I am the Idiotic Taoist

[shanlung]

Hi folks,

 

I have to say hi to you all.

 

In the past, before the days of Internet, I was in BBS and alt dot whatever talking inane stuff on the Tao and what was perceived of the Tao. I signed off as "Idiotic Taoist" or "Taoistic Idiot" or "Idiot on the Path" in those days.

 

Just a while ago, I was suprised by a hit on an obscure part of my webpages.

 

That was on http://www.shanlung....taonirvana.html

 

That was on an equiry on Google.GR on "tseng lao weng". I followed that hit back to that google search and found your site listed as one of those that talked on " tseng lao weng"

 

That was why I came into here, looked around a bit and thought I should at least say Hi to you folks here following that Path or even wondering of that Path or just talking and pondering on that Path.

 

As to what my webpage is about, if you do not know of me before and you are into birds or into cats, you might like to click and find out.

http://www.shanlung.com/index.html

 

I think you will be very surprised.

 

 

I cannot add to your knowledge or detract from your confusion on the Path. I know I probably do not know more than a fraction of 1 percent of all that is to know of the Path.

 

A long time back, I decided I do not know what is right, and hence what is wrong for that matter.

Guidance from me will be taken at your own risk.

 

There are definately folks who know, and be happy to guide you to what they know or what they think they know.

 

I am only an Idiot in comparision to all of them.

 

Which is why then in the past, and now, and into the future.

 

I signed off as

 

 

The Idiotic Taoist

[Basher]

Origin: Idiot

 

Middle English (denoting a person of low intelligence): via Old French from Latin idiota 'ignorant person', from Greek idiōtēs 'private person, layman, ignorant person', from idios 'own, private'

 

Here's the Paradox. Is the person who knows they're an Idiot, really such an Idiot ? Or are they just self-aware of their own limitations (real or perceived) ?

Lots of people pretend / appear to be intelligent, but in reality are just Idiots !!! (Like me).

Welcome to the Tao Bums my friend.

Basher

[Melanie]

Welcome to the group,

Being myself a fool, I understand being an idiot

I look forward to reading your contributions to the discussion.

Don't worry I think its a given that we take each others advice in regards to our own paths rather then as absolutes.

[Marblehead]

Hi Shanlung,

 

Welcome.

 

Well, I think that to use the label "idiot" is unfair but labels don't really say anything anyhow.

 

The Path? What Path? I didn't know there was a Path. I have been wandering all over the place.

 

My first impression is that your involvement in some of the threads will be very welcome.

[Nelida]

welcome Shanlung, from idiot to bum then!

 

lol Marblehead, you crack me up

 

∞Nelida

[shanlung]

What nice warm welcomes I got here!

 

When even idiots are welcomed together with fools, it is a good sign that maybe the end is near.

 

And Marblehead, since the Tao is everywhere,and nowhere will the Tao be absent from, where is that Path you are trodding on that is not of the Path? I recalled this old chinese saying "Juo lu . Tsao lu"

 

Or in English, "sitting on a deer, looking for the deer"

 

That the Path might well be what you are wandering about on all over the place. But since you are treading on it, you did not recognise it like that man sitting on a deer and looking for the deer.

 

But never mind me. This idiot is here to learn and gather the pearls cast in front of me , near me, and behind me.

 

 

Idiot on the Path

[Marblehead]

And Marblehead, since the Tao is everywhere,and nowhere will the Tao be absent from, where is that Path you are trodding on that is not of the Path? I recalled this old chinese saying "Juo lu . Tsao lu"

 

Or in English, "sitting on a deer, looking for the deer"

 

That the Path might well be what you are wandering about on all over the place. But since you are treading on it, you did not recognise it like that man sitting on a deer and looking for the deer.

Hehehe. That was your first test. You passed. Next level.

[idiot_stimpy]

Hello idiot

[shanlung]

Hehehe. That was your first test. You passed. Next level.

 

This is so terrible to me!

 

I am mortified!

My reputation all gone!

 

I am the Idiot, and being a genuine Idiot, I am not supposed to pass any test.

 

And if I am in a test, who test the tester?

What doctrine will the tester be based on?

 

When even the good Tao Te Ching denied itself as the authority in the first few sentences.

 

Tao ke Tao

Fei Chang Tao

Ming ke Ming

Fei Chang Ming

 

The Tao that you think is the Tao

Is not the Tao

The Name that you think is the Name

Is not the name.

 

Further more.

Can there be answers to questions that cannot even be asked?

 

It is much easier for me to tell you the sound of one hand clapping.

 

Except that I being the Idiot, I do not have the words to craft out that answer with.

 

The Taoistic Idiot

http://shanlung.com/

[rene]

Idiot you may be, delightful you are.

 

Glad you're here. Welcome. (-:

[Marblehead]

Nice site. Nice pictures. Thanks for sharing.

 

I am the Idiot, and being a genuine Idiot, I am not supposed to pass any test.

 

Sometimes in life we make progress and never realize it until many years later, all the while thinking that we have failed.

 

And if I am in a test, who test the tester?

What doctrine will the tester be based on?

 

Life is the tester. The processes test the tester. Who tests the processes? Don't ask me!

 

When even the good Tao Te Ching denied itself as the authority in the first few sentences.

 

The Tao that you think is the Tao

Is not the Tao

The Name that you think is the Name

Is not the name.

 

Hehehe. That is why I mostly talk about Te and use many different labels to try to slap on it. Still haven't secceeded in fixing a single one in place, wherever that might be.

 

Further more.

Can there be answers to questions that cannot even be asked?

 

It is much easier for me to tell you the sound of one hand clapping.

 

Except that I being the Idiot, I do not have the words to craft out that answer with.

Ah!, all the answers already exist. We simply have not yet found the wrods to ask many of the questions. In fact, I would say that we have not yet realized which questions we should be asking.

 

But, if we are still alive apparently we are doing something right.

Edited September 8, 2012 by Marblehead

[shanlung]

Marblehead

 

Words words words

 

Labels, labels and more labels

 

Definations to the right, and explanations to the left.

 

My search for simplicity and the Tao within became entangled in words and labels and definations and explanations.

 

Or is it just the Idiot in me ?

 

 

The Taoistic Idiot

 

aka

 

Shanlung

 

Mountain Dragon

http://shanlung.com/

[Marblehead]

Marblehead

 

Words words words

 

Labels, labels and more labels

But how else can I share my thoughts with you? Words and labels are a necessary part of communications. Even face-to-face communications depends on words and labels.

 

I suppose that, rather than limiting our use of these we need be watchful that we do not limit the concepts that are represented by them.

 

Yes, simplicity can be had, no doubt. Isolation! But how dreary would that be? Even the birds and butterflies do not live in isolation; why we?

 

But I will agree with you, the search for Tao can be over-shadowed by the use of too many words without the actions backing them up. I guess that would fall into the category of walking our talk.

[Melanie]

 

But how else can I share my thoughts with you? Words and labels are a necessary part of communications. Even face-to-face communications depends on words and labels

 

*Moves her hands trying to answer with signs but realizes she only knows a dozen or so, so instead she smiles and waves to answer the question *

[shanlung]

*Moves her hands trying to answer with signs but realizes she only knows a dozen or so, so instead she smiles and waves to answer the question *

 

 

*smile back*

 

*Communications without the need of words*

 

With a million more words, and legions of MBAs to conjure even more words, why is the world

even more precarious than ever before?

 

Do you feel yourself to be economically safer than in the past with much fewer words?

Do you feel personally to be safer than before?

 

Do you feel more wise because you hear more words?

 

 

 

The Idiot on the Path

 

aka

 

Shanlung

 

Mountain Dragon

 

http://shanlung.com/

[Melanie]

Sorry I know this is off topic but you bird friend is named Tinkerbell? That's an adorable name

 

My tortoise familiar is named Wujing, he's an anti social creature mostly, preferring to find quiet places to hide most of the time. He's very patient, loyal and easy going though also very easy to care for.

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

I dunno, you might just be a fool...

[shanlung]

I dunno, you might just be a fool...

 

I am the Idiot. I tried to be the fool but I failed. I play a lot of chess and registered myself as Village Fool in a chess playing site. Everyone else called themself KillerOfKings, NewBobbyFisher,GrandMasterXYZ,BlackKnight, WhiteKnight etc etc. I won and won. Making them unhappy that they lost to the Village Fool. And when they won, they felt they had no honor in winning the Village Fool. I refused to change my name and they kicked me out. So I cannot be the Fool.

 

Sorry I know this is off topic but you bird friend is named Tinkerbell? That's an adorable name

 

My tortoise familiar is named Wujing, he's an anti social creature mostly, preferring to find quiet places to hide most of the time. He's very patient, loyal and easy going though also very easy to care for.

 

I have no idea that anything can be off topic in a site that professed to be a Taoist site.

 

Folks found the Tao in flower arrangement, in tea drinking, in looking at a bamboo grove, and even in the chopping off of human heads and arms aka Musashi and his Five Rings.

 

I find the restoration by Cecilia Gimenez and others trying for the Cecilia Prize http://pinterest.com/ceciliagimenez0/www-ceciliaprize-com/ to have closer resemblance to that Ecce Homo by Elias Garcia Martinez than what a HotAirWorm talked about as taijichuan to real life taijichuan.

 

I fail to see how the HAW can decide what is on and off topic on anything.

 

I am welcomed and known in many bird forums even when half the time I talked of the Tao (without mentioning the Tao). I talked of my cats too. I never was taken to task for not talking of my bird all the time.

 

When I first set sight on her, I knew her name to be Tinkerbell and that her karmic fate was entwined with mine.

 

I could not take her with me when my contract was over in Taiwan. That was during the time of the bird flu shortly after the SARS scare. I spend a year teaching a family how to look after Tinkerbella and gave her to them.

 

About every year since 2004, I flew back to Taiwan to spend 2 weeks to a month with Tinkerbell. She is the only entity that I flew halfway around the world to be with. My last visit to her was in 2011 June/July.

 

I knew more of the Tao and spoke more of the Tao through her. Try to find time to see one of such writings

 

Tsaoling Revisited

http://shanlung.com/wtsaolingrevisit.htm'>http://shanlung.com/wtsaolingrevisit.htm

 

And try to read this too.

 

Tinkerbell Revisited - The beyond humaness of Tinkerbell

http://shanlung.livejournal.com/11658.html

 

 

I am at a loss to the title of today. I just could not find the word or the words. What Tink did in the last 30 minutes before I left her for the day was so haunting that will be imprinted into me, and I suspect into you all as well. Humaness might even be the worse possible word to use. We have shown ourselves to be so capable of evil, spite and cruelty to both ourselves and the other creatures living with us that perhaps I should change that title. The only reason I could not is that as I have said, I just could not find the word or even words......

 

http://shanlung.livejournal.com/11658.html

 

It does not matter if Tinkerbell fly high in the sky or your Wujing crawled with belly close to the ground.

 

The Tao is every bit as much in them as in you and me.

 

 

Idiotic Taoist

 

aka

 

Shanlung

 

http://shanlung.com/

[Melanie]

[shanlung]

 

Wujing is very wise, I can't be sure how far he's achieved emptiness and Tao, but I can feel a fraction of his serenity when he's sitting on a warm stone in the sun.

 

I have long known the wisdom of birds just by watching them every once in a while.

 

Do remember the ancestry of birds. Birds did not start with the egg. They started long long ago with the age of T Rex and others of their like. For all we know, they possesed collective wisdom of a lineage longer than us. Think of that next time you rip into that drumstick or enjoying that scrambled eggs.

 

Wujing has the time and the inclination to watch the stone breathing and the grass growing. Unlike most of us in desire to go for quality time and end up neither with quality or with time.

 

Or is quality time peculiarly American propensity for glorified words?

 

But on other hand, I thought I read enough American authors from Mark Twain, Thoreau, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald etc etc.

Never seen them talking of quality time.

 

Perhaps its because they had no clue what quality time is all about unlike most Americans now. In which case those authors must be pitied for being clueless of quality time since they did not write or evoked that.

 

In the same way Chuangtze be discarded from the Taoist canons as he never mentioned the Tao in his writings and therefore a mere Pretender.

 

Another reason why I felt with more words and more explanations made with even more lofty sounding words, our minds became more entangles and further from the Tao.

 

Sorry if I add to that confusion by banging out more words instead of voicing my thoughts the way Wujing is doing so well.

 

Idiot wandering on the Path

 

aka

 

Shanlung

山 龍

Mountain Dragon

 

http://shanlung.com/

[Melanie]

[shanlung]

I am an unapologetic carnivore.

 

I think I wrote enough in my webpages and livejournal blog to let those writings be the witness as to my outlook on all things big and small, bright and beautiful that share this Earth with us.

 

I have been through the times where meat did not come in shrink wraps. And from times when if you go to camp in Islands for a week or so, and you wanted a BBQ, you bring meat on hoof.

 

Strangely in all those occasions, the task ot sending them on fell onto me. A task I did not relished, but a task I knew got to be done and done in least pain for them and with respect for them.

 

Perhaps that was why I decided Taoism suit me fine as being carnivore is accepted. I once asked a Taiwanese friend how to distinguish between Buddhism and Taoist temples as they shared many common entities. He told me to look at the altar offerings. Buddhism altars would have flowers and fruits and Taoist altars would have that and in addition, roast pork and chicken as well.

 

I kept quiet to him that the Dalai Lama loves a good steak now and then,

 

Idiot stumbling about on the Path

 

aka

 

Shanlung

山 龍

Mountain Dragon

 

http://shanlung.com/

[shanlung]

It was some time since I drop by here.

And fearing to offend others who might not have known me, and my signature, I thought I kick this up.

That others might know how foolish I am, and indeed, I am the Idiot here.

 

 

 

The Idiotic Taoist

[skydog]

hello