How many people practice Taoism to gain supernatural powers?

[doc benway]

Steve,

 

It's not that I am suffering. I have a really great life.

Very glad to hear that!

I reached an erroneous conclusion based on some of your posts...

Please forgive me.

 

Best regards,

[Thunder_Gooch]

DAO rain TAO,

 

I waited a little while to let the thread die down. I'll try to answer your question now that it isn't derailing the thread.

 

The problem with your question is that nothing exists including yourself.

 

Existence is a delusion.

 

All there is an energetic, experience of information.

 

You have no body, you have no friends, you have no family, you have no possessions. You are just an experience. There is no one experiencing the experience, the experience is just happening. There is no you in the equation other than the experience itself, that is all you are.

 

What you feel, what you see, what you smell, what you hear, what you taste, what you remember, what you imagine, all of the experience is you and you are nothing more than an experience at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;

The deed there is, but no doer thereof;

Nirvana is, but no one seeking it;

The Path there is, but none who travel it."

 

-Buddha quoted from the (Visuddhimagga) The Path of Purification sutra

 

 

Your body is empty; emptiness is your body. Emptiness

is nothing but your body, and your body is nothing but emptiness."

 

"Every existing thing is emptiness."

 

 

"There are no eyes; no ears; no nose; no tongue; no body; no mind; nothing to see; nothing to hear; nothing to smell; nothing to taste; nothing to touch; and nothing to think of."

 

 

"There is no part of you that sees. There is no part of you that is aware of what you see; and this is true all the way up to the part of you that thinks, and the part of you that is aware that you are thinking."

 

-Buddha (quoted from The Heart Sutra)

 

 

"All existing things are such that no living being exists, and nothing that lives exists, and no person exists."

 

 

"A mind which is past is non-existent. And a mind in the future is non-existent. And a mind that is going on at the present is non-existent as well."

 

 

"At that moment there came into my mind no conception of a self, nor of a sentient being, nor of a living being, nor of a person —I had no conception at all. But neither did I have no conception."

 

 

"Bodhisattvas give all that they have, for the sake of every

living being. And this same conception of anyone as a living

being is a conception that does not exist; when the Buddha(One Gone)

Thus speaks of "every living being," they too are living beings

that do not even exist."

 

-Buddha quoted from the diamond sutra

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, but where is this business of independence from experience?

 

 

 

It doesn't matter if we consider ourselves empty, full, illusory, rainbow-colored.

We experience. It's a fact.

Can you say "I don't experience at all"?

 

You may even say that to experience is an illusion, that we are the experience.

Still, you perceive things and have experience.

And more. You use this experience to describe reality in a specific way.

Is it the experience that experiences itself? It doesn't matter because

 

the question remains untouched

 

We experience it because it is real,

or it is real because we experience it?

 

Assuming that we are the experience:

 

The experience experiences itself because it is real,

or it is real because experience experiences itself?

 

In the second case, it's relevant that experience experiences itself in different ways, in contradictory ways also... to make up a coherent reality. That's why atheists live in a world without spirituality and it is coherent, complete and funny, they know why things work in a certain way... and spiritual seekers live in a world of spiritual being and this same world is coherent, complete and funny, they know why things work in a certain way.

Who lives the right reality?

 

What is real in all of this?

Edited October 23, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[Wells]

All there is an energetic, experience of information.

 

You have no body, you have no friends, you have no family, you have no possessions. You are just an experience. There is no one experiencing the experience, the experience is just happening. There is no you in the equation other than the experience itself, that is all you are.

 

What you feel, what you see, what you smell, what you hear, what you taste, what you remember, what you imagine, all of the experience is you and you are nothing more than an experience at all.

 

What the hell.....?

You described the truth even better than Buddha himself! Well done!

[Marblehead]

Then, why seek anything?

Because it's fun playing hide and seek.

[GrandmasterP]

How can we discover if we do not seek , Grasshopper?

Edited October 23, 2012 by GrandmasterP

[Thunder_Gooch]

Then, why seek anything?

 

I seek continuity of consciousness between lifetimes, or perhaps to continue as a spirit (consciousness) that does not reincarnate.

[Marblehead]

How can we discover if we do not seek , Grasshopper?

I have been told that we should not seek but when we are ready a teacher will find us.

 

I call that procrastinating. I also call it something else.

[Marblehead]

I seek continuity of consciousness between lifetimes, or perhaps to continue as a spirit (consciousness) that does not reincarnate.

As soon as you stop believing in reincarnation you will stop reincarnating.

[GrandmasterP]

Well it is active procrastination.

By non doing... Stuff happens.

Ah sweet sweet Tao, gives so much, demands... Nothing at all.

;-)

[Marblehead]

 

Ah sweet sweet Tao, gives so much, demands... Nothing at all.

;-)

But it does request that we live to our fullest potential so that it can experience itself.

[GrandmasterP]

You got that right Oh wise one.

Seems to me that a lot of folk use religion as a bolt hole from the real world.

If it ain't all part and parcel of a regular life then it ain't much to speak of at all.

Saddest sacks I ever met in quite a long life have been full time pro religionistas of one brand or another.

The guys at the top, the abbots and gurus and such are a cheery crowd as a rule cos they are skimming the cream but the poor shaven headed grunts in orange robes and such further down the rankings, man; if miserable was an Olympic sport those guys would all be gold medallists.

[Thunder_Gooch]

What the hell.....?

You described the truth even better than Buddha himself! Well done!

 

Thanks

 

The Mahayana Buddhists compare the mind to a mirror which reflects reality.

 

When you think about it the reality you perceive occurs INSIDE your mind, not outside of it.

 

You are seeing a simulated virtual experience which is representative of an external reality if there is one.

 

The map is not the territory however. A representation of a thing is not the thing itself.

 

Plato's cave allegory also alludes to this, with the men chained to a wall in a cave who believe the shadows on the wall to be reality.

 

The cave is your mind, and the shadows on the wall are the reflections you see with your eyes.

 

 

 

 

Another interesting thought that may bake your noodle.

 

Each of your cells is an independently intelligent organism.

 

You are like a society of cells.

 

Your brain and nervous system is like their internet, except instead of fiber-optic cables they use axons and dendrites to send messages.

 

It is the constant chattering of your cells online that gives rise to your consciousness. Your consciousness is just the energy and information exchanged by your cells.

 

We as humans also give rise to a larger consciousness in which we play the roles of neurons, we just don't realize it.

Edited October 24, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[Birch]

Consciousness as emergent or whatever the opposite of that would be?

Free-will in absolute and/or relative terms?

 

Those are really bugging me:-)

[Thunder_Gooch]

K,

 

I am not sure what the opposite of a consciousness that emerged from lower levels of complexity would be, perhaps if we created an AI it would be a non emergent intelligence, maybe sort of kinda.

 

Free will, well that's a very tricky question.

 

You don't actually exist to choose anything, and the world you live in is a virtual reality anyway.

 

You are democracy of cells, and what you experience as the world around you, and personality, memory, sensation, etc. all of that is just you cells chatting away on their electrochemical internet, and you have no existence as a consciousness independent of that. You are just the voices of trillions of beings together as one consciousness.

 

But, you can still choose to do any possible thing within your power moment to moment.

 

In 2005 I had an experience of being a disembodied wave of energy/consciousness flowing through time.

 

Time was a solid object, my body when I was born, and my body when I died were all apart of the same solid object, and I was merely flowing through it, my location determined the time and date.

 

Both past and future have already occurred.

 

Any book you could possibly write, or thought you could possibly think has already happened.

 

That isn't to say that free will does not exist however.

 

There are infinite pasts, presents and futures.

 

Every possible future exists, as does every possible past, for any possible observer.

 

Moment to moment whenever you make a choice you are navigating through infinite potential future realities, but these realities existed prior to you observing them, so nothing is ever truly created or unique to you as a person.

 

You have freewill to choose from infinite preexisting realities, but that is all. It is not possible to ever create something new or unique, including your own personality, or ego.

 

 

 

 

Consciousness as emergent or whatever the opposite of that would be?

Free-will in absolute and/or relative terms?

 

Those are really bugging me:-)

Edited October 25, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[GrandmasterP]

A choice between pre-existent destinies sounds more like Calivinistic predestination no matter how many potential destinies there are to choose between in that you only get one that was already 'there' amongst the rest.

Not free will at all looked at that way.

Stuff just happens and there are consequences. I'm not sure the Tao actually gives a sh*t. How could I be?

[Stosh]

pre-emergent lower order phenomena

(not combined in such a way as to embody the emergent phenomena)

 

Beasties living and procreating and dying in competetive mutating situation

Yields an emergent phenomena.... evolution.

 

Planetary energies masses materials can yield ...techtonics

 

Stosh

[Marblehead]

pre-emergent lower order phenomena

(not combined in such a way as to embody the emergent phenomena)

 

Beasties living and procreating and dying in competetive mutating situation

Yields an emergent phenomena.... evolution.

 

Planetary energies masses materials can yield ...techtonics

 

Stosh

What Cha' been smokin"?

[GRANTGRANT]

...

 

in 3 hours we change

Edited October 25, 2012 by Homserat Tember

[Marblehead]

... realized that dream abt powers is stupid.

I laughed. I never put it that bluntly.

[Mokona]

K,

 

I am not sure what the opposite of a consciousness that emerged from lower levels of complexity would be, perhaps if we created an AI it would me a non emergent intelligence, maybe sort of kinda.

 

Free will, we'll that's a very tricky question.

 

You don't actually exist to choose anything, and the world you live in is a virtual reality anyway.

 

You are democracy of cells, and what you experience as the world around you, and personality, memory, sensation, etc. all of that is just you cells chatting away on their electrochemical internet, and you have no existence as a consciousness independent of that. You are just the voices of trillions of beings together as one consciousness.

 

But, you can still choose to do any possible thing within your power moment to moment.

 

In 2005 I had an experience of being a disembodied wave of energy/consciousness flowing through time.

 

Time was a solid object, my body when I was born, and my body when I died were all apart of the same solid object, and I was merely flowing through it, my location determined the time and date.

 

Both past and future have already occurred.

 

Any book you could possibly write, or thought you could possibly think has already happened.

 

That isn't to say that free will does not exist however.

 

There are infinite pasts, presents and futures.

 

Every possible future exists, as does every possible past, for any possible observer.

 

Moment to moment whenever you make a choice you are navigating through infinite potential future realities, but these realities existed prior to you observing them, so nothing is ever truly created or unique to you as a person.

 

You have freewill to choose from infinite preexisting realities, but that is all. It is not possible to ever create something new or unique, including your own personality, or ego.

 

That's a cool experience, I had one in meditation earlier last week - my conciousness slid down my spine and as I went down I felt heavier and heavier. When I neared my tail bone I "became" "was" just solidness and stability. Earthy. Total mind-screw. I loved it. When "I" realized what was going on my awareness snapped back to wherever it normally resides.

 

Ah! I've been having too much sex and leasure time after work, need to start meditation and chi kung back up.

[GrandmasterP]

Thank you for sharing.

;-)

[Stosh]

What Cha' been smokin"?

Maybe Ive just been reading some posts by Et

Stosh

[GrandmasterP]

Yep, that'll so it.

I have been teetotal this thirty-seven years past.

Had completely forgotten what a really bad hangover felt like before I began reading some of et's wilder missives on here.

Just say NO!

 

:-)

Edited October 25, 2012 by GrandmasterP

[Ya Mu]

There is no such thing as supernatural powers. There is only awakening to and enhancement of natural being & natural talents, which is what Taoism does. Humanity's majority have forgotten. If one wants supernatural they could go live in the comic books.

[skydog]

lol at the last page and agree with ya mus post.

 

I guess I kind of do, everyone gets involved usually on some level what appears to be egoic goals, but really it could be something much deeper.

 

I have superpowers, but their not super, they only seem super because of science and the dogmatic theories forced upon children as realities.