Taoism Vs Buddhism

[voidisyinyang]

http://www.amazon.com/Invading-Sacred-Analysis-Hinduism-Studies/dp/8129111829

 

There is no basic fact checking in western scholarship on Hinduism.

yeah we discussed that book before -- the quote I gave was from the link I posted - University of Delhi.

 

Department of Political Science, Daulat Ram College, University of Delhi.

Suranjita Ray

•

I suppose it's possible she's U.S.-born.... but she's not listed as a "visiting" fellow for the Developing Countries Research Centre where she's a fellow -- doing post-doctoral research:

Dr. Suranjita Ray, has submitted a proposal to UGC for Post-

Doctoral Research on Development with a Human Face:

Kalahandi Revisited

http://www.dcrcduac.in/pdf_anul/dcrc%20annual%20report%202007-08.pdf

http://www.dcrcduac.in/pdf_anul/dcrc%20annual%20report%202006-07.pdf

[email protected]

If you want to ask her - go ahead! haha.

http://www.sasnet.lu.se/sasnet/delhi-university

Edited May 8, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[RongzomFan]

Man you are confusing me. I thought the quote was from the video.

[voidisyinyang]

Man you are confusing me. I thought the quote was from the video.

 

I know there's a tribe in South India that has the wife's brother raise the children and not the father and the family name is matrilineal.

 

Can't remember the name though.....

 

 

Several communities in South India practiced matrilineality, especially the Nair in the state of Kerala and the Bunts in the states of Kerala and Karnataka. The system of inheritance was known as Marumakkathayam in the Nair community or Aliyasantana in the Bunt community, and both communities were subdivided into clans. This system was exceptional in the sense that it was one of the few traditional systems in western historical records of India that gave women some liberty and the right to property.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality

 

Yeah the Nair

Edited May 8, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[Jetsun]

I will have to try find the quote but I recently read the Dalai Lama speaking about the different approaches to cultivation which I found very interesting, I get the impression he considers the mind more important at least in the beginning because it is ultimately what's in charge and the body can fail but if you have a healthy mind its not too much of a problem, Dilgo Khyentze seems to say the same thing its better to work on mind before the channels. But at later stages he says approaches like Tantra try to cultivate the illusory body, while others like the Kalachakra try to cultivate the illusory mind, but Dzogchen does both the illusory body and the illusory mind simultaneously.

 

Taoism tends to focus more on the body which can be a problem if the mind is ignored because no matter how much you cultivate your body will eventually fail and get sick. But then Chan which is largely a mixture of Taoism and Buddhism tends to also do both body and mind, for example the White Skeleton approach of Master Nan you cultivate both your Qi channels while simultaneously doing concentration meditation for the mind then moving both into emptiness, so you cultivate both at the same time simultaneously.

Edited May 8, 2013 by Jetsun

[Maddie]

I know there's a tribe in South India that has the wife's brother raise the children and not the father and the family name is matrilineal.

 

Can't remember the name though.....

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrilineality

 

Yeah the Nair

 

That's also the custom with the Eskimos in Alaska. :-)

[Simple_Jack]

Buddha was never a person.

 

Ok. This doesn't change the fact that anatman is a central theme in Buddhism.

 

http://kelamuni.blogspot.com/2006/07/are-brahman-and-emptiness-same-part.html

 

So, this shows me that you get your info on Buddhist practice from non-Buddhist sources....And that you haven't actually applied any specific Buddhist practices beyond maybe samatha.

[Maddie]

I found those videos very interesting. I watched another one from that first woman who talked about the Christ myth. I actually used to be a seminary student, then I became a history student and that ruined that adventure for me as I began to study the history of Christianity lol. When I saw that the Christ myth was not original to Christianity but was much older and was found in many cultures it was quite eye opening. What I found interesting in her video was how the Christ myth arose from the solar worship cult.

 

Now if I understand what your saying about Taoism is that its not polarized into either a purely male or female philosophy but is all about the balance of yin and yang as opposed to the dominance of either?

[RongzomFan]

I found those videos very interesting. I watched another one from that first woman who talked about the Christ myth. I actually used to be a seminary student, then I became a history student and that ruined that adventure for me as I began to study the history of Christianity lol. When I saw that the Christ myth was not original to Christianity but was much older and was found in many cultures it was quite eye opening. What I found interesting in her video was how the Christ myth arose from the solar worship cult.

 

Now if I understand what your saying about Taoism is that its not polarized into either a purely male or female philosophy but is all about the balance of yin and yang as opposed to the dominance of either?

 

 

You might be interested in Dr. Richard Carrier who has a PhD in Ancient History from Columbia.

 

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=richard+carrier&filters=long&lclk=long

[voidisyinyang]

I found those videos very interesting. I watched another one from that first woman who talked about the Christ myth. I actually used to be a seminary student, then I became a history student and that ruined that adventure for me as I began to study the history of Christianity lol. When I saw that the Christ myth was not original to Christianity but was much older and was found in many cultures it was quite eye opening. What I found interesting in her video was how the Christ myth arose from the solar worship cult.

 

Now if I understand what your saying about Taoism is that its not polarized into either a purely male or female philosophy but is all about the balance of yin and yang as opposed to the dominance of either?

 

Well in Taoist alchemy the focus is on the "yang" - the goal to make a yang body -- and so alchemy through the small universe practice -- which is an immortality practice - it does rely on patriarchal culture. There has to be pretty much total isolation to achieve the goal. I mean Taoism in China was heavily influenced by Buddhism -- you really can not separate the two.

 

But the basic yin-yang model of reality as complementary opposites is the key point to a matrifocal philosophy and this is found in the Tao Te Ching and I think Chuang Tzu.

 

So yes that focus gives the Lunar-earth energy as much importance as the solar yang energy and the reason, again, being that the lunar-earth energy is the material resonance of the Emptiness as the Tao or Wu Chi - what I call the female formless awareness.

 

Yeah so for example Pythagoras studied in Egypt for his longest training - assuming he was an actual person - but the "orthodox" Pythagorean philosophy is also based on the yin-yang principles but the universal definition is through nonwestern trance music theory - the 1-4-5 music ratios. It's well known that music is the language of emotions and all human cultures have the 1-4-5 music ratios - it's just that Western music warped those ratios into a "contained infinity" system.

 

So the early monotheistic Solar ritual priest religions use the "divide and average" mathematics to create a sacred geometry -- at first the geometry was transcendental on its own and so the arithmetic never was a "contained" infinite as irrational geometry. So for example in Egypt the geometry was against any closed series - despite the New Age propaganda claiming Egypt used the Golden Ratio. India and the Zoroastrian cultures - the two being basically mirror opposites -- so they used divide and average math also but again they never "contained" infinity as a materialistic geometry. There was still a transcendental geometry.

 

So the male and female principles were still acknowledged - it's just that the female principle was subsumed to the male principle - and this was the alchemical training. So for example the Brahmin priests used mind yoga based on the "I Am that I Am" tautology - it is symmetric closed logic with the goal to contain infinity within the body as alchemy. And so the Brahmin priest was not allowed to even make eye contact with females and if this happened then a three day purification ritual was required. I read that in a book on Brahmin priest taboos - it was an old used book but I just read through it in the store so never got the source.

 

Anyway so obviously the real training is very strict -- so for example in the orthodox Pythagorean training there was a nine year vow of silence. And so in Egypt the ratio 2/3rd was sacred and never divided into a smaller fraction - and 2/3 is the perfect fifth music ratio which is also the "yang" ratio in Taoism.

 

So this is a secret complementary opposite resonance while the Brahmin culture relied on the symmetric or commutative logic -- the commutative principle - (A x B = B x A) -- that is from the Brahmin mathematics. So there has to be a "one to one" correspondence between geometric symbol and arithmetic number. This is such a fundamental principle to Western symmetric logic -- and even Buddhist logic -- it is not even acknowledged by most.

 

But the complementary opposite resonance of the Tai Chi symbol goes against this symmetric commutative logic of A x B = B x A. So with the 1-4-5 music intervals which is the basis for the yin-yang resonance - then if you were to translate the geometric symbols from the music intervals then C x G does not equal G x C aka A x B does not equal B x A while the commutative principle is based on A x B = B x A.

 

http://fulllotusqigong.blogspot.com/2012/11/non-commutative-resonance-quantum.html this link gives all the details clearly explained with images.

 

This is why in 10th grade math I rejected the solution for the Pythagorean Theorem because I had already studied the secret of the real Pythagorean philosophy of complementary opposites and there is a secret music origin of the Pythagorean theorem which is based on covering up the complementary opposites that are the empirical truth of reality.

 

So yeah Buddhism does not recognize the complementary opposites resonance but the "three gunas" - the oldest philosophy of India - is based on this complementary opposites resonance as is the classical Indian music scale.

Edited May 8, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[Maddie]

Well in Taoist alchemy the focus is on the "yang" - the goal to make a yang body -- and so alchemy through the small universe practice -- which is an immortality practice - it does rely on patriarchal culture. There has to be pretty much total isolation to achieve the goal. I mean Taoism in China was heavily influenced by Buddhism -- you really can not separate the two.

 

But the basic yin-yang model of reality as complementary opposites is the key point to a matrifocal philosophy and this is found in the Tao Te Ching and I think Chuang Tzu.

 

So yes that focus gives the Lunar-earth energy as much importance as the solar yang energy and the reason, again, being that the lunar-earth energy is the material resonance of the Emptiness as the Tao or Wu Chi - what I call the female formless awareness.

 

Yeah so for example Pythagoras studied in Egypt for his longest training - assuming he was an actual person - but the "orthodox" Pythagorean philosophy is also based on the yin-yang principles but the universal definition is through nonwestern trance music theory - the 1-4-5 music ratios. It's well known that music is the language of emotions and all human cultures have the 1-4-5 music ratios - it's just that Western music warped those ratios into a "contained infinity" system.

 

So the early monotheistic Solar ritual priest religions use the "divide and average" mathematics to create a sacred geometry -- at first the geometry was transcendental on its own and so the arithmetic never was a "contained" infinite as irrational geometry. So for example in Egypt the geometry was against any closed series - despite the New Age propaganda claiming Egypt used the Golden Ratio. India and the Zoroastrian cultures - the two being basically mirror opposites -- so they used divide and average math also but again they never "contained" infinity as a materialistic geometry. There was still a transcendental geometry.

 

So the male and female principles were still acknowledged - it's just that the female principle was subsumed to the male principle - and this was the alchemical training. So for example the Brahmin priests used mind yoga based on the "I Am that I Am" tautology - it is symmetric closed logic with the goal to contain infinity within the body as alchemy. And so the Brahmin priest was not allowed to even make eye contact with females and if this happened then a three day purification ritual was required. I read that in a book on Brahmin priest taboos - it was an old used book but I just read through it in the store so never got the source.

 

Anyway so obviously the real training is very strict -- so for example in the orthodox Pythagorean training there was a nine year vow of silence. And so in Egypt the ratio 2/3rd was sacred and never divided into a smaller fraction - and 2/3 is the perfect fifth music ratio which is also the "yang" ratio in Taoism.

 

So this is a secret complementary opposite resonance while the Brahmin culture relied on the symmetric or commutative logic -- the commutative principle - (A x B = B x A) -- that is from the Brahmin mathematics. So there has to be a "one to one" correspondence between geometric symbol and arithmetic number. This is such a fundamental principle to Western symmetric logic -- and even Buddhist logic -- it is not even acknowledged by most.

 

But the complementary opposite resonance of the Tai Chi symbol goes against this symmetric commutative logic of A x B = B x A. So with the 1-4-5 music intervals which is the basis for the yin-yang resonance - then if you were to translate the geometric symbols from the music intervals then C x G does not equal G x C aka A x B does not equal B x A while the commutative principle is based on A x B = B x A.

 

http://fulllotusqigong.blogspot.com/2012/11/non-commutative-resonance-quantum.html this link gives all the details clearly explained with images.

 

This is why in 10th grade math I rejected the solution for the Pythagorean Theorem because I had already studied the secret of the real Pythagorean philosophy of complementary opposites and there is a secret music origin of the Pythagorean theorem which is based on covering up the complementary opposites that are the empirical truth of reality.

 

So yeah Buddhism does not recognize the complementary opposites resonance but the "three gunas" - the oldest philosophy of India - is based on this complementary opposites resonance as is the classical Indian music scale.

When you mention "containing infinity" what does that mean?

[Stosh]

The length of post contained within a quotation box ?

[voidisyinyang]

When you mention "containing infinity" what does that mean?

 

 

ummm -- well let's cover it from the error that it is....

 

http://www.tpr-world.com/irrational_numbers.pdf

 

So the formal "Greek Miracle" foundation of Western science is the irrational magnitude that was not found in the earlier imperial mathematics - but they did have a "divide and average" math with this same goal of containing infinity.

http://books.google.com/books?id=j0dkJQwORvYC&q=Indian#v=snippet&q=Indian&f=false

 

So Stephen Hawking googlebooks notes how the Indians had not "scientifically established" the Pythagorean theorem but had convinced themselves of its truth just through practical and empirical use and "divide and average" mathematics.

 

So if you consider the tautology "I am that I am" -- the "that" of course refers to nondual formless awareness as the Emptiness or - whatever people want to argue endless about.

 

"I AM" actually translates from Pythagorean philosophy into I as the number one (which is not a number but is the yang male principle) and AM as the 2:3:4 of Tai Chi philosophy.

 

Another way to think of this - as Abraham Seidenberg notes in the ritual origins of geometry in Egypt - the base of the triangle is ISIS and the height is Osiris and the hypotenuse is SET or HORUS (aka Satan or Jesus) - the two battling it out infinitely. That would be the original male and female principle that was infinite energy but not contained.

 

UNLESS you can contain infinity then the hypotenuse is the "irrational magnitude" as the Pythagorean Theorem (and suddenly - presto! You have rational science and the ritual sacrifice mumbo jumbo can be hidden away).

 

So the empirical truth is a never ending and never beginning process of energy creation from the inherent complementary opposites of reality - it's called the "time-frequency uncertainty principle" by science. Math -- Western math - has never "solved" this conundrum as I point out in my blog post in my correspondence with the ancient Greek math expert professor LUigi Borzacchini.

 

O.K. so by alchemy -- and "containing infinity" is this hope for a god-man to retain personal identity and yet be infinitely immortal - and obviously this is not possible but it give rise to all the logical paradoxes that create the innumerable religious debates about what have you - the trinity of Christianity or the Triyaka of Buddhism.

 

So by complementary opposites - the consciousness is not the same as the Emptiness because we always already exist in the Emptiness and so we can never obtain or "contain" it into an individual awareness which is consciousness. consciousness is the light awareness -- and the yin-yang model teaches this as the sine-wave in the Tai Chi symbol - the consciousness as light awareness goes into the Emptiness which is the Wu Chi or the circle and this then creates the yin-yang energy.

 

In terms of math it is the number one as consciousness goes into the female formless awareness as the Wu Chi and this process -- since is it complementary opposites (1 and the Emptiness are not symmetric principles) - so then this creates 2 as the female first matter or mater - mother -- as the jing energy and 3 is the first male number as the yang ratio 3:2 or 2/3 - that ratio as the yang ratio then creates the rest of the universe infinitely.

 

If it is not clear - it's not supposed to be - since it is a holistic "three in one" unity. Aka yin jing energy is from yang shen energy and combine the two and you get yang jing energy which is yin chi energy - combine that with yang shen you get yang chi energy which is yin shen energy - combine those and you get yang shen energy which creates yin jing energy. The process starts and ends with the female energy.

 

But the attempt to contain it is to use right hand technology from sacred geometry that is a physical materialistic "containment" of infinity. At first it was said - it can be put as a number - it just "is" -- and so you get sacred geometry like the equilateral triangle. Western science says - no you can put it as a number but it's just an irrational number.

 

So Western science appears very precise but if you understand complementary opposite resonance then you realize that even these early "divide and average" attempts to contain infinity were wrong - -because based on complementary opposites then 1 plus 1 does not equal 2. The math is subservient to the music resonance emotional power of the harmonics. We can LISTEN to the infinite as female formless awareness aka logical inference of the I-thought. We can not "contain" or visually see the infinite as geometry - be it sacred geometry or irrational geometry.

Edited May 8, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[RongzomFan]

Indian hindu culture is matriarchal in my experience. There is a strong tradition in parts of India, where the bride keeps her family name. Compare that to the west, where you adopt the groom's family name. The mangalsutra has both families' gothrams on it. There are the female deities, which atleast traditionally were considered the highest deities.

 

I forgot to add that India has had female prime ministers. And this was a long time ago as well.

 

Some western countries never even had female presidents yet.

Edited May 9, 2013 by alwayson

[voidisyinyang]

I forgot to add that India has had female prime ministers. And this was a long time ago as well.

 

Some western countries never even had female presidents yet.

 

Yeah I would distinguish "technofeminists" from "ecofeminists" like Vandana Shiva who gets attacked by other technofeminists like Meera Nanda.

 

So from the rationalist materialist leftist intellectual standpoint it's very easy to dismiss Vandana Shiva as Meera Nanda does and the materialist rationliast leftists follow suit. For example Doug Henwood in his book Wall Street - he attacks Vandana Shiva and Helena Norberg-Hodge who supports the traditional Buddhist ecological culture in Ladakh.

 

So basically if you study Vandana Shiva she notes that the goddesses of India were the focus of the local tribal cultures before the Brahmin culture took over.

 

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/stayingalive.pdf

 

So in her early book Staying Alive Vandana Shiva states:

 

 

'Prakriti' is a popular category, and one through which ordinary women in rural India relate to nature. It is also a highly evolved philosophical category in Indian cosmology. Even those philosophical streams of Indian thought which were patriarchal and did not give the supreme place to divinity as a woman, a mother, were permeated by the prehistoric cults and the living 'little' traditions of nature as the primordial mother goddess.

 

Of course the irony of Vandana Shiva that really confuses people is that she took science to its final extreme in quantum consciousness -- the subject of her Ph.D. and I have done similar research, although obviously not with her professional physics training. But the discovery of "time-frequency uncertainty" in quantum physics is the opposite extreme, dialectically, of the nonwestern tribal cultures that originated out of Africa - the tribal trance cultures using the 1-4-5 music intervals for energy training.

[eye_of_the_storm]

I think the whole patriarchal and matriarchal thing is total BS.

Some male conspiracy to dominate the planet...?

99% are slaves to the system.

I think its an alien conspiracy to dominate the planet... our "leaders" are surely not human and have no interest in humanity.

Edited May 9, 2013 by White Wolf Running On Air

[RongzomFan]

So basically if you study Vandana Shiva she notes that the goddesses of India were the focus of the local tribal cultures before the Brahmin culture took over.

 

What are you talking about? There are female goddesses in every Hindu temple with Brahmin priests.

[voidisyinyang]

What are you talking about? There are female goddesses in every Hindu temple with Brahmin priests.

 

http://wgc.womensglobalconnection.org/conf06proceedings/Ondrich%20M--Every%20woman%20is%20born.pdf

 

But at some places, the situation is slightly changing. Rituals, which originally belong to women, like Mulaipari and Kummi pattu are sometimes interfered by males, who carry Mulaipari or sing Kummi Pattu in order to diminish the importance of women during the festival occasions. Sacred groves of the Mother Goddess are turned into big temples imitating the orthodox tradition. Often they come under a temple authority – women and their way of venerating the Goddess are regulated. Often they have to pay for performing their rituals. Women got and get more and more alienated from experiencing their own power, the power of independent, autonomous Goddesses like MA Kali, Durga, Mariyamman and village Goddesses all over India.

 

and

 

 

Thus, though motherhood is highly honored in Hindu kinship systems, it seems that this honor is based on her self-negation, the ability to endure privations for the family, and the willingness to nurture and give sustenance, no matter what the sacrifice, with no thought of her own needs. When the natural world is feminized, the above concept of maternal nature is projected onto the earth or any natural phenomenon that is considered sacred. Consequently, whether it is Bhumi Devi or Bharat Mata, or a sacred grove, the expectation is that the site will bless, nurture, purify, or perform any other supportive maternal act without any requirement of sustenance in return."

 

Rita Dasgupta Sherma, "Sacred Immanence: Reflections on Ecofeminism in Hindu Tantra," in Purifying the Earthly Body of God: Religion and Ecology in Hindu India, ed. Lance E. Nelson, SUNY Press, 1998, 97.

Edited May 10, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[Wu Ming Jen]

Taoism is about balance and harmony with all things it does not verse anything. You're a buddhist thats great, you eat meat thats great, you eat plants that's great. The mind is not divided. One can be a taoist christian if thats your way. There are no set or fixed ways, all things are in a state of transformation and change.

 

When men and woman are in balance they complete each other and give birth to life. One sex is not better than the other, each have their own roles. Equality only begins when things are out of balance with each other. Intellect damages the spirit and makes sprit run around searching the endless search.

 

The stories we read are about us becoming better people. If it is not working and full of restrictions and obstacles to our path just change your way.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Wu Ming Jen

[Maddie]

Yea the word "vs" is in there but not really one I would have picked. I think Buddhism and Taoism compliment each other wonderfully!

[RongzomFan]

http://wgc.womensglobalconnection.org/conf06proceedings/Ondrich%20M--Every%20woman%20is%20born.pdf

 

 

When I saw this quote, I knew it was written by a Westerner. And I was right.

[voidisyinyang]

When I saw this quote, I knew it was written by a Westerner. And I was right.

 

 

I am an eco-spiritual artist, living in Southern Tamil Nadu, India.

 

http://www.magoddess.com/art-gallery-

 

She's Australian but she wrote that paper while doing her Ph.D. in India.

 

 

"Corporate sponsorship has commercialised Kolkata Pujas. But I appre-ciate the efforts to renew connection with cultural tradition, already a global trend now. It helps to create the cultural conditioning to go back to nature and people close to nature," says Gupta.

 

For sceptics, it is a collective annual self-deception for the urban middle class whose nostalgia lasts only for four days. Gupta disagrees. "Even if the community tries to come out of the Western stereotypes for four days, it reveals its collective yearning and trials. When you try to manage a plaited dhoti, it needs involvement," she observes.

 

For her, the Pujas can be understood in the context of eco-feminism. "The planet earth as well as women is oppressed. The mother cult of Bengal, particularly Durga Puja, is fascinating. Contrary to violence-dominated patriarchal interpretations of scriptures, Durga's family in-cludes all life forms including Kalabau, one of the nine plants in which the deity had hidden herself when male Gods were searching for her," Lina argues.

 

She has found a new assertion of women's empowerment in the sex workers' refusal to allow the traditional collection of soil from their doorsteps for the Pujas.

 

"It reveals new attitudes of the women. In my childhood, I never heard about all-women Pujas. The dress and make-up of the girls in Puja crowds also indicate a zeal for carefree physical expression. Unlike our generation, they value their wishes," says the researcher.

 

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2002-10-14/kolkata/27321109_1_durga-puja-pandal-ma-durga

 

The eco-feminism of Ma Durga and family

Biswajit Roy, TNN Oct 14, 2002, 12.36am IST

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8310927

 

The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. By Sumathi Ramaswamy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

 

http://ahr.oxfordjournals.org/content/117/1/184.1.extract

Edited May 10, 2013 by pythagoreanfulllotus

[eye_of_the_storm]

When I saw this quote, I knew it was written by a Westerner. And I was right.

 

"Feminist" movement has poisoned a lot of western "thought"

 

Militant, anti male and insane... equality is not what they are about.

 

Every building is a penis... everything to them is a penis and oppression.

 

Insanity ^ + Support Islam and women's rights at the same time? oxymoron? ha

 

Its a political mind fk tool to cause division between men and women. ( A top down movement funded by banks + corps = more tax $$$ and slave labour... and more ppl to sell their rubbish to eg: "Torches of Freedom"... PR campaign to make smoking seem fashionable/cool to women.. and a rebellion against "male oppression" hahahah...god)

 

It has infiltrated all universities etc

 

Men and women need to unite again and drop all the BS they have been brainwashed with.

 

All this patriarchal matriarchal stuff just feeds this bs ideology.

 

 

 

Edited May 10, 2013 by White Wolf Running On Air

[Vmarco]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this forum and am sorry if there has been any discussion on this topic already. Anyways, I have recently become very moved by both of these religion/philosophies about life. I am fairly new to both concepts and know that much can be said in terms of my question. I am just a bit confused about the differences between both Taoism and buddhism. Could someone be both a buddhist and a taoist? Also what are the main differences between buddhist qigong and taoist qigong? Thank you, I appreciate all the help and clarifications anyone is willing to give.

BTW does Taoism predate buddhism?

 

From my obsevations, Taoist Traditions are quite contrary to Buddhist Traditions,....however,...what Lao Tzu and Sakyamuni spoke of, are the same thing.

 

Lao Tzu said, "the Tao doesn't come and go."

Sakyamuni said "the Tathagata doesn't come and go."

 

That which comes and goes is neither the Tao, nor the Tathagata.

 

Relate only with what doesn't come and go,...everything else is a diversion.

 

Most,...that is to say, perhaps 99.9% of all who profess to be Daoists or Buddhists,....have little propensity to relate with what doesn't come and go. This is because the 6 senses can only observe what comes and goes.

 

Although many follow Taoism and Buddhism as religions,...and some follow as a philosophy,....what Lao Tzu and Sakyamuni spoke of, is neither a religion or philosophy,...if you need a word, it could be called an ontosophy,...that is, the wisdom of real being,....yet even that is incorrect,....because what Lao Tzu and Sakyamuni spoke of, is beyond wisdom,...which translates to prajna.

 

If you want a fast track to understand Taoism and Buddhism,...The Heart Attack Sutra, by Karl Brunnhölzl is a good start,...IMO

[Vmarco]

 

1

The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

 

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.

 

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

 

Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.

 

Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

 

4

The Tao is like a well:

used but never used up.

It is like the eternal void:

filled with infinite possibilities.

 

It is hidden but always present.

I don't know who gave birth to it.

It is older than God.

 

 

5

The Tao doesn't take sides;

it gives birth to both good and evil.

The Master doesn't take sides;

she welcomes both saints and sinners.

 

The Tao is like a bellows:

it is empty yet infinitely capable.

The more you use it, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

 

Hold on to the center.

 

6

The Tao is called the Great Mother:

empty yet inexhaustible,

it gives birth to infinite worlds.

 

It is always present within you.

You can use it any way you want.

7

The Tao is infinite, eternal.

Why is it eternal?

It was never born;

thus it can never die.

Why is it infinite?

It has no desires for itself;

thus it is present for all beings.

 

 

 

If the Tao caanot be told, why did Lao Tzu speak of it? If the Tao is unnameable, why did Lao Tzu name it?

 

I disagree not, with any of the 7 above,...although I disagree with the cerebral-centric interpretations.

All 7 of the above are 100% compatible with What is Light. Through the nature of Light, we can discuss the nature of the Tao.

http://thetaobums.com/topic/19803-what-is-light/?hl=%22what+is+light%22

[RongzomFan]

"Feminist" movement has poisoned a lot of western "thought"

 

Its not the feminism I had a problem with.

 

Its the constant putting down of Indian culture by people who always get basic facts wrong when you check their sources.

 

Indian culture spread to Afghanistan, China, southeast Asia and even Japan while also transporting the 1st major Indian religion, Buddhism.

 

As the center of this cultural empire we should get the same respect as the Roman Empire.

Edited May 10, 2013 by alwayson