Tao in the human world

[Taomeow]

From Livia Kohn's blog, published January 8, 2018 

 

(...)

A much less pleasant dimension of increased prosperity and economic freedom is the rise in fraudulent businesses and investment scams. China is full of both, some—such as the tinkering with baby formula—making worldwide headlines. Less well known are the actual numbers. For example, in 2014, financial scams conned people out of $24 billion, while more recently police arrested 21 people involved in a Ponzi scheme centered on Ezubao, the country’s largest online financing platform, that netted them $7 billion.

(...)

 

Daoism, too, is not exempt from this trend, as the well-publicized case of Li Yi 李一(b. 1969) documents, the one “not of the constant way,” as the headline puts it. An initiated Daoist master, Li Yi served as abbot of the Shaolong guan 绍龙观 (Summoning Dragons Temple), located in the Jinyun shan 缙云山nature preserve near the mega-city of Chongqing in southwest China. Claiming to have started Daoist practice at age 3 and attained academic recognition by major universities—both entirely fictional—he styled himself a living god in possession of supernatural healing powers. To prove these, he regularly faked miracles and soon attracted over 60,000 followers, including some well-known pop stars and internet giants like Jack Ma. In the process, he made himself rich by charging thousands of dollars for spa treatments and courses in magical powers.

 

Coming to the attention of the authorities, the Bureau of Religious Affairs started an investigation into his claims and practices in 2010, leading to a formal trial and sentencing to several years in prison. The case has highlighted the potential dangers of miracle healers and thrown a rather unfavorable light on the Daoist Association, which allowed him not only to practice unchallenged but also to rise to the status of abbot within its ranks.

 

Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFtc6VPfDaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLOpLMHplJg

Read: Schmitz, Rob. 2016. Street of Eternal Happiness: Big City Dreams along a Shanghai Road. New York: Crown Publishers, chs. 9, 11.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Taomeow

[Taiji Bum]

I love Livia Kohn. I've read all her books and highly recommend "Sitting in Oblivion". It is not just about meditation, but has a lot of stories about Taoists ascending. As for Chinese religious frauds..... I've encountered a few. I heard once the reason there are so many fake teachers is because there are so many fake students.

[Taomeow]

52 minutes ago, Taiji Bum said:

 I heard once the reason there are so many fake teachers is because there are so many fake students.

 

In taoism, there's this concept of simultaneous arising.  Instead of a "because," a cause-effect relationship, or of an "acausal" manifestation (a highbrow misconception to whose shelter physicists and philosophers alike might run when they are unable to discern the cause), it's more like, a certain environment, a particular zeitgeist is conductive to both appearing simultaneously -- not one as the outcome of the other but both as the outcome of "the kind of times we're in."    

[Marblehead]

10 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

In taoism, there's this concept of simultaneous arising.  Instead of a "because," a cause-effect relationship, or of an "acausal" manifestation (a highbrow misconception to whose shelter physicists and philosophers alike might run when they are unable to discern the cause), it's more like, a certain environment, a particular zeitgeist is conductive to both appearing simultaneously -- not one as the outcome of the other but both as the outcome of "the kind of times we're in."    

Tao gave birth to One,

One gave birth to Two,

etc.

That's not simultaneous arising.

 

Yes, there are a few, even here, who hold to the concept of simultaneous arising.  I'm not one of them.

 

Cause and effect rule!

 

[vonkrankenhaus]

Simultaneous because Dao is not a thing.

 

Something comes from Nothing.

 

And something always has polarity.

 

Every "thing" has inside and outside, front and back, left and right, etc - or we say they have YinYang.

 

Which obviously arise simultaneously.

 

From One, Two.

 

"Cause and Effect" is a literate mind view. 

 

A view informed by rows of letters in order.

 

Literate says A, B, C in a row, which implies causality. Numbers they also see like this.

 

Chinese (pre-alphabetic-literate, and also non-literate) way is existing ABC or 123 all at once, like reality.

 

Like Chinese writing is a picture all-at-once, and not row of abstract sound symbols.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Taomeow]

5 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Tao gave birth to One,

One gave birth to Two,

etc.

That's not simultaneous arising.

 

Yes, there are a few, even here, who hold to the concept of simultaneous arising.  I'm not one of them.

 

Cause and effect rule!

 

 

My friend, Laozi didn't teach kindergarten arithmetics, he taught the dynamics of the tao, they are not the same.  "One yin and one yang are called the tao."  They arise simultaneously.  As soon as "one" manifests out of "none," it is polarized, it has an up and a down -- simultaneously, a dark and a light -- simultaneously, a heavy and a light -- simultaneously.  Not in sequence.  Co-dependently.  Co-dependent arising is the bread and butter of taoism.  Taiji (the "one" born out of wuji), aka yin and yang, are the basic, fundamental case of simultaneous arising.   

 

Events that have a sequential cause and effect constitute about 20% of all events in the universe -- that's what free will is for -- the rest is simultaneous arising.  When you were born, the stars assumed a certain position in the sky, your birth didn't cause them to do that, nor did they cause you to be born (arguably, but let's simplify for brevity's sake) -- yet both you and the stars of the moment were linked into a unified moment in space, time, or more precisely universal qi, inextricably and simultaneously.  The qi of the moment shaped both, and was shaped by both, yes you participated in shaping the universe, but without either causing it or being caused by more than 20% of its overall simultaneously arising antics (that's the maximal percentage, practically of course it was much less than that.)  Put those stars in your pipe and smoke them (not hazardous to your health, I promise.)     

[Taomeow]

26 minutes ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

Simultaneous because Dao is not a thing.

 

Something comes from Nothing.

 

And something always has polarity.

 

Every "thing" has inside and outside, front and back, left and right, etc - or we say they have YinYang.

 

Which obviously arise simultaneously.

 

From One, Two.

 

"Cause and Effect" is a literate mind view. 

 

A view informed by rows of letters in order.

 

Literate says A, B, C in a row, which implies causality. Numbers they also see like this.

 

Chinese (pre-alphabetic-literate, and also non-literate) way is existing ABC or 123 all at once, like reality.

 

Like Chinese writing is a picture all-at-once, and not row of abstract sound symbols.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

 

Right on -- and I wrote my response to Marblehead without seeing yours, did the word "polarity" arise simultaneously in our minds?   

[Marblehead]

6 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

My friend, Laozi didn't teach kindergarten arithmetics, he taught the dynamics of the tao, they are not the same.  "One yin and one yang are called the tao."   

Seems to me we will eternally disagree regarding this concept.  BTW  Yin and Yang are two.  Collectively they are called Chi.

 

Singularity (One) gave birth to hydrogen and gravity (Two); Two gave birth to the electromagnetic force (Three).

 

That's cause and effect.

 

Is there a prime cause?  IMO, yes.  Tzujan.  (Not Tao.)

 

 

 

 

[Marblehead]

6 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

Right on -- and I wrote my response to Marblehead without seeing yours, did the word "polarity" arise simultaneously in our minds?   

Polarities (dualities) are a mental concept.  What is simply is.  Not to be compared with anything else.

 

[Marblehead]

BTW  Yu is a subset of Wu.  First there is Wu then there is Yu.  Yu being the manifest and Wu being potential (mystery).

 

 

[Taomeow]

In the immortal words of Krusty the Clown, "This, I don't need."   

 

 

[vonkrankenhaus]

6 hours ago, Marblehead said:

BTW  Yin and Yang are two.  Collectively they are called Chi.

 

Singularity (One) gave birth to hydrogen and gravity (Two); Two gave birth to the electromagnetic force (Three).

 

That's cause and effect.

 

Is there a prime cause?  IMO, yes.  Tzujan.  (Not Tao.)

 

YinYang are two, but the two is of one.

 

YinYang are complimentary/antagonistic - "one" never arise without the "other".

 

"Up" only never manifests. Only in relation to "down".

 

So up and down appear simultaneously.

 

Left and Right appear simultaneously.

 

From one manifestation - like the left and right of any physical structure.

 

"Left" never manifests without "Right". We never see only a "Left" side appear.

 

In terms of Lao Tzu:

 

Imagine "One" being Humanity.

 

Male and Female appear, of Humanity.

 

Produces Child (3).

 

"One" did not polarize into "hydrogen" and "gravity".

There is no polarity there to cause any coherent movement.

 

And, Two of what gave birth to "the electromagnetic force"?

 

Just the "numeral 2"?

 

In terms of "Prime Cause", it need be no more complex than realizing that all things change, and so "Nothing" will also change, and the only way for Nothing to change, is to become "Something".

 

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Marblehead]

4 hours ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

YinYang are two, but the two is of one.

 

YinYang are complimentary/antagonistic - "one" never arise without the "other".

 

"Up" only never manifests. Only in relation to "down".

 

So up and down appear simultaneously.

 

Left and Right appear simultaneously.

 

From one manifestation - like the left and right of any physical structure.

 

"Left" never manifests without "Right". We never see only a "Left" side appear.

 

In terms of Lao Tzu:

 

Imagine "One" being Humanity.

 

Male and Female appear, of Humanity.

 

Produces Child (3).

 

"One" did not polarize into "hydrogen" and "gravity".

There is no polarity there to cause any coherent movement.

 

And, Two of what gave birth to "the electromagnetic force"?

 

Just the "numeral 2"?

 

In terms of "Prime Cause", it need be no more complex than realizing that all things change, and so "Nothing" will also change, and the only way for Nothing to change, is to become "Something".

 

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Okay.  So now I know of five people who hold to the concept of simultaneous arising.

 

But everything you said are creations of the mind of man and you have totally ignored physical "truth".

 

Lao Tzu told us that as soon as we recognize beauty as beauty we will create in our mind "ugly".

 

Up/down, left/right, etc are constructs of the human mind.  The location of anything at any point in time is simply its location.  It is neither up, down, left or right.  These words are used only so that the human mind can associate one thing from another.

 

Yes, there are two polarities of Chi: Yang an Yin; Positive sand negative.  But they are not separate things.  Chi is one thing: electromagnetism.  That's number three after hydrogen and gravity.

 

Simultaneous arising would be you having eaten an apple but yet you still have the apple uneaten.  Ain't gonna happen.

 

Simultaneous arising, in my opinion, is more a concept compatible with Buddhism, not Taoism.

 

Cause and effect rule!  You can't go down a mountain until after you have climbed it. (Or gotten to the top by some other means.)

 

No, I can't imagine One being Humanity.  We all know my imagination sucks.

 

I cannot stand up and sit down at the same time.  There are processes in nature.  There first must be condition one before condition two can come into being.  Beautiful and ugly do not appear simultaneously.  Both appear in and of themselves, without the dualistic thinking of man.

 

[vonkrankenhaus]

2 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Chi is one thing: electromagnetism.

 

There are many "kinds" of Qi. There is water qi, air qi, and so forth.

 

Because qi is not a substance. It is the movement between the poles of any polarity.

 

The movement of Heat, as in "thermodynamics", is showing "heat qi", but your definition would omit this from being qi, for not being "electromagnetism"?

 

 

2 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Simultaneous arising would be you having eaten an apple but yet you still have the apple uneaten.

 

Not at the level we are discussing.

 

Simultaneous arising of polarity itself is what Lao Tzu refers to.

Not the arising of "you and an apple", etc.

 

It mean that any "One" will simultaneously, from its existence, have a left and right, up and down, etc.

 

Up doesn't manifest first, then down - it's both or "Nothing".

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Taomeow]

3 hours ago, Marblehead said:

Okay.  So now I know of five people who hold to the concept of simultaneous arising.

 

 

 

Man, you should go out more often.  Six thousand years of the taoist tradition hold fast to this concept, but you had to Indo-European-bomb the thread about "tao in the human world" with the Hindu-Vedic-originating competing concept, Pratītyasamutpāda, "dependent arising" -- your "cause and effect" doctrine at its ideologically motivated root.  Ideologically motivated because without this doctrine you can't have karmic punishment, heaven/nirvana for the pious/obedient  and hell /samsara for the sinners/heretics/dissidents.  In other words, it's a major tool of control of the masses, not a "pure" philosophy.   

 

 An anarchist who subscribes to Pratītyasamutpāda is an oxymoron. 

 

[Marblehead]

45 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

Man, you should go out more often.  Six thousand years of the taoist tradition hold fast to this concept, but you had to Indo-European-bomb the thread about "tao in the human world" with the Hindu-Vedic-originating competing concept, Pratītyasamutpāda, "dependent arising" -- your "cause and effect" doctrine at its ideologically motivated root.  Ideologically motivated because without this doctrine you can't have karmic punishment, heaven/nirvana for the pious/obedient  and hell /samsara for the sinners/heretics/dissidents.  In other words, it's a major tool of control of the masses, not a "pure" philosophy.   

 

 An anarchist who subscribes to Pratītyasamutpāda is an oxymoron. 

 

Ha!  This response got you no where.  Show me, if you will, where, in either the Tao Te Ching or the Chuang Tzu simultaneous arising is spoken to.

 

I'm pretty sure you know where in the Tao Te Ching it states "One gave birth to Two".

 

So you don't like my understanding?  That's okay because it isn't your mind having the understanding.

 

The universe did not suddenly appear from nothing.  There were processes.  Effect followed cause.  And BTW  both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu speak about cause and effect.  This isn't just a Western concept.  It is universal.

 

I have no idea about all that other stuff you spoke of.  It surely isn't Taoism.

 

Edited January 12, 2018 by Marblehead

[Taomeow]

53 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

Ha!  This response got you no where.  Show me, if you will, where, in either the Tao Te Ching or the Chuang Tzu simultaneous arising is spoken to.

 

I'm pretty sure you know where in the Tao Te Ching it states "One gave birth to Two".

 

So you don't like my understanding?  That's okay because it isn't your mind having the understanding.

 

The universe did not suddenly appear from nothing.  There were processes.  Effect followed cause.  And BTW  both Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu speak about cause and effect.  This isn't just a Western concept.  It is universal.

 

I have no idea about all that other stuff you spoke of.  It surely isn't Taoism.

 

 

Laozi and Zhuangzi were a very late addition to taoism and poetic rather than scientific at that.  I've enjoyed reading both but this didn't make me a laoist, I'm a taoist, and a taoist has a helluva lot more to learn and, most importantly, practice.  I couldn't possibly find the time or incentive to clog my brain with every line from every book in the Taoist Canon, there's 1,200 of them and TTC is not the first, albeit not the worst.   So I had to make sure I got the foundational fundamentals right, and you do't go to poetic mass-appeal sources for that.   

 

If you want to know how taoist sciences arrived at simultaneous arising, you need to go much farther back, to the founder of taoism, Fuxi, and his Hetu revelation.  To the shaman-king Yu the Great and his Luoshu discovery.  To King Wen and the Duke of Zhou and the construction of the I Ching as the tool of cognition that is used as such to this day (including by me) based on the fundamental concept of simultaneous arising.  If you used yarrow stalks even once or threw the three coins six times even once, you were practically applying this concept to solve your personal problems and get answers to your personal quests.  If you did it several thousand times over the course of a couple decades, you'd notice simultaneous arising.  Guess you never did.  Guess you never experienced simultaneous arising in taiji either, never felt qi flowing up your spine from your mingmen simultaneously with sinking it into your LDT (you can't do it in sequence, you can't have this as a cause-effect pair, only as a simultaneously arising pair, aka unity.)   I guess you never studied classical spacetime (Xuan Kong) feng shui and didn't observe the co-creating processes in Chinese medicine, which at its best can diagnose you with a damp basement and clogged plumbing in your house based on your pulse, but trace both -- your basement/plumbing problems and your heart/stomach problems not to one causing the other but to both being a manifestation of a simultaneous Fire deficiency-Earth excess arising codependently in your bazi chart.  In other words...

 

...in other words, you haven't invested time, effort and practice into obtaining the tools necessary for this conversation to have any meaning beyond your "I think so therefore it is so" stance.  If you need to be right above all, I can live with that.  Yes, you're right.  Not about anything in particular, but about your "this response got you nowhere" to me.  As would any other.  It's a good thing I don't need to convince you of anything.  (Sip of coffee, shrug, sip.)  

Edited January 12, 2018 by Taomeow

[vonkrankenhaus]

1 hour ago, Marblehead said:

The universe did not suddenly appear from nothing.  There were processes.  Effect followed cause.

 

One issue is that you appear to be assuming this is about the appearance of "things".

 

As if we could say "One potato arose, and from that, two potatoes arose,,"

 

This isn't about a thing like a potato.

 

I Ching is "book of changes", not "book of things" - and although we grasp the emergence of "things" by such study, we are really studying how changes happen, including the change from Nothing to Something.

 

Modern physics is same way - they start out looking for "things", but they end up seeing "illogical" phenomena  like "non-locality" and the "observer effect", etc, etc.

 

Neils Bohr did study physics well, and then put the taijitu on his coat-of-arms, and not without reason.

 

Because physics is looking for the Taoism (yes, of Fu Hsi and King Wen) that describes how change universally occurs, and this because the physical-seeking concepts and explanations of materialistic science had run into Reality.

 

Again - the "One" is not referring to an item.

 

If it did, we would be faced with extreme irrationality if that first "One" was a "single item", a "thing", and had been, for example, a peanut.

 

Such that from "Peanut" comes "Two", and so forth?!

 

That's what we are looking at if "One" is a particular object or thing.

 

Silly. But that's how many western people approach this.

 

Even physics finds dual "particle/wave" conception of matter - (light being particle and also wave, so they're not even as sure as you with your "apple"!).

 

And "Dao" is not a "place" or "thing" or any kind of physical object, and this is why the Dao that can be spoken of is not the true Dao.

 

"Silliness" is also not a physical object.

 

But I hope all people can still appreciate it!

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

 

 It's a good thing I don't need to convince you of anything.  (Sip of coffee, shrug, sip.)  

Yes, good thing. that is.

 

And I actually, a long time ago, tried reading the texts that you spoke of but I got the same feeling I got when I read Buddhist texts.  Not for me.  Inacceptable to me.

 

But again, I hold to "cause and effect" because it works every time.  Kinda' makes it a universal truth.

 

And no, I don't have to be right, I just am.

 

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

One issue is that you appear to be assuming this is about the appearance of "things".

 

As if we could say "One potato arose, and from that, two potatoes arose,,"

 

This isn't about a thing like a potato.

 

I Ching is "book of changes", not "book of things" - and although we grasp the emergence of "things" by such study, we are really studying how changes happen, including the change from Nothing to Something.

Cause and effect is the process of change.  Observable in the physical universe.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Modern physics is same way - they start out looking for "things", but they end up seeing "illogical" phenomena  like "non-locality" and the "observer effect", etc, etc.

I have not fallen for that silliness.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Neils Bohr did study physics well, and then put the taijitu on his coat-of-arms, and not without reason.

 

Because physics is looking for the Taoism (yes, of Fu Hsi and King Wen) that describes how change universally occurs, and this because the physical-seeking concepts and explanations of materialistic science had run into Reality.

 

Again - the "One" is not referring to an item.

I consider "One" to have been singularity.  I suppose we could also say that "One" is "Tao".

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

If it did, we would be faced with extreme irrationality if that first "One" was a "single item", a "thing", and had been, for example, a peanut.

 

Such that from "Peanut" comes "Two", and so forth?!

Bad argument.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

That's what we are looking at if "One" is a particular object or thing.

One is the totality.  There is no outside observer.  Nothing to define.  Defining can begin only at "Two" (hydrogen and gravity).

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Silly. But that's how many western people approach this.

 

Even physics finds dual "particle/wave" conception of matter - (light being particle and also wave, so they're not even as sure as you with your "apple"!).

I have never accepted the theory of light being both a particle sand a wave.  Brian and I discussed this until he turned blue in the face.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

And "Dao" is not a "place" or "thing" or any kind of physical object, and this is why the Dao that can be spoken of is not the true Dao.

Yea!  We have agreement!

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

"Silliness" is also not a physical object.

True.  It is a mental concept.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

But I hope all people can still appreciate it!

I can.  I get silly some times.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

 

[cold]

11 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

 

And no, I don't have to be right, I just am.

 

 

A bit of channeling?

Of the POTUS of course...

[Marblehead]

2 minutes ago, cold said:

 

A bit of channeling?

Of the POTUS of course...

I was hoping someone would appreciate that.  It was my form of humor, of course.

 

BTW  Today while gathering information on something I was told that I was almost right.

 

Edited January 12, 2018 by Marblehead

[cold]

I thought I was wrong once I wasn't .

Its happened twice before.

[vonkrankenhaus]

25 minutes ago, Marblehead said:

I consider "One" to have been singularity.  I suppose we could also say that "One" is "Tao".

 

If One is Dao, then Dao cannot produce One. They would be "same", no distinction.

 

Dao is the WAY that any thing appears.

 

One is what appears, and Two are its aspects.

 

Aspects are complimentary opposites, and so produce movement and change.

 

We call that "Qi".

 

The change isn't merely electromagnetic.

 

It can be change of heat, movement of water, or day and night - anything, any movement between any polarities.

 

Some call that movement "forces" - but this leads to a mistake where a "force" is taken to be a "thing".

 

They see lists of "kinds of qi", and also Order of Qi, such as Big Qi, Small Qi, etc - as per Fu Hsi, or interaction of qi as in King Wen arrangement.

 

None of these work if we interpret "Qi" as merely or only "electromagnetism".

 

Or if qi is some kind of mediating substance, like a fluid in thermodynamics.

 

Do Day and Night depend on a fluid for some kind of transference of matter between one and the other?

 

No. Day is not a physical object, nor is Night.

 

They are just one of the polarities we see on One rotating Earth by its very existence.

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Marblehead]

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

If One is Dao, then Dao cannot produce One. They would be "same", no distinction.

 

Dao is the WAY that any thing appears.

 

One is what appears, and Two are its aspects.

 

Aspects are complimentary opposites, and so produce movement and change.

 

We call that "Qi".

We are in agreement at this point.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

The change isn't merely electromagnetic.

Agree.  I was speaking to the initial processes of the creation of the universe.  Other forces evolved later.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

It can be change of heat, movement of water, or day and night - anything, any movement between any polarities.

Agree.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Some call that movement "forces" - but this leads to a mistake where a "force" is taken to be a "thing".

True.  "Force" is not a physical thing that can be defined as we define "things".

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

They see lists of "kinds of qi", and also Order of Qi, such as Big Qi, Small Qi, etc - as per Fu Hsi, or interaction of qi as in King Wen arrangement.

 

None of these work if we interpret "Qi" as merely or only "electromagnetism".

 

Or if qi is some kind of mediating substance, like a fluid in thermodynamics.

Good points.  I simplified and perhaps should not have.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Do Day and Night depend on a fluid for some kind of transference of matter between one and the other?

 

No. Day is not a physical object, nor is Night.

 

They are just one of the polarities we see on One rotating Earth by its very existence.

I can't disagree with you here either.  There are describable processes at play here.

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus