Trunk

~~~ Admin Statement ~~~ Now closing the thread. ~~~ Admin out ~~~

I’ve been watching “The Hustler”, 1961 black & white starring Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, more… The cinemetography, the writing, the music, the editing, … I’m about 2/3rds of the way through and have to stop because THIS IS A CLASSIC, omg this unusual and so well done.

Quoting the above simply to re-emphasize and agree. Thank you to those of you that came forward. I will close this thread later today, or tomorrow. I want to allow a little time here at conclusion for those directly involved to say anything else if they want to. - Trunk

Just to be clear: My intent is & was to be supportive to those who've gone through difficulty, who've directly participated, but to caution others' involvement, who weren't there, from piling on with conjecture and layering more confusion onto an already difficult situation.

#1 & #2. You bring up good points for my consideration. I respect and have empathy for those involved who've been ill-effected. (Though I don't claim to know *any* of the particulars of that group.) Thank you, and I'll undoubtedly be thinking about this. And I hope that members can connect with each other and brain-storm solutions. #3. It was a general statement, not accusatory. I did not have you particularly in mind. This was in response to private conversations re: this issue, not in response to any specific post in-thread.

~~~ ADMIN STATEMENT ~~~ This is one of those situations where admin's discretion is appropriate. While there is appropriately some room here for people to acknowledge SOTG's passing, and dynamics around that group, decompress a bit from whatever direct personal interactions (positive and/or negative) ... and I genuinely respect aspects of that process. ... but there is a measure of things ... I do NOT want to stir this up into a whole additional thing here on the board. Not a research project nor ... any new big anything. Please don't expand on it. 1. My understanding is that SOTGs has passed on, died. (... according to the statements from the two linked websites.) 2. Identity links between SOTG's and other/s I find suspect, at least one I factually and completely disagree with based on direct personal experience. Going down a rabbit hole of theories on this and whatever other thoughts, investigative journalism, character analysis or other ... Just don't. Not here. My opinion - which, in this rare case, I'm making official - is that it's not good for the board. - Trunk TheDaoBums admin ~~~ ADMIN OUT ~~~

You HAVEN’T WATCHED “IN BRUGES”!!????!!!!! oh, god, one of my favorite films! In Bruges The Graduate Confessions of a Dangerous Mind … but I didn’t come here for that! Here’s Jerry Seinfeld talking about TM, long interview. Pretty cool.

Special thanks goes to Jose, @liminal_luke's partner, for putting the 2023 Year of the Water Rabbit banner together! Jose does graphic design work, and his business is promoted through his facebook page (the language is spanish on fb, but there are plenty of graphics to enjoy, review Jose's work): https://www.facebook.com/focaazul36 Please give a round of applause to Jose for his contribution to our community!

Happy holidays to all Dao Bums! Thank you for sharing community ... taking a few quiet moments to review, take in, way too much to write out. a few thoughts Some years ago I read an intro post in the Welcoming section. A mature married man who lived in Ohio or Pennsylvania, who had an esoteric book collection in his basement. Only his wife knew of it; too incendiary for the local community. And TheDaoBums was a real boon for him, an outlet where he could talk to someone. And I think of how my path has benefited - in many ways - from this community. (thank you, @zerostao) And "it ain't the 80's any more". I look around at the number and quality of teachers readily available, and same of practitioners in our community. wow. There *is* progress. And I find that this time of year is reliably a feeling~dynamic of reviewing, refining, consolidating and renewing alignment and vows going forward. I wonder what any of you do during this time of year? How it feels to you? happy holidays, Trunk p.s. I'll probably keep this thread pinned through the Chinese new year.

Special thanks goes to Jose, @liminal_luke's partner, for putting the banner together! Jose does graphic design work, and his business is promoted through his facebook page (the language is spanish on fb, but there are plenty of graphics to enjoy, review Jose's work): https://www.facebook.com/focaazul36 Please give a round of applause to Jose for his contribution to our community!

Thank you for posting this. I didn't know he'd passed.

… just my personal journey … When i was first introduced to meditation, the primary orientation was toward stillness, emptiness, sky of mind, letting all images and thoughts become irrelevant in favor of … nothing, lol. So, that was the basis and I still appreciate that as basis in meditation. Visualization seemed contradictory to the above and I was wary about visualization on that basis. I’ve found that skillful visualization of the pearl to be helpful, and integral with, fosters the basis of emptiness. reference: the enso essay at johndaoproductions.wordpress.com https://johndaoproductions.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/enso-emptiness-and-the-deep-centers/

This is a neo-western, not an enlightened movie … (hmmm… maybe I should change the title or tag/s of this thread) … anyway, ”Hell or High Water” movie 2016, Jeff Bridges, Netflix. Watching it for the 3rd or 4th time now. It keeps revealing itself. No clip does this movie justice. The trailer ruins it, portrays it totally wrong. The superficial plot is common: brothers go on a crime spree. The clips on youtube are over-actionalized ... HOWEVER, omg! This is a slow painting of a poor region of modern Texas; it’s a regional essay that reveals itself, colors, step by step. The dialog comes off as natural, but is beautifully and thoughtfully written. Every seemingly casual incident adds, The characters have depth, the character arcs vary, are of interest, and reveal themselves slowly. (vs, say, “Thor”, where we know the full character from the poster). The relationships are meaningful in themselves as well as figures to inhabit, colorize … maybe the main character, that local culture and time. The craft of this whole movie… just really wow well done.

~~~ admin statement ~~~ Staff sprinkling some groovy vibes and general rules reminder. - Trunk ~~~ chill out ~~~~~~~~

Kaihe, Welcome to TheDaoBums! - Trunk

ladies and gentlemen, Tom Waits!

Politics, "Current Events", provides a huge whole additional topic area to get into intense conflict about. (Sometimes it's smooth sailing, other times not.) Staff decided to make the whole area invisible to members by default, so members can focus on what this site is about: internal arts cultivation. If it were "read only" then all the political posts would still show up in everyone's "unread content" list. This way is much cleaner.

Yup. That, exactly; it's been done before. Sure, no problem. Just let me know for how long, whenever you decide.

Welcome to TheDaoBums! There are a number of good systems/teachers around these days ... More than one person can keep track of, but Two of the teachers of high quality that I'm aware of: Sifu Chris Matsu of Dragon Gate Sanctuary Damo Mitchell of the Internal Arts Academy cheers, Trunk

Nefarious activity is not welcome. Impossible to name all the variations…

It's fine for people to promote their ideas and products, here. (Sharing pirated material is discouraged.) This whole site is about discussing various such stuff, so you're good here. Activities NOT considered spam: all cool, quite welcome here - Having a thread about a product/method (yours' or someone else's, all good) - occasionally mentioning/discussing same in various threads - discussing same as a out-right torrent in your own Personal Practice Section What *IS* considered spam?: (basically: really going overboard) - constantly posting your product/school in Welcoming Section "hello" threads (occasionally, appropriately, is fine) - constantly posting same in every frickin' thread all over the board! - Trunk admin, TheDaoBums

I can tell you that I don’t want to consider another case right now. Consider us pooped for a while, please.

Welcome back @ChiDragon!

Oh, *yikes*. My personal pt of view has always been the opposite: nei gong = fundamentally a spiritual development, that is incidentally used in the asian martial arts. I'm not super clear on which schools are Daoist, and which aren't, but ... Just sort of this cultural linguistic stream: anywhere you see the term "nei gong" it's likely that an integral martial art is somewhere in that system. That does NOT mean that nei gong is inherently martial, and you can (and most modern people *do*) practice these (xing yi, bagua, tai chi) without martial emphasis, often with no martial application at all... maybe push-hands among friends, if you're lucky. THIS: There is really specific, effective body-changing in the daoist internal martial arts that is *very* helpful towards integrating transpersonal energies & awareness (spiritual stuff). A lot of consciousness junkies (meant in a good way, with a wink) get into this area for this reason exclusively. Trunk

Similarly, the martial part of all this does not interest me, either, however … You’ll find that in many internal arts traditions there is: - a medical~health aspect (hinduism: ayurvedic medicine, Daoism: Chinese medicine, etc) - body-wisdom-discipline (yoga, martial arts) - spiritual (meditation, etc) In the Daoist internal arts, often all three (martial, health~medical, spiritual) of the above are embodied in their ‘martial’ arts, specifically: - tai chi - xing yi - bagua Personally, I really have no interest in the martial aspects of any of those, but I’ve found the practice of them for other purposes to be very very rich. I think that’s a pretty common interest and experience of them, these days. So, when you look up neigong, that’s why you’ll find it very interwoven with the Daoist martial arts but - probably most of the time - people are learning & teaching those arts for the body-changing and conscious integration that is part of the spiritual path. cheers, Trunk