Apech
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Everything posted by Apech
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Dark energy also ... and yes although the understanding of physicists may change the process they are studying i.e. Nature does not change.
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Since I have nothing intelligent to say today (it being excessively hot) I am posting a picture of my marrows (I feel I know you all well enough now for this ): I'm not saying they are the largest in world but nothing to be ashamed of ... and my carrots all sweet and tasty. Cheers John
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Hi, Just back from broadband free outback to find this thread still mouldering on. I was caught by that ziran = smell of roast dog thing ... but then it seemed to get lost in pro/anti buddhist stuff (yawn) and other things. Hot dog anyone?
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Size isn't everything ... or so I like to believe. What makes TTBs a special place is the discussions and debate. This place is not a sterile place of dogma. But I think that too often all you get is pages and pages of bitching and point scoring. These threads are long but are painful to read. And they usually go nowhere or rather to the same place. The Taoist threads are often peaceful where they start with a quote from Taoist Philosophy - I think this is just a sign of how powerful/true those words are. Most debate is about whether the translation is right or perhaps can it be read another way. I have learned a tremendous amount from this - especially from people who know the Chinese (I don't). As regards the dharma - is it not the case that Taoism and Buddhism rubbed up against each other for centuries in China and learned from each other. Do we expect one of these two to suddenly prove that it has somehow won the debate and consigned the other to the dustbin of history? It ain't going to happen. Not on here or anywhere. Any serious Buddhist wills for all sentient beings to find happiness and enlightenment. While they would doubtless see the dharma as special and maybe 'perfect' they certainly would not be against anyone finding these things in another way. This means that attacking other systems in a way that makes it less likely that the people involved find happiness and enlightenment is a complete no-no. Or so I believe. Taoists similarly have no interest in ramming their ideas down other peoples throats - as this would be very un-Taoist - though seeming strong would actually be weak and so on.
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Could be Spanish too... Maybe its the castanets Or gypsy guitar.
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Adept, Don't leave on the basis of this. I like to read your posts and hope you will stay. Other people are free to express themselves and we don't have to agree on anything/everything. I don't like personal attacks but ideas are free and I think we just have to accept our differences. Also I don't think Buddhism or Dharma rests on what anyone says on here ... Anyway hope you reconsider. John
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Marblehead, Stig and Riyue, Thank you all so much! This is excellent stuff. I wouldn't quite say its clear to me now but its definitely getting clearer. I remember when I was 17/18 reading this section of Lao Tzu (25) and being hit by how perfect and profound it was. I didn't really understand it of course but that feeling was there. (Maybe a belief? ha ha).
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by waxing them all... that's every bikini line it's Brazilian.
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This is kind of what I getting at above. Why do you prefer that translation? Does the original mention tzujan? I can't work it out from Riyue's link. I could say I prefer: Man follows Earth. Earth follows heaven. Heaven follows the Tao. Tao follows what is natural. Feng and English 'What is natural' is not the same as Nature. So what did Lao Tzu mean by this? In fact I am willing to bet that in anyone's definition of Nature there are all sorts of ideas and assumptions which amount to beliefs. When a scientist looks through a telescope at the distant galaxies he 'believes' he can understand them - if he thought that he couldn't then he wouldn't even look. I know we have had this discussion before so that's it for now ...
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I know where you are coming from but I am not sure that just what we can prove is enough and the rest is not all about comfort. For me for instance 'rebirth' (rather than reincarnation) is and always has been, since I first ever heard about it obviously true ... or at the very least far more likely to be true than not. I would never ask someone to prove it ... even if they did I wouldn't be very interested. After all you can't actually prove to em that the Tao is anything other than the ravings of some old Chinese guy ... can you? As usual the problem with the whole belief thing is what has been done to us by organized religion. e.g. this is so and don't question it ... just believe it ... if you don't God will come down and spike your gonads with a kebab skewer, roast them and eat them for supper ... ok that was a bit specific but you get the idea. I think there are many things that we naturally accept because they feel right and quite often this means they are right ... BUT if we ever get true wisdom then we will see them again properly.
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Daoist Sitting in Oblivion vs Xstian Apophatic Prayer
Apech replied to Stigweard's topic in General Discussion
I wonder what person actually means when used in this context. -
Daoist Sitting in Oblivion vs Xstian Apophatic Prayer
Apech replied to Stigweard's topic in General Discussion
Apophatic is such a great word ... I'm going to start dropping it in everyday conversations just for the hell of it. Defining things by what they aren't ... or rather God by what he isn't ... well to me that's all you can do with the Absolute anyway. Even a Buddhist Lama once said to me that since the ultimate is ineffable then if one person says its God and the other says its the Dharmakaya they may both be right. I think in terms of practice we start from the point of view of existential subjectivity - which means the processes are similar no matter what path we are on or what beliefs we might have. Contemplation and meditation are not denominational as procedures and even something like prayer if it is an appeal to whatever is greater than us may be the same or similar also. Obviously there is a stark difference between theist systems and belief in impersonal power (Way or whatever) because the theists see God= the ultimate as a person. On the other hand what does a 'person' mean at that level anyway ... only naive views would suggest God as a person has a long white beard and looks like Santa Claus. Indeed if the Absolute subsumes all possible functions and modes of being then certainly this must include the idea/function of being a person. All positive statements begin to fall away and hence you are left with saying what it is not. e.g it is not a person but it is not not a person and so on. We all have our preferences in this respect borne out of our experience and what we have come to hold true. Most of us have some baggage about god as a person because of authoritarian religion which tries to speak for that person in telling us what to do, what to think and what to feel. Obviously this is crap because if god or the absolute is real then it is real and we don't need holy fathers to interpret for us. Best I think to be as open as possible until we really know. My thoughts anyway. -
wise mice wait for dawn... but not foolish night rodents they rat out early.
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Is it the NFL player idea that attracts you or something else?
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Welcome to TTBs. Hope you enjoy your time here. Cheers John
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Welcome back - I hope you enjoyed your short break
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who knows this for sure? nobody with certainty we're all in the dark.
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Two quotes from Chuang Tzu
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Good luck and best wishes.
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Stig, I am not one for abstraction and I think the word Heaven and ideas like 'subtle realms' tend towards the supernatural if you see what I mean. However it is quite legitimate to distinguish between 'gross' and 'subtle' and its all about perspective really I think. The easiest way for me to think about all this is to consider 'energy'. Even though we can't quite say what that is of course - but physics gives us an 'in' in the sense of light or electricity - in other words a subtle unseen force - we see its effects but not it itself. Energy can exist in both a highly attenuated form (i.e stretched out fine energies which permeate all space) and also in the grossest physical manifestation e.g. a lump of granite. I would equate the most subtle form of energy with Heaven - to put it in a nut shell.
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Earth conforms to Heaven. Heaven conforms to Tao and Tao conforms to its own nature. Thus Earth and Heaven are partial views. Sounding like another system is not the issue here. The issue is this "Is Tao the Ontological Essence of Life". Answer ... no! But Heaven could be seen this way.
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I was thinking more of this: It is a modern distinction we make between Heaven as a realm of pure yang energy and the sky ... to the ancients they are the same (I can quote from other cultures to back this up).
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OK good point ... I was thinking of the 'place where you go when you die and are happy ever after' sort of place ... which I regard as a kind of brainwashing ... But yes a realm of eternal light (which goes back to Ralis' 3rd eye thing) is about right. Then you can say that the patterns in nature ... in the earth such as the sand vibrations that Stig posted above are Earth conforming to Heaven - if we take light and sound to refer to vibrational energy.