Daoist Alchemy: Jerry A. Johnson

[flowing hands]

You need to let go of what you've learned and become more open, flowing hands.

I don't think you really know anything about what you are talking about otherwise you would not have to go so low to be snide.

 

This is the first time I have talked to you and you have been snide on both communications.

 

What does that say about you? Lots of things

[Aetherous]

I didn't go low at all...just pointed something out (which you said yourself) that would help you in your practice, if you chose to take it in that way. If I'm being snide, and it says a lot about me to you, then that's unfortunate for how you're viewing me.

[dawei]

Lao Tzu gives us great pointers as to what we should do and hold in our hearts; it is not him, nor is it Jesus or God nor anyone else.

 

So to be a true cultivator one has to be at one with the Dao or whatever word one wishes to call it. Remember we can't call this God or Jesus or even the divine, for with these names come great moral and ethical reasoning, such mind sets already have blocked true emptiness and realization and true cultivation/alchemy.

 

I think this is the moral of the story and which I can identify with. In the training I had with them, they like the word 'divine' and equated it to Dao. I later struggled with reconciling this as it did not sit right but I finally came to peace with it.

[h.uriahr]

I don't think you really know anything about what you are talking about otherwise you would not have to go so low to be snide.

 

This is the first time I have talked to you and you have been snide on both communications.

 

What does that say about you? Lots of things

 

Sadly the wrong understanding of emptiness! Plus the fact that we do not know that it was Jesus who said this.

 

How do you know what Jesus meant?

[ChiDragon]

Did you understand Flowing hands' comment in your last quote....???

[h.uriahr]

Did you understand Flowing hands' comment in your last quote....???

 

Ah but the question is did you understand my comment?

[ChiDragon]

Ah but the question is did you understand my comment?

Yes, but what is your point....???.......

Edited October 22, 2013 by ChiDragon

[spiraltao]

I appreciate the feedback. Thanks R V and CD, FH and I see the point you all are making and YES the teachings have been perverted JB. I feel like there are good things that one can apply to better one's own life within that book called the Holy Bible.

I am still finding trouble wording my query correctly but I am gonna sit back and read this thread nevertheless. Thanks everyone!

Edited October 22, 2013 by spiraltao

[三江源]

.

Edited June 22, 2014 by cat

[Green Tiger]

This is not a contradiction of Internal Alchemy but a matter of religion. You can be either one but not both if you understand what Taoism is all about in a religious sense.

Ah! I see. Thanks for clarifying ChiDragon. So the argument is about whether or not J.A. Johnson is a Taoist fundamentalist or not. I would say he is almost certainly NOT.

 

Christian fundamentalists would probably say the same things about him. "Well, he's all into this 'Tao' thing so he can't really love Jesus like he should. So he isn't really a Christian."

 

Sadly the wrong understanding of emptiness! Plus the fact that we do not know that it was Jesus who said this.

 

Really? As though there could possibly be some correct understanding of emptiness. Jesus wasn't far off, but I think that Jesus (or whomever you'd like to attribute the writings from the gospel) knew that understanding of emptiness cannot be achieved. All you can do is talk around it, not about it. Emptiness just is.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Green Tiger

[flowing hands]

Ah! I see. Thanks for clarifying ChiDragon. So the argument is about whether or not J.A. Johnson is a Taoist fundamentalist or not. I would say he is almost certainly NOT.

 

Christian fundamentalists would probably say the same things about him. "Well, he's all into this 'Tao' thing so he can't really love Jesus like he should. So he isn't really a Christian."

 

 

 

Really? As though there could possibly be some correct understanding of emptiness. Jesus wasn't far off, but I think that Jesus (or whomever you'd like to attribute the writings from the gospel) knew that understanding of emptiness cannot be achieved. All you can do is talk around it, not about it. Emptiness just is.

 

Yes there is a correct understanding of emptiness. Combined with Dao Xin, enlightenment is obtainable. Once enlightenment is obtained, the third eye can be cultivated. The statement by Turtle Shell quoted from the Bible is insinuating more things do do with ethical and moral behaviour, that children are untainted enough to be pure to enter the gates of Heaven. The emptiness and understanding of a Daoist cultivator goes beyond the 'new born babe' symbolism.

[Jeff]

Yes there is a correct understanding of emptiness. Combined with Dao Xin, enlightenment is obtainable. Once enlightenment is obtained, the third eye can be cultivated. The statement by Turtle Shell quoted from the Bible is insinuating more things do do with ethical and moral behaviour, that children are untainted enough to be pure to enter the gates of Heaven. The emptiness and understanding of a Daoist cultivator goes beyond the 'new born babe' symbolism.

 

Could you describe what you mean by "emptiness and understanding of a Daoist cultivator goes beyond the 'new born babe' symbolism"? Or, maybe why you believe that new born babe symbolism applies to only ethical and moral behavior?

 

Thanks,

Jeff

[Green Tiger]

Yes there is a correct understanding of emptiness. Combined with Dao Xin, enlightenment is obtainable. Once enlightenment is obtained, the third eye can be cultivated. The statement by Turtle Shell quoted from the Bible is insinuating more things do do with ethical and moral behaviour, that children are untainted enough to be pure to enter the gates of Heaven. The emptiness and understanding of a Daoist cultivator goes beyond the 'new born babe' symbolism.

 

I'm sorry, you failed to prove your thesis. Go back ten spaces and roll again.

[h.uriahr]

That verse goes a tad deeper than that. Understanding comes in degrees.

[dawei]

That verse goes a tad deeper than that. Understanding comes in degrees.

 

That verse is not alchemy. SO stop hijacking the thread. LET IT GO...

[h.uriahr]

 

That verse is not alchemy. SO stop hijacking the thread. LET IT GO...

As per request

Edited October 23, 2013 by h.uriahr

[dawei]

your doing it again... FH went back to topic , or attempted to... just let it go. Start your own thread... (What an idea!)

 

Actually, I am 5'6" and about 150 lbs... athlete all my life... too many sports to mention... now I know your 'inner seeing' is BS.

 

I spent many years in very conservative Christianity... and read with a passion everything and everyone going backwards to the old testament... I realized the masses were greatly stupid on what they 'believed'.... So I left that ignorant crowd.

 

But the point remains: Jesus talking of the children is not about alchemy but simplicity. In Daoism this is Pu, the uncarved block. That is how it all starts... The point is not about how it starts... but where it ends (or progressing towards).

[flowing hands]

I don't want to be 'anti Christian' but there seems to be far too many Christians on the Taoist section of this board, trying to pervert the course of proper Taoist discussion and mocking the beliefs of Taoists.

 

Perhaps its time I went on a Christian Forum and talked about the "Tao and only Tao", might be good fun, I could accuse them of being an "apprentice of 'God or Jesus" like this was a joke and try and belittle them also. I could say how I went to the mountain and became at one with the Tao and the Immortal Master was there with me and say how I know that God doesn't exist as the Bible was just written by ordinary men (no women of course or homosexuals!) and it has been used to control people ever since.

 

Perhaps I might even get banned from the site for speaking the truth.....the truth is always difficult to swallow.

[ChiDragon]

A good Taoist wouldn't do that and please don't go there........!!!

[Aetherous]

I don't want to be 'anti Christian' but there seems to be far too many Christians on the Taoist section of this board, trying to pervert the course of proper Taoist discussion and mocking the beliefs of Taoists.

 

Perhaps its time I went on a Christian Forum and talked about the "Tao and only Tao", might be good fun, I could accuse them of being an "apprentice of 'God or Jesus" like this was a joke and try and belittle them also. I could say how I went to the mountain and became at one with the Tao and the Immortal Master was there with me and say how I know that God doesn't exist as the Bible was just written by ordinary men (no women of course or homosexuals!) and it has been used to control people ever since.

 

Perhaps I might even get banned from the site for speaking the truth.....the truth is always difficult to swallow.

 

No one is mocking Taoism like this here! I'm reporting your post because it's dragging things off topic even more, and you're just attempting to start a fight with another religion. In a thread about Jerry Alan Johnson.

[joeblast]

Agreed, Scotty. FH, so what if some of us grew up christian...how many of us do you think that grew up steeped in that still practice it to this day? Rhetorical question. Let's keep this thread about JAJ's Daoist Alchemy - if there's overlap in relevant areas, that's of course ok, but it is fruitless to take these tangential bits of discussion too far. /\

 

-modstuff

[h.uriahr]

I haven't gotten his book yet. Has anyone started practicing with it yet?

[h.uriahr]

His new book...just to clarify

[Green Tiger]

I haven't gotten his book yet. Has anyone started practicing with it yet?

 

From the sounds of things it's like an encyclopedia for all the cultivation techniques he's ever learned. It brings together several disparate cultivation practices that he described in his earlier books and also added many new ones that he's never published before.

 

I haven't actually seen the new book, but based on conversations I've had with people who own it, the new info is mostly very advanced practices. Too be honest, that made me not so interested in it. I don't want to play around with the advanced practices unless I've got an instructor from that tradition on hand to guide me.

[spiraltao]

Interesting Green Tiger. I share your thoughts on not wanting to go into advanced level stuff sifu-less. I have most of his books, how much is new, would you estimate percentage wise?