Zhongyongdaoist

Yes, I couldn't agree more. The problem with the Analects is that most people approach them as if they were the all there is to Confucanism, since supposedly they were said by him. The Analects is certainly not the first book anyone should read on Confucianism, since it is at best a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius, and while traditionally it is considered that he said all of them and then edited them into this collection, it is also traditionally believed that he wrote many other books which were studied to give these aphorisms context and deeper meaning, and then there are the books that are considered fundamental to an understanding of Confucianism, such as the writings of Mencius, and such works as the Zhongyong, usually translated as The Doctrine of the Mean, the Daxue, or Great Teaching, and other woks. I could go on and on, and if I have time maybe I will, but for now, don't read the Analects without context it can only be a source of misunderstanding. ZYD

There is so much superficial nonsense posted about Confucianism on the Dao Bums that it is ridiculous, with the same people who when questioned reveal that few of them have even a passing familiarity with the Analects, much less the all of the profound aspects of the Tradition, yet they persist in posting the same misconceptions even when corrected. The book that opened my eyes to the real nature of Confucianism was: Humanity and Self-Cultivation: Essays in Confucian Thought, by Tu Wei-ming This book through its "intensive focus on the Confucian process of self-cultivation, noted author and teacher Tu Wei-ming aggressively explores the spiritual dimension of this tradition" provides a look at the insides of Confucianism and reveals a profound landscape in which the human and the divine find a common ground, and can flower in the most remarkable ways. If you really want to understand Confucianism, this is the book to read. ZYD

With all due respect Shubin, as a person who has studied both Chinese Alchemy and Western alchemy since the early Seventies, I can say with certainty that the dictionary definition to which you refer is so superficial as to be misleading at best: The key here is the notion of "universal elixir", which in practice was considered both red (Dan) and a pill. Used in the metallic realm it transmuted base metal into gold, taken internally by people it cured all diseases and rejuvenated the person who took it. As such it is the Western Equivalent of "外丹", Weidan. Going a little further into the resources of the dictionary you cite, following the link to synonyms and further to the link, View synonyms, we find: Which certainly corresponds with the purported goal of Chinese Alchemy. Now when I say that I studied Chinese and Western alchemy, I mean that I had the resources of works on Chinese Alchemy by such authorities as Nathan Sivin and Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China, but in particular I had Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga Alchemy and Immortality, which I read and reread many times with the intent of answering the question, "Do the meditative processes outlined in this book have a sufficient connection to alchemy as conceive of and practiced in the West to merit the name alchemy?", and the conclusion to which I came over several years of reading, rereading and reading again and intense analysis of the Texts lead me to believe with high certainty that the procedures outlined in the Taoist Yoga text did indeed bear a remarkable resemblance on conceptual levels, and in many ways they had enough resemblance to the stages described in the Western texts, that they could be described as an "internal" realization of the same principles that were put forward as the basis of the external work done in a laboratory. For me to justify these conclusions would require a significant digression and exposition, which I do not have time for now, nor is there really space in this thread, but which I hope to put forward at some point in the future, however, based on those researches I have to say that Daoist Alchemy or Chinese Alchemy, as it was also practiced by Confucians, seems a good and not at all misleading translation for Dandao as a term that includes both Neidan and Waidan as separate but complementary aspects. ZYD

I'm sorry about the delay, the staff member who usually handles more technical questions like this is on personal leave, and we have not yet adjusted to that. No one about whom we have received reports has made complaints such as you have made, which implies that the reporting system does not interfere with the editing or posting process in and of itself, also we have received no recent reports about any of your posts anyway and so they would not be in the reporting system, which therefore couldn't be interfering with your attempts to edit or correct text. I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble with your text box, but it doesn't seem that it has anything to do with the reporting system. Is there anyone else reading this who is currently having problems, or who has problems similar to this and has a suggestion for what the problem is and how to remedy the situation? Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

To clarify, in the US, the Anglican Church, AKA, the Church of England, is called the Episcopalian Church, and you can find them all over the place in the US. However, none of the things that rideforever has mentioned have anything to do with Anglican theology and what an Anglican or Episcopalian is supposed to believe, but then the Anglican Church did produce Alan Watts, and they never expelled him for all of the "Eastern" things he talked about, why should they get huffy about the reductionist scientism that is apparently making its way into the Church. To the Anglican the ritual, even up to the Eucharist itself, is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and Spiritual Grace", if you perform it or otherwise participate in it, in theory that Grace will eventually manifest, and if not, well then you at least tried and after death that will be taken into account, as long as it was done sincerely. That is what the "covenant" is all about, and you are not going to understand anything about this without understanding what Romans and Anglicans believe about the covenant, and how it works. Roman Catholics and Anglican Catholics, yes, they do consider themselves to be Catholic, have related, but sufficiently different ideas about the "covenant" and what it means, to have been arguing about it for centuries. I don't believe any of this myself, but you have to understand what the leaders of these sects believe about the "covenant" to understand their attitudes to ritual and its performance and efficacy, and why they believe, rightly or wrongly, that it will be effective for ultimate salvation. ZYD

Staff Notice Staff has reached an agreement with Sifu Terry/zen-bear and Earl Grey that Earl Grey will be made a co-Moderator of this PPD to relieve some of the burden of keeping it on track from Sifu Terry. Sifu Terry expressed complete confidence in the ability of Earl Grey to be co-Moderator. He now has all of the editing ability for this PPD and he should also be treated with the respect due in regard to his running of this PPD as Sifu Terry/zen-bear's appointed representative. From what I understand Sifu Terry will continue to check in and personally answering questions as time allows. Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

Well said. This is what I would call awakening. But everyone knows "they" are aliens, don't they? or haven't you put them on? ZYD ZYD

Just a reminder for those who have forgotten. My favorite Synphony: and this wonderful piano piece whose first section, with its intense Sturm and Drang proto-Romanticism, anticipates everything that Chopin was to do, and finishes with a fugue which summarizes all that went before in a way that only Mozart could do: While the YouTube page credits Rudolf Serkin, a great master in his own right, the picture is of his son Peter, and I am almost certain that it is Peter Serkin's performance, since it was Peter Serkin's recording of this which introduced me to this wonderful piece given to me as a birthday present a little closer to 50 years ago than I care to admit, and this sounds too much like that recording and it is difficult for me to believe that Peter Serkin would have imitated his Father as closely as the resemblance would require, but maybe he did. ZYD Edit: Added link to Sturm and Drang for those unfamiliar with the term.

Frankly, I thought that many posts appearing today were unhappy posts and decided that a better way to spend the days was to celebrate Mozart's Birthday (Schubert's too oddly enough) instead, so to start off here is a favorite for almost fifty years, who would have thought that such an odd and ungainly instrument should be such fun? Feel free to post away, I may post more.

So, what is the basis of this "magical authority" that I keep talking about, and which is symbolized by the magican's wand? Cornelius Agrippa makes this clear in Chapter Three of the third book of his great compendium of magical theory and practice: Simply put, without this "dignification", one is not practicing Magic, in its "brand name" sense of Magic as it was conceived of and practiced from the Hellenistic period through the end of the Renaissance, and at least a little beyond. I usually call this form of magic Classical Magic and differentiate it from neo-Magic, the result of a revival magical practices that started around 1900. One can certainly produce "magic" like effects through "energized enthusiasm", working oneself into an emotional frenzy and sending it off to have an effect, but this is not Magic, it is sorcery, witchcraft, shamanism, whatever you want to call it, but it is not Magic, and if you have achieve sufficient dignification you don't need emotional frenzy either. Here is an interesting story about a very Magically dignified individual, or at least according to the story he would be: If you are curious, and if you are interested in how Magic is practiced then you should be, you can go here: Plotinus, Our Tutelary Spirit on Wiki Source I recommend this because ideas very similar to some that Plotinus puts forward in this work appear, albeit dressed up in Qabalistic guise, in the Adeptus Minor teachings of the Golden Dawn. I could make references to that, except that the material is too dense, technical and complex for anyone without a sufficient background to read with a satisfactory level of understanding. Of course if anyone with a sufficient background asks, I can refer them to the necessary sections. In modern magic the way that this dignification is trained and achieved is largely through what is called the Middle Pillar practice in either its ritual or meditative versions. It is possible using those teachings to obtain the necessary dignification, if you know what you are doing and practice it correctly, however even the original Golden Dawn teachings teachings leave out important aspects of Classical Magic, however when the Golden Dawn ritual system is used within the full context of the Occult Philosophy as expounded in Agrippa's work, the result is very satisfactory, but lacking this during the Twentieth Century the tradition was significantly degraded. I hope this gives at least some idea of what Magical Authority is, and basically to recap, it is the realization of the divine potential that inheres in every human being. This belief in the divine potential of human beings is common to Western Pagan and Abrahamic traditions, as well as both Daoist and Confucian traditions in China. The methods of realizing this potential are different, but the result is the same and is why in China and the West, the Magician's wand and its Chinese equivalent, are a symbol of authority, like a sovereign's scepter. ZYD

In my previous post I intended to show that there was no rigid relationship between magical instruments or weapons, and any of the elements, rather these instruments are symbolic representations which, in traditional magical theory at least, had a deeper relation which might be called "resonance" with the represented elements or other power, and was more than that of mere suggestion, as modern interpretations would maintain. However, I left some matters insufficiently developed and that bothered me to the point that I resolved to write something to clarify this by further examining the nature of both fire itself and magical authority and how they relate. I worked out the outline and sources, but then became too busy to put them into a coherent form, this post and my next one will deal with these matters before returning to the question of the polarity of left and right in Chinese and Western magic. In volume II of The Hermetic Museum, in the second part of Michael Sendivogius' "The New Chemical Light, Concerning Sulphur", is a treatment of the four elements, and while I read many such treatments of the four elements back in the Seventies, this one stands out in my mind and was very influential to my later thinking, as I suspect it may have been to the founders of the Golden Dawn, and very likely influenced A. E. Waite's treatment of the Kings as seated on a throne, since Waite was definitely aware of the text, the following being his translation from the Latin. On pages 137-38 we find the following discussion of Fire: "out of fire of an inferior purity were created the stars" In my previous post I mentioned that the Golden Dawn adepts Lotus Wand was related to the Zodiac, since the Zodiac consists of stars which are created of fire, this is a further link between the Wand and Fire. "and of it is fashioned the vital rational soul, which distinguishes man from all other animals, and makes him like God. This rational soul <138> was divinely infused into his vital spirit by God, and entitles him to be regarded as a microcosm, or small world by himself" This brings us to the notion of what I described as "magical authority", and in the Abrahamic strand of the Western Tradition, magical authority is derived from the human resemblance to God, while after the fall it is dormant, like fire in a flint, but can be stirred to action through the appropriate procedures. As noted above I will talk more about this magical Authority in my next post. Here is an interesting quote from Alexander Wilder's translation of Iamblichus seminal work on Theurgy, usually referred to in its Latin title De Mysteriis, On the Mysteries: All of which points to the ancient notion of the sacrality of fire in both Abrahamic and Pagan traditions. With this background it is no wonder that in the initiatory rituals of the Golden Dawn, the officer of Water says, "I purify thee with water", and the officer of Fire says, "I consecrate thee with fire", and thus to the initiate is revealed, right at the very beginning and repeated over and over again, one of the most important secrets of practical magic, whether he or she picks up on it and realizes how to use it in practice is another matter. In the above discussion I implied some of the traditional relationship between fire and and magical authority, which could be the basis of a magic wand as a scepter and representation of the magician's authority, in my next post, which will follow shortly, I will examine the notion of magical authority itself. ZYD Edit: Fixed a problem with line spacing. Edit: Changed an wrong "of" to a correct "or" in the first paragraph.

Wands seem to me to invoke the intellectual and mental nature of magick more than the Sword. Swords seem to me to invoke destruction and transformation/breaking things apart than the Wand. Also, "fire" and "sword" are often mentioned together in the Bible and are referenced in the Gospel of Thomas as well. This seems far more intuitive than the Wand's association with the will and the Sword's association with evocation. This being said, the sword in Daoist magick has more of a universal function, if I understand correctly. So you're right about these things being culturally and geographically situated. Thank you for clarifying your thinking, I shared some of Nungali's misgivings about it, but decided to address the matter of the Loshu first and leave swords and wands to him. Having seen this answer, and granted it is only a quick summary, so far at least I find it superficial and noncontextual, so let me provide some context. Let's start with the wands association with the "will", as I have said here: begins with the early Nineteenth Century reframing of magic as primitive Mesmerism and the wand as a directing instrument of the animal magnetism through the mesmerist's will following the usage of Mesmer himself. The original purpose of the wand is rather more in line with a royal scepter, or other "staff of office", and thus refers not to the will, but the authority of the magician to perform his rites, which is why the second Psalm, as a remembrance of the divine adoption of man, is used as a preparatory in the grimoires. On the other hand the sword has a very direct association with evocation as military magic, even to its origin in the Roman Military rite of evocation: So that the Wand and Sword represent the different aspects of the divinely bestowed authority of the magician, the wand authority and the Sword his threat of force for noncompliance. While this Military context is not clear from the grimoires, viewing Goetic Evocation within the context of military magic has suggestive implications for the notion of spiritual warfare, and also to the references in some grimoires to the operator and exorcist, or the probably related karcist (I am relying on my memory, which is generally reliable, for this, but given time I could come up with suitable references. I remember being puzzled by the usage when I first saw it in my teens a long time ago.). Within the context of the Golden Dawn which you reference there are two wands for practice, the Lotus Wand which is for general purposes and specifically for working with the element of fire the "Fire Wand", which takes the shape of stick with a flamelike drop on one end, thus resembling a candle, a very suitable symbolic reference to a positive manifestation of fire. The Lotus Wand of the Adept on the other hand is dedicated to and consecrated by the powers of the Zodiac, and the Lotus which surmounts it is specifically a symbol of the Tetragramaton, and represents the Divine Lordship of all within the confines of the Zodiac. Again within the Golden Dawn context, there is a Sword and an elemental dagger, a lesser bladed weapon with the sword being dedicated to the Sepirah Geburah and its manifestation Mars, all of which reinforces its martial interpretation and use in "Military Magic" and thus evocation. The dagger is purely an instrument for working with the element of air, with throwing knives being one possible example. That said, in the decades in which I have studied the traditional systems of four, five, six, and even ten elements, I have read enough to be able to understand how many things could be useful symbolic representations of them in different contexts, and am loath to get dogmatic about the matter, and also, I always prefer creativity anyway. Chinese magic also has it military magic and its swords are usually dedicated to and consecrated by the Seven Stars of the Dipper. There are symbolic ones made of peach wood as well as metal ones which are usually engraved with or otherwise have representations of the Seven Stars on them, but aside from that the Daoists have a large number of magical weapons ranging from staffs to magical whips. Indiana Jones might have found the last to his liking, they might have been helpful in the Temple of Doom. Well, that's all for now, I will try to get back to the Loshu and divine/human polarity shortly. ZYD

I have many posts on Dao Bums which deal with this type of thing both Chinese and Western, here is one of them: I am very busy right now, but I will try to have a fuller discussion at some point. ZYD

I am very busy right now, but I will try to have a fuller discussion at some point. ZYD

And your familiarity with Plato is what exactly? Have you read any of the dialogs, or even a competent introduction to Plato's thought? Or are you limited to quoting polemical rhetoric from rival schools, that you have picked up somewhere? These are, as far as I am concerned, merely rhetorical questions, I am not interested in your answers because it is obvious that you are already a "born again" worshiper of Diogenes and have closed your mind to all else, whereas I am not a worshiper of Plato, and in point of act when I first read Plato in my teens I thought it was ridiculous and said so for more than a decade. During that decade I did a lot of work with spiritual traditions both Chinese and Western, I am not some "academic intellectual" who is contents simply to talk about such things, I have done everything I can to live them, both then and in all the time since. It was only when I had to look deeper into Plato to understand the thought of others writing centuries later that begrudgingly and over a period of years, during which I read the dialogs and works about Plato and ancient Greek philosophy, and yes even all six volumes of W. K. C. Guthrie's A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), that I began to realize that there was actually real value in his work and ideas, and I respect that work and the person who wrote it, and I would respect anyone who had a real and informed criticism of it. Just to show to show yourself and others how much you don't know: Diongenes was a mere child when Socrates was executed in circumstance too complex to detail here, so your chronology is all wrong, and he seems not to have staked his life on anything, except possibly eating tainted octopus, or playing with vicious dogs: And yes, I do know why the notion that he died of "an infected dog bite" can probably be dismissed as polemical rhetoric from a rival school, and I have the sense to avoid such mistakes, whereas you apparently don't. Based on what you have said and the mistakes you have made so far I see no reason to respect you or your criticism, either of Plato or of myself, with that in mind I see no point in continuing this discussion. ZYD P. S., I had written all of this post before discovering, as I noted above in the first quote above, that the rideforever had changed the ending and maybe other aspects of his post, but I hope that what I have already said makes clear that I am not someone who is merely clinging "to Plato's legs": I was a rigorous and independent thinker, as well as spiritual explorer, for several years before I read Plato the first time, when I was "sixteen going on seventeen", and misunderstood him, and practiced as I noted above, for over a decade, before I studied him the second time and gained a better understanding of him. I was practicing yoga when I was ten and read Aleister Crowley when I was twelve, as well as books on Tibetan Yoga when I was thirteen or so, these and other works including the Tao Teh Ching, as it was called at the time, were all things that I read before I read Plato and they also colored my own interpretation of and subsequent rejection of Plao. I could say more but I don't see a point in doing so and will draw the matter to a close now. I have other things to do with my time than comment further and in point of fact must head out to do some of them now. ZYD Edit: Corrected a spacing problem in the last paragraph of the P. S., I literally had to run out the after posting it door to meet some commitments.

I am sorry, but you completely misunderstand Plato, who unlike those others you mention, never yelled at anyone, rather following the lead of his teacher Socrates, he asked them questions, questions designed to bring out the presuppositions and logical consequents of anything which they were proposing, thus bringing them to criticize their own belief systems in ways that they usually reserved for other peoples belief systems and possibly to realize that their belief system was just as silly as those that they rejected. I have tried to clarify this in an introductory thread on Plato I started a few years ago: Back in the early 1980s I was reading Plato in a public place and a guy came up to me and said that he had started reading Plato himself a while back and said “You know, I think I know less now then I did before”. To which my reply was, “Good, you're making real progress” and then I explained to him what I am about to explain here. Socrates "Ritual" is that of the lesser or prefatory mysteries and these are rituals of purification or "catharsis" as the Greeks would call have called it, from which which get the medical term “cathartic” and derived meanings, such as a “cathartic experience”, in which clears out a lot of junk and resolves issues. Socrates “cathartic” ritual is designed to clear the mind of false and conflicting opinions, and that is why I categorize some of the dialogues as “cathartic”. What I call the “cathartic” dialogues are those which are usually referred to as the “Socratic” ones, supposedly Plato's devoted portrait of his master doing what Socrates did best, which was ask niggling questions, and yes it is certainly that, but there is also a real purpose to it and that is made clear in the following quote from the Sophist: This quote is long enough, but gets the basic point across, anyone can read the quote from the Sophist by following the link and then reading the rest of the post. I hope this clarifies at least one problem with this discussion which is otherwise, like discussions all over the internet, a hopeless muddle of unexamined presuppositions and ignored consequents and, as such a mess way more complex then I care to address. ZYD

OK, thanks for the clarification. To me it sounds like you are doing well with this, you have some basic knowledge, thinking about it you have some ideas, you have experimented and got results which you have analyzed and noticing "strange" side effects you stepped back for further analysis, and have already worked out some new ideas on the subject, looking to investigate further, you've decided to join Dao Bums in the hopes of getting some good feedback and direction for further study and research. Does that about sum it up? ZYD

I have watched this conversation a little bit because of a historical interest in traditional uses of anger for magic and energy development, it has a long tradition going back to shamanic techniques rooted in war magic and warrior training. Let us be clear this is weigong, external cultivation, and not neidan, which requires inward training and complete calm, and so some of the criticism voiced so far, are not relevant, if greatsaiyaman is only interested in weigong types of practices. I have emphasized some passages in greatsaiyaman's posts to show that he seems quite aware of what can go wrong, and wants some sort of serious discussion on the matter, not advice from people who have not paid much attention to his posts, but want to lecture him about them anyway, though they have raised some valid and good points, I prefer to listen to someone a little longer before I start to either praise or criticize their ideas or actions. So, taking as a starting point, greatsaiyaman, why do you "believe that anger can be transmuted into raw spiritual power. I also believe that anger can be just as useful as love."? Is this something that you have read about, tried and found successful, is it something that you are learning from someone, or is it the result of some spontaneous experiences that you have had? Where I have seen this type of thing done in a Chinese context it is usually done after a fair amount of training, and more often then not either in a martial arts setting, or in some cases, Chinese Sorcery, in both of which extreme and potentially dangerous training methods can be used, with that in mind, the one thing I will say upfront is that someone who is trying to do something like what greatsaiyaman is talking about, should have a good knowledge of TCM and preferably be under the guidance of a teacher to avoid problems, which from what I understand, can be very difficult to recover from if things have gone too far. ZYD

The Sage doesn't rule as ordinary rulers do, by buying loyalty with rewards, or gaining submission through fear of punishments, he rules by De, 德, virtue a "power" that as I have noted earlier achieves its end by bringing all things to their highest potential, this is the type of power that the Sage in his Wisdom values as he realizes that rewards only encourage greed and a grasping nature, and punishments develop obsequious and fawning behavior, which may only be front for resentment and eventual treachery. These are species of deformity, and not the best that people can be, only a virtuous Ruler can bring out the best that people can be and realize genuine omnipotence, the real power to achieve his ends and not the faux power which the ambitious King or cruel Tyrant seeks, and this genuine omnipotence is achieved only through self-cultivation. Going back to the Neiye, there are many sections of interest, but I will start with these as indicating how "omnipotence" is achieved: This character, 德 de, "virtue", rendered as "inner power" and since in the last line, 果, guǒ, is fruit, it might almost be read as as saying that virtue allows "All the myriad things, to be plucked like fruit", an image probably intended to convey the ease with which the Sage governs, though taken at its worst it's right up there with "straw dogs". Since as the text affirms: 14 Rewards are not sufficient to encourage the good; 15 Punishments are not sufficient to discourage the bad. rewards and punishments are not an effective form of government, so the Sage Ruler who possesses the 全心, "unimpaired mind" does not rely on them but relies on 心氣之形, "The perceptible form of the mind's vital energy", what we might describe as a "charismatic" ability to influence people, based on, but I don't think limited to, visible manifestations: 3 It will be known in your countenance, 4 And seen in your skin color. to achieve his goals, for once he/she has a stable mind, "All under the heavens will listen". It is interesting to note that the Neiye emphasizes both speech and listening in some of its teachings, so much so that I came to the conclusion that it could be taking about a technique of "efficacious speech", a way of talking that is rooted in an inward understanding of what it is that the words are pointing to, and which the Sage understands and can connect with, giving his speech extra power to convince people to act on them. The basis of these powers is the cultivation of shen, 神, and it seems that omnipotence is rooted in omniscience. I will talk about that in my next post. ZYD

I'm sorry to be so long to getting back to this thread, but in terms of what I was looking at, it was starting to expand in a lot of interesting directions, most of which would be interesting expansions, but way beyond what I had originally intended, and worthy of its own exposition. Also I had also been putting off things that needed attention and I finally had to take care of them. So I spent several hours yesterday going back to review what I was working on a week ago and after thinking about it will probably work on a separate discussion of it and will try to wrap up what I started here soon and should be able to start posting the conclusion of this by midweek, it still may take two or three posts to conclude. ZYD

The French Doctor after whom the guillotine is named invented it as a "humane" alternative to "Breaking on the Wheel", and as such I think most would agree that it was an improvement. In one of those ironies of history during the Terror, Dr. Guillotin almost met his end on the machine of his own devising. ZYD

i am actually interested in this part. How can the 'work' be not seen? Is he an invisible sage or something? Well, maybe he could be invisible if he wanted, but his influence is not visible except in those affected by it, but since he does not draw attention to himself and his influence is like gravity or for that matter like light itself, the source of all visibility, is invisible and only in many ways a deduction from its effects. The sage through his self cultivation has achieved the realization of the li of Dao and as such like the sun which radiates the light which is necessary for the growth of plants radiates another Light which penetrates many things, and helps those who are open to its influence in ways that they may not know and perhaps could not even imagine. In order to examine this I will have to return to discussing the Neiye, something which I will do in my next post. As long as you find my posts interesting, and I hope that others do also, I will continue. For those interested Mr. Woon has discussed his ideas at some length in his introductory post, where among other people responding to his proposed interpretations, dawei our admin, has asked the type of questions that I would ask. Since his ideas about wuwei are examined there, I don't see much point in discussing them in detail here. ZYD

I am rather in agreement with your position and took Transactional Analysis as a basic model to which I gave a Fourth Way " many 'Is'" expansion as a teenager circa 1967-8. Much later I was to discover the psychological interpretation of Plato's Republic as outline of personality and possibly guide to psychological integration. You might find this link to a post by John Ubersax, a contemporary Christian Neo-Platonist of interest: Psychopolis: Plato’s Inner Republic and Personality Theory When I was writing my series Plato and Platonism 101, I recommended more of his posts as part of my introductory post, if you like the above, the links in this post may be of interest to you: Ubersax is, as I said, a Christian, and I of course am not, but he has an excellent understanding of Plato in a contemporary context, which is why I did and still do recommend him. ZYD

I would also be upset at "being called a (New Age) holist", I might jokingly call myself an old age holist, but more accurately, I am a Rationalist with no fundamental ontological commitments, but whose "working model" of reality has been "Platonist" since around 1980. Based on my analysis of the problems which face modern physics, I believe that a strong case could be made for the reintroduction of formal causes and that they could be modeled a hyper dimensional "forms" which guide the symmetry breaking that leads to the experience of "common sense" reality. Naturally this model could also be used to lay the foundations of a fundamentally scientific understanding of "such fairy tales", if by science you actually mean those doctrines which have been explored experimentally modeled mathematically, and can actually be considered to be the source of modern science and technology, and which is different from "modern materialism", which is a set of dogma's that was not the result of scientific investigation, but rather of the revival of Epicureanism in a religious setting by Pierre Gassendi where it made significant inroads into Seventeenth Century Protestant thought within this religious framework, and where it was part of the religious beliefs of such people as Newton, Locke and Boyle, deeply religious Christians of a nonconformists, in its original meaning, orientation. It was also adopted by such libertine rakes as John Wilmont, the second Earl of Rochester, hardly a person who made any significant contributions to the foundations of experimental science. I could go on and trace its development through the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, through Diderot and the Baron D'Holbach and Karl Marx and the "left Hegelians", but that would take us as far afield as ancient Chinese Cosmology. In short as much as "materialism" may have become an accepted dogma among late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century scientists, such materialism was never a part of experimental science, but rather a norm that became imposed on scientific investigation for extra scientific reasons. All of which can be shown by suitable citations of accepted scholarly works in the history of science and philosophy. I have taken the time out for the above to make my own position as clear as I can in a short space since it is a rather unusual one, and definitely not "new age holism", however strange it may otherwise seem. With that in mind if you are not interested in an approach that could lay the foundations for a Twenty-first Century scientific understanding of wuwei, but rather only concerned with reductionist interpretations rooted in the Nineteenth Century, I will be happy to be free of the responsibility of finishing my discussion and absent myself from this thread. ZYD

The problem is probably not with this interpretation of wuwei, but with the underlying cosmological assumptions of ancient China in which there existed a lost Golden Age under the "rulership nonrulership" of the ancient Sage Kings. A return to rule by Daoist sages using wuwei would mean a return to the conditions of this time and an end to all strife by the harmonizing influence of the Dao. The fact that moderns would dismiss such "magical" thinking doesn't make it any more appropriate to assume reductionist notions are useful for understanding what the author intended. I don't see much point in discussing the matter further at this time, as it would lead far afield into matters early Chinese cosmology etc., with which I don't care to deal right now. ZYD