Stosh Posted August 8, 2017 29 minutes ago, Marblehead said: I think that Chuang Tzu might likely agree with your zero sum concept. I'm not sure I do. Thats ok , but I would like to hear why... and then try not to argue the opposite. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Marblehead Posted August 8, 2017 3 hours ago, Stosh said: Thats ok , but I would like to hear why... and then try not to argue the opposite. We all live, we all die. Doesn't matter too much what kind of life we led. And after we die will it matter to us what people think about how we lived? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stosh Posted August 8, 2017 Does it matter WHEN we do the caring? or THAT we cared. Doesit likewise matter how many lives we impacted well? or that we made things even one smidge better. Some of the 'far out' ideas I have come across , actually appear to be the only rational ones. We are inorganic atoms of wave potentials somewhere in a field which can sustain awareness. Its every bit as weird as the fact that each of our cells ,and even mitochondria is ... a living thing in its own right. I know we will still feel and act as if we really exist as individuals , and thats fine , but at the end of my ephermeral vortex of interrelated wave forms I will be grasping on to remembering that , so I can lt go a bit easier. Its been on my mind of late, there really is just one NOW. That however this now is, really is all that is, and I really want to be on good terms with the now that IS... and I just dont care much about trying to pin down now, in a conventional context, what its duation is, whether it connects with all the future and past nows. Screw the other nows, but right now I can be planning for other ones, which dont exist, and it doesnt matter if they do or dont. Sorry , I know that was cryptic. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Marblehead Posted August 8, 2017 No sorry needed. That's a fair perspective. And I agree, discounting the past (can't change that) and the future (it ain't here yet) there is but the now moment. So we have our set of values and we try our best to live according to them. No judgements from one to the other. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stosh Posted August 9, 2017 I suppose so, Well said. Thanks. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dawei Posted August 19, 2017 On 7/17/2017 at 6:45 PM, Marblehead said: Chuang Tzu was an idealist. But he was also a realist. This may be the crux of understanding ZZ, and why it is so difficult to understand him... very few can toe both of these lines as a singular path. For this, that singular path is, "naturally live". 3 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Anastasia Posted August 21, 2017 Hi Stosh and Marbelhead, I believe the best thing you can do is solve your own problems. If everybody would do that, the world would become a much better place naturally. I hope that Chuang Tzu would agree with this. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
rene Posted August 21, 2017 On 08/19/2017 at 1:29 PM, dawei said: This may be the crux of understanding ZZ, and why it is so difficult to understand him... very few can toe both of these lines as a singular path. For this, that singular path is, "naturally live". 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Taomeow Posted August 21, 2017 (edited) Methinks Zhuangzi is trying to explain to civilized people why being civilized is a distorted, damaged state. However, most people who read what he wrote read it from a civilized, distorted, damaged perspective, so he is seldom understood. We "need" kings? A king is a stand-off for an abusive parent to a helpless, powerless, and fully dependent infant. The Chinese state (and every other for that matter) is modeled on this pattern and no other. Do we "need" abusive parents to survive? Hardly. Would we succeed in transference onto abusive kings of our attitude toward mommy and daddy if our real mommy and daddy were living a life we wanted, and could, replicate by simply being around them and imitating their harmonious, life-affirming and life-supporting ways? Not for a second. Do we need abusive stand-offs for parents to learn to be obedient toward being exploited? Yup. How else would we be so successfully trained and conditioned to be exploited instead of living if refusal to be exploited wasn't punishable by death? Sages... Where do they come from, the sages who teach humanity? Who are they? The invasion of a superior civilization always results in the destruction of the "simple" natural life. (Which is not really "simple" in the sense "simplistic life of simpletons" as we are led to believe -- only simple in the sense "free of contorted artificiality.") One may want to think hard about what "sages" are really about. A taoist, typically, has two paths. Zhuangzi's, Laozi's somewhat jaded, often wistful pining for the harmonious ways of the "real human." Or the "if you can't beat them, join them" path of cultivational, alchemical, magical, scientific (sic), immortalist taoism. Follow the sages not because people are better off due to their presence but simply because they are here and they call the shots. Try to become one of them. And screw the human -- whether natural, "real," tao-made or civilized, unreal, mired in man-made (but at the source sage-made) illusions from birth to death. Then perhaps there's the middle way... Edited August 21, 2017 by Taomeow 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
9th Posted August 21, 2017 Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you're always afraid Step out of line, the men come and take you away We better stop Hey - what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down... 2 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
