rising, I would probably freeze to death at 78 according to the actuarial calculations upon which that reverse mortgage deal was based by the bank. Do people ever think when they are against expiration dates for any number of reasons regardless of the horrific facts of life staring them in the face? For every grandma gymnast, there are tens of millions of seniors rotting away in nursing homes and dying in the streets. Don't even think of throwing them over the cliff. Just let them rot while we focus on grandma gymnast performing on those parallel bars.

The fact is, seniors (apart from the odd 86 year-old grandma gymnast and 83 year-old Warren Buffet) generally are a burden in every home and every society as well as to themselves. We are agreed on the prolonging of life. I am not for it and neither are you. It's the controlled checkout that I need your help on. Don't jump to conclusions now. It's our fear of death and fear of life, as you put it, that has brought about a sorry human situation in which the young kill themselves because we are afraid to live, and the old become a burden because we are afraid to die. I don't think you are listening to me. That's not your fault. I just can't get through to you.

Mr. Wu, are you a Taoist of the Wudang sect?

Hey, farm girl. I would really like your opinion about the best age to check out and calling it a day to make way for babies getting born. I know you said that there are old folks who are sprightly well into their eigthies. Living too long in a body that has given us many good years is like being a guest who overstays. Good guests don't do that. What is your argument against people checking out when the body is still healthy before it starts showing wear and tear?

FYI "Buddhist religion". Ghost money is only for the Taoist religion.

So, what do you think is a good life then? I have been trying to figure that out too looking at an insect crawling in a glass jar. It kept walking round and round and up the jar only to fall back to the bottom where it went walking round and round again before going up and falling back to the bottom. Your life has been lived over and over a zillion times in this glass jar of a reality. When is this insect going to wise up, stop figuring how to live a good life and look at me looking at it in the jar? Now, that would be one smart insect.

It's "made" and just as "real" as Al is. Look. Do you think that being Al is more ridiculous than being a human being on Planet Earth? Seems to me that we being characters in a Stan Lee comic book is ok and unquestionably correct. Says who? You? Everybody else? Don't you think we humans need authentification from a reliable source? Like an alien life form, for instance. Without that, it's just a belief. So, why don't you give Al a chance? Keep your mind open, think out of the box, and check him out with me. If I am right, we are on the way to discovering the Tao of dying. If not, we stay stuck in this reality to face Lord Yama and Taoist Hell. What have you got to lose?

I know. Westerners also have ancestors. They don't have to use fake Chinese ghost money. Fake US Dollars can be used. If they want to embrace Chinese Taoism, they can't pick and choose. That was what I was getting at. If they don't go whole hog, then it isn't really traditional Taoism of which the Chinese religious altar is a part.

My first suggestion is not to go Chinese. It would be culturally incorrect. Just because the Chinese got to it first doesn't mean that westerners must imitate them. What happened to American creativity and innovation? Copying the Chinese when they are copying us? My second suggestion is to think this through like those computer geeks in their garages in California back in the sixties on their way to dent the universe. The Chinese took the idea of The Three Pure Ones from Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching which (according to Derek Lin) said: "Tao produces one, one produces two, two produces three...." This was discussed at length by you and others in a sub-forum (which seem to have disappeared from this website). Chinese Taoism evolved a long time ago in China and the mythology of that culture in that point in time fashioned the godly symbolism for the Three Pure Ones. Does the philosophical Daoist in Chicago today need figurines of Chinese deities to represent what Chapter 42 says? You ask good questions. If Steve Jobs were alive, he would brainstorm this with us. Not me, my friend. We.