Taomeow

People freely mistake superstitions based on nothing in particular for genuine taboos and vice versa, because to be confused is human. But genuine taboos are not based on superstitions at all, and neither are they rooted in common sense. They are rooted in magical and mystical/spiritual competence, and are actually axioms of science-by-other-means, the kind done the traditional sympathetic-magical/alchemical way. Here's a few examples: the taoist prohibition on self-mutilation (this would include tattoos and Botox and Lasik and plastic surgeries, by the way). The reason for the taboo can be found in the taoist anatomy and physiology which includes the human body into the realm of spirit -- some of its shens dissipate after death but others don't, and the problem with these is that they carry the acquired (or lost) parts to other realms and other lifetimes, to any and all existences and non-existences that lie ahead. So interfering with the body in this manner is understood as interfering, quite tangibly, with the soul, and not just in this life but in the afterlife to come as well. So what might be mistaken for "moral judgement" or "common sense" regarding the reasons for this particular taboo is in reality the continuation of magical expertise, of the taboo's creators proficiency in the realm of the spirits. The taboo on disturbing ancestral graves (a common one for all "uncivilized" peoples on earth) is of a similar origin -- to interfere with the resting-in-peace state and/or wholeness of the body's remains is understood as a blatant interference into the life of the soul that used to be attached to this body and, partially but inevitably, still IS! -- and is still connected to this dead person's living-today descendants -- in ways more mysterious but no less real than the way you are connected to your ancestors through your genes inherited from them. Yin feng shui, e.g. (that has been practiced in China for at least a couple thousand years), i.e. feng shui for the graves (as opposed to yang feng shui for homes and businesses), has multiple taboos all of which effectively prohibit making the remains uncomfortable in any manner whatsoever. I've seen an opinion that the Han people who constitute the overwhelming majority in China, which makes them by far the most populous people on Earth today, used to be a tribe no different from numerous other tribes on the territory of ancient China in anything except their burial rituals, and that that's what has made the historic difference in their long-term fate. Their closest historic competitors used to hang their coffins in the hope of assuring the dead relative's ascending to heaven or something. The coffins were thus frequently disturbed by, e.g., adverse weather events and what-not. That people, once Han's powerful rival, is long gone and forgotten. A single taboo that was meticulously observed by a single tribe for a long enough time seems to have shaped the world as we know it...

For a dart board, the Circular I Ching is ideal! You can simply throw six darts instead of tossing three coins six times. (A pic of the Circular I Ching adorns the upper left corner of the forum whose link is attached to my signature. You can make a dart board like this yourself if you like... I occasionally paint the Circular I Ching as part of my calligraphy practice, with brush and ink.)

Seadog, Ryan, Sunshine, Xeno, thanks for your generous words and your thoughts! Trunk, I'll have to dedicate a separate post to answering your question... maybe more than one, memory is looooong and vita brevis Spyrelx, jing is not "gas," if you follow the "taoist canon" (which is what exactly in you opinion, by the way? All major sects have their own, which other sects may or may not accept. The things they ALL accept, the common basics which I like to refer to every chance I get, are Hetu, Luoshu, I Ching, yin-yang, qi, ganying... and that's that. The rest is... one sect's canon and another sect's herecy. Go figure. There's taoists who believe Laozi was his own mother, I can give you the references. Is this canonical? Yes, believe it or not. There's others who accept him as a deity. Is this kosher? Absolutely. And still others don't think he ever lived to begin with. Is this the traditional view? Yes, every bit of it. Anyone who's after taoist wisdom better get ready to process more than one paradox! ) As I was saying, "gas" is not built into the very structure of the car, "gas" you can, and have to, keep replenishing. That's your metaphor for "postnatal qi," or just qi for short. The ignition, however, and the key that gets it to "come alive" (provided there's gas in the tank of course), IS the built-in structure... and that's your jing, or just "prenatal qi" for long. Now you want to replenish it instead of losing it -- sheesh, I wish it was as easy as replenishing "gas" in your car! but no... you have to know the overall maintenance of the overall car in order to begin to control your jing, there's no magic fluid you can put in (unlike the situation with gas) to "replenish" a busted ignition, a fried transmission... OK, I'm about to run out of car metaphors, I am fairly technophobic and utterly car-clueless, to tell you the truth... my son had to explain to me why I need a "tune up" for my car by resorting to the TCM metaphors I could understand ("it's like prevention, you know, it's like what you do for your body..." ) As for "withering away," that's the farthest thing from my personal intentions. I humbly but rather stubbornly follow the classic pursuit of the Three Treasures -- perfection, nondecay, immortality. To venture once again into the car metaphor, I make sure there's gas, I make sure I change the oil, I make sure I rotate the tires... and I make sure I remember where I put my car keys... ...without which all of the other steps would be useless hassle, don't you think?..

Just a quickie for now, perhaps more later: jing IS memory; memory IS energy -- ordered energy as opposed to chaotic energy; Jung and his concepts have nothing whatsoever to do with anything I was talking about. (I don't think much of him anyway, and if anyone says "Freud" on top of that, so help me, I'm gonna scream!) I am a traditionalist by design, I don't care much for anything "new and improved," anything at all. I have two taoist teachers of unbroken lineage going nineteen generations back in the case of one and more than that in the case of the other. While I read enough to assert I'm familiar with most "taoist literature that has been translated into English and Russian" (and am learning Chinese in order to be eventually able to do better than that), much of what I know (not much, really, but more than enough for most taoist discussions that might ever take place in the 21st century...) is not from books. Of course when I say something that seems to contradict what you know you are welcome to take it or leave it depending on whether what I say resonates with what you perceive. However, in case it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm "very very very wrong" -- it might simply mean I'm "very very very differently cultivated." By the way, I do practice female sexual alchemy, but I don't see how I could benefit from it if I didn't know that jing is memory and memory is ordered energy. What would be the use of cultivating something I don't understand (and I don't if I don't remember what it is -- I mean, in my every cell, not in my head!) that comes from I don't know where (and I don't if I don't remember -- I don't mean as a "concept," I mean just as pragmatically, doably, bodily, as you remember what moves to make in order to get your car keys -- and exactly your car keys, not someone else's car keys or some random piece of metal or wood or sh..t or 'pure energy' -- when you intend to take a ride...)?.. "The pattern of tao is motion, and the pattern of this motion is return." If you don't remember where your car keys are, moreover, if you don't remember you NEED a key to start a car, moreover, if you don't remember what a key IS, moreover, if you don't remember how to hold objects in your hand, moreover, if you don't remember you have a hand... and so on... then of course you can fully believe in your head that you're going on a journey when you sit behind the wheel and imagine stuff going by... only problem is, the car won't really start. Jing is your ability to start it... fully dependent on your ability to remember how. (Again, not in the head, and not as a "concept," whether Jungian or anyone else's, but as your own cellular memory attached to that of all life that went before -- in your body, and beyond and before your body... Jing ain't no chopped liver, you can't slap a label on it -- "energy, pure and simple" -- and have it pinned down. Nooooo waaaaay... Pure and simple energy is... what? What IS pure and simple energy?.. )

One of my favorite subjects, jing is, so I'll jump right in... The opinion that jing is lost through sexual orgasm is one of those generalizations that are somewhat true some of the time for some of the people. Jing is not limited in any way to "sexual energy," contrary to popular belief. Jing is our cosmic memory. As opposed to our personal memory, which is more accessible to some of us some of the time. The healthier the shens, the more complete the personal memory. The healthier the jing, the more complete the cosmic memory. Far as human jing is concerned, its main function is to remember how to be fully human. As one of the holy sages put it, "To be fully human is this: to stand like a human, to sit like a human, to walk like a human, and to lie down like a human." Anyone whose bodymind "remembers" how to do these things as a human being will suffer no abnormal loss of jing through any human activities. Anyone who doesn't will keep losing it through ANY activities, not just sexual intercourse. Human sex, like all other human activities, has parameters of "normality" and "balance" that are determined correctly by an overall-balanced system, and incorrectly by an imbalanced one. Modern people are conceived, born, and raised in all manner of unnatural/unbalanced/abnormal ways, so they lose rather than gain some jing right at conception, and more while they are growing, and more as they proceed to live a subsequent life already predicated on distorted development and growth processes. Addressing this problem via sexual or asexual practices is about as useful as addressing the ocean with a teaspoon. So... basically, I wouldn't bother. If one is engaged in too much sex, the problem is not sex, the problem is the distorted pathways (lost memory!) that cause one to mistakenly process needs, feelings and drives not sexual in their origin via sexual release. (E.g., anger. Forbid the physical expression of anger to a small child and the release will be sought later by other means. Or love. Deprive a small child of normal everyday physical contact expressing closeness, acceptance, love, and safety -- and the fulfillment of an unfulfilled need will be sought via sexual touch later, and misunderstood for sexual needs and feelings.) If one is engaged in too little, chances are it's a symptom of a weak jing to begin with, not of a particularly enlightened state... but how much is too much and how little is too little is quite individual.

Thanks! Of course I was an empress of China in a past life, no question, but the original idea behind the name was to encourage discussions of taoism specifically by people who do more with taoism than "discuss." Sorry for a poor introduction... the guy I meant is named Gavin. I'll ask him if he might join the thread here... hopefully either way I'll see some interesting expositions of hermetics.

Too bad you didn't get it from the library... maybe it's not the right time? My own copy of Wilhelm/Baynes came to me from the library but mysteriously. I borrowed it. I then called to renew it. The library said, we have no record of you having this book. You don't have it, so you can't renew it. OK, I said, I have it, and I am willing to return it, but not right now, I do want to keep it a bit longer, can you put it on my record and renew it? No can do, they said. Records are records, ours say you don't have it, it means you don't have it, there's no way around it, who do we trust, you or our new and improved computerized system? Have a good day. OK, I said to myself, I'll ask the book. I threw the coins. I Ching, should I return you to the library? Yes, she said, return. I threw the coins again: When? In ten years, she said. Well... ...I'm gonna. The map in this case IS the territory. This transpires (for me it did, at least) when you study ganying, the main engine of tao. The closest Western idea to ganying of taoist sciences is that of a fractal/holgraphic universe, but where we have an "idea" to toy with, "they" have a system of equasions whose sum is reality itself -- not an "image" of reality, not a "symbol" (the way our equasions are symbolic) but reality built into images, inseparable from them, non-symbolic. The I Ching shows you a picture that is not a picture... it just shows you one side to look from, a flat 2D side of a multidimentional nD reality behind it. "In the heaven of Indra, there is a string of pearls, so arranged that each one of them reflects each and every other one of them." The I Ching is this string of pearls, and there's exactly 64 of them. Tao is the thread that connects them... in a loop... Have you ever seen the original I Ching, the Circular one?..

Michael, cool, look at the Ta Chuan, and then in case you develop a taste for its simple but fun math, take it to the modern territory and check out what Donald Yan, Ph.D., Professor of Computational Chemistry at Cornell U, has figured out about it in his "DNA and the I Ching." (Here's a taste of the cake: presented as a sequence of codons, which is one way to arrange the "digrams" of the hexagrams flowing naturally from the fact that both the I Ching and the genetic code use binary mathematics, chapter 12, Standstill, corresponds in every detail to a genetic "stop dividing" message to a live cell encoded in your very own DNA. How's that for "your own intuition?" You didn't perchance encode your own DNA "intuitively," did you? Well, neither did I! ) Wayfarer, I agree with most of your take except that divinational function of the I Ching is "secondary." Nope. It is primary. All of taoism is a stochastic science and its crucial concept is "luck." When Einstein said that "God doesn't play dice," he made as big a mistake as did Descartes when he announced his dualistic manifesto, "Cogito ergo sum." The science of the six-thousand-years-older-than-ours civilization of Southeast Asia ain't no poor misguided superstitious relative to our "bigger better Western Science." When Francis Bacon said (and he did) that all of our Western civilization owes its very existence to discoveries made in ancient China, he knew what he was talking about. Taoist sciences ain't no bunch of silly superstitions ISO a "bigger-better-WHITER" explanation, and not an "inferior" way to approach reality. They are different from our approach (that of ascribing to reality itself as much action as we can think up in our human heads, and no more -- and most of what our human heads are capable of thinking up based on our daily experience with reality fits in a TV guide) -- they are different in that they work by emulating, in the greatest possible detail, the way reality itself works -- and reality plays dice all the time, one has to be "kicked in the third eye" (thanks for the cool quote, Wayfarer) very hard, as we all are, to fail to notice. What are the odds you will guess correctly whether I'm drinking tea or coffee right now? Depends on who you know. One thing to keep in mind when consulting the I Ching. It won't always bother answering the question you've asked, but it will ALWAYS answer the question of the moment, the real question you SHOULD have asked. And this one is the only part that depends on your intuition, insights into your own consciousness, and so on. If you have these pinned down, you will ask THE question at THE moment. If you don't, you will ask something esle, something off the top of your head, off the top of your consciousness if/when its deeper parts are hidden from you. But the I Ching will still answer the question from those deeper parts -- not just of your consciousness but of reality itself. And it IS infallible, as infallible as any probabilistic method can possibly be. If it appears it isn't, it means you didn't pinpoint the real question when asking. Here's an example from my experience: A young guy, a rock musician, was in a band that was just beginning to get its first serious gigs and becoming visible, and they decided they needed to change the name of the band, because the name they had at the time was from way back in high school and rather unimaginative. I said, what if changing the name interferes with your artistic luck? Ask the I Ching, he suggested, knowing I do that. So I did. The question I asked was, "should such-and-such band change its name?" The line I got in response read, "although there is illness, one doesn't die." I didn't get it, and tried again. The line I got was, "for three years, one won't come out of the house." The boy shrugged, I shrugged, well, perhaps the I Ching is not infallible after all, this is gibberish. A month later, a member of the band was diagnosed with cancer. The band fell apart. The battle with illness was life-and-death, took three years, and was successful.

I soooo disagree. The I Ching (together with its more concise sources, Hetu and Luoshu) is ALL of taoism -- not "some" of it but the bees' knees of it, the very core -- the rest is fringes, icing on the cake (and often way too cloying at that... too many cooks have thrown their sugar and honey and, lately, corn syrup and Aspartame on top of it... The cake itself is, however, perfect. To get a taste of real taoism, and of the truth that gave birth to it, one has to scrape off the mountain of icing -- by the way, all those ideas about how we are smarter than King Wen because we know about Rorschach and he didn't are part of that deceptively sweet confectioner's powder everything we've been fed since childhood has been sprinkled with -- yeah, shake it off, and try the cake... I kid you not.) Have you tried reading the Ta Chuan (The Great Treatise On The Changes)? I think it can help a modern person firmly indoctrinated into despising divination to get a glimpse of how and why the I Ching divination is every bit as scientific as quantum mechanics, genetics, and other stochastic (probabilistic) sciences of today. It has about as much relevance to one's psychology, incidentally, as the latter. I.e. "some," inevitably, but that's really not where it's at... To me (the daughter of a physicist and an engineer, a lineage of five Ph.D.s and six generations of atheists, who was taught to read, at age three, from a book titled Principles of Thermodynamics), the I Ching is the single most scientific book ever written on earth... and the only way to use it is the way it was intended to be used by its authors: for divination. Of course I wouldn't ask her about "the end of the world" or some such. I have a relationship with this book, that of a teacher-disciple, and she takes me seriously enough after a few years of building and nurturing this relationship on my part that she doesn't let me ask trivial, frivolous, superfluous, or silly questions. If I try, she snaps at me. If I persist, I get "I told you once, I told you twice, how many times do you want to hear it -- don't ask this stupid question again, I mean it!"

Hi the Grand One, at our (my and SJ's) Empirical Taoism forum we have a very knowledgeable member who's a member of the Hermetic society -- you're welcome to come pick his brain! http://skymountain.net/forum

For me it used to be a planned activity... oops... planned inactivity. I went through periods when I stillness-meditated every day. The result was not good. I thought for a couple of years I had become oh so peaceful, oh so wise... silly me. Eventually, through this practice (coupled with ideologically motivated denial of my own deeper feelings -- way deeper than the deepest meditation went), I accumulated too much yin and it generated false/surface yang and I became very... how shall I put it... spacey, the way quite a few new agers/hippies/potheads are (I was none of these), then restless, then... then I realized I'm far away from home, quit meditation for a few years altogether, dealt with problems from the past that had to be confronted rather than "forgotten," repaired most holes in my memory, restored my natural balance of natural feelings, and THEN resumed meditation. Only now it's something that "chooses me" instead of me "choosing to meditate" -- "it" tells me "when" and "for how long." So now it's whenever it tells me -- sometimes it's every day, and sometimes it's not even every year. But when it tells me it's time, I trust it and obey it. The only stillness meditations I "count" though are the ones where it's physically difficult for the body to remain still. (I have no problem stilling my mind -- maybe because I don't see it as a big deal, much less as the holy grail of meditation. ) Another quirk of mine: transmissions have to be personal, I can't possibly have an "online guru" or a book guru. "Like a candle lit from a candle" (Talmud), for me transmission of any teaching has to start with physical touch. (Well, I'm kinesthetic to the max in the NLP system -- not auditory, not visual...)

Chinese astrology's take: 40% of reality is destiny, written in the stars, can't be changed; another 40% is shaped by personal actions and choices (not thoughts); the remaining 20% is left to pure chance. Marcus Aurelius's take: "the body is flowing waters, the mind is dreams and vapors." My personal take: most people's thoughts shape their unreality.

Um... there's jing foods that aren't of animal origin, but if you use Deng Ming Dao as a source (which I would encourage, the guy knows his taoism way better than most "modern popularizers,") you will find he shuns "chronic" vegetarianism. Very few people in China have ever been vegetarians, and far as taoism is concerned, most sects will practice vegetarian eating periodically towards a specific goal, but none incorporate it "for everybody for all purposes." E.g., a Mao-shan sorceress will keep a vegetarian diet for a week before writing a talisman. Vegetarianism might be adhered to on a few specific days of the year; also four or five times during the year's transitional phases; also to "kill" strong sexuality when/if it interferes with other activities, or if you're a monk who's taken the vow of celibacy; also in very advanced age, late eighties on; also if/when a doctor prescribes it as a temporary targeted intervention for a particular disorder. By the way, these traditional jing-building foods are delicious, but very hard to find in organic shape and form (if it's factory-farmed, like any other meat obtained this way it is quite harmful of course, not because it's an animal product but because it's a product of human insanity). I don't know what happened in this country with this whole "yuck" idea sold to the population regarding organ meats, but the first thing that comes to mind is that it's yet another bit of racism/colonialism in disguise, since all indigenous peoples without a single exception (and, of course, all Native Americans who lived here before the land was taken away from them) valued organ meats above all other kinds of meat and rightfully so -- that's where all the jing and qi action is. In Mexico, when I dined with a local family rather than in a touristy place, I was served a shen food too -- fried brains!

The knowledge is from Xuan Kong (space-time) feng shui (authentic, not the "wealth sector" and "career sector" and the rest of the bogus stuff that has been sold to the West as "feng shui"), and feng shui masters used the name as an inside joke of sorts, meaning it will kill the feng shui master, or at least his or her career, to even take out the luopan for a client on one of these days. Here's a translation I have among my feng shui files (or should I say piles... haven't finished the Full Moon--New Moon cleaning phase of the New Year yet): Grand Master Yang's Inauspicious Dates (also known as Feng Shui Masters Killing Days) Translation: These are the 13 days passed down by deity There will be losses if having activities All constructions If not burned down will meet with disaster Marriage will not be long lasting and will not be "till death doth us part" People come in and go out on these days Though toil but the expense will be more than income If buried on these days the descendents will beg for food If on the way to one's post on these days There will be a lot of worries and (...) be dismissed/discharged Hope those who know will widely pass on to the world For their descendents will be prosperous and their good deeds will be credited to the next world. These are inauspicious dates we should avoid for major activities.

Man, very perceptive again! Yes. Among other things, these days act as traps -- they lure you into undertaking stuff.

Astute perception, Ian! February 6th was one of the 13 "Master Killing Days" of the year, which are rather important to keep track of in authentic feng shui. I keep the list of all these next to a wall calendar so that I know when NOT to schedule anything important. The most important things not to do on one of these days are "big" and "new" ones with lasting consequences (i.e., don't get married, don't start a business, don't move to a new home, don't make investments, close deals, sign contracts, start construction, etc.). Small things can get slightly screwed up too -- you might get blisters if you wear a new pair of shoes, you might get into a delay from hell if you travel by air -- but that's not as important as knowing to avoid doing the "big and new" stuff. I might post a list of the Master Killing Days for 2007 when I have the time to calculate them or else ask someone knowledgeable. (If anyone already has it and can spare me the math and/or the leg work, please share!)

Thanks for all the input, guys, and, Craig, SJ, I will look into shaking too, been meaning to... but I feel that I specifically need something good and energizing that is done "to me" and "for me" rather than "more things I have to do" The past four years, I've been doing "a helluva lot" rather than "not enough." There was a serious illness in the family, and that's where much of my qi and most of my life's energy and all of its focus went, mending it. My acupuncturist kept telling me that I "need things for myself," shaking his head and asserting I'm "using up more than I have." So anything that generates qi without my having to dip into the (already running low) pool of zhi is welcome in my life right now. That's how I try to design my practices of the moment -- the I Ching way, "the easy and the simple." (Of course my definition of "easy and simple" is not the same as someone else's, but the Qi machine is definitely in this category for anyone -- except I would still use the dantien focus or some other meditation mode when using it. I do it when getting acupuncture too, and even when swimming, and even when loading the dishwasher )

Interesting question! Sincerity is not one of the virtues of tao, far as I've been able to discern. (One of my favorite sources, the Ta Chuan or Great Treatise on the Changes, does go into "virtues of tao" in some detail.) Looks like "spontaneous, sincere lying" is part of how things seem to work in nature. E.g., there's a whole huge class of biological phenomena known as mimicry, which is used by thousands of species in an attempt to fool other species into believing they are what they really aren't. In appearance and in behavior, they lie and lie -- an insect pretending it's a dry leaf, a pair of butterfly wings pretending they're the eyes of an own, an ears-flattening hissing cat pretending she's a snake, a virus that tricks a cell into believing it's part of its natural milieu by simulating the kind of chemical signals to which the cell wall that is supposed to stop the alien invader responds like to an open-sesame... there's literally thousands of examples of this "lying game" in nature. And besides mimicry, there's thousands more ways natural things fool other natural things. Psychomimetic substances in plants that the brain mistakes for its own neurohormones. All creatures who make a living by arranging traps for other creatures -- the spider being a familiar example. Are any of them being "sincere" or not?.. Looks like "sincerity" is a concern of "the human mind," not of "the mind of tao." Integrity, on the other hand, is what all these creatures and humans alike need to have in order to be exactly what they are, no more, no less (that's another shade of meaning of "de" -- "true to self"). This "exactly what they are" seems to include, all across the natural spectrum, the ability to be insincere on occasion. So it looks like there's only one kind of insincerity that's not compatible with integrity and with te: lying to oneself!.. A hissing cat who pretends she's a snake still knows in her heart she's a cat. A butterfly with wings painted to imitate a staring owl's eyes, who scares away a hungry swallow by pretending to be something that can swallow the swallow, still knows he's a butterfly (unlike Zhuangzi who seems to be unable to decide whether he's man or butterfly in an often-quoted fable that, to me, illustrates the confused state of man in general, not of Zhuangzi specifically). So it looks to me as though "fooling oneself" is the kind of insincerity that would clash with "integrity," while "fooling others" for a good cause is not off limits... or at least to tao it isn't.

There's an English word that contains the concept and implications of Te in its entirety: INTEGRITY. It's not something that "happens," you either "are" it or aren't, "have it" or don't, it's the way you are organized, or not. Sean's "sincerity" is close, but also closer to the surface. "Sincerity" is an attitude of the mind, which one can take or leave, have today, change tomorrow, display to some people, refuse to approach others with; while "integrity" is the organizational principle of the body-mind-spirit as a whole that is (or isn't) present at all times and is not contingent on the particular attitude of the moment. That's what te is -- the way you are when you are whole.

Oh, I just realized something, QiDr -- you probably mean electroacupuncture machines which you compared to needles? The machine I was talking about is the one described above by Ian, the one that moves your legs vigorously (and the whole body, sublty) from side to side in a specific fish-tail-like fashion. (The makers of the Sun Ancon machine assert other brands fail to create the correct pattern of "primal" movement, but whether they are telling the truth I don't know. The Japanese guy who invented the machine was inspired, predictably, by his goldfish.)

Speaking of which, what do you think about using acupuncture on oneself? The three Chinese acupuncturists whose treatments I used at different times all said "no, not good," the two non-Chinese ones whom I asked the same question said, "sure, I do it on myself whenever I need it." I don't do acupuncture on myself (although I know enough of it to be able to) because it "feels unnatural." So I was trying to compare the Qi machine to other self-treatments, not to treatments of self by others. Do you do acupuncture on yourself?

I have Cleary's "Taoist I Ching" (a bit of an oxymoron there, this title! ), which is a translation of Liu I-Ming's version, and Liu I-Ming was a Buddhist till his old wise age when he converted to taoism, so the fact that he was a Buddhist thinker first is all over his interpretations of taoist concepts -- is this the version you had in mind, or is there another book that's called "Buddhist I Ching?" If there is, I don't have it, sorry. If you mean Liu I-Ming's version, I'll be happy to summarize how it tackles Hexagram 31.

Interesting, we seem to have similar bookshelves, Yen Hui! I have Wong Kiew Kit's books too, and Wilhelm-Baynes is the version I prefer to the ten others I have, although currently I don't read the commentaries much (beyond those of the Duke of Zhou), contemplating the images instead... Funny how different people can look at the same sources and draw quite different conclusions. Have you noticed that Confucius is concerned with having the child obey the parent, while Laozi, with trying to convince the parent to let the child be?.. And how buddhism assumes that "attraction," aka "attachment," is bound to cause suffering -- a view taoism never had? in particular, in the quotes you posted about "attraction" and "attachment" between heaven and earth being a natural law? Of course it is possible to reconcile the differences by fragmenting one's own consciousness, but a whole, unbroken, or else successfully unified consciousness notices that you can only have it all three ways at once if neither one communicates with the other two at any given point. E.g., you can be a taoist and study and practice, among other things, the magnificent natural laws of attraction of opposites (which include laws of repulsion, by the way -- taoism actually started as the discovery of magnetic forces, which tangibly go both ways). Or you can be a buddhist and study all those magnificent ways to pretend these forces don't exist, i.e. learning to "rid yourself of attachments." Or you can be a Confucian and just make sure the peasants don't rebel against the landowners, the women take a submissive position towards men for all purposes everywhere in society, and the children obey the parents regardless of whether they are being loved or abused, nurtured or violated. But to be all three all at once, one needs to be fragmented and not whole. The non-fragmented whole can't be put together ouf of parts that simply don't fit together... or as a Chinese proverb goes, "you can't get far traveling the river in two boats simultaneously by placing one foot in each." Let alone in THREE boats... My humble, of course.

Thank you, Ian. Yes, that's the name of the author, but the book I had in mind is "Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism." She must have written another one since (or before) that one.

Yes, her ideas came from watching non-cooperating cows suffer a lot more before they die, and feeling what they felt. Since it was not in her power to eliminate factory farming, she did the thing that WAS in her power -- helped eliminate the additional and excessive suffering of the doomed animals. She couldn't kill the industry, but to kill the overkill, which is what occurred to her, didn't occur to "normal" people who designed the equipment that was in place before her modifications. She also designed equipment for herself to alleviate her own suffering (she was in pain most of the time for most of her life, and on all known painkillers and antidepressants, which didn't do much), a "squeeze tube" to apply even, gentle but firm pressure to the whole body. She made it for other autistic people too, and for some, it was the first and only thing that ever helped. Now something that didn't occur to her but it did to me -- I think this "squeeze tube" of hers is designed to emulate the natural sensations of natural birth, which is a kind of necessary normal developmental stimulation -- not "too much," not "too little" -- "just enough" to serve, as mother nature intended it to, as the first and most imporant pattern of signals for the whole system to switch gears smoothly from prenatal to postnatal existence. Many autistic people (and many less severely affected ones) miss out on this "just enough" pattern in modern birth, and a lot of signals get scrambled for life.