Magda

There's nothing wrong with demonstrating abilities, especially if a person who demonstrates them actually uses them to earn his living! Would you rather go to a healer who is proven or to a healer who could mess you up instead? At least in case of healing it makes all sense to ask for proof beforehand. In case of teaching it might be offensive, but imho it's all about the manner you use to ask. If you explain why you need a demonstration and your words are reasonable, then maybe you'll be given one. As for the attitude of masters not ever demonstrating anything, I think it's very comfortable for all fake masters that are after your money

I was always like that, even as a child at 4 years old... Always cold. But you're right about a constitutional deficiency, I was always physically weaker than other girls and had a tendency to get tired quickly. Later it became worse, but not drastically, just a bit worse. Do you think it's possible (as a theory) to get born with less chi than others, or did something in the first years cause it? In my city it could be difficult to find acupuncture specialists and especially herbalists, it's not Moscow where you can find everything. I found the description of this text in wiki, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_Han_Lun, in cases that sound alike mine it mentions "warming with supplementing". I wonder if warming on its own can help. I always keep temperature in my room at home about 10C higher than in other rooms, but it seemingly is of no help. it's even worse to go out of the house, because temperature drops too drastically. So generally people tell me I'm crazy and need to take cold showers instead to make my body more resistant to cold... Do you have any idea what the author of the text meant by "warming", maybe some special methods exist? Yes, post please, I'm very interested! I won't find a practitioner too quickly anyway, so anything you suggest that I can do on my own would be of great help. And don't worry, sure it's my own responsibility if I choose to do something that you suggest or not! This is great, I'm happy for you Thanx Although six healing sounds are for taking out excessive heat as far as I understand, so they can help only if the reason is too much heat.

Maybe it's a little off-topic or strange, but am I the only one who selfishly thinks that there was something definitely good in all that? For example, if it was not for bad circumstances that forced some Tibetans choose life outside of Tibet, we could never have them teaching people in the West And if the Chinese had huge and grateful audience in China and very good circumstances, they probably wouldn't care to be known anywhere else.

New Age is primary a way to make money. Such a niche is difficult to pass by for many people who understand that audience is very gullible. The saddest thing is that some people who're sincere about it won't ever achieve anything substantial at any rate... New Age steals miscellaneous ideas from different traditions and mixes them, and it's done in a manner to please the mixer. It isn't founded on any objective truth or true knowledge, and whatever the result is, it has no chances to be a working method. If you mix ideas from things like astrology, ritual magic, qi gong, kabbala, buddhism in a random way without an inkling how any of these work... oh well. New Age only exists because people at large stopped caring for authenticity. It's the main problem of New Age, it's founded on the spirit of "I know better". But life doesn't work that way. If there is some way to achieve, say, immortality, you can't dictate what way it is, you can only attempt to discover it somehow. If you think you know better and create your own imaginary way, it won't lead to anything. Some people think that creating new ways is a sign of independant thinking, but it's like wanting to construct an airplane in a wrong way and hoping that it's going to fly.

I'm interested in death and immortality a lot, please enlighten me what taoism has to say about this topics! If you die, then do you reincarnate or do you just die forever along with your physical body? And I heard that if you practice taoism you can survive death... But what happens to you at the end of your life in that case, what happens to your physical body and where do you find yourself?

Initially it all started because I thought that you were completely against any texts or preliminary knowledge Many people in the thread seemed to be opposed to answer in terms of taoism and offered their own opinions instead. Maybe it was my fault, I should've written something like "No opinions, taoism theory only!" in the thread's name. But frankly speaking, I assumed that everybody would think in a uniform way at a taoist forum and that such a question would be no problem. Oh that must be terrible! But you sound as if you already got into habit of seeing people die. They say that people who often see it create a defensive mechanism against shock.

Not that it was said for me, but I'd like to point out that this got explained by alwayson already: And this is true... Why would you have to feel hate or anger in order to defend your life?

I agree with what you say, and it looks like I wasn't speaking in a clear manner. I didn't mean that belief if needed for practice to work, but that it's needed for it to continue (and even to start). Are you a kabbalist?

Yes, you're right, I can't recognize truth. This is why I said that I'm interested only in traditions that claim immortality as actual possibility and not in a general theoretical search. If a tradition claims that its adherents did achieve immortality, there's a chance that this tradition holds truth and a working method. It makes more sense to pay attention to it, rather than trying to find truth among those whose knowledge is theoretical and was not ever proven to work. Of course, it's possible that a tradition is false and lies about achievements of its adherents. But traditions that make claims are a better source than general guessing anyway. There's a chance that achievements of its adherents were real and knowledge proven, whereas general guesses were never proven... Last but not least, to invent a working method from a few guesses would be quite an enormous feat for one life-time, while traditions already offer methods. For that you first need to know how to raise the energy body vibration rate Some preliminary knowledge is needed again... You need to believe that certain practice would raise your energy body vibration rate, and you need to believe that it's going to make you able to discern truth, too. It isn't instantly obvious why this is so. You need some understanding first. Apart from that, there are many traditions, not just one. In order to choose one, you have to have some general knowledge about what it is that they offer and what their differences are. Maybe I'll make myself more understandable if I say that I practiced a variety of things and drew a conclusion that such practice has a very little chance of being successful. The primary obstacle is that you never know what conclusions to make about your practice, whatever you think can very well prove to be wrong. Even in your example with energy vibration rate, you first need to be sure that it's actually higher and that it is the reason for your new understanding. But how can you be sure in something so subtle and hard to judge on your own for sure? Oh no, I didn't say that if you have information you can get everything without applying any effort!!! . That's too easy and even a little childish to assume that it's possible. I just doubt that you can achieve anything if you start out with general guesses. Maybe you can if you're enlightened or otherwise different from all others, but how many people are like that?

I'll see if I can find these books in my country. Newton's name sounds familiar, I'm sure that it was translated. This is fitting for somebody whose quest is search for truth I have no curiosity about truth, however, I only search for a working method to survive death. Theoretical search is of no use in this case, you need to look for a method in traditions that claim it as a real possibility and understand what exactly makes it possible in those traditions.

You slightly contradict yourself First you say that books and texts are of no use because practice is required to understand, but then you say that for practice a teacher is needed! A teacher is a source of knowledge, just like books or texts. Of course it's better to have a teacher than texts, but their function is the same, to explain you what the practice is all about. I agree with you that theoretical knowledge is useless, but practice without any inkling about what you're doing and why is equally useless. If somebody laconically says, stare at the wall for 30 minutes every day and you won't die, it wouldn't be helpful. First you have to learn more about why you won't die if you stare at the wall, to understand some underlying philosophy behind it, otherwise you'll give up pretty soon or your efforts will always be half-hearted. Then you need to understand how to make sure that you stare correctly, otherwise your efforts won't bring the correct result. If there's no teacher, then texts can help you. Otherwise you'll try to fill in the gaps in knowledge with your own subjective ideas and there's not much chance that you'll get any correct result after that.

Thank you

Sounds very alike to buddhism. I'm afraid that you're speaking from the perspective of the whole reality. For reality it doesn't matter that it's fragmented or that some fragments die. This reality doesn't die, it's immortal. But we're the fragments, we die, so for us it would be wrong to say that we're immortal... I understand your idea that we can somehow "become one" with this reality and gain immortality. But until that happens, we're mortal! I'm not that gullible, so please don't worry Does taoism talk about astral or causal planes, what does it say about them? What is ascension? The question is, how does this "whatever you actually are" continue on? Does it reincarnate, does it merge with the Tao, or does it dissolve with time and die once and for all?.. About taoist immortality... I heard about "the immortal embryo" that you can make grow up, but don't know much anything else. What are the technicalities? Is this embryo you? Will it survive death while you die, or you both survive? P.S. Thanx for pointing me to that other thread Thank you. I think these quotes deal with death from the point of view of the universe and not people... of Tao, as you say. Not from ours! The question is, why would taoism adopt the point of view of Tao... Maybe it's done so that taoists wouldn't resist an idea of death, as death is natural and to resist it is to resist the natural order of things. So I'm afraid that these quotes don't talk about what happens after death or about immortality, their goal is different, not to show you that what happens, but to show you that resisting death isn't natural.

Well, I'm not interested in a lot of different responses, they're all subjective. I'm interested in taoist philosophy and its definitions of "you", "death", and "immortality". Can you help me find them out? Tell me what taoism's definitions are. That calls for starting to practice! But what am I going to practice, if I have not the vaguest idea what this path leads to? I don't need miracles or powers, I'm interested in immortality, therefore this is what I'm trying to get information about. As it's known that taoism offers a chance to survive death, there must be some explanations about it in it!

Zen is a sect of buddhism, so we're left talking about buddhism and taoism... Let me disagree with you that buddhism is focused on this plane, it has a large philosophy of dying. This philosophy is not esoteric, it's supposed to explain the premises of buddhism, like karma or dependant origination. My knowledge of taoism is too superficial, from reading Tao Te Thing only. I didn't notice anything about dying there. Maybe you know about taoist texts\articles\books on this topic?

So opinions are different. Phore thinks that we reincarnate, Bum Grasshopper thinks that we return to the source. But judging by the fact that these opinions are different and that both persons are into taoism, these opinions must be subjective... Isn't there something in the texts or taught by teachers that could clarify taoism's take on dying? Is it in some texts or a real taoist teacher said so? Well, I'm sorry to be so insistant, but I'm really interested in taoism's take on it, and as far as other opinions are concerned, they're easy to find, I even have plenty of my own, too

Hm, so nobody really knows what such a situation means in terms of ying\yang chi

There must be answers or at least hints in taoist texts... Or something told on these topics by modern teachers.

Hmm, so it can't be known what's wrong in this particular situation?

But the body itself, does it have too much ying or too much yang if reaction to cold is always too strong? It's much stronger than for anybody else I've known. I think that what you need to eat depends on an answer to this question...

Thanx

No, I'm Belarussian and live in Russia now, so you can see why I'm afraid of winters