Nintendao

Primordial chaos? Lego bricks strewn everywhere? Let's build something new.

Hi, here's the lines from daodejing 16 that this got translated from: 復命曰常，知常曰明。不知常，妄作凶。 I never saw chang (常) called as a pivot before. Most often it gets translated as "eternal," as in the famous "fei chang dao / not the eternal dao," of chapter one. So that makes sense it would be like the fulcrum, the unmoving center. How cool that finding this version led you to that light bulb moment with the seesaws! Speaking of light bulb, another notable word here is ming (明), translated as enlightenment. Pictographically it is a sun and moon, meaning brightness or clarity. For context here's the whole page i've snagged from the googlebooks link

slam dunk!

Before the other guy showed up asking about immortals, i was going to say: Asking a purely academic about Tao is like asking a car salesperson about engines. Are you still so reluctant to throw your questions to us grease monkeys?

Here is a legible one, but it's the reworked version. 修真圖.jpg (1315×2802) (kamlankoon.com) An in-depth transcription is here: Phoenix Road Institute| 炁 Jindan Avenue Research Association: Realistic Illustration (Zhang) (Complete) (phoenixtao.blogspot.com)

Life best uncorked How they get the pear in there! Start when small, then wait?

Space Smugglers Adventures in Emptiness

Orch OR seems compatible with the Lime Jello effect, as it attributes consciousness to more fine-level processes than the neurons-as-transistors paradigm. While a bowl of jello may exhibit similar electrochemical capacity to a brain, it lacks the complex structures needed to conduct quantum coherence. There's something about the molecular geometry of microtubules that could play a role in guiding probabilistic potentialities into finite reality states. Hence the "Orchestrated Objective Reduction," or Orch OR. This even allows for the idea of brain as merely an interface between the sensory realm and a continuum of consciousness-like events woven into all of spacetime. Neat stuff about the Henry More!

The Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR theory correlates non-local quantum phenomena with the tubulin structures in living cells. https://galileocommission.org/the-quantum-soul-a-scientific-hypothesis-hameroff-chopra-2012/

Great thread! I guess the answer depends on just how nuanced are we able to get, when it comes to categorizing and describing the actual structures in question. In the most general level, it makes perfect sense that all energy bodies be the same, as much as one could say that all humans' physical bodies are the same. Even all mammals are the same to a certain extents, and so on. On the other hand, take any two people on the planet and you will be able to find at least some level of quantifiable differences in their makeup. Some differences are purely genetic / inherited diversity, but as noted above there are tons of variables that can develop in one direction or the other, depending on what practices we do and for how long. For example it's obvious that someone riding a bike to work every day is more likely to have powerful legs than someone who only takes the bus. Someone who eats a lot of vitamin E might benefit from a healthier skin condition. Furthermore, "everybody poops," but depending on what we eat, there can potentially be quite a range of colors and textures. Usually this is not a big deal, but is certainly of interest in some specialized fields of study and medicine. Likewise, every life creates a subtle body (or vice versa?) but the precise measurement thereof gets to be a bit tricky..

I once aced a Comparative Religions course at community college. Does that count?

So much for moonlight Reflected gold on still pool Fleeting unless calm

Wow three thousand years later and this bop is still pretty relevant. Just replace the slave with a corporate yes-man or similar. Those Sumerians really did have a finger on the pulse of what makes a civilization tick. I wonder if there was a catchy tune to go with it back then.

Ban can be associated to the IP address as well. Probably someone in the past had used the same kind of VPN to break the one-account-per-person rule or other mischief.

Tangential to the actual topic, but in case any want to learn a cool thing about plasma (or possibly a fun party trick for the holidays 😇) Edit: i got to thinking, wait a minute i think i posted this here before.. turns out is was exactly one year ago yesterday. Might as well make it a holiday tradition. Deck the halls and zap the balls! Except I don't own a microwave, and most people don't like when i do this in their kitchen, for some reason.

It's like how Tao Teh Ching 48 says, Learning consists in daily accumulating; The practice of Tao consists in daily diminishing. Keep on diminishing and diminishing, Until you reach the state of Non-Ado. (Wu-Wei) One example comes to mind, of how when you first learn to do chi kung, there might be a lot of movements to remember, while conditioning the body, but once unlocked true movement-in-stillness, the more it looks like you're just standing still.

It's a significant milestone as we continue to transition into Age of Aquarius. Here's an optimistic bit of related astrology

Now wait a minute - I know I'm lying in a field of grass somewhere So it's all in my head -Eric Burdon and War

I haven't read that one.. might check it out soon. I do remember seeing someone on this site say that at least part of what John Chang could do was legitimately similar to whatever an electric eel does to build up a charge. The light and sparks may very well have been the exact same kind of plasma any of us would have seen when getting zapped by a doorknob on a dry day, albeit with quite a different level of intensity and control. I'd venture to say that such an ability surely involves the use of chi, but not necessarily that chi is the "stuff" being put into the ball itself.

Bruh that's wicked practical. I will claim that it adds up with the Awareness is Space paradigm, though. Visualization is a funny thing, like, what all have you actually added to your movements, simply by concentrating on them, yet, you have added something.

Hmmmm 🤔 I think you might be technically correct about that. I mean on some level there has been found a physical something to this nothing. During the friction of my fingertips on the handle of the top as I spin it, there is an exchange of "force carriers" amongst the various blobs of atoms. But these are virtual particles, packets of quantification assigned to interactions between energy fields. They are proven to exist by direct observation only after accelerating them to such an extent needed to split the atom! Even then they very quickly literally disappear back into "space" from whence they came. Of course even the atom itself can be conceived of as a persistent harmonic of various forces. But that is getting way into the weeds from this topic. Or is it? Wonderful thing about energy, its readiness for transmutability. With something easy to perceive like the spinning top, we can trace a crude path of conversions from the object in motion, to the electric impulses that moved my muscles, to the chemical energy of a starch I ate, to sunlight received by a produce plant, to nuclear fusion within the Sun, etc. all the way to the Big Bang. Not to mention the web of ancillary processes and perceptions along the way to make each step possible. Again into the weeds I go, and this is still pretty elementary stuff. Okay now we're getting somewhere. Those science-friendly forces, they happen to interact with relatively inanimate objects. A compass needle, an LED light, a test tube full of chemicals, a large hadron collider. Each modality has its medium. The medium of chi however, is life itself.. Awareness..

In order for the photon to exist, there must be both an electric field and a magnetic field propagating off of each other (like a yin-yang) but the magnet field exists whether anything is moving through it or not. To think of it in terms of another familiar form of energy: kinetic. If I take a top and give it a spin, what have I actually added to it? The answer is obviously "energy," but as far as substance, nothing!

Chi maybe more of a force, instead of a substance. Thinking of a much simpler example: the magnet. I'm not saying chi equals magnetism, but for comparison. We can tell that the magnetic field exists, and measure its various properties, only because of its effect on other materials near the magnet. What if I ask you, what is the magnetic field itself made out of? Empty space!

Legendary Jupiter Saturn conjunction appearing this Solstice! https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/great-jupiter-saturn-conjunction-dec-21-2020 https://www.pbs.org/video/what-a-great-conjunction-december-21-december-27-yjojyc/