Taoist Texts

siddhis are not a byproduct . they are the goal. siddhis do not exist in the physical external world. they are internal subjective phenomena in and of the practitioner's consciousness. whoever believes in external siddhis is naive. whoever claims to sell external siddhis is selling a bill of goods.

it is the same guy who denies you your opinion. interesting thing is that there are many vocal people who worship the digital dead AND deny you your opinion. thats a whole new level of crazy. Also, you know who was denied an opinion? Slaves were. No opinion for them slaves. Slaves to who? Why, to the digital dead of course. Thats why these are the end times. Thanks for the antidote btw @wandelaar lol.

Yes, Virginia

strangely enough it did not start in the period of the rise of Confucianism. probably they needed 1200 years to figure out the connection

depends on how old is whom you ask. same as "Is There a Santa Claus?"

  is actually one of the most frequently used HTML entities. Nbsp stands for non-breaking space, meaning that strings separated with this ..sorry the link glitched

it predates Confucianism coming from "The Classic of Rites" so it was always there as a key virtue just not codified as one of 4 keywords. In the Song dynasty there was a major Confucian resurgence against the buddhist  excesses so the confucians turned to their roots, reformulating the 4 principles to include 節; jié "the chaste moderation"

sure. as usual with the chinese, it is convoluted the initial idea of 4 virtues different from the later 四字 is some 1500 years later those morphed into current 四字 in a Song dynasty book then it was codified again in an immensely popular fantasy book of Ming dynasty

these views do not come from any perspective. the perspectives and the views come from the inner objective certainty of an individual: "i know that i have lived before, i know that i am going to live after. i may not remember the exact details but i just know it." apparently you think that these are mutually exclusive. but ppl did not want just continuation of life, historically people were certain that the life will continue in a better or a worse rebirth. continuation per se was not an issue. what they wanted was a better continuation, a better rebirth. And enlightenment is just the best one of all the possible better rebirths.

xing is nature in a sense of a characteristic of an object; this thread is a about nature in a sense of a changing physical--biological universe - there is no exact single world for the latter, nor a combined notion for it in chinese no he does a fine job. he does not conflate world-nature with object-nature or man-nature. he checked in on this forum long time ago btw in china it started in the Conf's time hence he had to do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names in europe it started with christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum of course there can. screw the world, you are the decider whats wrong and whats right there are shades of gray sure dualism is the cure not the disease

i cherry pick english dictionaries;) so the dictionary says that ethics morality virtue are one and the same thing. but westerners make up a distinction between them denying morality. it is because by now in the west words have no meaning in general. its called post-modernism. a more specific reason to deny morality is its extinction in the west. "we dont judge over here. ok?"

this is a great example how the western opinion of chinese concepts is a direct 180 degree opposite of the very said chinese concepts. Imagine reading the title Tao-te, knowing full well that in chinese it literally stands for 'morality' and then go ahead and claim that TTC is amoral. Its like black is white, war is peace mentality. In everything, not just TTC. I am endlessly fascinated how that even works in their minds. Also amused a bit.

exactly. like Jung said 'they dont have thoughts, they have opinions'. It amuses me to repeat that there is no word for 'nature' in ancient chinese'; and whatever it is translated as nature, nobody is required to 'follow' it. "to follow nature" is a meaningless made-up phrase, its a word salad what does that even mean in english? to jump like a rabbit or something? so this phrase was always meaningless. people just repeat it, and 'explain' it simply because they do not think for themselves.

a lion is a cat. the first lesson would be called 'breakfast without hate'.

yes 4 keywords

no. What you listed are strengths not virtues . Strengths have nothing to do with ethics or morals. An unethical or an immoral man can have them. Virtues are: The Five Constants are:[58] Ren (benevolence, humaneness) Yi (righteousness, justice) Li (propriety, rites) Zhi (智; zhì: wisdom, knowledge) Xin (sincerity, faithfulness) These are accompanied by the classical four virtues (四字; sìzì), one of which (Yi) is also included among the Five Constants: Yi (see above) Loyalty (忠; zhōng) Filial piety (孝; xiào) Continence (节; 節; jié)

lets say a reader does not know anything about china or any kind of breath exercise. the sentence will inform him: 'real men always breath deep as if their breath comes from their heels up'. a reasonable reader will understand this sentence to a t. he will need no evidence nor experience nor explanation. he will surmise: 'deep calm breath=good'. thats what ZZ says and there is nothing more to it. now if you personally want to imitate the real men or to learn about ancient chinese culture and so on, you may do more research. but no research is necessary to understand ZZ for a reasonable average reader.

so at that age he was capable of lovemaking? thats amazing! my hat off to him!

that is exactly correct. the lesson to be learned from it is still 'taking it easy' tho i used wife simply to find stories about family life as most relatable to all of us

to be useless, of course to take it easy

they are all from the original no, we should not. commentaries do not add anything to the original. you can read Guo's commentary in regular font and ZZ's original in bold here https://cup.columbia.edu/book/zhuangzi/9780231123877 as you see Guo is merely paraphrasing no not really. what you see is what you get. its all there in black and white on the page. no Chinese mind necessary. if you formulate a question regarding a story i can answer it for you if you wish this is what ZZ also thinks. but he also proposes a way to do something about those issues

no, none of them are based on his commentary. all of them are based on ZZ itself in Guo's redaction it is not important per se. the only reason why it could be somewhat interesting is that Guo butchered ZZ from 50 to 30 chapters, so peeps read Guo trying to guess what is it that he cut out. Otherwise his commentary is meaningless paraphrasing of ZZ

i am not going to. i just wanted to ask, are you all right fren? me and my Himalayan fam are worried about you all in due time grasshopper...all in due time...and its a 'Doctor' my first diploma literally says 'electrical engineer'...just saying actually all of them do. in order to get paid for their esoterics on their discord channels you know i am that teacher and thank you. the poster made a long elaborate joke about me. sorry it mislead you to take the post seriously. it is a joke. as in 'ha-ha' joke.

i dont mind, anyone is welcome to say anything they want about me, i never get angry this seems to be aimed at me a lil bit so no, i am almost none of those things. i am just healthier than the most, that part is true we are not in competition. i deal in intangibles: old words and eternal salvation. while you do something totally different. to borrow an expression from my field: 'your students are as numerous as hair on a cowhide, mine are as few as horns on a cow's head'. however for my research i investigate the modern energetics, thats why i participate in these debates. well, and for giggles too.