Peter Jennings

You make the same mistaken contradictions I have already detailed that TTC scholars repeatedly make in their misunderstanding. You didn’t actually engage with any points I made. You labeled it as if I have fallen into some sort of “beginner’s trap,” and assumed I don’t understand anything and implied I’m outsourcing my thinking to AI which is 100% wrong. As I've said, I can explain it all because I came to these concusions on my own, then just found later that TTC fit the same system I discovered. If you'd like to have an exchange of information, let's do that. I don't have time now to reply to all the others, I will get back to them in the future, have a nice night.

Hi, not sure what you're talking about. I'm not using chatbots to understanding anything. I have my own framework, then it just happened to be the case that TTC happened to align with what I already discovered as true. I don''t think you read or understood at all what I was saying.

I did do chapter one, it was in my original post!

Haha, thank you. If I talk like a Taoist, it is only because I discovered the same concepts that Lao-Tzu wrote about. I do have some strong disagreements with the way TTC scholars interpret the book. If you had any particular chapters that you thought were especially interesting or confusing, point to it and I can break it down. That might be fun and informative.

Hi, thanks for the reply. Basically, I take it that your stance, which is what I am saying I really disagre with about TTC, is that, Dao is nothingness + potential. Correct me if that's wrong. What I would say to that: If Dao is “nothingness with potential,” then it already has properties. If it has properties, it is not nothing. Therefore the concept contradicts itself. To explain further why I reject this, I have to assert the ground assumptions my formulation works from: Logic is the foundation within which anything that does exist can exist. For example, something cannot exist and not exist at the same time. The creator must abide by logic. Logic also shows how this idea of "nothingness" is literally impossible. How can nothingness be anywhere? If you had something to point to, it wouldn't be nothing. There is only one creator, there can ever only be one creator, because if there were two, that means there is something more foundational containing both. This idea of 1 and 0, is absoutely central to my framework. It is how reality operates. Binary code. Everything in reality fits into this binary. Materialists try to argue that matter came before consciousness. Spiritualists try to argue that consciousness came first. There is the Creator—the One, which is the only true existence—and everything else is simply the appearance of not-Creator. This does not mean there are two opposing forces, or a cosmic battle between equals. It also does not mean there is such a thing as actual nothingness. The “1” here means the display of the Creator as something apparently “other,” not a real rival or a true void. This is the distinction: the binary is between what is, and what only appears to be. So I'm literally saying these ideas about nothingness are mistaken perceptions of what the TTC is saying. Once scholars accepted: “You can’t use Dao as a method”, they then presume: Therefore nothing causal is accessible at all” At that point, “nothingness” becomes a safe presumption since it avoids prescription, it avoids responsibility, it avoids causal claims. So I'm saying, this is literally just wrong. The same error shows up almost word-for-word in Advaita Vedanta. They take the same insight then make the same incorrect leap in assumptions. Specifically I'm talking about this Advaita Vedanta concept of there is "no-doer" of actions. But Advaita is dead wrong about this and also about the 'no-self' claim. What I am saying is that there is a doer, you are a 'doer', but it is not the doer who makes anything happen. There is an intermediary, what I call 'the mirror'. This mirror is a go-between, it is what 'makegs things happen', and it can never be manipulated. Although, it can be influenced, but, only indirectly, and in very subtle ways that took me years to figure out. I get that I introduced a bunch of new concepts but if I am to explain how I arrived at these conclusions, these other concepts need to be addressed. ---------------------------------- edit: I read this back and felt this explanation about was probably confusing to people about 'no-doer' vs 'doer'. To simplify this. It's like, a computer programmer writes the code, but the CPU executes orders based on that code. So, you are the doer, it's just that, the doer emits signals, but does not directly control how those signals are converted into outcomes. The mirror is what converts the signals into outcomes. The mirror can only be influenced via constraint compatible signals. This is why anybody who tries to understand reality gets so confused, because these constraints are very difficult to see. Lao-Tzu literally wrote in chapter one: “These two arise from the same source but differ in name. Together they are called obscure. Obscure upon obscure. The gateway of the many subtleties.” ----------------------------------------- If people actually can list some chapters that they think are especially confusing or unclear, it would probably be pretty interesting for me to break those down and explain them, that way we can get on the same page, because, obviously this reply was very dense! I do appreciate the thoughts!

Hello, my name is Peter. I've spent the last four years of my life basically studying causality (manifestation, what causes what), and over that time, I’ve been figuring everything out about how reality works. After I discovered how things work, I started comparing the framework I had created against other frameworks in history. To name a few who I thought deserved honorable mention: Krishnamurti -- No one can lead another to truth. I thought when he said, authority, teachers, traditions, methods, teachings, and even his own words as obstacles to the truth the moment they are followed as gospel rather than integrated into one’s own being. Each person must see directly for themselves. Truth cannot be transmitted, packaged, or received second-hand. Maharaj -- No teaching can deliver truth to someone. Words function only as pointers. Liberation does not occur through belief, practice, or accumulated knowledge. Nothing is more true than “I am that I am.” Any other attempt to point at anything else is an abstraction. Each of those guys touched a part of it. There were others who’s explanation of what reality arises from, like Baruch Spinoza, and Meister Eckhart, who I agreed quite often with each, but no one else I was able to find except Lao Tzu who truly explained the concepts in a way that actually made sense under this framework I’ve stumbled upon. In terms of my own history with this TTC book, I can say that I did own the book for many years, but always perceived it as lacking pragmatism (from my younger perspective), so I read it, but it was never something I dug my heels into. But now that I’ve found how close the book actually was to the truth I independently discovered, I figured it could be fun and interesting to share these recognitions with others interested about this cryptically worded book. I can actually explain what it means at each stanza in each chapter. (Let me add, I’m not some kind of great genius, I just have the capacity for critical thinking and an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. If not for my relentless drive to question myself and my life and the events that happened to me day by day on end for dozens of hours per week for months and months and years, I’d never have figured it out. I find this guy Lao Tzu, if he actually did live as a person, to be so much more brilliant than I am, because I never would have figured out anything he did without the aide of chatbots, so my saying he’s wrong about anything is not a dig, it is just, I am privy to information that he wasn’t.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Here’s the chapter 1 explanation: “The Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao. The name that can be named is not the constant name.” The Dao is the way causality responds. Tzu clearly understood that our thoughts, words, actions and motivations are all being read, and outcomes manifest as a result. Tzu understood the fact that attempting to use this knowledge to force positive outcomes creates negative outcomes. That’s why he says the Dao “cannot be spoken.” , What he was actually saying is: The moment you try to explain how to ‘use’ the principle that governs outcomes, you violate it and block positive outcomes. So taking this thought and following through just to the 3rd chapter, I have to say, I do believe very strongly that the text is not in its original form. For example, a massive contradiction occurs already in the 3rd chapter and does get repeated at multiple points throughout. In the first chapter it is made clear: one can’t speak about the thing because once one does, it becomes corrupted. Then, in the 3rd chapter already, it’s making “prescriptions” for how rulers should rule. What a joke. There’s no way a guy who was awake enough to have written the 1st chapter ever could or would ever have written the 3rd chapter. They are completely antithetical ideas. And based on the way we can see how our modern day “rulers” lead, we all know, the victors write the history books. You can’t say that truth corrupts the moment you explain its mode of operation, then also prescribe how rulers should rule. Any prescriptive instruction about how to act “in accordance with the Dao” is already a violation of the Dao’s principle. The rest of Chapter one: “The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.” The Dao (causality) is prior to consciousness/matter Matter is the ten thousand things that can be named. “Always without desire, one observes its subtlety; Always with desire, one observes its boundaries.” Yes exactly. When desire is governed by fixation, everything else gets blocked out, you can’t see clearly. Tzu says, if you’re without desire, you can see how the Dao works. “These two arise from the same source but differ in name. Together they are called obscure. Obscure upon obscure. The gateway of the many subtleties.” My take on this is, Tzu understood there was an order to how things were happening, but he used this term “subtleties”, because he couldn’t be sure what was and what wasn’t causing what to manifest or not manifest. I can be pretty sure because those are the things that drove me mad for years trying to understand., which I never would have if not for very specific life circumstances. ------------ What are the subtleties? They are what I would call constraints, like, inside a computer simulation or computer program. The constraints we are privy to are: Ownership. Management. Manipulation. Fear. Victimhood. Shame. Guilt. ---- Flatly: Incoherence. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wu-wei does not mean “do not do, force, act, or exert, ever.” Wu-wei in actuality means, “do not do, force, act or exert, in any ways that violate the constraints.” ================================================================================== If anybody would like to discuss anything about this, or talk about different chapters or stanzas, I’m open to it if it’s interesting.