Taoist Texts

1 minute ago, Shadow_self said:

Seems to me, when asked about the things that aren't written in books, you arent nearly as chatty as you stated above

discussing is one thing, disclosing is another. for example here is discussion: i posit that the entire ND process is written in the books. otherwise books would be useless, obviously. who needs only the left half of the multiplication table right?

4 hours ago, Shadow_self said:

The  "empty room makes white" or whatever term you want to use, thats another thing that comes with its own set of changes

So, im ready to hear all about it  Tell me about the changes that occur physiologically, please  

sorry no can do. top secret. need to know.

 

13 hours ago, Shadow_self said:

If I recall there was a raft of neidan phenomena that I tried discussing with you, only to realize you werent willing to get into it

Are we ready to talk about the physiological changes from the "empty room makes white" yet my friend?

i am always willing to discuss real neidan, i am a regular chatty fella, witnessed by my post count, unfortunately this particular topic whereas the guy emits visible light...

17 hours ago, Shadow_self said:

Sounds like some made up imaginary nonsense

 

7 minutes ago, Forestgreen said:

Since my chinese is seriously lacking: No reference to the fabled yuan jing?

thats right, no 元精 in this verse, nor in the entire book of WZP. 元精 was incorporated in neidan nomenclature much later circa 16 century, although as a stable term appears already in 100 AD.

4 hours ago, snowymountains said:

One is, mountain spirits potentially hint at having origins in animistic beliefs deep down in history.

to me its the other way around: spirits create beliefs 

4 hours ago, snowymountains said:

Second it what symbols did the Daoists use in their talismans ?

anything weaponized and awe inspiring like 'thunder' or 'humane wise great heavenly emperor' like below

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Ting_curse_charm#List_of_magic_incantations_found_on_Lei_Ting_curse_charms

4 hours ago, snowymountains said:

is there any decent literature on the talismans aspect of Daoism ?

f course, see Reference at the link

1 hour ago, Forestgreen said:

3 hours ago, Antares said:

If there is no true sperm in the tripod (Fu), that is like to boil empty kettle (Cheng) using water and fire. /...  .../ Without Water flowing and without the True Sperm to realize a small circle of heaven - to use  a feeling of qi is like using a fire to burn under  an empty pot. 

I'm not sure that is a full quote and a good translation  @Taoist Texts

yes, as usual this here is a garbled misunderstanding.

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

the quote comes WZP, the full 5/2th verse of it says:

 

Quote

 

五
咽津纳气是人行，有物方能万物生。

swallowing saliva, intaking qi - that's what people practice, having the thing can birth a myriad things

鼎内若无真种子，犹将水火煮空铛。

if in the tripod there is no true seed, it is like boiling on fire an empty kettle with nothing but water in it.

 

so to list just a couple common errors here, this verse contains no...:

1 no 'true sperm' - 'true seed' instead

2 no negation of qigong - qigong results are affirmed instead

3 no damage to the 'kettle - ' - just useless instead

53 minutes ago, Shadow_self said:

As @freeformmentioned, he was bleeding from every orifice in his head, when he made a slight error.

oh noes! was he been practicing by the book that ? i heard that can be so bigly dangerous! if only he had a realest truest secretest linage teacher to guide him.... 

7 hours ago, Nintendao said:

interesting that Fulu is included on the mountain.

because in this case those are protective talismans against the evil mountain spirits

27 minutes ago, Cobie said:

palaeography.

just one Guodian find is inconclusive

55 minutes ago, Sahaja said:

I guess all we really have outside these three texts (maybe add in a fourth, Nei Yeh)  is Xuanxue. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiang'er         

2 hours ago, Forestgreen said:

Separating the worth from the not-worth. ...how can a beginner know how to separate the two? 

a stupid beginner cannot. which does not change anything. because he has no yuanfen to master the worth anyway, even if he stumbles on it.

On 8/31/2024 at 1:29 AM, Cobie said:

. Chapters 70–81 of the DDJ were not yet composed at the time the Guodian slips were copied.

may be they were, just not included into GD

2 hours ago, Sahaja said:

I am curious if there are any commentaries on Laozi that don’t mix Confucianism into it

that would be buddhist commentary

https://www.academia.edu/26284677/Exploring_the_Common_Ground_Buddhist_Commentaries_on_the_Taoist_Classic_Laozi

and even those will probably have Conf undertones just by virtue of being chinese which equates being confucian

 

2 hours ago, Sahaja said:

I wonder if there were any Daoists that reinterpreted Analects from a Daoist (Laozi, Zhuang xi , Liezi) philosophical  perspective

There are stories about Conf in ZZ, so thats one interpretation. But such reinterping strictly Analects per se was not not possible since those Daoists and their perspective ended before the received Analects were put together.

(besides it is generally not recognized that Confucianism=Daoism. two sides of the same coin)

25 minutes ago, forestofclarity said:

I don't see the synching... arising if the acquired minds/egos are running the show, which would necessitate some level of inner work, IMO.

thats correct, that work is called '  timing not right - just sit tight', rein in your ego, shelter in place  - thats what syncing is . doing nothing - the simplest half of wuwei

 

54 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

Simple, until you get to the next question -- what does "in sync" practically mean? 

great question. lets say going NW direction at 10 am is inauspicious. But thats where the market is and i am all out of  OJ! If i disregard and  go - i get out of sync; if i stay put and order home delivery - i get in sync.

54 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

And both the cosmic clock and the personal clock are way more complex than an analog watch.  

artificial things have many cogs. heaven and man just have one and the same: the 5 elements.

1 minute ago, forestofclarity said:

And yet...

well since you insists...hmm..lets see...a young dude pushes a body-positive grandma, gets praised as a paragon of advanced skills, with the invisible power':.......'ewww' ....'cringe'....'my eyes, my eyes' .... those words come to mind first. After the initial shock wears out a question: teachers will put on any show to finagle a buck, that goes w/o saying. But what went through this dude's mind? Let me tape how i can manhandle a plump senior woman, the students will line up to learn that precious and rare skill? That amazing power?

1 hour ago, Taomeow said:

And bingo -- now you're telling me you know qimen!  That's rare and precious!  So what is it that you know about the paradigm that nobody understands?  

A paradigm is an answer to the question: how does this thing work? So first thing to know about a paradigm ('the how and why")  is that it exists. People dont ask yourself that question.  E.g: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qimen_Dunjia this does not say how QM works exactly ? Read any QM manual, it goes through the maze of of putting together, the tables it does not say why?  Now when i explain any paradigm  two things happen 1. peeps dont understand it (because it is too simple, old dogs-new tricks) 2 peeps think they knew it all along  (because it is too simple, old dogs-new tricks).

In case of QM it works like this: there are two clocks: 1 the cosmic one 2 your personal one. When they are in sync good things happen to you, when out - bad ones. Simple?

did i just see a video of a young guy pushing a grandma titled 'the invisible power of taichee'? with advanced skills?........sometimes there are no words....

9 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Most humans translate stuff from the Chinese even worse, and most taoist compilations fare worse than most texts and often contain inexplicable stuff or sheer nonsense or both. 

cant agree more!

9 hours ago, Taomeow said:

However, while this Mountain might have been an AI glitch or a human glitch, it might also be none of the above and quite meaningful. 

yes it is. This chart was created by this autodidact Han or more likely Uighur from Urumci

Quote

 

Johannes M L Hausen Is this your own graph? 

Don't Know Nothing 不知道人 Yes, I made it myself. Due to the page size (and resolution), it is limited to this main framework.
Fyi - The framework is not mentioned in any ancient texts. It is only in the past few decades, people started discussing Taoism practices as such.

 

the 5 method division itself was made up by the modern chinese fantasists, gaining modest currency over the chinese interwebs . They explain the 'mountain' title as meaning 'the methods done in the mountains'

16 hours ago, Taomeow said:

Curious to hear from folks who have undertaken studying and practicing (and maybe teaching?) any of these methods.

recently i had to explain the paradigms behind fengshui and qimen to my student. nobody understands the paradigms.

 

 

2 hours ago, DynamicEquilibrium said:

 Nice map, these 5 skills just like the five fingers

they say to detect an image made by AI you gotta look for small incongruous details like 6 fingers on a hand. In this diagram the top branch says 'Mountain', wtf does mountain even mean here? And then you go...ahh nice try AI. but no cigar. the 6th finger gave you away.

5 hours ago, dwai said:

Why exclude anyone?  

its a caveat of not getting personal

5 hours ago, dwai said:

why do you feel that anything other than a literal translation is a fantasy?

because of the results. if following a literal translation gives me the promised results then any other translation is a fantasy. 2+2=4 is a verifiable result, if  someone implied that  2+2=71.345 then that implication is a fantasy, not needing a verification, because in our causal world one set of causes produces only one result.

 

Lets try  a few different reasonings:

1. Saying one thing but meaning another thing is the very definition of lying. In case of a spiritual book why would the author deceive the reader?

2. If he lies with the literal meaning he would lie with the implied meaning as well, right?

3. Explaining a lying book makes the teacher a liar as well, right? 

4. Why would not the author just write plainly the implied meaning?

5. If the teacher explains the book why is the book needed at all?

..and so on and so on..it  just does not make sense in reality. Thats why it is a fantasy.

 

I met a fairly successful western neidan teacher who claimed that the saints who wrote the books lied intentionally. Seriously he did. He said that the patriarchs of his own avowed linage were liars who lied to intentionally deceive the reader, for secrecy. Of course he was lying, and his students swallowed his absurd lie. They had no De thats why they could not understand the books.

 

5 hours ago, dwai said:

What do you think the daoist texts are for?

luckily i dont have to think, my saintly teachers tell me that in black and white:

Quote

Abandoning myself to follow the others I have authored this chart, completely disclosing the Heavenly spring. Even if stupid commoners get it – none of them would not succeed. But whoever has no De, even if he gets this, Heaven certainly will not accord him this Dao. Why is that? Because Dao and De are like bird wings, if one is lacking, the other is of no use. One must have 忠(zhōng)孝(xiào)仁(rén)义(yì) loyalty, filiality, humanness, duty and the 5 precepts  completely pure, only after that there is a hope. But the refined subtleties and the mysterious marvels are all completely in my this book the 慧(huì)命(mìng)经(jīng). Of those who will be observing both the Dao and De, none will not get the true.

 

Quote

 

Thus the Dark Spring is deeply shown, which was hardly ever disclosed in texts. The marvelous principles of the Numinous Treasure allow to enter the sainthood, transcending the mundane. This summary of the Three Vehicles method is titled ‘Lingbao Bifa’. These words of the great Dao saints I dare not to selfishly use for myself alone, so I transmit this book to Dong-bin, the kind sir, so as to make the completion of Dao not secret, and to bequeath it to the later gentry.

https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/40852-books-vs-crooks/?do=findComment&comment=687892

 

 

4 hours ago, Shadow_self said:

No need for teachers or lineages. 

There are no secrets

All you need is a book

there ya go, you tell them bro!

7 minutes ago, dwai said:

There is an implied meaning that is hidden to those without proper teachers or guidance.  

Esoteric texts are not meant to be taken literally - hence lineage, teacher, disciples, etc.

the present company excluded of course, but in general, no matter how often and how emphatically we repeat a fantasy it will still remain  a fantasy, especially that of a cultish sort

3 hours ago, Apech said:

cantong qi that it was the first neidan book.  And it’s earliest dating is I think about 800 AD

that is correct but it depends on the definitions as to what neidan is precisely. CTQ is not it, too many ingredients lacking eg MCO

3 hours ago, Apech said:

Is the ultimate goal of neidan the same as the ultimate goal of Daoism?  

of course it is, neidan is a western term for the discipline, traditionally the discipline is called the great dao, so how can it have different goals with dao-ism? Quite the same: peace, health, longevity, clan prosperity, better rebirth, immortality.

4 hours ago, Master Logray said:

The writer of DDJ had a thinking which explained the world.  

correct

18 hours ago, Sahaja said:

a scholar ...who viewed the theme of DDJ as Yang Sheng cultivation (a series of practices for nurturing health and longevity with qi as a central component of the practice). His hypothesis was that these teachings started as an oral tradition among a group of proto Daoist recluses doing Yang Sheng practices that was later compiled into the DDJ. 

so the DDJ is about  Yang Sheng compiled by  Yang Sheng-ists who did not mentioned  Yang Sheng 养生 even once? But who for some reason talked only  of ontology and governing instead? That figures. 'to a child with a hammer everything is  a nail'.

Quote

As compared to you, who has first-hand knowledge of it? 

 

of course to me and of course I do - because i am literate. and i am happy to share, just for my fun;) here is an explanation what De is exactly

Quote

But whoever has no De, even if he gets this, Heaven certainly will not accord him this Dao. Why is that? Because Dao and De are like bird wings, if one is lacking, the other is of no use. One must have 忠(zhōng)孝(xiào)仁(rén)义(yì) loyalty, filiality, humanness, duty and the 5 precepts  completely pure, only after that there is a hope.

 

De=values+precepts

https://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/慧命經

this comes from Huimingjing the sole foundation book of the modern neidan in China, and its garbled version in the West;)

 

4 hours ago, Apech said:

The original meaning of virtue was manly strength - the Latin for man being vir.  Then it came to mean strength or power generally - which is the sense used by Machiavelli in the Prince.  Virtue as in saintliness and morals comes from female virtue which was about behaving properly and maintaining virginity and so on.  

This is getting close to the truth gender-wise, but please consider that manliness is not a manly physical strength, an elephant is strong but not manly, a woman can be strapping but not manly. Virtue is doing the right thing, like a real man, (even when there is no pressure which would require any psychological or physical strength) (yes virtue is a sexist word). Hence there is no separate male and female virtues because when a female behaves virtuously she is doing the right thing like a real man would.

 

Now to the amateurish western guesswork of De being something tangible, like qi-substance or ability to think or some tangible-power;). Of course none of these empty guesses are supported by a traditional quote.;)

Westerners are amoral-illusory-mind-materialists who cling at the tangible straws they can understand such as: thinking-ability  or some qi-substance or some tangible-power or ability-to-do-something; that's why they actively refute the obvious original - De is doing the right thing, De is the moral behavior - which is a loathsome immaterial-and-moral concept that's why the westerners are studiously blind to it.

And that's why the word’s graph is a human (morally) upright (直) heart (心)   德.

46 minutes ago, Cobie said:

天地 - nature, the physical world. 天地 has 物 wu4 

物 wu4 - things in ‘nature’ (including the human bodies). Floods, droughts very scary, very powerful etc.

These cannot be controlled.

of course they can be. because 天地 are the spiritual world, not physical, and when the spirits see your De they approve of it and make the 天地 peaceful

Quote

夫恬惔寂寞，虚无无为，此天地之平而道德之质也。
Ingrained Ideas:    
Hence it is said, 'Placidity, indifference, silence, quietude, absolute vacancy, and non-action: these are the qualities which maintain the peace of heaven and earth and embody the Dao and its De.' 《刻意 - Ingrained Ideas》

 

1 hour ago, Cobie said:

天下 has 事 shi4 

事 - what’s man-made, human interactions. 

These can be controlled with virtue. 

actually 事 refers to serving Heaven as well. 59道德经:    治人事天莫若啬. its a one universe, the spirits are watching, the heaven is listening

11 hours ago, Antares said:

His "lineage" comes from self - taught lady from Taiwan who was actually banned here for bad language .

he says it like it is a bad thing 

11 hours ago, damdao said:

The meaning of 德 dé is richer and more complex than "virtue" 

For those interested in a linguistic analysis here we have a good one

https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp235_de_character_early_China.pdf

the author is an amateur. who says that de is just like virtue so you may wanna IMHO again

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

Maybe they got it confused with the idea of the nurturing De in DDJ Ch 51

highly likely!

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

道 生 之; 德 畜 之 dào shēng zhī ; dé chù zhī  - Dao created you; virtue raised you. 

in this line 之 refers to dao (same as ziran)

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

The 5 relations refers to Wuxing

close 五伦         五倫    wǔ lún the five Confucian relationships (ruler-subject, father-son, brother-brother, husband-wife, friend-friend)

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

5 precepts are the Buddhist morality.  Yes?

yes;) 五戒 wǔjiè 1) * five prohibitions (measures to prevent crime; oath, order, prohibition, check, instruction) 2) buddhas. five vows (vows; do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, do not consume wine)

 

46 minutes ago, johndoe2012 said:

Not a Westerner I guess? 

yes i am

46 minutes ago, johndoe2012 said:

What is your lineage? Books? 

yes it is;)

8 hours ago, ChiDragon said:

On 8/24/2024 at 7:57 PM, Antares said:

For De nourishing more ingredients are required  

Yuan jing(元精, original jing) is the prenatal jing originated from the parents. It stays in the body to be maintained by the postnatal jing. It is not part of a medicine. De(德) is a philosophical term. It is not a substance in the body as one might think it would be.

De(德) shouldn't even be considered in the discussion. Peace!

I would be interested to know where this idea of De nourishing come into western neidan. Unfortunately the western neidaneers being illiterate do not know it themselves and cannot quote it. The idea does not come from WLP because WLP clearly says

全德者，在世法中能全五伦之德，于道法中又能全五戒。De is 5 relations and 5 precepts. (probably they misunderstood and made up, as usual)