Apech

This is what ethnic cleansing means: ... what is happening in Europe is an increase in the diversity of the populations of countries like UK and Germany. This has happened as a result of colonial history and international trade in the 19/20th Centuries. The migration is mostly economic migration of people willing to move to work in rich countries for low wages and then settling there. There are social problems as a result due to pressure on local services, health care and education because governments have allowed this to happen in the haphazard and unplanned way. Using the term ethnic cleansing for this process is incorrect.

Some of the ants look like uncles from up here.

She hasn't had cancer it is a preventative measure because she has a gene which makes it likely that she will develop cancer.

Is this the same as cosmetic surgery? I'm not sure.

This post nails it.

Its probably not very helpful to say this but looking for one to one correspondence between systems is fraught with difficulty and a lot of the time pointless. Each system is complete in itself and uniquely expresses its own insights ... just because the Wuxing are translated as 'elements' does not mean you can line them up against the western elements because the significance is subtly different. Better to understand each in the contest of the whole system in which they operate and then if you wish make comparisons. Its a bit like the cakra/dantien comparisons which never exactly match.

Well, according to the link posted by Cat his ideas have been used by some in a racist way.

It means in the very least that they haven't examined what the term 'race' actually means in a human context. It actually means very little apart from a way of grouping people on the basis of very superficial similarities of appearance. Then it is mixed with cultural traits which makes it even more vague and confusing as a term. So if they use race as a way categorising people in terms of spiritual development or their value (however defined) then it shows that they make superficial value judgements about individuals which will not stand proper examination. So the question is do they do this in other areas of thought? And really are they as wise as they make out? I think the answer is that they may have other valuable things to say .... but it must be at least tinged with a suspicion that they are limited in their true understanding. BTW Blavatsky and others used the term race for something quite different and with no connection to ethnicity.

Saw a woodpecker in the neighbours walnut tree the other day. Lots of birds here ... no idea what they are though LOL. We do have storks that nest on the top of telephone posts and make a strange rattling sound with their beaks. Also lovely white birds a bit like an ibis but with straight beaks which feed off the insects round the goats and sheep. Swallows also.

Makes perfect sense. I took Phosphor. a few years ago in an emotionally draining/demanding situation and it helped.

Have you looked at your energy when the girls are chatting. How do you feel in those moments and what do you do yourself that allows energy to get drained?

Man follows Earth. Earth follows heaven. Heaven follows the Tao. Tao follows what is natural. (or its own nature). So the way 'man' (meaning mankind) behaves follows earth and so on. Or put it another way all levels of interaction (cosmic/human etc.) follow the way ... by understanding nature we can understand ourselves ... even to point of the conversation in MacDonalds ...

Surely the point is that India is a vast and diverse country which incorporates a variety of cultural and religious expression. If you make generalisations based on one or two facts or observations then they are bound to be wrong. This would include attitudes towards women. The same is true of America as well. So you cannot say because this occurs somewhere this is true of 'India'. The problem I find with western academics who study these things is that unless they are very, very good objective thinkers then their own cultural heritage somehow imposes itself on the subject matter. This is the point I made above somewhere about the Oxford group who study Buddhism .... it is as if Anglican theology has swallowed up Buddhism and turned it into a reflection of their own cultural attitudes ... hence the 'secular' and 'atheist' Buddhism of Peacock and Batchelor. As if the last 2500 years of practitioners and commentators can be washed away as non-Buddhist because they accept karma, rebirth and so on, or developed Buddhist philosophy in ways that the academics deem unacceptable. For me Buddhism differs from all other religious views because it starts in a different place. Not with the issue of creation or ontology but with the experience of existing in a confused state, what this means and how to deal with it, and most importantly the key idea that seeing things as they really are brings liberation. Because of this perspective it is very adaptive to whatever cultural environment it fonds itself in ... hence to different forms of Buddhism ... without losing its key values and principles. Perhaps of the non-Buddhist systems I think Taoism is perhaps the most sublime and also looks to the heart of the nature of things in a very direct way. I think this is why Buddhism and Taoism can be symbiotic and not one versus the other so much. I know many Taoist masters quote Buddhist ideas without contradiction and we have the development of Zen and so forth historically.

No ... but it is in the realm of energy transfer ... so .... similar I think.

Hi, It's an honour to be confused with Cat by the way. I think the analogy works in that the ageing King uses the energy from young woman to prolong life ... what is that but a form of vampirism? albeit possibly overt and agreed to. Kings 1 1-4 is the verses I think.

A word in support of alwayson ... there is a particular cognitive problem with western scholars of eastern religion in that no matter how they try ... unless they are practitioners they turn the subject into a form of Christianity ... for instance the so called secular Buddhists of Oxford University, John Peacock et al.

Loving kindness for a vampire is not necessarily feeding their habit. Kindness can mean treat them as they are and not as something they are not. So it would be kind to a vampire to help them not to perpetuate the habitual tendency to steal energy for instance. All sentient beings have the potential to liberate themselves from conflicting emotions, habits and karmic effects and it is kindness to wish them true happiness, that is to give up the craving for energy from others. Or put it another way they think they need your energy and are trapped by this thought. BTW here is an example of conscious vampirism by an old man of a young woman ... from de Holy Bible no less!!!

I usually start with normal abdominal breathing to establish a rhythm (it feels more natural and relaxed) then switch to reverse ... sometimes this happens without me doing anything ... just of itself ... get good energy movements.

He did I think. I was listening to some tapes by John Peacock of Oxford Uni. who said that if you study the etymology of Avidya (Ignorance) then there is a sense of both 'not knowing' and 'not wanting to know' ... so our confusion is in some way deliberate .... which is interesting I think

Firm, but gentle; Calm. or raging like a mad thing all the same to me. PS. world is one syllable to me ... but I do speak funny.

Super intelligents? ...Duh, I dunno.

Nicely said.

Well... In this context, is a deep hole in the ground healthy, better, though.

after cell phone died. I buried my thoughts inside. never made that call.

in earnest this hem the edge of my Taoist cloak is now in tatters.