Is ‘Dao’ more easily translated as ‘God’, or ‘Nature’?

[Limahong]

6 hours ago, Limahong said:

Instead of putting post after post of single sentences and GIFs, please put them into a single post. This way you will not clog threads.

 

To the Person who had PM me as quoted,

 

Please advise where in this thread had I done thus?

 

Your PM came shortly after I had responded to just this on this thread:

 

On 7/31/2018 at 5:58 AM, Phoenix3 said:

And if ‘God’ usually is seen as masculine, and ‘Nature’ is usually seen as feminine, then what gender is ‘Dao’?

 

If ‘God’ is usually seen as personal, and ‘Nature’ is usually seen as impersonal, then what is ‘Dao’?

 

Please don’t just repeat the predictable answer of ‘Dao is genderless’ or ‘the Dao that can be named is not the true Dao’, like a mindless drone. Not to say they are wrong, but it’s just a typical answer from someone who doesn’t think. Please provide a thoughtful answer, though I acknowledge thinking isn’t for everyone.

 

I am raising this post in relation to openness and traceability thus -

 

 

- LimA

[Limahong]

On 8/4/2018 at 5:34 AM, Marblehead said:

poets speak a different language than do scholars

 

Hi Dada-da,

 

Besides English - if there are poets and scholars at TDB, what other language(s) have they made avail to themselves on a transparent and understandable front?

 

- LimA

Edited August 5, 2018 by Limahong
Correct errors.

[Lost in Translation]

1 hour ago, Limahong said:

 

Hi Dada-da,

 

Besides English - if there are poets and scholars at TDB, what other language(s) have they made avail to themselves on a transparent and understandable front?

 

- LimA

 

Moi, je parle francais un peux, и Я изулчал Руски многа лет таму назад.

[Marblehead]

2 hours ago, Limahong said:

 

Hi Dada-da,

 

Besides English - if there are poets and scholars at TDB, what other language(s) have they made avail to themselves on a transparent and understandable front?

 

- LimA

Abstract vs Technical

 

[OldDog]

For the Dao to find acceptance in the west where the Abrahamic faiths predominate, there can be no contention with the notion of God. Most Abrahamic faiths take a pretty exclusionary view of anything that sounds like the wrong interpretation of God. 

 

Daoist principles can find acceptance from a philosophic point of view. So, taking Nature as a example of the working of Dao seems more appropriate .... long as you don't get into a discussion on evolution. Just watch out how you approach the notion of change.

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2018 by OldDog
Missing word

[Limahong]

1 hour ago, Marblehead said:

Abstract vs Technical

 

Hi Dada-da,

 

Moi, je parle francais un peux, и Я изулчал Руски многа лет таму назад - Lost in Translation.

 

Check with him.

 

I am going to the market with Granny.

 

- LimA

[Marblehead]

I know only a few French words and nothing of Russian.

 

Have fun shopping.

 

[Limahong]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

Have fun shopping.

 

I am very busy...

[Marblehead]

1 minute ago, Limahong said:

 

I am very busy...

I'm sure you are.

 

[Limahong]

1 minute ago, Marblehead said:

I'm sure you are.

 

With Granny around - I better be...

 

... a bee.

[voidisyinyang]

On 8/1/2018 at 9:43 PM, Walker said:

 

I have a lot of admiration for Red Pine--I wouldn't bust his balls just to bust his balls. 

 

This was almost a decade ago, so my memory's a tad hazy, but it was a simple exchange, and I'm pretty sure I remember it reasonably clearly. At the time Red Pine was delivering a talk that mostly centered on Buddhism, with "emptiness" (空, in Buddhist contexts) occupying a central enough part of the lecture that I felt compelled to ask afterwards what he thought the important similarities/differences between Daoist and Buddhist discussions of emptiness (空 as well a 虛, in Daoism) are. He replied succinctly, "Daoists don't talk about emptiness, because they're only interested in qi," or something to that effect, and effectively closed the book on my question. Perhaps he was just having an off day or was jetlagged or whatever, but the fact is that one cannot read more than a few pages of inner alchemy texts without seeing that the Daoists are quite interested in emptiness, and thus I came to the conclusion that Bill Porter does not read these types of books. Early on he spent a lot of his time in Taiwan in a Buddhist monastery (in the Dharma Drum organization under Master Shengyen/聖嚴法師, if I'm not mistaken), and also spent time in the Land of 10,000 Buddhas in California, which is affiliated with Master Hsuanhua/宣化上人... while those temples are probably great places to learn about Buddhism, they are simply not hotbeds of Daoist alchemy. I know people in Taiwan quite steeped in the Dharma Drum organization, and they are taught very little about Daoism in general, and effectively nothing about alchemy.

 

 

If he says that--please dig up the exact quote, if you have the book on hand--that's still simply a very controversial statement. Oracle bone inscriptions of moon (月) and head (首) look nothing alike. The 《説文解字》 does not connect the two characters, nor did the master etymologist Duan Yucai. 

 

As for all the ancient Sumeria/Sanskrit etymology/agriculturalism/Bushmen culture/etc., it's all very interesting in its own right and I am open to the possibility that there are shared motifs, wisdom, practices, etc. in all these ancient cultures, but I think one risks connecting dots that aren't really connected if one runs too wild with these things. From the standpoint of history, I think it's very hard to say that this or that calendrical tradition or representative god/dess found in one corner of the ancient world (and interpreted by some modern person millennia years later) tells us anything conclusive about anything else at some other corner of the ancient world. 

 

And then there's another problem. If there was no moon, would there be no Dao? If there was no sun, would there be no Dao? What about two moons, two suns?

 

While we can certainly see yin and yang represented in the two big balls in the sky that we see every day, and while they certainly play a part in lots of Daoist imagery and even specific practices, one finds far more nuanced teachings. Song Longyuan, a Qing Dynasty-era Longmen Daoist-cum-imperial archivist who wrote a brilliant and exhaustive commentary on the DDJ for Emperor Kangxi (who was no lightweight in terms of his scholarship, nor credulous when it came to Daoism--he is recorded as once literally having thrown a book on secret methods for reaching physical immortality back in the face of the person who offered to him) for instance, when talking about the 玄 and 牝, refers to them as wuji and taiji; it is those two vast, intangible-yet-everpresent, distinct-yet-inseparable, not-one-not-two principles that are constantly mating, giving us the seen and the unseen... not the two balls in the sky. 

 

To "bust the balls" of "two balls in the sky"?

 

Thank you very much for your excellent response! And so the book I "quote" from on Red Pine and the "character" of head and the Dao as face of the Moon is his commentary on the Tao Te Ching, translation. It is stashed in my teepee - that I just came back from - and I never did get a chance to look at it again. I didn't want to waste my headlamp battery, and I figured any reading of phonetic language would have just put me more back into a left brain dominance mode anyway. But it seems you know your Chinese well enough - or classical Chinese oracle bones, etc. - and what you say about Red Pine's response - and your take on it - all makes sense to me. But then we can also consider how the Daoists in the internal alchemy texts incorporated Buddhism - and so the terminology possible has several meanings - based on a Daoist or Buddhist "slant" on the reading.  But my foray into this type of research is mainly only after I did the meditation training from Chunyi Lin who does have a Moon and Sun meditation C.D. set for his Level 3 class to open the third eye. And so my experience, as Chunyi says, the meditation is ten times stronger 3 days before and after the full moon - and my experience has been precisely this - that I could realize it was the Full Moon when the pineal gland magnetic bliss got that much stronger. Anyway ...

 

And then there's another problem. If there was no moon, would there be no Dao? If there was no sun, would there be no Dao? What about two moons, two suns?

 

Now this theoretical - well "opportunity cost" as an Economist would call it - the issue I have with this is that the scientific fact that we only see one "face" or one "head" of the Moon is due to the "harmonic resonance" of the moon's orbit with the sun and the Earth - and this is also the scientific reason that the moon can cause eclipses of the sun - despite their huge different in size and distance from Earth. And so in terms of the Dao - we have to ask, is this a "coincidence"? Again in terms of Western science this is part of the argument called the Strong Anthropic Principle stating in cosmology that the whole Universe is based on extremely fine tuning of constants, in order for humans to exist. Of course most scientists state, what to me also seems obvious, that the past, in retrospect, is 20-20 hindsight, meaning it only looks like "fine tuning" since we already exist in order to ask the question of why we exist in the first place. But in the context of what is human consciousness a la the possibility of consciousness of the Universe - and what is the role of humans in terms of life on Earth, etc. - science puts this in terms of entropy - and I won't get sidetracked into a science discussion. In other words it is quite a "left brain" question to start supposing - "what if" Earth had two moons, etc. because the Moon governs ecology of LIfe on Earth - and yet science - western science has destroyed already 80% of life on Earth - in the past couple thousand of years. In other words Western science - by assuming that life on Earth is not sacred inherently, and therefore could theoretically be switched around - (maybe we could power civilization using a black hole or something?) these types of experiments - like maybe nuclear bombs should be used for mining or we should mine the moon, and maybe create an artificial moon, etc. - the results of such theoretical questions have been turned into actual science projects that have destroyed the fragile ecology on Earth. In other words Daoism appears to assume that ecological life, controlled by the moon, is assumed and this would appear to be based on the evolutionary fact that human females, when living in Nature, as a group, are the only primates that have their "estrus cycle" synchronized precisely with the moon and this cycle is governed by the third eye as psychic energy - the pineal gland.

 

So in other words to project a Western reality as the assumed background - that the background of reality could be switched around willy-nilly - is to inherently already go against the formal process of Daoism itself. Or as VAndana Shiva states, life grows from within, Evolution happens from within first and grows from within, externally. But we as WEsterners take an external approach first. So I don't really see it as a problem - the Sun and Moon meditation is to open the third eye and as per alchemy  - when the Earth is created - this means the Sun manifests within the Moon and for Heaven - the Moon manifest in the Sun - when the Mercury is replenished. And I would take this back to music theory.

 

In terms of doing a cross cultural examination - David Ewing Duncan's book Calendar is quite fascinating because the issue is how to subtract the lunar calendar from the Solar calendar and try to "line" the two up. And so to do the mathematics using a language based on ideograms or pictograms (sorry I don't know all the fancy terminology) - well it's like trying to do math with Roman numerals but even worse. Just as Chinese are known today to be able to count faster since the english language uses more terms for numbers, etc. And so David Ewing Duncan argues that the Chinese then incorporated the phonetic "rod-based' number system of 10s - into Chinese culture - maybe this is when the Chariots "invaded" China as well with their "hub" wheel metaphors?

But the point being - that from the cosmology as music harmonics - for the Daoist harmonics - the lunar calendar is lined up with the solar - I think it is every 19 years based on 81 lunar months. I would have to quick check the math again. The point is that the math, of course, does not line up precisely - and that is not a problem in Daoist harmonics because the Lunar month is the "foundation" as the first number or number 1 - in the music harmonics.

And so similarly in Pythagorean philosophy - "one" is Not a number - why? Because the full moon is actually the resonance of the Solar energy - and so the female number as lunar has the sun within it - and the source of the number 1 as spirit-consciousness is the Formless Awareness as Yuan Qi.

So to say, for Red Pine, to say that Qi is not emptiness - I disagree with this. Yuan Qi is the Emptiness as a spacetime transformation as the hidden momentum of light ( to put it in science terms) - or as the "doing in non-movement" of Yuan Shen to put it in alchemy terms.

So quantum physics has shown that the source of the Sun is quantum entanglement - this was coined as "negentropy" by Schroedinger in his classic 1930s book, "What is Life?" - again I won't go into a Western science side-talk - but I'm just point out that when you make the connection about the Moon and Sun, as hypotheticals, and not necessarily the Dao, etc. - that I don't think they are mutually exclusive - there are connecting levels to this or "gates" or harmonic nodes. Gurdjieff's philosophy gets into this and so does Sri Aurobindo - although I disagree with Aurobindo more so, as Ramana Maharshi also disagreed with Aurobindo. haha.

 

 

 

[Marblehead]

Red Pine is a Mystic so he should be read in that mentality.  I like what he did with the TTC.

 

[Walker]

Drew,

 

Everything you said is worthy of contemplation but ultimately you haven't convinced me that the term "Dao" solely describes the unique environment of planet earth and humanity's relationship to it. 

 

You suggest I am projecting a western reality by asking my questions, but I'm not convinced that is so. How is my question more eastern or western than Zhuangzi's question about the butterfly? It strikes me as presumptuous for a modern, monolingual (correct me if I'm wrong about that) American who has never lived in Asia--much less ancient Asia--to conclude that somehow Daoist thought precludes the kind of question I ask, when abundant evidence suggests to us that throughout history many people we look back on and call Daoists were very interested in asking all sorts of questions. Given where you're standing in 2018 Minnesota, unless your teepee has a time travel function, I have to ask: really, how the hell would you know where long dead people's lines of inquiry would stop, and why? During the Warring States period, when Laozi and Confucius and countless other teachers wandered from place to place teaching, people were certainly not all in agreement about much of anything--one can pick up any book with "諸子百家" in its subtitle and see plenty of primary source evidence that the idea of some unified way of viewing the world that can be called "traditionally Chinese" is not based in actual historical fact. Heck, the doctors over the centuries couldn't even decide just how many zang and fu organs there were!  

 

Anyway, while you seem to base many of your conclusions on the notion that Daoists got their ideas from observing the heavenly bodies (which some of them certainly did do), I base many of my conclusions on the notion that Daoists also got ideas from going "inwards" into stillness and finding something so original that it is not even contingent upon the existence of this planet, this sun and moon, and even the long dead first stars that supplied the dust that those later things are made of.

 

As Laozi put it right there in the Daodejing, they found something 先天地生: "before + heaven + earth + born." It cannot be named, Laozi said, but if forced to give it a name...

 

You're well read but you're quoting an endless list of non-Daoist books written by non-Daoist authors to back up your thesis. Given your deep interest in Daoism, doesn't it ever cross your mind that you might want to learn classical Chinese and start working directly with the tradition you're commenting on? There are a few millennia worth of books waiting for you, to say nothing of the living oral tradition, which can still be found by those who look for it. Even if this path isn't for you, though, might I suggest that you reread Laozi and Zhuangzi from time to time, and when doing so, with no intent to "figure out" what they're trying to say? Instead, just let the words into your mind, and then let go. Reading like this isn't my idea--many an old Daoist teacher suggests taking this approach from time to time. 

 

For the record, Red Pine did not say "qi is not emptiness." He said that Daoists are not interested in or don't talk about emptiness--something to that effect.

Edited August 6, 2018 by Walker

[voidisyinyang]

1 hour ago, Walker said:

Drew,

 

Everything you said is worthy of contemplation but ultimately you haven't convinced me that the term "Dao" solely describes the unique environment of planet earth and humanity's relationship to it. 

 

You suggest I am projecting a western reality by asking my questions, but I'm not convinced that is so. How is my question more eastern or western than Zhuangzi's question about the butterfly? It strikes me as presumptuous for a modern, monolingual (correct me if I'm wrong about that) American who has never lived in Asia--much less ancient Asia--to conclude that somehow Daoist thought precludes the kind of question I ask, when abundant evidence suggests to us that throughout history many people we look back on and call Daoists were very interested in asking all sorts of questions. Given where you're standing in 2018 Minnesota, unless your teepee has a time travel function, I have to ask: really, how the hell would you know where long dead people's lines of inquiry would stop, and why? During the Warring States period, when Laozi and Confucius and countless other teachers wandered from place to place teaching, people were certainly not all in agreement about much of anything--one can pick up any book with "諸子百家" in its subtitle and see plenty of primary source evidence that the idea of some unified way of viewing the world that can be called "traditionally Chinese" is not based in actual historical fact. Heck, the doctors over the centuries couldn't even decide just how many zang and fu organs there were!  

 

Anyway, while you seem to base many of your conclusions on the notion that Daoists got their ideas from observing the heavenly bodies (which some of them certainly did do), I base many of my conclusions on the notion that Daoists also got ideas from going "inwards" into stillness and finding something so original that it is not even contingent upon the existence of this planet, this sun and moon, and even the long dead first stars that supplied the dust that those later things are made of.

 

As Laozi put it right there in the Daodejing, they found something 先天地生: "before + heaven + earth + born." It cannot be named, Laozi said, but if forced to give it a name...

 

You're well read but you're quoting an endless list of non-Daoist books written by non-Daoist authors to back up your thesis. Given your deep interest in Daoism, doesn't it ever cross your mind that you might want to learn classical Chinese and start working directly with the tradition you're commenting on? There are a few millennia worth of books waiting for you, to say nothing of the living oral tradition, which can still be found by those who look for it. Even if this path isn't for you, though, might I suggest that you reread Laozi and Zhuangzi from time to time, and when doing so, with no intent to "figure out" what they're trying to say? Instead, just let the words into your mind, and then let go. Reading like this isn't my idea--many an old Daoist teacher suggests taking this approach from time to time. 

 

For the record, Red Pine did not say "qi is not emptiness." He said that Daoists are not interested in or don't talk about emptiness--something to that effect.

Drew,

 

Everything you said is worthy of contemplation but ultimately you haven't convinced me that the term "Dao" solely describes the unique environment of planet earth and humanity's relationship to it. 

 

You suggest I am projecting a western reality by asking my questions, but I'm not convinced that is so. How is my question more eastern or western than Zhuangzi's question about the butterfly? It strikes me as presumptuous for a modern, monolingual (correct me if I'm wrong about that) American who has never lived in Asia--much less ancient Asia--to conclude that somehow Daoist thought precludes the kind of question I ask, when abundant evidence suggests to us that throughout history many people we look back on and call Daoists were very interested in asking all sorts of questions. Given where you're standing in 2018 Minnesota, unless your teepee has a time travel function, I have to ask: really, how the hell would you know where long dead people's lines of inquiry would stop, and why? During the Warring States period, when Laozi and Confucius and countless other teachers wandered from place to place teaching, people were certainly not all in agreement about much of anything--one can pick up any book with "諸子百家" in its subtitle and see plenty of primary source evidence that the idea of some unified way of viewing the world that can be called "traditionally Chinese" is not based in actual historical fact. Heck, the doctors over the centuries couldn't even decide just how many zang and fu organs there were!  

 

Anyway, while you seem to base many of your conclusions on the notion that Daoists got their ideas from observing the heavenly bodies (which some of them certainly did do), I base many of my conclusions on the notion that Daoists also got ideas from going "inwards" into stillness and finding something so original that it is not even contingent upon the existence of this planet, this sun and moon, and even the long dead first stars that supplied the dust that those later things are made of.

 

As Laozi put it right there in the Daodejing, they found something 先天地生: "before + heaven + earth + born." It cannot be named, Laozi said, but if forced to give it a name...

 

You're well read but you're quoting an endless list of non-Daoist books written by non-Daoist authors to back up your thesis. Given your deep interest in Daoism, doesn't it ever cross your mind that you might want to learn classical Chinese and start working directly with the tradition you're commenting on? There are a few millennia worth of books waiting for you, to say nothing of the living oral tradition, which can still be found by those who look for it. Even if this path isn't for you, though, might I suggest that you reread Laozi and Zhuangzi from time to time, and when doing so, with no intent to "figure out" what they're trying to say? Instead, just let the words into your mind, and then let go. Reading like this isn't my idea--many an old Daoist teacher suggests taking this approach from time to time. 

 

For the record, Red Pine did not say "qi is not emptiness." He said that Daoists are not interested in or don't talk about emptiness--something to that effect.

 

well - thanks again for the thoughtful reply - yes it is fascinating to think that there was no agreement on how many "zang" or "fu" organs there were (so you can maybe respect my lack of knowledge on that subject). As far as what "is" (fill in the blank with a phrase or word) - I defer to music. Every human culture uses the Octave, Perfect Fifth and Perfect Fourth as 1:2:3:4. Now we as Westerners happen to "not" use the actual natural resonance harmonics - and even more so - we look at those numbers and think either: arithmetic or geometry. But as you know, there is another option of "complementary opposites." As I discovered 2:3 as yang and 3:4 is yin - and it is this "concept" that I have deferred to as a secret lineage - going back to the dragon and tiger - or principle that is transcultural, via music and a certain training. Dr. Victor Grauer did the research on this - his book, "'Sounding the Depths" was a free blogbook.

 

Anyway - yes I'm glad you called me on my "game" of my claim about Red Pine. But anyway I would like to point out that your use of the word "contingent" is a Western loaded term - implying randomness and I would like to point out that randomness is a Western concept based on the Platonic use of logarithmic entropy:

 

Drew,

 

Everything you said is worthy of contemplation but ultimately you haven't convinced me that the term "Dao" solely describes the unique environment of planet earth and humanity's relationship to it. 

 

You suggest I am projecting a western reality by asking my questions, but I'm not convinced that is so. How is my question more eastern or western than Zhuangzi's question about the butterfly? It strikes me as presumptuous for a modern, monolingual (correct me if I'm wrong about that) American who has never lived in Asia--much less ancient Asia--to conclude that somehow Daoist thought precludes the kind of question I ask, when abundant evidence suggests to us that throughout history many people we look back on and call Daoists were very interested in asking all sorts of questions. Given where you're standing in 2018 Minnesota, unless your teepee has a time travel function, I have to ask: really, how the hell would you know where long dead people's lines of inquiry would stop, and why? During the Warring States period, when Laozi and Confucius and countless other teachers wandered from place to place teaching, people were certainly not all in agreement about much of anything--one can pick up any book with "諸子百家" in its subtitle and see plenty of primary source evidence that the idea of some unified way of viewing the world that can be called "traditionally Chinese" is not based in actual historical fact. Heck, the doctors over the centuries couldn't even decide just how many zang and fu organs there were!  

 

Anyway, while you seem to base many of your conclusions on the notion that Daoists got their ideas from observing the heavenly bodies (which some of them certainly did do), I base many of my conclusions on the notion that Daoists also got ideas from going "inwards" into stillness and finding something so original that it is not even contingent upon the existence of this planet, this sun and moon, and even the long dead first stars that supplied the dust that those later things are made of.

 

As Laozi put it right there in the Daodejing, they found something 先天地生: "before + heaven + earth + born." It cannot be named, Laozi said, but if forced to give it a name...

 

You're well read but you're quoting an endless list of non-Daoist books written by non-Daoist authors to back up your thesis. Given your deep interest in Daoism, doesn't it ever cross your mind that you might want to learn classical Chinese and start working directly with the tradition you're commenting on? There are a few millennia worth of books waiting for you, to say nothing of the living oral tradition, which can still be found by those who look for it. Even if this path isn't for you, though, might I suggest that you reread Laozi and Zhuangzi from time to time, and when doing so, with no intent to "figure out" what they're trying to say? Instead, just let the words into your mind, and then let go. Reading like this isn't my idea--many an old Daoist teacher suggests taking this approach from time to time. 

 

For the record, Red Pine did not say "qi is not emptiness." He said that Daoists are not interested in or don't talk about emptiness--something to that effect.

 

So now I will throw down the Western gauntlet - which is to say that the idea of "contingency" has actually destroyed ecology on Earth - by which I mean life governed by the Moon cycle - because randomness from logarithmic math inherently implies that civilization is "order" while contingency is based on entropy. So for example "random" heat is entropy as "noise" - scrambled information that is unpredictable.

(insert previous discussion of Hundun as "chaos" that I posted on this site).

So anyway other than that - I get your drift - and I would just state that the Sun and MOon are "necessary but not sufficient conditions" of the Dao.

 

So in other words - let's use Western science as an analogy (I realize probably even most Chinese now consider Western science to be the standard to define reality - despite their religious revival, etc.). So Lee Smolin took his first quantum physics class from the same professor teaching the same class that was my quantum physics class also. Only Lee Smolin went on to get his Ph.D., etc and so he published a book on the evolution of life in the Universe - I think it's called the Self-Evolving Cosmos? hold....Life of the Cosmos..

O.k. so his big point was that spiral galaxies are necessary for life to evolve. Now - consider Mantak Chia - I quote him in my 2000 master's thesis - stating how spirals are some kind of Daoist gestalt....

 

Epicenters of Justice | Theory | Systems Theory - Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/39436920/Epicenters-of-Justice

Epicenters of Justice - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read ... (27) Taoist qi gong Master Mantak Chia states, Through observing nature and the .... The spiral of the law of growth is fundamental to yin/yang transformations and ...

 

Yeah so Mantak Chia says how spirals draw in and condense and transform energy.... and so we can use them in meditation.

 

Anyway - so, my point is that even for the huge universe of trillions and trillions of light-years seen by the Hubble telescope - there is still a "form of the formless."

 

So even the simple 1:2:3:4 concept has a secret "form of the formless." And so in my master's thesis - I was still imposing this Western logarithmic symmetric math (i.e. fractals, chaos math, etc.) without really having "Unlearned" the Westernization - that is a very deep mind control.

 

So anyway music as natural harmonics - the latest science has shown that these "small numbers" as harmonic ratios are found in our neurons - as I quote on my blog - and also so then found in other mammals perception system - and even birds prefer natural harmonics, and even mosquitoes use the Perfect Fifth harmonic when mating. haha.

 

So as Chunyi Lin says "the simplest is the most powerful."

 

 

[Kongming]

The word "nature" has the connotation of being the natural world, the world of space-time, the manifest cosmos, which is indeed included in the notion of "Dao." This nature is the Dao's function or 用.

 

The word "God" has too many Abrahamic connotations, namely a personal, transcendent, and willful Being as the supreme reality who consciously creates the world and has a plan for the world, i.e. divine providence. Only two of these qualities really apply to the Dao, namely possessing a transcendent aspect and being responsible for creation, except in the case of the Dao it isn't a willful "creation" so much as a spontaneous emanation.

 

Neither are perfect but honestly God would probably be preferable if only because it maintains connotations of being transcendent, spiritual, divine, magical, supernatural, etc. whereas "nature" would too easily fall into the trap of modern materialism or scientific naturalism, and hence Daoism would be portrayed as simply being some kind of Chinese Rousseau rather than a path to the Dao or Ultimate Reality, namely to 的道成仙, or achieve the Dao and gain spiritual immortality/transcendence.

[vonkrankenhaus]

2 hours ago, voidisyinyang said:

Yeah so Mantak Chia says how spirals draw in and condense and transform energy.... and so we can use them in meditation.

 

Mantak Chia borrowed his stuff about spirals from macrobiotics.

 

And macrobiotics borrowed them from Walter Russell and Teilhard de Chardin, etc.

You can see this because the ideas appropriated from macrobiotics do not actually correspond with Chinese YinYang, and you will see contradictions between the borrowed stuff and the rest of the text.

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[voidisyinyang]

1 hour ago, vonkrankenhaus said:

 

Mantak Chia borrowed his stuff about spirals from macrobiotics.

 

And macrobiotics borrowed them from Walter Russell and Teilhard de Chardin, etc.

You can see this because the ideas appropriated from macrobiotics do not actually correspond with Chinese YinYang, and you will see contradictions between the borrowed stuff and the rest of the text.

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

 

That makes sense. Yes someone on this site studied with Mantak Chia and then said Mantak Chia did not even see light very much - and so his third eye is not fully open. But that German doctor tested his qi and discovered his vagus parasympathetic nerve storing the qi and then switching it to the sympathetic at discharge. But on the Shen level - the Yuan Qi - the qigong master can leave his body at will and create yuan shens that are individualized to heal people - so the Emptiness does the healing but the master embodies the emptiness.

 

[Phoenix3]

@voidisyinyang is this light you describe the light mentioned in taoist yoga which arises from the mysterious gate when the alchemical agent arrives in the original cavity of the spirit (niwan palace)? Or is the light of the opened third eye a different light? Thanks

[voidisyinyang]

2 hours ago, Phoenix3 said:

@voidisyinyang is this light you describe the light mentioned in taoist yoga which arises from the mysterious gate when the alchemical agent arrives in the original cavity of the spirit (niwan palace)? Or is the light of the opened third eye a different light? Thanks

http://qianfengdaoismuk.weebly.com/daoist-meditation-stills-and-calms-the-mind.html

you can study this website for details

[Walker]

On 8/5/2018 at 8:26 PM, nestentrie said:

 

Do these 10 ideas you're riffing on relate to these other 10 ideas from the Zhuangzi? If so, I like your cleverness in responding!

 

Hui Shi had many formulae and his writings filled five carts, but his guiding doctrine was incoherent and his language didn't get the point. He catalogued the significance of natural kinds. He said:

1. 'The ultimately great has nothing outside it, call it "the greatest One". The ultimately small has nothing inside it, call it ''the smallest one".
2. 'That which has no thickness cannot be accumulated, yet it's amounts to a thousand miles.
3. 'The sky is on a par with the earth; mountains are level with the marshes.
4. 'The sun is simultaneously at the center and declining; natural kinds are simultaneously living and dying.
5. 'Make unity great and with it a lesser unity differs. This we call the lesser unity and difference. The myriad natural kinds are totally the same and totally different. This we call the great similarity and difference.
6. 'The south has no limit yet has a limit.
7. 'I go to Yue today yet arrived yesterday.'
8. 'Linked rings can be disconnected.
9. 'I know the center of the world; north of Yen (northern region) and south of Yue (southern region); it is this-here-now.
10. 'Exhaustively love all the myriad thing-kinds; The cosmos is one unit.'

I ask not just because your choice of 10 retorts is interesting, but because they seem to share something. Also, I've been working with them of late. I look forward to seeing you incorporate them elsewhere!

 

Sorry to have ignored this post--there was no intentional overlap,but I'm reading Zhuangzi for the second time this year right now, so I guess I'm at least learning how to mimic sagacity, if nothing else!

[Walker]

Drew, you're all over the place, man. 

 

Simple question:

 

Laozi says of the Dao that it is 先天地生, or "before + heaven + earth + born." 

 

Laozi is mistaken? 

[voidisyinyang]

2 hours ago, Walker said:

Drew, you're all over the place, man. 

 

Simple question:

 

Laozi says of the Dao that it is 先天地生, or "before + heaven + earth + born." 

 

Laozi is mistaken? 

 

Simple answer: Laozi was correct and with the extra bonus of WEstern science confirming that the source of the Sun is the 5th dimension as quantum nonlocality - aka quantum negentropy (coined by Schroedinger) but in fact it is relativistic quantum mass. So if you want a "Western" verification of Laozi - I recommend "not" relying on the Western concept of "contingency" since again that is the wrong math. Instead you have to dig deeper into more cutting edge science (that most scientists are not even aware of). So - Sir Roger Penrose is a good source or Nobel physicist Gerard t' Hooft. His essay, "Why Light is Heavy" is excellent - I quote it on my blog.

 

http://elixirfield.blogspot.com

This is why I said the Sun and Moon are "necessary but not sufficient."

So ONLY humans are primates - only female humans living in a group in Nature have their estrus cycle precisely synchronized with the lunar cycle, via the pineal gland.

 

Quote

..the energy-momentum flux will be larger in the blue shifted part than in the red shifted part....In a moving frame, they diverge: the mean internal frequency of the photon will increase; simultaneously the orbital frequency of the photon will decrease due to the relativistic law of the slowing down of clocks. Despite the difference in frequency, at any point in space-time these two oscillations must be in phase....This provides a possible physical origin for the postulated law of the "harmony of the phases" first proposed by de Broglie, which lies at the origin of quantum mechanics. ...Is the electron a photon with toroidal topology?

J.G. Williamson and M.B. van der Mark, 1997...    

Quote

The shorter the wavelength...of the photons, the heavier the box....Matter is transformed to radiation but mass stays the same [frequency/speed of light squared]. Put on a balance in a box, it is impossible to know whether [it is matter or light]....The confusion that sometimes arises can often be traced back to the mix-up between the words "mass" and "matter." Matter can be transformed into radiation. ...      What is intriguing is that matter's most basic building blocks, the elementary particles, all have non-zero spin, intrinsic angular momentum, which seems to imply they all have some sort of intrinsic dynamics....So what is matter really made of then? In the Dirac theory, the electron is like electromagnetic energy quivering at light speed, just like a photon in a box. If really so, matter is light.

  Nobel physicist Gerard t'Hooft and M.B. van der Mark, 2000: The Physics of Heavy Light 

Quote

"The yin and yang of a human being are originally combined into one energy; it is because of mixture with temporal conditioning that yin and yang separate.

Liu Ming

Edited August 9, 2018 by voidisyinyang

[Walker]

On 8/10/2018 at 12:22 AM, voidisyinyang said:

Simple answer: Laozi was correct and with the extra bonus of WEstern science confirming that the source of the Sun is the 5th dimension as quantum nonlocality - aka quantum negentropy (coined by Schroedinger) but in fact it is relativistic quantum mass. So if you want a "Western" verification of Laozi - I recommend "not" relying on the Western concept of "contingency" since again that is the wrong math. Instead you have to dig deeper into more cutting edge science (that most scientists are not even aware of). So - Sir Roger Penrose is a good source or Nobel physicist Gerard t' Hooft. His essay, "Why Light is Heavy" is excellent - I quote it on my blog.

 

 

Lol... I believe you mean you mean...

 

Simple answer buried under GIANT HEAP OF 多言數窮！

 

By the way, in fact I do not "want a 'Western' verification of Laozi." Have you not noticed that I'm the dude suggesting you to try and see this from the perspectives of what the classics written in Chinese say and what the living Daoists of China, Taiwan, and elsewhere teach? I guess that is hard to notice when you're weighed down by the sheer heaviness of light (no wonder I'm tired all the time--it's this fucking light on my shoulders!!!!) and various other conundrums that evidently Daoism is really all about. 

 

Sigh. But not to despair! Suddenly I am reminded of a song--let us sing! Now how does it go? Something like...

 

Push push push your boat

Forcefully up the stream

Wearily wearily wearily wearily

Why can't I wake from this dream?

(Cue the tubas)

 

 

Shit, I need more vocal lessons, I think my imperfect C might've knocked the moon out of its orbit (again).

 

Anyway, speaking of rivers, to keep wagging our jaws about this would be a bit too much being like the two fish on the sand of yore, lovingly spitting on each other to try and keep each other's scales wet. Ah, truly a romantic way to spend one's qi, and yet, well, I see the river over there, so you know what I think I'm just gonna flop on in and get lost in the water. Remember, if that light gets too heavy for ya, you might try not dragging that suitcase around everywhere you go... Ta-ta!

[voidisyinyang]

1 hour ago, Walker said:

 

 

Lol... I believe you mean you mean...

 

Simple answer buried under GIANT HEAP OF 多言數窮！

 

By the way, in fact I do not "want a 'Western' verification of Laozi." Have you not noticed that I'm the dude suggesting you to try and see this from the perspectives of what the classics written in Chinese say and what the living Daoists of China, Taiwan, and elsewhere teach? I guess that is hard to notice when you're weighed down by the sheer heaviness of light (no wonder I'm tired all the time--it's this fucking light on my shoulders!!!!) and various other conundrums that evidently Daoism is really all about. 

 

Sigh. But not to despair! Suddenly I am reminded of a song--let us sing! Now how does it go? Something like...

 

Push push push your boat

Forcefully up the stream

Wearily wearily wearily wearily

Why can't I wake from this dream?

(Cue the tubas)

 

 

Shit, I need more vocal lessons, I think my imperfect C might've knocked the moon out of its orbit (again).

 

Anyway, speaking of rivers, to keep wagging our jaws about this would be a bit too much being like the two fish on the sand of yore, lovingly spitting on each other to try and keep each other's scales wet. Ah, truly a romantic way to spend one's qi, and yet, well, I see the river over there, so you know what I think I'm just gonna flop on in and get lost in the water. Remember, if that light gets too heavy for ya, you might try not dragging that suitcase around everywhere you go... Ta-ta!

Yeah Walker - you wanted me to "correct you" if your claim that I was "monolingual" was wrong.

Yan Xin did his qi-emitting healing lectures often in places of China where people could not understand what he was saying!! haha. So consider the below quote from a Fields Medal math professor, Alain Connes - it rehashes what I said above.

Now - you can read the approach and say "too many words" - or you could summarize the quote with this section of it:

Quote

the noncommutative [complementary opposites as yin/yang] nature of the quotient corresponding to the three places {2, 3,∞}.  The formula is in sub-space

My approach is music as math (as a secret alchemical science). So when the Tao Te Ching says, 2, 3, infinity (or what's the phrase ?) - yes do you really think Westerners understand the meaning of that? haha. I don't think so! Most Westerners are going to see 2, 3, infinity as counting. Nope. It's music theory.

Quote

What is a parameter? The parameter is time...If you stay in the classical world, you can not have a good set up for variables. Because variables with a continuous range can not coexist with variables of discrete range. When you think more, you find out there is a perfect answer. And this answer is coming from quantum mechanics....The real variability in the world is exactly is where are you in the spectrum [frequency] of this variable or operator. And what is quite amazing is that in this work that I did at the very beginning of my mathematical studies, the amazing fact is that exactly time is emerging from the noncommutivity. You think that these variables do not commute, first of all it is that they don't commute so you can have the discrete variable that coexists with the continuous variable. What you find out after awhile is that the origin of time is probably quantum mechanical and its coming from the fact that thanks to noncommutativity ONLY that one can write the time evolution of a system, in temperature, in heat bath, the time evolution is really coming from the noncommutativity of the variables....You really are in a different world, then the world of geometry, which we all like because we all like to draw pictures and think in a geometric manner. So what I am going to explain is a very strange way to think about geometry, from this point of view, which is quite different from drawing on the blackboard...I will start by asking an extremely simple question, which of course has a geometrical origin. I don't think there can be a simpler question. Where are we?....The mathematical question, what we want, to say where we are and this has two parts: What is our universe? What is the geometric space in which we are? And in which point in this universe we are. We can not answer the 2nd question without answering the first question, of course....You have to be able to tell the geometric space in an invariant manner....These invariants are refinements of the idea of the diameter. The inverse of the diameter of the space is related to the first Eigenoperator, capturing the vibrations of the space; the way you can hear the music of shapes...which would be its scale in the musical sense; this shape will have a certain number of notes, these notes will be given by the frequency and form the basic scale, at which the geometric object is vibrating....The scale of a geometric shape is actually not enough.... However what emerges, if you know not only the various frequencies but also the chords, and the point will correspond to the chords. Then you know the complete thing....It's a rather delicate thing....There is a very strange mathematical fact...If you take manifolds of the same dimension, which are extremely different...the inverse space of the spinor doesn't distinguish between two manifolds. The Dirac Operator itself has a scale, so it's a spectrum [frequency]. And the only thing you need to know...is the relative position of the algebra...the Eigenfunctions of the Dirac Operator....a "universal scaling system," manifests itself in acoustic systems....There is something even simpler which is what happens with a single string. If we take the most elementary shape, which is the interval, what will happen when we make it vibrate, of course with the end points fixed, it will vibrate in a very extremely simple manner. Each of these will produce a sound...When you look at the eigenfunctions of the disk, at first you don't see a shape but when you look at very higher frequencies you see a parabola. If you want the dimension of the shape you are looking at, it is by the growth of these eigenvariables. When talking about a string it's a straight line. When looking at a two dimensional object you can tell that because the eigenspectrum is a parabola.... They are isospectral [frequency with the same area], even though they are geometrically different....when you take the square root of these numbers, they are the same [frequency] spectrum but they don't have the same chords. There are three types of notes which are different....What do I mean by possible chords? I mean now that you have eigenfunctions, coming from the drawing of the disk or square [triangle, etc.]. If you look at a point and you look at the eigenfunction, you can look at the value of the eigenfunction at this point.... The point [zero in space] makes a chord between two notes. When the value of the two eigenfunctions [2, 3, infinity] will be non-zero. ...The corresponding eigenfunctions only leave you one of the two pieces; so if there is is one in the piece, it is zero on the other piece and if it is non-zero in the piece it is zero there...You understand the finite invariant which is behind the scenes which is allowing you to recover the geometry from the spectrum....Our notion of point will emerge, a correlation of different frequencies...The space will be given by the scale. The music of the space will be done by the various chords. It's not enough to give the scale. You also have to give which chords are possible....The only thing that matters when you have these sequences are the ratios, the ear is only sensitive to the ratio, not to the additivity...multiplication by 2 of the frequency and transposition, normally the simplest way is multiplication by 3...2 to the power of 19 is almost 3 to the power of 12....You see what we are after....it should be a shape, it's spectrum looks like that...We can draw this spectrum...what do you get? It doesn't look at all like a parabola! It doesn't look at all like a parabola! It doesn't look at all like a straight line. It goes up exponentially fast...What is the dimension of this space?...It's much much smaller. It's zero...It's smaller than any positive.... Musical shape has geometric dimension zero... You think you are in bad shape because all the shapes we know ...but this is ignoring the noncommutative work. This is ignoring quantum groups. There is a beautiful answer to that, which is the quantum sphere... .There is a quantum sphere with a geometric dimension of zero...I have made a keyboard [from the quantum sphere]....This would be a musical instrument that would never get out of tune....It's purely spectral....The spectrum of the Dirac Operator...space is not simply a manifold but multiplied by a noncommutative finite space......It is precisely the irrationality of log(3)/ log(2) which is responsible for the noncommutative [complementary opposites as yin/yang] nature of the quotient corresponding to the three places {2, 3,∞}.  The formula is in sub-space....Geometry would no longer be dependent on coordinates, it would be spectral...The thing which is very unpleasant in this formula is the square root...especially for space with a meter....So there is a solution to this problem of the square root, which was found by Paul Dirac....It's not really Paul Dirac, it is Hamilton who found it first...the quaternions is the Dirac Operator....Replace the geometric space, by the algebra and the line element...for physicists this thing has a meaning, a propagator for the Dirac Operator. So it's the inverse of the Dirac Operator.... You don't lose anything. You can recover the distance from two points, in a different manner....but by sending a wave from point A to point B with a constraint on the vibration of the wave, can not vibrate faster than 1; because what I ask is the commutator of the Dirac Operator is less than 1...It no longer requires that the space is connected, it works for discrete space. It no longer requires that the space is commutative, because it works for noncommutative space....the algebra of coordinates depends very little on the actual structure and the line element is very important. What's really important is there interaction [the noncommutative chord]. When you let them interact in the same space then everything happens....You should never think of this finite space as being a commutative space. You have matrices which are given by a noncommutative space...To have a geometry you need to have an inverse space and a Dirac Operator...The inverse space of the finite space is 5 dimensional....What emerges is finite space...it's related to mathematics and related to the fact that there is behind the scene, when I talk about the Dirac Operator, there is a square root, and this square root, when you take a square root there is an ambiguity. And the ambiguity that is there is coming from the spin structure.... We get this formula by counting the number of the variables of the line element that are bigger than the Planck Length. We just count and get an integer....  There is a fine structure in spacetime, exactly as there is a fine structure in spectrals [frequencies]....Geometry is born in quantum space; it is invariant because it is observer dependent....Our brain is an incredible ...perceives things in momentum space of the photons we receive and manufactures a mental picture. Which is geometric. But what I am telling you is that I think ...that the fundamental thing is spectral [frequency]....And somehow in order to think we have to do this enormous Fourier Transform...not for functions but a Fourier Transform on geometry. By talking about the "music of shapes" is really a fourier transform of shape and the fact that we have to do it in reverse. This is a function that the brain does amazingly well, because we think geometrically....The quantum observables do no commute; the phase space of a microscopic system is actually a noncommutative space and that is what is behind the scenes all the time. They way I understand it is that some physical laws are so robust, is that if I understand it correctly, there is a marvelous mathematical structure that is underneath the law, not a value of a number, but a mathematical structure....A fascinating aspect of music...is that it allows one to develop further one's perception of the passing of time. This needs to be understood much better. Why is time passing? Or better: Why do we have the impression that time is passes? Because we are immersed in the heat bath of the 3K radiation from the Big Bang?...time emerges from noncommutativity....What about the relation with music? One finds quickly that music is best based on the scale (spectrum) which consists of all positive integer powers qn for the real number q=2 to the 12th∼3 to the 19th. Due to the exponential growth of this spectrum, it cannot correspond to a familiar shape but to an object of dimension less than any strictly positive number. As explained in the talk, there is a beautiful space which has the correct spectrum: the quantum sphere of Poddles, Dabrowski, Sitarz, Brain, Landi et all. ...  We experiment in the talk with this spectrum and show how well suited it is for playing music. The new geometry  which encodes such new spaces, is then introduced in its spectral form, it is noncommutative geometry, which is then confronted with physics.  

Fields Medal math professor Alain Connes,

[Lost in Translation]

FYI to those who love to post very, very long messages: Use paragraphs.

 

Not only do they make your message more pleasant to read, they also help break up your thoughts and make it much easier to follow your meaning.

 

Feel free to ignore this.