OldDog

From the Ho-Shang Kung Commentary, Dan Reid translates as ... To depart from life is to enter death The companions of life are thirteen The companions of death are thirteen In their way of living, people approach death-traps By way of (these) thirteen Why is it so? Because they live lives to excess I have heard that those who are good at absorbing life Travel the land without encountering rhinoceros or tigers That they walk into groups of soldiers Without requiring armor, or soldiers, for protection The rhinoceros has no place to trust its horn The tiger has no place to grab with its claw And the soldier has nowhere to place his weapon Why is this so? Because these people are without any death-traps Thirteen is cited to mean the 9 apertures, the 2 hands and 2 feet. Death-traps are taken to mean that death enters through the thirteen by way of excess indulgence in the pursuit of life pleasures and experiences ... by the way people live. Living a life of naturalness and spontaneity protects one by not exposing one to risks in pursuit of excess.

I look at it this way ... Any way of thought, be it animistic, theisic, scientific or spiritualistic, is an attempt to discribe the same unity and should not be discounted or disparaged. They all have the ability to inform.

Thank you! The pdf on noncommutative operations in consciousness studies explains a lot. In particular the introduction sets the stage for distinguishing the two points of view; I.e. commutative vs noncommutative. There are sufficient examples that allow a lay understanding to emerge. One of my take aways is that those immersed in the operational mechanics of the math often are unable to grasp the implications ... a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.

Soooo ... how does one that is not well versed in advanced math gain a working perspective on noncommutative logic and its general implications? I have always looked to likes of Hofstadter (GED) or Hawking (Brief Hx of Time) ... talented mathematicians and physicists with a knack for being able to reduce complex subjects to layman's terms. Is there someone working the realm of the noncommutative that has the knack?

That makes sense to me. I am a strong adherent to the cyclic nature of Dao ... day/night, seasons, etc ... why not life. We are born, we develop and mature, we go into decline and we pass away. Our bodies return to earth, our energy/spirit goes elsewhere. That we are human is just one expression of the possibilities in Dao.

What the heck does this mean? Kill-site? Far as I can see none of the other translations mention anything that could resemble this. Is Hinton drawing from some obscure interpretation of the original source material? Thoughts?

Yeah, I have struggled with the idea of immortality, as well. Taking it literally does not make sense. I often wonder if what is meant is not more like transcending mortality ... but that does not sound quite right either. Then there is the notion of what I call supramortality ... if that is even a word. (No claim to coinage .. may have heard it somewhere) Something like what Marblehead is getting at. The idea of conservation of energy has always appealed to me. So that after the physical body returns to the earth, where does the energy go? Does it retain any of the distinctness or individuality of the physical instance that once was? Or, does it just merge with the energy pool of the universe ... ready to be drawn in the next instantiation of life?

Yeah, suspending/suppressing may have been a poor choice of words ... left the wrong impression. In the translations above it appears to me that as often as not the sagely mind is being compared/contrasted with the mind of the ordinary people. Ordinary people are judgemental. The sages mind should be without judgement. That is the point I was trying to get at ... however poorly I may have expressed it. Only Flowing Hands hits the right note for me. The Sage is at one with the Dao, his mind is open and uncluttered. I am not.there either ... just an ordinary judgemental individual.

I thought I saw somewhere on the TDB site a resource page that listed various books, texts or links to content of interest ... sort of a reference materials resource. Does such a place exist? I cannot find it, so either I am mistaken or just have not found it yet.

For me this is all about suspending the impulse to make judgements ... which is a hard thing to do. Survival mechanisms are intended to work quickly. That's one thing but many other judgements are just habitual. Considering the unity of things ... how things are leveled in in the Dao can help break the judgemental habit.

No, please, no proof necessary. I am still reeling from our exploration of complex/imaginar numbers! All matters of correctness or non-correctness aside ... I do find these kind of discussions interesting. It's just that my attention span threshold is much lower than it used to be.

@voidisyinyang btw ... Speaking of books on strange applications of mathematics ... I am reminded of the book Goedel, Escher and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas Hofstadter. Have you (or anyone else for that matter) read it? It is an interesting exploration of mathematical principles found in works of art. Kind of a fun read.

Complex numbers ... imaginary numbers ... noncommutative phases ... the mind boggles! Although it is beyond my ability to deal with such things, I am fascinated by those who can. Is it not amazing that there are those who have so trained their minds ... in concepts that so defy practical representation ... that they are able to freely and seemingly consistently be able to discuss them? How much like a sage are such people? Not trying to be facetious here. I find it interesting that there are apparently so many people on this site ... seemingly disproportional to the numbers found in the ordinary world ... that have some level of capability in such discussions. Interesting group of people here.

Ok, did not mean to offend. There is absolutely nothing wrong with honoring those that have had a marked influence on your life. I also, carry memories of influential individuals from my life, often based in things they have said. In fact, I deliberately incorporate many of those into my working manner of expression. Kind regards.

Really? Is there some reason not to identify the Jed Stuart you quoted on several occasions? One of the things I like about this thread is when I read a particularly memorable quote I can look up the person quoted and learn about them ... who were they, what was the social, philosophical context for the quote. On more than one occasion, this has lead me to look at the figure more in depth and delve into other writings. Did not mean to provoke a fire storm ... but I honestly don't know who you have cited.

Only Jed I know of is Jed Clampett ... Weeee, dogie!

Ok, I'll bite. Who's Jed Stuart?

Ugh .... think I'll pass. Topic is getting a bit weary since I am having a hard time relating it to anything practical.

Speaking of singer songwriters ... Don't know if y'all are familiar with Robert Earl or not ... been around a while but still immensely popular here abouts.

AMEN! Sooo ... the i that can be told of is not the real i. ... just needed a way to bring this discussion back around to the general topic of the forum.

The red-a,green-b analogy is a good one for helping dispel attachment to i. Still, attachment is strong. As a young person stuggling with concepts in mathematics, algebraic rules were hammered in at the expense of geometric concepts. Looking back on the education experience, there seems relatively little that connects geometry with algebra. Indeed, it was not until a class in Analytic Geometry that the two began to come together. So, back to the quote above. It would seem then that statements of the form a+bi ... or perhaps just the bi part ... cannot be manipulated using the rules of algebra. I say that as sort of a hyperbole. This discussion seems to make clear that we should not be thinking of i as anything other than a form of notation to indicate the presence of a component that cannot be resolved. As such, it cannot be manipulated using algebraic rules.

Yes, but remember, life too short for bad coffee.

Does this mean that i with a coefficient of 0 is a non-zero value thus requiring the term to re retained.

Thought just crossed my mind. Is it not possible, while performing operations such as addition and multiication, on expressions containing complex numbers, to have complex terms cancel out? Thus yielding results without a complex term.

Except for the pure beauty of mathematics ... I am not really seeing an application. Its been said that mathematics is the language of science. Guess what I was hoping for was a language of philosophy. I may end up joining Marblehead out on the porch pretty quick.