Taoist Texts

I wouldn't say this is necessarily the case. The Neoplatonists had exercises, primarily of an apophatic or emptying nature, and later Neoplatonic theurgy and ancient Greek alchemists had exercises of one might call a 'yogic' type, or at least esoteric/occult.

Thank you. Being ignorant of any sources to that effect i have to subscribe to the theory of  radical differences between the oriental and the western psyche, the latter evolving from an ancient one that made yoga unnecessary or impossible, to the modern one that while craving the oriental fads is unable to digest them.

 

 

 

When did this tradition became refered as "Daoism", Dao Jiao ? Do we know that ?

To answer that one has to define this tradition first, because that term was in use as early as

《墨子 - Mozi》

[spring and Autumn - Warring States] 490 BC-221 BC English translation: W. P. Mei ^[?]

有強執有命以說議曰：「壽夭貧富，安危治亂，固有天命，不可損益。窮達賞罰幸否有極，人之知力，不能為焉。」群吏信之，則怠於分職；庶人信之，則怠於從事。

吏¹不治則亂，農事緩則貧，貧且亂政之本，而儒者以為道教，是賊天下之人者也。  

Further, he holds tenaciously to the dogma of fate and argues: "Old age or early death, poverty or wealth, safety or danger, order or chaos are destined by the fate of Heaven and cannot be modified. Failure or success, reward or punishment, luck or adversity, are all settled; the wisdom and power of man can do nothing." When the different officers believe this they will neglect their several duties. When the common people believe this they will neglect their work. Lax government will lead to disorder; inefficient agriculture will lead to poverty. And poverty is the root of disorder and insurrections. Yet the Confucianists take this teaching about fate to be the Dao and the principle of life.(Daojiao) This is to destroy the people of the empire.

Also

http://www.goldenelixir.com/publications/eot_daojiao.html

And this state of the soul is called wisdom. Is it not so?”  (Perseus Digital Library, Plato Phaedo, 79c-d)

It could be so;) but it is the destination. What is the road leading there?

The problem is that - according to some shcolars - the oldest forms of yoga were based on stillness, so if you look for some descriptions of various movements and postures in antiquity you wont find them neither in greece or india.

To my mind yoga is not about the body or its postures or movements. Yoga is what you do with your mind. A formal exercise. Indians have it. Greeks dont. Instead of a formal exercise regimen the Greeks offer righteous conduct, some asceticism, some meditations (as in thinking things over). No exercise.

Now, pyrrhism and buddhim, or whole greek tradition versus whole indian one. What is the one single biggest difference? Yoga. Greeks never developed anything like it. I wonder why.

 

 

I'm not sure we can really discuss if, instead of showing me historical illustrations of your view, you just say that all of mine come out of some complot to rewrite history.

Oh, I was not intending to take the conversation into post-modern academia politics, multi-culti and globalist propaganda. The above were just remarks on the cuffs for my own gratification but fully on topic i shall say. Whoever is interested can just follow the money: government or corporate sponsorship ---> universities and foundations ---> grants and tenures --> the product ordered by the sponsors. And whoever believes that there is a pure science unaffected by the money. ...Well....ignorance is bliss

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope.

So you think that before colonization there was no contacts,

I know that there were not. When people think of contacts say along the great silk road they imagine a Sindbad type of a merchant on dry land who would hoist his bundles of silk and china on a camel in Harbin showing up two years later on the appian road weary from the trip but carrying his Philosophy and Astronomy and Buddhism with him. That never happened, the trade routes were a long string of merchants and markets with goods changing hands many times before reaching the destination. Nobody would go all the way for obvious reasons. The age of exploration was driven by the need to cut out the excessive middlemen.

and that Europe, India and China were isolated systems ?

Yes, that's why there were different and extremely xenophobic civilizations, and  not one big marketplace for goods or ideas.

But wait a second, who on earth would like you to believe that the globe was one big marketplace since time immemorial? Moreover, who on earth would like you to believe that the Europeans produced nothing of their own and were buying goods or ideas from Asia since time immemorial?

Could it be the same tricksters who would like the globe be one big marketplace now? Could it be the same tricksters who would like the Europeans to produce nothing of their own and buy goods or ideas from Asia?

Duuh. But how could they achieve that? After all it is so natural for a local to go to the local farmers market for produce, to the local tailor for clothes, to the local automaker for a car, to amuse  himself with local plays, sports, news and movies . So how?

By rewriting the history that's how.

I'm allways confused when people are citing other's people book reviews in a topic... I just don't get what it means. In general, or in that case.

 

Do you post that in order to add some material as an illustration for the topic, like when you copy/past relevant bits and pieces of Wiki ? In that case at least compile different reviews with pro an con.

yes. thats what i do it for, for illustration. i post it for my own reference, please do not mind me.

, to prove that theirs views are the best. But that's not what I'm doing.

of course not, its all in good fun. hey what does your nick mean?

BTW. If you want a book on Pyrrho & Buddhism that is not by Beckwith, there's always:

http://www.indologica.de/drupal/?q=node/131

Merci. Very illuminating.

The major drawback of this study is that it might have been more successful had Kuzminski further developed his comparative approach in a more thorough manner without making unnecessary historical claims that could not be adequately supported and developed in the space of this book. His characterization of Pyrrhonism rests almost exclusively on late Greek sources such as Diogenes Laertius and Sextus Empiricus and depends upon the acceptance of Pyrrho as the originator of Pyrrhonism and not just its nominal founder. The same goes for Kuzminski’s treatment of the question of historical diffusion. To a certain extent, Kuzminski exculpates himself from this charge by reminding his readers on several occasions that the scenario he is presenting is only a plausible one. His choice of the word ‘reinvented’ in his subtitle to describe the Greek adoption of Buddhist philosophy is deliberately intended to avoid the more ambitious claim of direct transmission (p. 5). However, this appears to be an attempt to justify the suggestion of a historical relationship while excusing the lack of more substantial textual evidence. Despite the relatively few focused treatments on this topic, Kuzminski is also not particularly thorough. He briefly mentions Thomas McEvilley’s work on this topic but neither addresses nor refutes his counter-thesis that the primary direction of diffusion was from Greece to India.

Reviewed by M. Jason Reddoch University of Cincinnati

 (think Roman orgies), 

i do. all the time.

Greek wisdow was lost the the medieval West. It was reintroduced via alchemy, in a new form via authors like Avicenna and Averrhoes, and more massively so when the Byzantine took the original ancient greek texts to North Italy.

Βασιλεία Ῥωμαίων was the  West, and after it fell the modern history started. The dark ages were recast as a 1000 years of darkness interspersed only by the pyres of inquisition and an occasional glimmer of culture from the enlightened Islamic east. I read somewhere that this picture of the dark ages is a myth invented in the early modern times for ideological purposes.

 platonism, which has his roots in pythagorism, which owns a lot to Persia and Central Asia...

hmm gotta look into this sequence

We're talking about millemniums of civilisations interracting with each other. So the important thing is to see that East en West are one,

a certain Mr Kipling would disagree

What can be said is that Central Asia, as it stands in the middle of Eurasia played a major role. Because if something was inventend in that center it could

it could. if it was. but it never did..

, it was by that center that it will travel reach the others.

the reality was different, the invention traveled on a one way ticket round the Cape of Good Hope.

for me personally this turns out to be a very educative thread. Thank you Aithrobates.

Forty times, it is said, he read through the Metaphysics of Aristotle, till the words were imprinted on his memory; but their meaning was hopelessly obscure, until one day they found illumination, from the little commentary by Farabi, which he bought at a bookstall for the small sum of three dirhams. So great was his joy at the discovery, made with the help of a work from which he had expected only mystery, that he hastened to return thanks to God, and bestowed alms upon the poor.

so who owes what to whom?

I can't answer that... I was just saying the the world that this hypothesis existed. If I had read the book seriously, like a second of third time, with all the notes, and had a firm opinion on its view I could argue.

 

If you want to dive into that topic... read the book... So that I'll have someone to talk about it ^^

Thanks i probably would read it if it falls into my lap but otherwise to me this author is highly unappealing. Back in 1950s it has become fashionable to bash the Europeans. Which is this guy's bread and butter apparently

Warriors of the Cloisters tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West. Medieval scholars rarely performed scientific experiments, but instead contested issues in natural science, philosophy, and theology using the recursive argument method. This highly distinctive and unusual method of disputation was a core feature of medieval science, the predecessor of modern science. We know that the foundations of science were imported to Western Europe from the Islamic world, but until now the origins of such key elements of Islamic culture have been a mystery.

 

In this provocative book, Christopher I. Beckwith traces how the recursive argument method was first developed by Buddhist scholars and was spread by them throughout ancient Central Asia. He shows how the method was adopted by Islamic Central Asian natural philosophers--most importantly by Avicenna, one of the most brilliant of all medieval thinkers--and transmitted to the West when Avicenna's works were translated into Latin in Spain in the twelfth century by the Jewish philosopher Ibn Da'ud and others. During the same period the institution of the college was also borrowed from the Islamic world. The college was where most of the disputations were held, and became the most important component of medieval Europe's newly formed universities. As Beckwith demonstrates, the Islamic college also originated in Buddhist Central Asia.

 

Using in-depth analysis of ancient Buddhist, Classical Arabic, and Medieval Latin writings, Warriors of the Cloisterstransforms our understanding of the origins of medieval scientific culture. 

You see, the Europeans were stupid so they could not possibly on their own get a group of students and profs together and call it 'a college', they had to borrow it from the Arabs. Also everybody else never reasoned logically before Buddhists invented the recursive argument which the stupid Europeans got to use. Like i said it is' lets bash the Europeans' galore, this is not science.

from the link above

Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described asGymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India.^[6] Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of śramanic, possibly Buddhist, thought: "Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention. ... Nothing is in itself more this than that"^[7]

Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts: "That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. ... That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief".^[8]

nothing that happens to a man is bad or good,

^{So is this  Lao-zi's point of view? Or Buddha's? I would say neither.}

Good god - so entirely wrong - things are never so black and white. Obviously they can both be right.

Men find Ways to persuade themselves, to believe any Absurdity, to submit to any Prostitution,  rather than forego their Wishes and Desires. Their Reasons become   at last an eloquent Advocate on the Side of their Passions, and [they] bring themselves to believe that black is white, that Vice is Virtue, that Folly is Wisdom and Eternity a Moment.

He latter compares the teaching of Lao Tzu and Chang Tzu with what we know of what appears to be a very early form of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, as documented by the greek sources in the 4th BCE.  And shows profound similarities.

 

I for one would be curious to know what are the exact similarities  between this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang-Lao

and this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milinda_Panha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

Back to topic: When there is no desire, al things are at peace.

yes. for there is no peace for the wicked.

Could this be an answer to the question, and could this explain why there is so much problem with this? Celibacy with desire remaining, that must be painful and unnatural.

Unfulfilled desires are the very fabric of the human condition. Is a non-celibate person  person living his life in contentment? No, his life is one of a permanent sexual hunger. Thats why sex sells in advertisement.

Do not desire disrupt the pre-heaven state?  

right on the money. thats what separates real practitioners from the fake ones. the real ones contain their desires, the fakers rationalize them.

 

 

However, for those  Western readers who are interested in what the Chinese Taoism really says in its  2500-year history, .....  . Fortunatey ,   the fact is , only small part of  it is worthy of  reading .  

I've been reading that recent book:

 

 

Lao Tan (the name of Lao Tzu) is the modern prononciation of an alternate, more chinese sounding, spelling of "Kao Tan" which indicates an old chinese *Gotama / Gowtama/ Gautama.

 

And Dao in the same way is reconstructed as old chinese *Darma.

 

Folk etymology, pseudo-etymology,^[1] or reanalysis is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]} Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation (since one or more of the morphemes making them up, like sam-, which meant "semi-", has become obscure) are reanalyzed in a more or less semantically plausible way, yielding, in these examples, sparrow grass and sandblind.^[8]

The term folk etymology, a loan translation from the 19th-century academic German Volksetymologie,^[9] is a technical one in philology and historical linguistics, referring to thechange of form in the word itself, not to any actual explicit popular analysis.^[8]

I have not read this exact book but i have read the original. The author mainly keeps missing the point wildly, like e.g  on the link above she pontificates for an entire page on the 'taming the dragon' without ever mentioning that it specifically refers to  the physical elimination of the menses.

...her own guesswork notwithstanding the translation per se is more or less palatable, so it could be a useful read all in all.

Thank you for your answer.  Additionally thank you for proposing a possible explaination of the absense of seminar deaths. 

 

If ive found the correct passage in the book you linked to, It seemed to indicate that the knowledge of whether a person could accidentally die was somewhat unsure, or possibly the person being interviewed did not wish to answer the question directly.

 

So what is the mechanism by which this death occurs?  Would it truely be considered accidental?

The mechanism is that the spirit is not mature enough to survive on its own or not mature enough to find his way to the body which then dies being left spirit-less.

Hello everyone.

I have come across the concept of astral projection through the crown chakra in numerous texts. 

 

The Healing Tao texts begin to project the energy body through the ba hui (crown center) during fusion practices.  This continues through the rest of the ciricculum of the system. 

 

Phowa is a tibetan practice that seeks to project the conciousness through the crown at the time of death into a buddha field. 

 

Mahasamadhi is a result of kundalini rising.  When the kundalini rises in a particularly strong way the aspirant projects through the crown chakra into shiva and is liberated from their body (dies).  (This can be read about in the texts of kashmir shiviasm by swami Lakshmanjoo)

 

In the old zen stories there are numerous examples of highly cultivated peoople who could die at will.  It was a sign of mastery if the old zennist could compose a death poem then die immediatly upon its recitation. 

 

It is also alluded to that Lao Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi composed their most notable works the night before their death.

 

My particular question about these practices is this:  Can a person accidentally die from crown projection? 

 

The modern day proliferation of teachings on Phowa and Healing Tao indicate that these practices are harmless.  I have never heard of a person dropping dead at a Mantak Chia Seminar for example. 

Hi;)

you start with a wrong premise assuming that whats going on in the seminars is the real thing. It is not. Seminars are mind games and fantasy conventions conducted for profit by the  seminar sellers  and attended for ego-tickling by the seminar hoppers. Of course no one dies (or gets any real results) at the seminars. No one boldly goes nowhere at a Star Trek convention either.

My particular question about these practices is this:  Can a person accidentally die from crown projection? 

The short answer is yes. The chinese take on the matter can be read about here.

There is an old reference in The Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海经)... wonder if TaoistText would give a translation?

 

帝堯、帝嚳、帝舜葬於岳山。爰有文貝離俞、久、鷹、賈、延維、視肉、熊、羆、虎、豹朱木赤支青華玄實。有申山者

 

 

Added: BTW, I'm not suggesting the above has anything to do with alchemy use of the term but curious as to the reference.

Hey)

the book has been translated in full by Yanshina back in 1977 so i will just type up her version

25        大荒南經:       The canon of the great southern wasteland

The emperor Yao、the emperor Ku、the emperor Shun are buried there  on Mount Yue。There are kauri shells ，spiritual beasts liyu、juju owls、eagles、buzzards、yanwei snakes、the Meat-eating Men、black bears、brown bears、tigers、leopards；there is a red tree with purple branches，green flowers，black fruit。The Elongated Mountain is there。

He is the spiritual person from whom Zhang Boduan received all or a part of his method. Nothing else is known about him. Also, there is a god  , The Lord of the East, one variant of whose name is the same,

Speaking of the Yijing though, I have never read it but apparently Liu Yiming has a commentary which was translated by Thomas Cleary under the title The Taoist I Ching. Has anyone ever read this work and does anyone recommend it?

I have read both Cleary and the original Liu. Liu wrote the original in code and Cleary, not understanding the code  mangled it beyond recognition too. But they say that there is something to learn from any book so i would recommend it if you keep in mind that it is a mistranslated, coded,  alchemical message (not neidan!)  , moreover   it is not about  Yijing  or divinitation per se.