nac

You've misunderstood Buddhism IMO. Half of us are at least interested in Buddhism. I am a Buddhist. Anyway, I hope you find what you're looking for. See ya!

True, thanks V.

You're already on the great Way. If you lose sight of it, just be yourself and you'll find it again. (or something like that) Have you read Chuang Tzu, Yang Chu and co.? http://www.sacred-texts.com/tao/index.htm Marblehead has an excellent series on introductory Taoist philosophy. Oh. Sorry, I know nothing about that kind of thing. PS. There are links and guides all over this forum, such as: http://alchemicaltaoism.com/ I'm not sure how it's supposed to lead you back to the Tao though.

By, um... being true to yourself and not doing anything unnatural that will make you stray from your path?

I'm convinced that I'm hopelessly deluded. Everything else is my teacher.

Sure. We can rarely know something with 100% certainty, but we can always make an educated comparison of probabilities can't we?

Don't Taoists believe in determinism? Or is that just a Chinese folk belief?

As long as you're leading a life of unadulterated simplicity IMO. Tribal nations don't need anything more. But not everyone is going to go back and live in "harmony with nature" like them. Like you just said, it doesn't matter what we choose to think or not. Whether we ask questions or don't ask questions can only change other phenomena from our own point of view. If we have incorrect assumptions about how the world works, we'll keep seeing the world through colored glasses. Besides presenting us with a subtly distorted picture of the world around us, this will incessantly mess up our skillfulness in achieving our goals. I can see three ways out: 1) accept the inefficiency and live with it, 2) give up goals altogether and live for the moment, 3) find out how the world really works. Eg. Replace cosmic-essence here with horse, truck, and so on: Assigning a mental prototype to an arisen experience usually involves a little dishonesty. You never know how much of the consequences will proceed in conformity with one's presumptions and mental pictures about the overall scenario. We're okay as long as we keep this in mind IMHO.

That's okay if you're not aiming for consistency of view. IMO, it's difficult to spot delusion if we refuse to analyze the interaction of phenomena, our views and behavior.

Yeah, he also lacks perspective, doctrinal understanding, the ability to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information and the ability to combine it into a coherent case. He makes several good points, but most of his conclusions are unfortunately pointless appeals to emotion. Still, I commend his dedication to ending ignorance and delusion to the best of his abilities. Last off-topic post. Promise.

Aw come on, everyone loves being the bearer of bad publicity. Don't you?

Awesome! Mind if I spread it all over the internet? Thanks in advance.

Irony is the gateway to higher planes of experience. Me too. Honest.

If you're looking for dirt on mainstream spiritual teachers, few sources are better than: http://www.strippingthegurus.com/ Warning: Don't believe everything you read, especially when the author begins speculating. Eg. students being unable to say no if gurus ask for sex, chewing pan making Indians meditative, etc. (that second one cracks me up )

Yeah, my brother said he won't let me use his PC these two days, but he's being nice about it. Yes, that statement's on the level of relative truth again. But if you agree with this, you realize that mentally assigning an essential "truck-nature" placeholder to a certain manifestation has no natural, inherent meaning in it irrespective of how one thinks about or views the situation, right? That sort of thing is usually meaningless to realists too. How are spirits or true self-natures consistent with your view? How do you see truck-nature, cosmic-consciousness-nature, etc as inherent in "nature" itself, above and beyond sentient experience? Wait, I don't agree with the rest of your post. Never mind. PS. Firstly because as Kant pointed out, existence is not a property. Mental concepts can't move in and out of "existence".

Exactly, Cosmic Essence is just a concept. Remember when I said we must be careful how we name experiences? I don't mind if you called one of your experiences the "cosmic essence", but I do mind if you turn around and assign properties to this experience based on what you've chosen to call it! (cosmic-essenceness) If I have an experience that subjectively seems like some kind of cosmic essence to me, I'd prefer calling it experience X with such and such properties that APPEARS TO BE the cosmic essence. This is a label I am creating to describe my experience. The experience arose due to it's own causes, it isn't going to magically conform to any prototypical ideals I assign to it.

Yeah, I knew it probably wouldn't make any sense. cya!

What does Taoism have to say on the subject of losing one's fear? I ask because it seems like an important concept in Buddhism.

Okay, let me put it this way: how do we know what existed prior to anything else? Cosmic-consciousness-experience or the understanding of DO? I don't think either did. I think both are man-made concepts designed to explain the experiences of sentient beings. The thing is, that is sort of what DO is ultimately saying. DO takes it's own arising and that of cosmic consciousness into account as understanding-phenomenon and experience-phenomenon respectively. As a whole, the process of DO would be beyond the grasp of cognition, direct observation or conscious control. One can probably explain things equally well if the cosmic consciousness is taken as an axiom, but it's problematic to accept something I don't find self-evident as an axiom, right? And if one doesn't fully trust "personal experiences" as innate truths, where does that leave us? The unknown possibilities of emptiness and studying the workings of consciousness and phenomena from scratch IMO. What do you think? PS. Sorry if I wasn't able to express myself properly and the above doesn't make any sense. It's well past 3 AM here. I won't be able to access the net tomorrow and the day after, so I'm doing lots of foruming in one go.

So I take it most skeptics will laugh it out of court? ;

If I'm not mistaken, Taoists teach that the cosmic void existed even before consciousness. Am I right?

What does mainstream science think of Hempel Effect? I mean, what kind of reception will it get in a skeptics forum?

About this "cosmic essence" business, I agree with the Buddhist tradition that this has no true existence outside one's mind either. We can conventionally say that we live in one whole cosmos, but this has no real meaning once we comprehend how phenomena arise before the consciousness from the web of Codependent Origination. The same thing that applies to each smaller lump of phenomena applies in turn, to the entire cosmos. See my post after this one. (the one you quoted)

Exactly, no one is negating the existence of beings. Why would any living, sane non-solipsist do that?