An Altar for Sree

[sree]

Likewise, btw, I am an atheist too. Thus, as a philosophical Taoist, I don't need an altar to be set in my home.

 

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.

[ChiDragon]

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.

 

Well, I am a Chinese-American

 

Did you know a western mind is equal to the Chinese heart. In the ancient time, the Chinese once thought that the heart was the central point of the body. Thus they thought the heart was the center of the body which does all the thinking. However, even though people still say I used my heart to think, but it was still understood that the brain was doing all the thinking.

Edited May 3, 2013 by ChiDragon

[dawei]

thanks dawei, i wasnt aware of how older the Goudian bamboo slips were. i am not any Tao Te Ching scholar. it is still hard for me to imagine that Lao Tzu didnt play with some type of taiji like forms. and how do we really know the exact origins of Taoist Arts. i wont say that i think Lao Tzu was purely some atheist philosopher and that he didnt have anything to do with chi kungs and meditation etc. i think that such a view is likely far away from reality.

 

I hear what you are saying and won't really disagree. But what I think we have to be careful about is anachronistic applications of later concepts [back to ancient times]. I personally like to find the original, ancient concepts although I know that later terms are more common.

 

There seems very little argument or doubt as to the understanding of dualistic archtypes. That they are later almost universally explained and accepted as "Yin Yang" or "Tai Ji Tu" is something we probably all do.

 

 

I'll provide to you the point I was getting at in my questions:

 

One of the most famous passages in the Yijing Xici is the opening line which reads:

 

"是故易有太极，是生两仪，两仪生四象，四象生八卦，八卦生吉凶，吉凶生大业”

 

“Therefore in Change there is taiji, which generates the Two Modes. The Two Modes generate the Four Images, and the Four Images generate the Eight Trigrams.” -- Legge

 

With the 1973 Mawangdui discovery of the Laozi on silk (and the Huang-Lao text on Nourishing life covering exorcisms, magic, talismans, and abstaining from grains), is also the earliest text of the Yijing and Xici (over 400 years older than the traditional Wang Bi version).

 

In the Mawangdui version, the same line reads:

是故易有大恆 - “This is why the Changes has Da Heng” !!! HENG... Imagine that... NO TAI JI...

[sree]

Did you know a western mind is equal to the Chinese heart. In the ancient time, the Chinese once thought that the heart was the central point of the body. Thus they thought the heart was the center of the body which does all the thinking. However, even though people still say I used my heart to think, but it was still understood that the brain was doing all the thinking.

 

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.

[sree]

Well, I am a Chinese-American.

 

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.