smallsteps

In your understanding, what are the main tenets making them diverge at some point?

Hi Jox, Congrats! Apart from what has already been said, you could do any centering/grounding practice you are familiar with on Monday morning before starting your job; actually every morning before going to work..and every evening after work. Good luck!

Yes, ok, I understand. Thanks! Sounds a lot like Buddhism..

Thanks Yueya, very beautiful.

Thanks! You explained quite well the part of the mutual dependency of 'this' and 'that', but I am still scratching my head about this part: ''There is beginning. There is a time before beginning. There is a time before the time before beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a stage before nonbeing. There is a stage before the stage before nonbeing. Suddenly there is being and nonbeing. Still, as for being and nonbeing, I do not know which is really being and which is nonbeing' and the relationship it has with the conceptual/language problem. Any idea?

Welcome Brightmoon !

Welcome My thoughts exactly :

Thanks Aques Peregrinus, I knew the meaning of that expression. Only I didn't see the point of answering that way, I wasn't asking for some esoteric information. But I am totally fine with the 'spoon feeding' answer. We can choose the questions we ask, not the answers we receive !

Spoon feeding?.... Fine, thanks anyway.

Thanks, Can you elaborate a bit more?

Thank you everyone for your very interesting posts ! I don't practice Magic/k and I am just scratching the surface of body energetics, I asked out of curiosity because Magic/k seems a fascinating world to me but too far from what I am. I don't plan to practice Magic/k anytime soon but I like reading about it.

Thank you , I understand and I'll check the book out.

Thank you for your comment but it doesn't really seem to be connected to the practice of magic. I'll try to find again the Dion Fortune letter so that everyone can directly react to it.

This section goes far beyond my head. Since you requested not to be the first to comment your own post..This is my modest contribution, I can't do more.

Welcome at TDB This one is very good:

Welcome here !

Welcome !

Welcome to the Dao Bums!

Welcome ! it is great to have some acupuncturists here, please do post and participate

Welcome !

Welcome ! It is great to have some more Tai Chi players!

Welcome here !

Welcome ! I am sure you'll find a lot of information about qigong here but not too much about mosquitoes. I usually capture and release them outside, but perhaps it is not that easy in Nepal. Best of qi

Welcome here, I am sure you will receive answers to your questions.

I would broke this quote down in two. I'll write how I see it. Please forgive me, I am just no one, I am only trying to understand. Following our prejudices is following our own blindness thinking/pretending our prejudices are rightful thinking: our neighbor is so and so, our husband/wife shouldn't have talked us this way, Trump/Hillary is better than Hillary/Trump because the US/world badly need the real deal, etc. it goes on and on and on until we die. Actually, it seems to tell us that we are not really thinking in a proper way, we are just blind people who consequently miss the Way/Dao because we cherish our own thinking so much, and especially our own thoughts about the Dao. It also means that knowledge is not relevant here. Because prejudices and knowledge are not really opposites. We can be very knowledgeable in a lot of matters (literature, politics, science, Taoism etc.) and still be guided by prejudices. Knwoledge doesn't protect from prejudices, and in some ways it just reinforces them because knowledgeable people can be very proud and arrogant. They use knowledge in some twisted ways to justify their prejudices. (the well-known 'facts') So the ignorant and the intelligent are just the same idiots when it comes to missing the way. Intelligence won't help. I find interesting to note that following the Way is not becoming ignorant/foolish nor becoming intelligent. It is stopping following our preferences which means having enough lucidity to identify them and abandoning them. Our minute-after-minute contact with reality could be a good way to see where and when our preferences come into play: we don't accept difference (everything/one is different from another) and change (nothing stays identical in time). I would say that Taoism is about developing a specific kind of intelligence built upon awareness/watchfulness. I find this part more tricky. Right and wrong are not absolutes. They come from the mind, so they are relatives. The Dao is under the law of right and wrong. Right and wrong are mind rooted viewpoints. Here again, I can't say I know what's right and wrong and judge others, situations and reality as if I had real knowledge about what is right and wrong. What we take as absolutes when it comes to morality or knowledge is the result of mind work. My question is: does it mean that Taoists have no idea of a real good? I find this complex to solve because at some point trying to return to the Dao is having in mind that the Dao is good enough to be pursued, I would say the good that supersedes any other good. The Dao is a way of salvation. In another line of thinking, does it mean that Taoists have no morality? I may perhaps misread what Mair has in mind using right/wrong. Since I am not a native English speaker, I have limitations here. Is it only related to knowledge or does it also refer to ethics? What would be the ethics of a Taoist? Anyway, no one- even the Holy Yu- can make something out of nothing: even the Holy Yu couldn't make that right and wrong exist outside the mind. Because doing so is like creating right/wrong without any basis since they only come from the mind. So who am I to do so? Here we perhaps find the link with the first part of the quote: right and wrong is a kind of knowledge which is more than once only prejudice. Knowing is a mind thing. The Dao doesn't fit in the mind. The mind should follow the Dao, but instead we want the Dao to follow our mind. Foolish and intelligent are in the same situation. They are know-it-all people, both in their own way, and the Dao doesn't care. Peace.