Taoist Texts

But what are some of the signs that we have accomplished enough to move on to the next "gradation"? Yes I know that a teacher becomes more necessary at this point, but can we not discuss?

of course we can. Here you go

6. Signs of Verification of Turning Around the Light

http://thesecretofthegoldenflower.com/ch6.html

Children brainwashed into tolerating their own destruction, 

 

yes. Although both the lead singer, and the majority of children in the vid are obviously not swedes. 

So If I tolerate bad behavior , that may come to an end ,,  

there is hope then

 

I could spell the difference out , if you like. 

Yes, by all means please do, thank you.

  The world is rarely black and white.  Not to mention pure white can be as much a pain in the ass as black.   I find people who see a mostly black and white are blinded to there own .. greyness because they live in such a binary world.   

 

 

yeah about that ...

Examples of acceptance not tolerance there is a reason there are two separate words 

words do not matter. actions do. of course acceptance is tolerance.

 It is very clear that tolerance has nothing to do with violent crimes as they are not tolerated by any society as they are against the law which is the very opposite of tolerating something.

Thats one very faulty logic. Of course they are tolerated - the law notwithstanding. 

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  So if no water reaches the bathtub because the pipes are not opened and at the very beginning the bathtub is empty then how can you use water from the bathtub to unclog the pipes later? 

All these things in qigong, their metaphors and their results are literally figments of the practitioner's imagination.

Why?  

To understand why not to do something, first you need to understand why to do it . Try answering the question: what exactly will i get for my hard earned $99?

 

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Uuuh a Pearl! And of Consciousness too!

How many teachers are there who teach prematureley?

How many gives advices here out of this place?

Hi there!

 

Is it worth to study QiGong online with Lee Holden?  

No.

But also interrupting his own ponderings? Snapping himself out of it all?

could be, yes

Is this close to the Buddhist concept of "no I"?

Exactly. The seeds of buddhism fell on well ploughed ground in China.

So are we talking here about the dualities of life?  I won't believe that he is intentionally being critical of people one way or another.  Just stating facts.  

Yes just facts and observation but of own thought process.

Here ZZ is strugling to understand where the human thoughts come from.

First he describes their variety. Big knowledge small knowledge, decisive thoughts, languid thoughts, competing thoughts etc.

Then states that there is no way to know how the thoughts originate except to make an observation that they stream on day and night. 

Having said that, he exclaims Aha! ( Enough! Enough!  - Mair; That is enough! That is enough! -Zy) and heuristically concludes that the thoughts are caused by the very same passage of time  during which the thoughts flow.

Sorry but I am a bit behind with your background in these texts. So this is a more accurate translation? And where can one find a copy?

Yes it is a bit more accurate:). Its mine, i did not translate the whole ZZ, just bits and pieces. I would be glad to provide mine as this discussion unfolds.

Thanks Daeliun for quoting Zyporin. I see that he did not recognise this sentence 

 Without that there would be no me, to be sure, but then again without me there would be nothing selected out from it all.

As being a paraphrase of a well known 

• 2.2 Hard and White

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/school-names/#2.2

paradox from the school of names. Not recognizing that Zy and the rest of them veered as far away from what ZZ says as humanly possible, while he says 5 fairly simple things.

1. What am I, where is the core of my personality? I can not find it in my body. None of my functions or body parts are central to me.

2.  If there is no core then a human being certainly disintegrates after death.

3 There are some people who talk about immortality arts but they are useless.

4. So whole human life is one big tragedy.

5. But although my personality dies, still in a human being there is something that does not die.

I'm struggling with this one. It all just seems to me like an elaborate way of describing how the great outdoors is.

 

Judging by the way the last paragraph is delivered, there seems to be some significance to it, or perhaps a summary? I am failing to see the significance in what he's saying though...

Right you are Rara:) There is none to see in this translation. Its bunkum. Marblehead managed to catch a good glimpse of what the original says, though.

The original meaning goes like this.

A master practices breathing and enters into a trance (loses himself)

For whatever reason his student wants to learn this 'losing himself' and asks the master how it is done.

The master explains that it is done using   breathing techniques of which there are 3 kinds (he calls them 'pipes') - man pipe (ordinary human breath), wind pipe, and heavenly pipe.

Then master explains that in order to 'lose himself' he has to progress through three stages of this breathing, of which in the second one, in the wind pipe stage, he still retains his consciousness (the wind-maker).

The student asks - what about the heavenly breathing?

And the master replies: that's the thing, once I go to the third stage there is no one to control the breath ('something else to stimulate ' in Mair's transl.), the breath is spontaneous and I have achieved my goal of 'losing myself'.

the importance of the virtue of the yarrow in Yijing. Is the accuracy of the oracle effectively increased by the mediation of this plant?

蓍生七十岁生一茎，七百岁生十茎。神灵之物也，故生迟留，历岁长久，故能明审。

If it grows for 70 years, it has one stem, if 700 – 10. It is a spiritual plant, that’s why it grows slow and long, and can divine.

夏殷欲卜者，乃取蓍龟，已则弃去之，以为龟藏则不灵，蓍久则不神。

The diviners of Yin dynasty hunted fresh millefoil and turtle, divined only once and threw those out, because the stored turtle has no soul, and kept millefoil has no spirit.

but was it really this plant which was intended? Could it also have been Achillea alpina which is commonly called Chinese yarrow?

Achillea sibirica Ledeb. — The Plant List

Achillea sibirica Ledeb. is a synonym of Achillea alpina L.

 

Once we have received our complete physical form, we remain conscious of it while we await extinction. In our strife and friction with other things, we gallop forward on our course unable to stop. Is this not sad? We toil our whole life without seeing any results. We deplete ourselves with wearisome labor, but don't know what it all adds up to. Isn't this lamentable? There are those who say that at least we are not dead, but what's the good of it? Our physical form decays and with it the mind likewise. May we not say that this is the most lamentable of all? Is human life really so deluded as this? Am I the only one who is so deluded? Are there some individuals who are not deluded?

 

This bit is not about the futility of life in this world. Its a lament about not knowing what happens in the hereafter. Mair garbled it up.

Ziporyn has a detailed exploration of Guo Xiang's commentary  

Guo, the butcher of Zhuang

Guo Xiang (Chinese: 郭象; pinyin: Guō Xiàng; Wade–Giles: Kuo Hsiang; died 312 AD) is credited with the first and most important revision of the text known as the Zhuangzi which, along with the Tao Te Ching, forms the textual and philosophical basis of the Taoistschool of thought. He was also a scholar of xuanxue.

The Guo Xiang redaction of the text revised a fifty-two chapter original by removing material he thought was superstitious and generally not of philosophical interest to his literati sensibilities, resulting in a thirty-three chapter total.

And I think part of what interested a [very] few was to maybe look at the chinese...  We don't need to get in great debate but your point about the quote that should be been extended makes sense.  So here is the section in question... and 'mingling' is a sometimes translated as a tree or turtle but given the very next comparison is a tree of much longer life, something other than a reference to a tree would make sense in the former case.  

 

而彭祖乃今以久特聞、衆人匹之、不亦悲乎。

 

 

Mair

I agree, its a turtle.

as to the Pathetic Peng it goes like this

(The turtle and the tree live thousand of years) 而but彭祖 Peng乃今nowadays以久特聞 is famous for his longevity、衆人everybody 匹equates之 him (to turtle and tree)、不but is not he亦also 悲 pathetic乎?。

(because he lived mere 800)

Also, this bit is a incongruous plug, inserted by the earlier editors, who did not dare to throw out the meaningless sentences, and which the translators pretend to make sense ever since. It does not belong here and it does not have any meaning either in the original or in transl.

- It's a galloping heat haze! - It's a swirl of dust! - It's some living creature blown aloft on a breath of the air! And the blue on blue of the sky - is that the sky's true color? Or is it just the vast distance, going on and on without end, that looks that way? When Peng looks down, he too sees only this and nothing more.

野马也，尘埃也，生物之以息相吹也。天之苍苍，其正色邪？其远而无所至极邪？其视下也亦若是，则已矣。

Mair - 1:2

 Once you are established on the throne, master, all under heaven will be well ordered. Yet I am still the ruler a......, the impersonator of the dead would not leap over the pots and pans to take his place."

而我犹尸之

..i am like the impersonator of the dead..

There are fairly significant mistakes here

Mair - 1:4
 

Yao brought order to all the people under heaven and brought peace to all within the four seas. 

尧治天下之民，平海内之政，

Yao governed the people of Underheaven, administrated all withn Four Seas

He went to distant Mount Kuyeh to visit the Four Masters. Upon returning to his capital on the north bank of the Fen River, he fell into a daze and forgot all about his empire.

 

往见四子藐姑射之山，汾水之阳，窅然丧其天下焉。

Went to visit the 4 immortals on Miǎogūshè, south of Fen River, and abdicated the Underheaven there.

So back in Zhuangzi's time they had the concept of teenagers? Or was it more like maidens? Just curious.

 

the exact term is 时女 shínǚ (time-woman), 'someone before woman age' , which probably includes both teenage aspect and virginity aspect. The woman character 女 also is used as a pronoun 'you', hence the confusion between translations.