Everyone post some favorite quotes!

[silent thunder]

16 hours ago, neti neti said:

 

...

 

I Doubt that.

 

me too! 

[neti neti]

"A man is not fit to live unless he finds something worth dying for."

 

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

[silent thunder]

Real dialogue is where two or more people become willing to suspend their certainty in each other's presence.
~ David Bohm

[silent thunder]

"Your Father is the Wind at your back.

Your Mother is the birds in the trees..."

~Ghost of Tsushima

 

an example of the dialogue from the game.

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by silent thunder

[zerostao]

On 7/17/2020 at 6:17 PM, silent thunder said:

Real dialogue is where two or more people become willing to suspend their certainty in each other's presence.
~ David Bohm

 standard for discussions on the way.

[Taomeow]

The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of profit and loss!

--Zhuangzi
 

[moment]

On 7/22/2020 at 9:13 AM, Taomeow said:

The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of profit and loss!

--Zhuangzi
 

 

The perfect Woman?

 

Projecting the Spirit

There is a body outside the body,

Which has nothing to do with anything produced by magical arts

Making this aware energy completely pervasive Is the living, active, unified, original spirit

The bright moon congeals the gold liquid

Blue lotus refines jade reality

When you've cooked the marrow of the sun and moon

The pearl is so bright you don't worry about poverty--------------- Sun Bu'er

 

Sun Bu'er (Sun Pu-erh, Chinese: 孫不二), one of the Taoist Seven Masters of Quanzhen, lived c. 1119–1182 C.E.

After twelve years of practice, at Fengxiangu cave, she attained the Dao and, it is said, became an immortal. Sun was a teacher with several disciples, founding the Purity and Tranquility School.

Sun Bu'er wrote a set of fourteen poems and is credited with various alchemical work.

Sun Buer is one of a group of female Taoist masters collectively referred to as The Immortal Sisters.

Many of Sun Buer's poems focus on Taoist practices of inner alchemy, using a precise, yet highly metaphoric language in reference to sacred energies and the subtle anatomy. 

 

 

 

Edited July 23, 2020 by moment

[silent thunder]

One does not heal through fighting.

Do not fight illness, care through it.

[liminal_luke]

The Lotus opens. Movement from earth, through water, from fire to air. Out and in beyond life and death now, beyond inner and outer, sense and non-sense, meaning and futility, male and female, being and non-being, Light and darkness, void and full. Beyond all duality, or non-duality, beyond and beyond. Disincarnation. I breathe again.”

 

R.D. Laing

[manitou]

On 7/22/2020 at 9:13 AM, Taomeow said:

The Perfect Man is godlike. Though the great swamps blaze, they cannot burn him; though the great rivers freeze, they cannot chill him; though swift lightning splits the hills and howling gales shake the sea, they cannot frighten him. A man like this rides the clouds and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four seas. Even life and death have no effect on him, much less the rules of profit and loss!

--Zhuangzi
 

 

 

I think our brain is a muscle that is exercised when holding that steady, still point of consciousness, even when our bodies may be moving or walking down the street.  I've noticed that this is a skill that grows steadily and subtly within our consciousness, when practiced.  I often wonder if the great ones - the sages, Christs, Buddhas, - were capable of moving energy in a way that warped time a bit, perhaps speeding up a healing practice - or going into the background of early childhood but observing it in the Now as it aligns with current manifestations, like illness.  

 

-Barb Ortega

[Taomeow]

A great artist has three ages: Childhood, Mature Childhood, and Immortality.  -- Paula Volkova

[moment]

Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you've been given the door will open.  

 

                                                   ---Rumi

 

[moment]

Lose yourself in silence--- Rumi

[moment]

Blaming it on you

Where does it age?

When is it untrue?

Death's visage?

 

Exit and entrances

I still ponder

Burn and rave trances

as I wander

 

Unconquerable

in my still soul?

Now manageable

A now emptied bowl

 

Am I newly sprung

or ancient found?

 

[Taomeow]

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.
--Abraham Lincoln

[moment]

 

 

 

A gaze blank pitiless   

ignores the just pain

as the elite 

eat the world

 

our many common bonds 

lack all conviction

while great evil

kills the good

[moment]

[Taomeow]

It goes without saying that every plan is dew on bamboo leaves.  --  Dazai Osamu

 

[Taomeow]

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left. -- Aldous Huxley

[mYogi]

Lullaby of Queen Madalasa

 

Madalasa says to her crying infant son:

 

You are pure, enlightened, and spotless.

Leave the illusion of the world and

wake up from this deep slumber of delusion.

 

My child, you are ever pure!

You do not have a name.

A name is only an imaginary superimposition on you.

This body made of five elements is not you nor do you belong to it.

This being so, what can be a reason for your crying ?

 

The essence of the universe does not cry in reality.

All is a maya of words, oh Prince! Please understand this.

The various qualities you seem to have are are just your imaginations, they belong to the elements that make the senses (and have nothing to do with you).

 

You are in the body which is like a jacket that gets worn out day by day.

Do not have the wrong notion that you are the body.

This body is like a jacket that you are tied to, for the frutification of the good and bad karmas.

 

The deluded look at objects of enjoyments as giving happiness by removing the unhappiness.

The wise clearly see that the same object which gives happiness now will become a source of unhappiness.

[silent thunder]

2 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left. -- Aldous Huxley

Aldous... so succinctly nails it.  Reading that made me chortle out loud, then choke up almost instantly...

 

I've long held (going on thirty years now) that Western Medicine is a financially predatory process, at least in Modern 'Murica.

It will treat you (with seemingly no interest in prevention), but in the process of treating you, it will extract every possible penny from your bank account, and the system of insurance while doing so...

[Taomeow]

5 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

Aldous... so succinctly nails it.  Reading that made me chortle out loud, then choke up almost instantly...

 

I've long held (going on thirty years now) that Western Medicine is a financially predatory process, at least in Modern 'Murica.

It will treat you (with seemingly no interest in prevention), but in the process of treating you, it will extract every possible penny from your bank account, and the system of insurance while doing so...

 

You are absolutely correct in your "predatory" assessment, unfortunately. 

 

As for the system of insurance, the predatory process is actually coordinated with it at the highest level of corporate decision-making.  The owners of medical insurance business and the owners of pharma companies and hospitals sit on the same boards of directors and plan their business activities together as one interconnected unit.  Often it's also the same individuals who own that coin which merely has two sides to show but is the same coin.  About 10% of these activities involve the wealthiest doctors, the only ones with a say in how medicine will be executed.  The remaining 90% are taught accordingly, policed efficiently enough and compensated generously enough to make sure they will neither rock the boat nor interfere with its course.

 

Aldous, incidentally, was a practitioner of the Bates method of eyesight improvement and has been maligned for this by people demanding that a natural method of healing which does not involve anyone buying any drugs or surgeries be always disregarded as quackery for all purposes in all circumstances.  They were bent on "proving" that he never really improved his eyesight and was faking it for 25 years, no less.  Well, as someone who dedicated the early to mid-90s to practicing this method, I could tell them that not only does it work if practiced correctly and diligently but it can open a whole lot of other kinds of vision (and lead to all the stranger things, as it did Huxley and as it did me too).  But it can also reveal something that is not part of our current medical paradigm: namely, that there's no one kind of even physical eyesight for someone who has mastered some control, and it may not change from constantly very poor to constantly perfect, but it can start going over that spectrum and closer and closer to its good-better-best part instead of being stuck at the worst possible setting at all times for all purposes.  Oh, and with easier-to-fix things like low diopter myopia or presbyopia, it can indeed fix it permanently.  But it demands work from the individual, and we've been conditioned to take all our problems to the doctor-knows-best for solutions, for someone else to fix them.  Which of course this someone else who knows best never does because that's not what the business model could possibly sustain.           

[silent thunder]

23 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

Oh, and with easier-to-fix things like low diopter myopia or presbyopia, it can indeed fix it permanently.  But it demands work from the individual, and we've been conditioned to take all our problems to the doctor-knows-best for solutions, for someone else to fix them.

My Father was of this ilk.  Not willing to change behaviors to prevent, just head to the Dr with hand out stretched and ingest whatever pills were prescribed.  It was his perogative.  I endeavor to avoid encounters with Western Medicine when at all possible.  And I'm not one to just take whatever a Dr says, without due dilligence and thorough questioning.

 

23 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

Bates method of eyesight improvement

I'll look into this (ha!), it sounds mighty intriguing. 

 

I experienced eyesight improvement while on retreat with Master Wang.  Sometime in the midst of the retreat, I realized while reading my book and waiting for my soup to arrive at my daily meal, that I hadn't thought of my reading glasses in a few days and no longer needed them.  (at the time and now, I attribute the shift to increased sung.)

Edited July 31, 2020 by silent thunder

[silent thunder]

Second item in my feed on the other forum I regularly contribute to...

Aldous seems to be making the rounds in my space... how delightful!

 

[moment]

學而時習之，不亦悅乎？

Xue er shi xi zhi, bu yi yue hu?

"To learn and to practice what is learned time and again is pleasure, is it not?"

 

                     confucius--Xu Er (first book of the analects)--- The book that explains how to be a gentle person

Edited August 2, 2020 by moment