Zhongyongdaoist

As one of the "bouncers" at this esteemed watering hole, I would hate to see a long derail develop here. I suspect that Brian found Gerry's talk of the "quantum weeds" dismissive and indicative that Gerry knew not of what he was speaking, and is trying to tell him to put up or shut up. Hmmm . . ., might I ask you gentleman to take your disagreement outside, before it seriously interrupts the flow of discourse on Laozi's Chapter Five, a long time favorite of mine by the way, perhaps by starting another thread on the topic of entangled quantum weeds and how they trip up materialist presuppositions that go back to the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicureanism?

A while ago I posted this: And BaquaKicksAss, who use to post with us frequently, posted the instructions below on baths: I could write my own instructions on baths, but couldn't improve much on these, the only thing I would suggest is not using Van Van Oil, but the herbs I suggest they are readily available and inexpensive, adding a little lemon oil or peel, but definitely not juice, to the mixture is a good idea especially in the case of depressed moods, or darkness, my nick name for lemon oil is "liquid sunshine". Starjumper's advice is also workable "rage magic" and has a long history, going back to shamanic war magic, and could work: Though unless you have experience working in this type of thing I wouldn't recommend any intoxicants, as they can open you up and make self control a little more difficult. if you read Fangshi's post: You will see that anger played a large part in dispersing the oppressing energy. My suggestions are a little more gentle, and probably better for people without much experience. If you have no particular Deity that you care to invoke, my personal recommendation would be The Heavenly Lord Taiyi, about whom I posted in my Personal Practice here: The Heavenly Lord Taiyi Where you can find a good picture of him that you can download and print if you want, and some comments about him.

Since in your other thread you mention problems with full lotus and stretching, you might find the exercises in this book good: Awareness Through Movement by Moshe Feldenkrais Which I discovered about 1977, while I had done yoga on and off in my early to mid teens in the Sixties and qigong and Daoyin type exercises since the early seventies, I was by ordinary standards pretty limber, but I found that not only did these exercises produce great results, the results lasted whereas before, if I stopped doing exercises that "stretched me out" for a while, I had to work to get back to that higher degree of limberness, on the other hand years later in the 90s my students were flabbergasted that I could get in and out of Lotus postures with ease and sit in them for hours. Oddly enough these exercises did nothing for my neck and shoulders in spite of have some good exercises for that, but my neck and shoulders were a real problem area until I learned enough about Chinese medicine to know the herbal combinations to take.

Goatguy, I am glad that you posted this, and also that you returned to us. I had looked at some of your earlier posts and found them interesting, but having no real interest in Gnostic texts, such as the Gospel of Thomas, per se, I did not participate in them. I find the Church Fathers more interesting, however, the whole Hellenistic melting pot in which Gnostic, Orthodox, and Catholic forms of Christianity, as well as the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo of Alexandria, which I believe to be the ancestor of Qabalism, and also the Hellenized versions of Egyptian and Chaldean/Babylonian traditions simmered away, has been a long time interest of mine, since the late Seventies in point of fact. I also find your discussions of sensus plenior interesting, though I do have some misgivings about it, however, I do find the concept of it possibly relevant to the origin of Qabalah. So I hope that you are going to stay around, as I have thought for some time that we might have some interesting discussions. I have been very busy lately and often find myself so, but I do hope that you will stick around and we can have some interesting discussions.

I told you that: What did I say here? I said that it was an informal statement, by which I meant that it was not part of a rigorous discussion using exacting descriptions, this is why it first says: "it’s the only substance that allows its solid state to float in the liquid state," and then disagrees with itself by saying that: "and in contrast to most other liquids, water unbelievably expands when it is frozen." Which of course confesses almost immediately to the inaccuracy of the first statement by qualifying it, and then describes this phenomena as an unbelievable expansion, but of course, it is, as a commonplace observation, neither unbelievable, nor unexplained, being based on the type of crystal structure that water assumes when it freezes. Which is the type of thing one learns in high school and college chemistry. Well, at least the part about crystal structure, you can observe ice floating around in a lot of places. All of which taken together, especially the qualification, is why I didn't find the statement problematic, though I did find it poorly written. I then explicated some of the aspects that I either didn't like about it, such as the use of the word “substance”, which I thought too broad, since it would include all sorts of things that would require special considerations, and two other linked concepts, “liquid” and “room temperature”, which I thought should have been made more explicit if one wanted to speak more rigorously, to exclude such things as metals, with which you mentioned being able to do it, so I mentioned mercury, the only metal that was liquid at room temperature. If you want, you can research whether frozen mercury floats on metallic mercury, and it might even make a fun piece of scientific trivia to know, but the relatively rare property of what is probably the most common chemical compound on earth, as well as one essential to life as we know it, is usually considered kind of special, which may explain the author's overly enthusiastic discussion of it. I certainly wouldn't have written the passage the way author did, but I did the best I could to explicate my understanding of it in a few words. I am sorry if I was not clear enough for you, and I hope that this clears the matter up, because I don't intend to put any more time into this.

It is a relatively common statement, but an informal one and a generalization at that, which is talking about "substances" that are "liquid" at "room temperature" and except for mercury, metals are not liquid at room temperature, and taken as an informal generalization, can be regarded as more or less correct. Or more simply, I have heard it for years and know enough from high school and college chemistry that it doesn't raise a red flag as "new age" nonsense.

Not so much missing as misplaced: The text the text in the article has put the text that I bolded into the previous paragraph between the beginning of suprisingly and its end, creating the odd sentence: and starting the next paragraph with: a rather odd beginning. So there you have the odd end of a good beginning that became a surprisingly distributed middle. (link provided for those who don't get the logic of the joke.)

I wonder if thelerner is referring to this one: Buddha in Persia I am almost certain that I originally saw this comparison of the two bird men in that thread, but it is not there now, and no sign of it being edited out, but Nungali says nasty things about Father Crespi there also in relation to a post by Gendao. In any case the thread in spite of its beginning with the idea that the Buddha originated and Persia and ended being, if not exactly for the birds, then for the bird men. ZYD

Nice of you to drop by, I hope all is going well for you.

I posted quite a bit in this thread earlier, most of which was in defense of Professor Johnson and his work, as well as his understanding of Neidan. I have watched the recent posts as they have developed from here: Ormus February 27, 2017 and have thought of replying, but I have been very busy, and I also decided that it would be good to review my previous posts and look at some of the other posts which I have posted on Professor Johnson's work, before weighing in on the matter, and also to review my copy of his Daoist alchemy book. I have finished those preliminaries and I hope that I can clear up some of the problems here. First of all, it is a big mistake to lump Professor Johnson with anything derived from Mantak Chia as is done here: While certain aspects of Professor Johnson's material uses visualization like Chia does, he also has material, such as that dealing with Daoist ritual which goes way beyond anything in Chia, and deals with very advanced aspects of the cultivation methods of the Shangqing and Lingbao schools, which goes so far beyond anything that most people here can appreciate, that it is almost a waste of time to discuss them, though I may try to explain it and its relation to Neidan anyway. What material he does have that is like Chia's is best thought of as Weidan preparations for the deep meditations which are the basis of Neidan and a close reading of his work will reveal ample reason to support statements such as this: Now qicat has not explicitly stated that she studies with Professor Johnson in this thread, but she did in her introductory thread, so simply based on that, it would be a good idea to take her word for what Professor Johnson teaches, I will simply agree with her, that he does understand the difference between Neidan and Weidan, however, I will also say that my overall impression at this time, is that he never makes that understanding completely clear in so many words in his books, so that someone who only possesses his books and has not dug into them deep enough, can be forgiven for believing that Professor Johnson believes that Neidan involves visualization and similar practices. I have a lot of background in this dating back to the early 70s, and I have more that I could say, and consider this is just a preliminary post. I hope to be able to say more shortly, but it will depend on how time works out for this.

We're certainly not denying that some men, or even that a regrettably a large majority of men can be total jerks, what we are skeptical of is whether your posts in their original form contributed anything to a dialogue about male/female relations, since denying that men can feel love: tends to imply that there is no point in talking further about the matter. Taking out the "D" word is meaningless, denying their humanity by denying that they have capacity to "love" is a conversation stopper if ever there was one. thank you Tuesday you put it in a better words than me anger blinds... I understand that perhaps in some lalaland in 'Merica there are happy lands, but around here it is so bad, it's questionable of it's reality. As how can humans be so two-faced. How can one praise Lord and rape children at the back of the Church. How can one pray to Holy Mother and worship her and treat his wife/girlfriend/woman on a street with such disrespect... How can one pay male 1 dollar and the female only 70 cents for the same job???? What happened to the "heart" and "love" Gerard was talking in the first post? Where and when did it all go wrong? Perhaps it is all my clouded perception...but then there is a whole bunch of those like me... Anger does cloud perception, but that doesn't mean that you are wrong in your perception. One of the worst things that anger does is narrow the search for solutions, indulged in for too long and it turns to hate, and then all positive, solutions, those involving the possibility of growth and insight are lost. I think that the search for where it went wrong is misplaced, it may never have been right in the first place, what we need to focus on is can it be made right, and if so how? I have my own ideas about that, but this is not the place for them.

qicat regarding these posts: Just a quick and friendly note from one of your friendly neighborhood mods, misandry is no more acceptable around here than misogyny. A while back we suspended a very vocal misogynist which you are aware of because you posted in the mod log here: There are a large number of views from the other side, of which this is a classic statement: Evolution has played some very mean tricks on thoughtful people of either sex who try to have honest authentic relationships. I hope that you will rethink your position, or at the very least edit your posts.

Goatguy, good to see you back, it is nice to see a prodigal son among the goats.

It took longer than I thought and I didn't open the thread, but I did finally post a review of this book Daoist Talismans here: Review of Benebel Wen's The Tao of Craft in Group Studies

I bought this book mostly to learn how to design my own fu, which is a Chinese style talisman, and in that regard I am not disappointed, in other regards it is a little disappointing, but these are more because of personal inclination, and should not dissuade someone else, but more of that later. As a reference work for creating fu, this book is very useful. It discusses in detail the traditional forms that fu take, In other words the basic blueprints with which fu are designed, and then provides a very complete guide to the symbols with which these blueprints are then filled in to “furnish” the fu, these are apt metaphor's because one of the traditional forms that a fu takes is called its “house”. The book itself has a detailed Table of Contents and an index, both of which are useful in actually studying a book on a practical level. The detailed notes at the end not only provide extra elucidation to the text, but valuable online links to such sites as the Chinese Text Project, for some of the traditional texts that she cites, greatly increasing the value of this book as a starting point for more profound levels of study. A fu is a Chinese talisman, and it is useful to ask what a talisman is, in this regard the etymology of the Western term, talisman, is rather interesting and also provides insight into a deeper level of understanding of what a talisman should be. Talisman comes from the Greek work telos, meaning end or goal, and as talismans are also symbolic in nature, the talisman can be considered to be a “wish list” of sorts in symbolic form, but if that was all it was, well it wouldn't be much would it? No, a talisman is intended not merely to be a wish list, but something which helps to make those wishes come true, and this is where the magical part comes in, because this symbol once decided upon and prepared physically, must be made efficacious, or “ling” (灵, líng, efficacious / effective / to come true / spirit ) as the Chinese call it, and this is where the various methods of “empowering”, to use Ms. Wen's term, and a fairly good one it is actually, because it covers a lot of more specific procedure's, such as “charging”, “consecration” and others very well, and she also provides in her books some good basic beginner methods to empower talismans. Now this business of empowerment is important because the whole idea is to make the talisman from a symbolic representation into something that has “causal” power to bring something about, in this case the fulfillment of ones wish to obtain a desired goal, which brings us back to telos and the notion of “final causes”, at its most profound and interesting a fu, or talisman, must become empowered to act as a “final cause” within ones magical activity, but more about final causes at the end of this discussion. How are fu empowered? They are empowered through ritual actions, and Ms. Wen provides a good enough introduction to basic ritual, including a large selection of tradtitional Chinese tools of magical ritual, as well as basic ritual procedure, as well as invocations, mostly in mantra form, for calling upon higher powers, ritual “movements”, which in Chinese magic will often involve actually stepping through various cosmic patterns related to such important sources of power, such as the stars of the Big Dipper, or the Nine Stars of one form or Chinese astrology, and a short discussion of “mudras”, or “hand seals” as Professor Jerry Alan Johnson calls them, which are used to control and direct the flow of qi in the ritual. Now ritual is a very misunderstood aspect of these types of activities, and now is hardly the place to get into the details of how and why it is a good thing to know and practice, but having literally decades of study and experience in the practice of magic, I can only say that it is definitely worth the time and effort to master. Now as to what disappointed me about this book. Well, since my personal bent is Daoist, there is simply not enough Ritual Daoism in it. No Heavenly Lord Taiyi, who is an extremely important god in Daoist work, a god of compassion, who protects and saves, his closest comparison functional comparison in the West would be Jesus, and he can be viewed as the male equivalent of Quan Yin, though rather than being a Buddhist borrowing he has a long history in China, having been among other things the most important deity in the Han Dynasty. He is very powerful and as a patron for the independent practitioner of Chinese styles of magic, a great ally to have. Most of the mantras are for Buddhist and even Hindu deities, though granted most Ritual Daoists don't use mantra that much, I would have liked to have seen more treatment of native Chinese deities and practices, though she does discuss several Chinese deities of importance, and such popular shen as the Eight Immortals. In her defense, such a discussion would have added to what is already a very long book, and I can understand why she didn't make space for more, at almost 600 pages, this was a lot of writing on here part, and a lot of reading and study on the part of the prospective fu practitioner, but t about $20.00 this is a great place to start one's study of the craft of fu, though as I mentioned in my previous post, this is for medium to advanced beginner's, the study of fu is not a study for complete beginners. If people are interested I can post more about what one should study in order to practice fu successfully. Earlier I mentioned "final causes" as an important part of talismanic magic, whether of East or West, and a short discussion of final causes might be a good way to end this, while pointing in new directions. While the notion of final causes is a Western idea, being part of a system called "the four causes", which was explicated and formalized by Aristotle, I have found it very useful in thinking about magic in general and talismanic magic in particular, and while Chinese philosophy doesn't have these four causes worked out in detail, many aspects of Chinese magical practice lend themselves to such analysis, especially since the Chinese already have as an important part of their thinking the notion of li (理, principle, inner essence), a fundamental part of Chinese cosmology, which corresponds to what in the West are called "formal causes", which are part "the four causes", which I mentioned earlier. I have posted on this is several places on the Dao Bums, and in particular its importance to understanding traditional Western magic here: Agrippa and Aristotle: the Aristotelian background of the Occult Philosophy Which among other things analyses the Daoist concepts of De or virtue and Wuwei or nonaction in terms of the four causes to demonstrate the usefulness of such ideas for the integration Chinese and Western esoteric philosophy and practice.

Really, Gerard? I am surprised that a person who posts with such self-assurance is not familiar with the concept of "Liver insulting Lungs", time for a little more "book learning" perhaps?

This "cave" is apparently well known: and A visit to the second site will show that they are not unique either. I think that an actual connection with the historical Knights Templar is unlikely, but am continuously surprised at how much stuff you can find online if you do a little "digging".

I posted about this book here and here, and as noted in the second link, received it as Christmas present (It does help to have strange friends). I have been far busier in the new year than I thought and so I have not had a chance to do a detailed analysis, but it seems to be a good introduction to the topic for a medium to advanced beginner in magic. As for Professor Johnon's Book, Daoist Magical Talismans, it is certainly loaded with valuable information, but none of the Daoist Magic series is intended for beginners. If I have time I will try to work up a more detailed review. By the way, the friend who gave this to me also ordered Benebel Wen's Tarot book and really likes it. ZYD

There is actually a very detailed article on Yi Guan Dao on Wikipedia, which includes several aspects, such as the "Three Treasures", mentioned here. It is apparently a salvationist school of the "Great Mother" variety, originating in the Nineteenth Century, with roots extending back several centuries in China. They are a "cult" in the original non-pejorative sense, but not necessarily dangerous in themselves, though to me at least, it doesn't seem like they have much going for them in terms of profound belief or practice.

Cambridge Analytica is a real company with an article about it on Wikipedia: Unfortunately this has serious implications on several levels, even without getting into the more extreme levels of conspiracy scenarios.

I was going to bring up many of the points dawei has made above, but since he has done so already I want to point out that in doing so, he is not taking sides, but acting to enforce the principle of Egalitarianism which is considered to be a fundamental principle to the Dao Bums, and to make this clear I will quote from one of the first posts pinned in the Rules and Use Subforum: It is in respect of these principles that we allow a great deal of "free speech" here, and generally only intervene when such free speech degenerates into personal attacks and insults, or into trolling, spamming, or stalking type of behavior which puts an unfair burden of defense on an individual member. There are some other reasons we might intervene, such as directly threatening another, advocating violence, unnecessarily and egregiously vulgarity, and others, but those don't seem relevant here, but the ones which I have mentioned characterize this and many other discussions that have happened here in the past few months, so I thought this reminder of the Dao Bums overall policies, and our role as mods might be useful to our members.

You can read about OM here, though he uses an older spelling, preferring "oom". On a more scholarly note, Livia Kohn has a very interesting essay in Taoist Meditation and Longevity Techniques, "Guarding the One: Concentrative Meditation in Taoism" in which she examines the many senses in which "one" is used in Daoist literature, through Laozi and Zhuangzi and into the early centuries C.E., which can be used to make an interesting and useful cross cultural comparisons with Plato's dialog, The Parmenides, assuming you can understand The Parmenides that is, which, since it is one of Plato's toughest dialogues is assuming a lot. In either case, the one is wonderful in its multiplicity, and while it doesn't speak with a fork-ed tongue, is not univocal either.

None of this would come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with Axelrod's famous work in: The Evolution of Cooperation Which I learned learned about in his original 1981 "Science" article with is referenced in the Wikipedia article linked above. These ideas have been a cornerstone of my ethical thinking ever since then, but I don't have time to elaborate on that now.

As a person who seriously posts, serious posts here on the Dao Bums, I started a long time ago to use a word processor for keeping track of posts and replies, this allows me to keep track of everything and while it requires some extra effort, it has allowed me to accumulate a large amount of written material and resources. I also don't have to worry about losing all of the work and effort that I have put into the Dao Bums over the years if, heaven forfend, it should ever go offline permanently. I use OpenOffice for this purpose because it is free and a very powerful productivity suite. You can check it out here: OpenOffice Home If you are not familiar with it already. As a starting point, to address your immediate issue you might want to start a Dao Bums Diary and store in it the URL of your posts which can be found at the top of the post window by the number of the post in the thread. By clicking on this, the URL will come up and can be copied and pasted anywhere you would like it in cyberspace, including your Dao Bums Diary where, if you are using Open Writer it be stored safely as an active link that you can click on, and go right back to that post on the Dao Bums. Kinda cute huh?

There can only be two interpretations to people who take this "sound bite" out of the context both of Descartes writings and the time in which he wrote them. Brian is correct, and the general train of thought is the beginning of Descartes answers to complete skepticism about the existence of the the self. It is however, as Brian points out, just the beginning. It is not however "physicalist" in Descartes system, as Descartes considered Mind and Matter to be two different substances and this dualism is one of the hallmarks of his thinking. The context in which he was writing was the Sixteenth Century revival of Skepticism beginning with Agrippa's The Vanite of Arts and Sciences, continuing through various authors such as Montaigne. About 1600 Epicurean materialism also experienced a revival, largely championed by Pierre Gassendi, but quickly taken up by such thinkers as Hobbes. A lot of useless speculation could be avoided if one simply took advantage of the internet, Wikipedia has a whole article on this very quote, as well as its development in Descartes works, and its meaning and influence. I quote from the first two paragraphs: I hope this is helpful.