steve

There is also the aspect of whether we are masters of ourselves or subject to the whims of others. I don't want to get too bogged down in typing right now but, in brief, we can try to be aware of how we react to others and see through the illusion that they have the power to cause us harm. It takes some serious work and is multilayered, but the bottom line is that it is possible to achieve a state of being where no one can cause you to suffer, regardless of what they do. I know that it is very easy to come back with horrible examples of how this is ridiculous but not matter what, it is within one's grasp to accept what the universe puts in ones path, whether the agent of that obstacle is human, animal, natural disaster, or otherwise, and to accept and be content and fulfilled with one's lot. This is spoken to in Zhuang Zi's parable The Empty Boat. It is alluded to in the DDJ Chapter 49 (and others). It is also pointed to by the famous Christian admonition, to turn the other cheek. We can get into it more if you'd like. There is no greater proponent in the English language of this than Anthony DeMello - nominally a Jesuit from India but functionally a consummate Daoist sage, IMO. PS Taomeow mentions the practice "To know thyself" - DeMello's message was awareness , to strive to be aware of everything within and without.

What makes you suspect we are not?

Of course and yes, it is most definitely another discussion. Show me the Qi!

Why is it that the desire for friends and a lover makes you suffer? Is it because you don't feel comfortable being in relationships with others? Have you been hurt? Are you intent on isolating yourself for a reason? I don't think the desire to have relationships should necessarily be a source of suffering. Look into why that is the case - it's a place to start.

I agree with you. What I meant to convey is that Qi is very fundamental in cultivation, very basic, and hence worthy of examination for Daoists. And really what I was getting at was focusing Marbles on Qi since it is a good example of something that may be difficult to appreciate as "objective" that is fundamental to Daoist thought, practice, and philosophy.

Existence is as it is, it's only our perspectives that vary. I'll be extra careful crossing the street tonight!

This is something I've wrestled with for a long time. I am an organic manifestation of Dao so how can anything I do or think be un-Daoist? So is everything I do and everything society and culture does somehow "unnatural" even though it all springs from nature directly or indirectly? And so on.... It is an area I think is worthy of serious consideration. I really enjoyed your post and take issue with only this. Vis a vis the above consideration, I think that figuring out "just going with the flow" and truly living that is the highest level of attainment. First I need to understand the flow then understand what it means to go with that in all things at all times. That is nothing less than a life of purity, the life of the sage, Wu Wei. I find De much more approachable and much easier... I suspect we are saying the same thing with slightly different language but I could be wrong...

Nope, no interest in trying to convince you of my perspective, just sharing it with you. Which is specifically that the chair is equally subjective and objective. There is no separation of the two other than that artificially created by man. My earlier rants were my feeble attempts at illustrating the genesis of my perspective. Edit - the only thing that I would try to convince you of would be to begin some practice of Daoist cultivation methods (preferably meditation if available to you, less helpful but still worthwhile would be Qi Gong, Nei Gong, or Tai Ji Quan) as I think this could give you a different and complimentary perspective from which to view the philosophical component.

Yes, Daoists most certainly do pray. Most prayer seems to be related to communicating with Daoist deities, spirits, and performing a host of religious rituals and obeisances. There is an extremely complex religious tradition that varies widely geographically and culturally. I found an interesting link here: http://www.my-island-penang.com/Taoist-Worship-Rituals.html I know very little about the "religious" side of Daoism. I practice some cultivation methods but that's really where my personal knowledge and experience ends. The closest thing I've personally experienced in terms of a Daoist "religious" ceremony was the Bai Si ceremony in which I was accepted as a disciple of my Shi Fu. I will not discuss the ceremony specifically but there were components that most would describe as having a bit of a religious flavor.

Cool - I get carried away pretty easily.... Atheism has nothing to do with it. We are not speaking of deities. The reason I brought up the afterlife was because you said that 'in Daoism we don't speak about after we die' - in Daoism, it is spoken about alot (and I also think misinterpreted a lot). No trick questions - trying to be fundamental and direct. Why less dogmatic? Do you have any interest in learning anything new? Any interest in opening to reality? Again, I'm not trying to be at all offensive, please don't think that's my intention. Dogma gets in the way. Dogma fills the void. Do you need to do any of that? Absolutely not. Is that one reason you frequent TTB? It is for me. I don't think you're broken at all. I think you are insightful, intelligent, and affable and you are one of my favorite imaginary internet friends, . I'm only responding to the topic you created in which who asked to debate subjectivity and objectivity. In doing so, did you not invite a challenge to your beliefs? Was that not your intention? And if so, perhaps you want to change your beliefs and path, not me (that is, I don't want to change your path). I'm just expressing my own in hopes that it may help us both to grow. We pass value judgements on everything, that is what defines objective vs subjective. Man doesn't distort objective reality, he creates "objective" reality by separating and then choosing. You like your garden and flowers - not shit and desert, that is a value judgement. You like your path, you like what works for you. You are choosing, defining, separating, dividing - objectifying. Attachment to the worth of your understanding prohibits opening to other possibilities that may ultimately be of more value (or less) to you. Again, if you want to stay where you're at, fine. But then what are we doing here? I also have learned the hard way to try and avoid making a judgement about the value of my perceptions to others. It can be hurtful, traumatic, unhelpful, rude, and I am certainly no one's authority. Maintaining a presence on this forum, however, implies that we have an interest in sharing, an interest in relationship, and so remaining open to looking at each other's ideas without placing relative value on them in advance seems to me to be worthwhile. I'm happy to stop there for now and we can see where we go from here.

I have one major problem with this Taoist Discussion forum - it's taking me away from my practice!!!!

Let's look at this for a moment. There is a great deal of Daoist thought and the Daoist canon that is dedicated to issues related to immortality and what occurs beyond death. It is interpreted differently by different traditions, schools, individuals. My own beliefs about this are a result of cultivation and not much influenced by written Daoism and are probably different than the "party line" Daoist view so I won't go into that much. But there is an enormous amount of Daoist attention on the afterlife and it's interaction with our present lives. For me, Daoism is primarily about self cultivation. I don't mean to say that I discredit other aspects or uses, I just don't take advantage of them. And the foundation of Daoist cultivation (not to mention Daoist science and medicine) revolves around the concept of Qi. There is and has never been any objective or measurable evidence that this exists. Some may argue that this is incorrect but, believe me, when the international scientific world can verify the existence of an objective quantity called "Qi" it will not remain a secret for long (conspiracy theorists please don't derail me too much here, we can always start a new thread ). So what is Qi, Mr. Marbles? I don't mean to sound patronizing, offended, challenging, or defensive, but do you practice any form of Daoist cultivation? I think this is very important when it comes to your attitude toward objectivity. Have you spent hours, months, or years trying to come to terms with Yi, Jing, Qi, Shen, Wu, and all things related to that? If you truly have, I think that your outlook regarding objective and subjective might be a bit less dogmatic. Because here you just may find the area (metaphysical, philosophical, spiritual, intellectual) where the objective and the subjective become blurred in truly Daoist terms and within the underlying principle of Daoist cosmology. And as far as I am concerned, the heart and soul of Daoism is to be found in practice, not study or debate or intellectual understanding. And I would confidently maintain that old Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, and Lie Zi (and any other Zi's you ask) would support that assertion. I have friends who are intellectual and philosophical Daoists and through interacting with them, I don't believe one can begin to truly approach Daoism without direct personal experience through some of it's associated practices. Because Daoism is a way of living not an understanding of life. Many may disagree with this also and begin to discuss whether or not the sages practiced this or that method of cultivation but after spending several years of practicing credible Daoist methods, one can see deeply into the classics in a way that relates directly to what is occurring and experienced/experiencing inside and there are things that just can't be understood and communicated in words - a very common and fundamental theme in all Daoist texts. In fact, the lessons of the Classics are much better experienced through practice than studied and understood intellectually. But what is so important about useful? Isn't that what Zhuang Zi was saying? And when you speak about a person, you have already taken him/her apart. How useful is a person without their environment? How useful is a person without air? Without water? Without the ground to stand on or space to move around in? How useful is a person, isolated with no other people, animals, or "objects" as you call them. A person does not and has never existed in isolation, nor has anything. It is all present in relation to everything else, always and forever. Organismenvironment - all separation is artifact of our brain. And the "object" is nothing more than the illusion created by mind which draws boundaries. Because it is much easier and "more useful" to imagine things as isolated and separate because to try and wrap our puny intellects around the whole thing is impossible, the intellect must be let go to connect with Dao (entirety/non-duality). Intellect is of no use in that realm. Wu Ji can represent entirety, non-duality, once Tai Ji enters there is duality - Me and everything else ---> 10,000 things. Here is the crux in Daoist terms. There is Wu Ji, which you may want to try and describe as objective but being non-dual there is nothing to experience it, there is no subjectivity or objectivity, it just is and is not nor is it or is it not (I know, sounds a bit B-ish doesn't it??). So what is the nature of the relationship between Wu Ji and Tai Ji. How does Wu Ji give rise to Tai Ji? That's right, the mind - subject/object split, judgment, consciousness, whatever terms you want to use. Tai Ji is the equivalent of relative reality where Wu Ji is that nebulous state that some would apply the word "emptiness" to that underlies or precedes reality. We are what creates Tai Ji out of Wu Ji. We are what therefore creates the 10k things. We are doing so completely through our conscious awareness which creates the subjective/objective split. So we are both completely subjective and objective at the same time, fundamentally. No other way. The physically manifest can be experienced by our particular characteristics of existence (the thinking brain and it's sensory apparatus) in terms of relative objectivity but dividing everything into bits is an artificial (and very useful) tool that can only be seen through with individual and arduous (for most) practice. Objectivity is a direct result of "bitting" the continuity of existence, it is a completely subjective artifice created by you. Perhaps this is one reason why, metaphorically, Zhuang Zi spurns the useful? What advantage has the useful over the useless, it comes and goes. It has no substance. Show me the number 7 - it has no existence. It's like when Alan Watts talks about coming across a bustling construction site and a month later, after economic collapse, he returns and asks why no one is building anything and one of the workers replies - because they ran out of inches! We live then we die, everything that occurs between occurs to us as completely and utterly subjective individuals. And when we die, what is/was the use? Each object (living) that you affect is a subject from their perspective. No one is anything other than subject and we are all interconnected in ways that are subtle but very real.

I think much of that misunderstanding is simply a matter of miscommunication rather than a complete misunderstanding of the nature of Qi Gong. I could be wrong about that but this is how I'm interpreting what the various contributors to the related threads have been trying to say.

I think you are misinterpreting the statements made about the use of breathing in Qi Gong. Breathing is always involved. One does not hold one's breath continuously during Qi Gong. It is also true that, with practice, the method of breathing will adjust and correct itself and come into better balance with the mind and body. I don't think anyone would question this. There are legitimate practices and teachers that have their students begin with a natural pattern of breathing. They specifically feel that it is not necessarily important or advantageous to have a student force a particular pattern of breathing during the exercise. The reason for this is that specific patterns of breathing can distract the student and interfere with their ability to learn the body movements and mental manipulation. In addition, trying to force an unfamiliar breathing pattern to an unfamiliar body movement, while focusing on a challenging matter of mental attention can cause anxiety, hypoxia, muscle tension, and so on. This can be counter-productive. If the mental and physical components are correct. It is possible for the method of breathing to grow naturally out of this and be as effective (maybe more so and possibly sooner) as a situation where a specific breathing pattern is forced. This was my Shiye's approach to teaching the Tai Ji Quan form which is a complex and extended form of Qi Gong. And it is VERY effective. One does not need to work on specific breathing patterns until (and unless) one gets into the martial applications. One does NOT need to coordinate the breath with using Yi to guide the Qi. They can (and some might say should) occur independently (or dependently depending on the desired result). Sorry for the long paragraph but I couldn't tell where to break....

Interesting idea. Never considered that before. Almost no one easier to exploit and distract than a spiritual seeker. No greater reservoir of opportunists and phonies than in the spiritual arena. A competent "agent" could almost certainly interfere with the spiritual growth of his/her targets provided they were well trained. This is a bit of a gratuitous assertion but the Cointelpro reference is pretty real stuff. Motives: spiritually and religiously liberated people are free and much more difficult to predict and manipulate. Religion is the opiate of the people (Marx). I'm with you on the education bit. The US educational system arose during the Industrial Revolution. There was suddenly a massive influx of young people from the rural regions who needed just enough education to make them suitable to be used in the workforce in the high tech environment of the factories. They did not need enough education to question authority or think critically, but needed enough to be "productive members of society." The system has changed VERY little since. And, if anything, the average level of high school education is falling, not rising, in the richest nation on earth. Think about it. We still don't teach our children how to be happy, how to be fulfilled, the importance of challenging authority, the importance of looking for NEW solutions to old problems rather than continuing to apply old procedures that have never worked, and so on... I'll admit that I haven't considered this before VCP and I'm still not sure I believe this forum would be enough of a target for any agency to apply significant resources to but one never knows.... Interesting topic.

I'd be happy to chat a bit about Qi. This is all a result of my own practice. My understanding of Qi is my own alone and is little influenced by study or writings or anyone's ideas but my own. My current practices include, in order of importance: Daoist meditation (崑崙仙蹤派) Tai ji Quan Qi Gong (I mainly practice Shi Ba Luo Han Gong, Gu Chan Ba Duan Jin, and Tai Ji Jian Shen Fa) Xing Yi Quan Ba Gua Zhang I've read a fair amount about Tai Ji Quan, Xing Yi Quan, Zhan Zhuang, and Qi Gong and some about Daoist meditation but I honestly find that books have not taught me much or helped me to understand. On occasion, books act to validate my empiric experience and that is valuable in and of itself. The best example of this was The Tai Chi Boxing Chronicle by Kuo Lien Ying. I tried to read this book multiple times as my early Tai Ji Quan training progressed. I never really learned anything from it but as my skills increased through practice I gained progressive understand and recognition of what Master Kuo describes in his magnificent book. Same thing happened with the Tai Ji Classics. My Shifu has always stressed to me to not get bogged down with study and scholarship but just to practice and when it comes to this stuff he is 100% correct! Jing 精 is usually translated as semen or sexual energy but it goes beyond that and connotes reproductive potential as well as energy inherent in the entire physical body, including many if not all of the living cells and tissues. I'm not an expert on Chinese medicine but there is pre and post natal Jing and each is described as having very specific properties and is associated with different organ systems and so on. Others can describe all this much better than I can. So the Jing is a component or aspect of the living body that is described as being energetic (as is everything in existence, according to most physicists). Qi is usually written 氣 these days which is the equivalent character for air and breath. In the old Daoist texts it is often written 炁. I've seen some people brush this off as a trivial difference due to the age of the texts only but according to my Shifu there is a meaningful difference. Air (氣) contains Qi (炁) but they are not equivalent. I also think it is instructive to think of Qi (炁) as being distinct from air or breath (氣). This is because it is easy for us to feel and imagine air circulating through our lungs but this is not equivalent (though not too different) from imagining and feeling Qi circulating through our tissues. I don't like the 'holding the hands together' method of learning to feel Qi flow. This is because it is very misleading in my experience and I believe that it gives people a false idea of what Qi is and what it is not. It is the root of fantastical imagination of masters exploding Qi from their hands and other supernatural things that are the stuff of myth and legend. Perhaps it is all true and real and maybe we will each see a convincing demonstration of it one day but it is not necessary, or even helpful, to develop a supernatural image or concept of Qi when first beginning to work with it. It is the most practical and universal thing possible to the Chinese mind. It is only mystical to those who don't look at it with the correct perspective. I like to share how I first felt what I knew to be whatever it is that is described as Qi. And to me, I felt it strongest by far in the bottom of my pelvis in the region of the prostate gland. It has a sensation that is very similar to sexual sensation. If you sit quietly and pay attention to this area over time you may begin to feel as if you are sensing something stirring in that area. It may be a warmth, tingling, coolness, flowing, buzzing, whatever - you will eventually have some sensory awareness of that area. You can try it with other areas. I've been told by Livia Kohn that many women do better becoming aware of this sensation in the heart area between the breasts, I can feel it there very powerfully now but I didn't pay much attention to that area early on. So once this feeling arises, you can begin to work with it. There are areas where it is much easier to feel and areas where it can be difficult to feel. These are referred to as blockages. There is a complex web of intersecting channels mapped out by the Chinese physicians and cultivators over centuries with which you are undoubtedly familiar. I am a bit of a heretic when it comes to this stuff but I'm not yet convinced to what degree all of the channels exist "objectively" or are developed through conditioning, whether it be through Chinese medicine and acupuncture training or Daoist cultivation training. It really doesn't matter to me but it's interesting to ponder. So once you are able to feel this, begin to try and come aware of any part of the body at any time in any area inside, in the tissues themselves. Feel your left big toe, don't visualize it or think about it, be inside of it. And your right elbow, and so on. And you can imagine what you know about internal human anatomy but in my experience that can be as much of a hinderance as a help. Just feel what you feel and trust it and keep practicing. Eventually you will become more and more sensitive. If you have the benefit of a teacher, you can learn all types of fascinating and challenging internal calisthenics to develop a high level of clarity and precision in working with this. Whether or not a tingling you may feel in your hands or fingers is Qi passing between the hands through air is irrelevant. What is important for cultivation purposes is what you can feel inside the tissues of your own body. That is where the true investigation and exploration begins and ends (I think, I'm not done yet!). So next we come to the Microcosmic Circulation. There are many different ideas and traditions about what it is and what it is not. There are different methods for practicing it. The "points" that I use in practicing the orbit come from my Shifu and are different from anything I've ever seen in print, though not dramatically so, but the differences are substantial. Based on my understanding of what Jing and Qi is, I do not believe that what you "feel circulating" is Jing. Jing is an energetic component inherent in human tissue and, as far as I know, it does not circulate through the meridians and channels like Qi is described to do. I will gladly stand corrected if I am wrong - like I said, I"m no expert in Chinese medicine. Now here is more of my heresy. I don't really subscribe to the notion that Qi is some distinct quantity of something (energetic or otherwise) that circulates in the body. I think it is a very useful paradigm and it works within the framework of Chinese medicine but that is simply not a helpful way for me to approach cultivation. It may be exactly what is happening, or not, but for me that is not what it feels like inside. What is happening is that my Yi (意) usually translated by my Shifu as "mind of intent" is moving through or scanning my tissues. The way I interpret the phenomenon is that the interaction of my focused awareness (意) with the energy of living tissue (精) is the experience of 炁 (or if you prefer, 氣). I don't think it is a coincidence that there is a similarity between what I feel as Qi and that Jing is related to sexual energy. I think this is at the heart of the conversion from Jing to Qi. Jing exists in the living tissue and as I practice moving my focused awareness through that tissue, I become progressively more precise and facile with this skill and this experience is described as circulating or guiding the Qi. So some say that the microcosmic orbit is always flowing and it takes very little effort and anyone can do it and they are correct. Anyone can feel a sensation flowing through any pattern in their body at any time and you can call it anything you like and it's relatively easy and trivial and I would ask, what is it exactly that you can do with that? What does it do for you practically speaking? And others say that the orbit is extremely difficult and takes years to master and they are also correct and, IMO, they are the ones who practice true cultivation techniques. It has nothing to do with whether something is flowing or not. It doesn't really even matter what pattern it's flowing in (once you have gained a firm grasp of the basics). What matters is how you practice refining the skill of using the Yi (意). As you develop higher and higher levels of skill in working with the Yi, the mind becomes very tranquil and this tranquility is enormously powerful in many ways. And with cultivation most would say that one's Qi becomes very strong - I just don't quite see it this way (heresy!). The same Jing and Qi are there although I do feel that cultivation leads to improved health and well being and this certainly would equate to more powerful Jing and perhaps Qi (whatever that means), but to me the "quantity" or "health" of Jing and Qi is something gratuitous, something speculative that I have trouble relating to (probably because of my medical / scientific background). My Qi is continuous with that of the universe around me. My bag of skin can neither contain nor exclude it. Chinese medicine folks will disagree and talk about Qi deficiencies and excesses and that's all fine. I look at it more as relative deficiencies and excesses, not absolutes. Anyway, for me what is stronger is my power and skill in using the Yi and being more sensitive and aware and precise, not to mention the benefits associated with the mental tranquility which I believe parallels what Buddhists define as Buddha-mind or heart-mind, and what Daoists refer to as becoming one with Dao, and what Hindus refer to as the Self and so on. This is what is extremely practical and useful in many things and the Chinese are nothing if not practical. So I'm sorry to ramble on for so long but these are my views from working with this stuff and I hope it's useful to someone in some way. I'm certainly looking forward to hearing the views of other cultivators and Chinese medicine folks who have a more traditional understanding and more experience in working with this stuff.

I echo your sentiments strongly on this Dwai. As one who has a foot each in the scientific and spiritual camps, I think it's critical to work within each framework based on their unique paradigms. It is very instructive to me to see overlap and parallels and try to understand how the paradigms interact but bringing the rules, methods, and language of the spiritual into the scientific laboratory is no more (or less) effective than bringing scientific measurement into the spiritual realm (show me the Qi). This is one of the major issues with the ID folks and other religious types who can't seem to get comfortable leaving the two separate (same criticism is valid towards the scientists how pontificate of the presence or absence of God and other spiritual matters). One does not need to validate the other. I doubt they ever will entirely. Although as science has matured it first deviated dramatically from the realm of the spiritual and is now advancing slowly back in that direction. I think it is human nature to want to understand what is not yet (perhaps can not be) understood, so this will be an ongoing phenomenon. And it's interesting that you use that illustration of thought being faster than light, it is the same analogy my Shifu uses.

Hi tulku, I'm interested in your excitement about pineal gland work. Are you comfortable talking about your methods in more detail? Can you share some of what makes you see this as so vital? Thanks

OK - let's examine honesty at it's most fundamental level with respect to what is actually going on here at this juncture. You are writing this first post in a thread about honesty on this forum. The tone of your post seems to be pointing at the entire board and challenging - are you honest? It even has the feel of - are you honest enough to engage with me? And yet you never quite offer why you are asking the question or where it may lead, it is very open ended. You are holding yourself aloof, observing, judging, measuring others against yourself. At least, that is what I feel from the words. So let's start with this. What is the true, fundamental reason for this post? Why are you interested in the honesty of others? How will you know when they are being honest? How will you measure and judge them? Why do you measure and judge others? Have you already completed the delicate and difficult process with respect to everything about yourself? Is it possible to measure others if you have completed that process???? Let's take it a step back even. Why are you posting on a public, anonymous forum a question about honesty? Particularly when there is no hope for confirmation of anything? When there can be no real human communication? When there are no expressions or gestures to read, no subtlety of communication whatsoever, no relationshp? Just analysis and conjecture based on carefully (or not so carefully) chosen words. Why ever post on any anonymous forum in such a fashion? What is my motivation and relationship to the words I am writing? How do they make me feel? What does honesty really mean when it comes to sharing words on a public anonymous forum? Do you/I write with care or impulsively? Why? Do I care how others respond? WHY??? You asked people to reply ONLY if they are in accordance with your intention and yet you never even specified your intention beyond the word honesty .... WHY?????? After you post something on this anonymous board, do you then look to see how others responded? Yes? Why? If they agree or compliment does that make you feel good? Is that why we do what we do here? Look very carefully at this if you haven't already. If they disagree or insult or challenge or question, how does that make you feel? Do you choose to give strangers that power over you? Do you think that you have that power over them? Why defend your particular opinion against criticism? Is that important to you? With strangers who you may never meet? Who may be 15 years old? Are there people in your life who perhaps would prefer that you spend less time in such endeavors and engage with them in real relationship? Do you have such feelings? Do you understand how to be in a relationship? Because even on this public, anonymous forum, what we are doing is relationship. Yet we choose this particular vehicle for very specific reasons. These reasons are critical to identify, acknowledge, and examine if we are to even begin to have a sense of who we are, what we value, what we are comfortable with, and what we are uncomfortable with, and how we choose to act in order to find security. And how we treat others with our words reflects much about who they are. This is honesty in my life. So if we are to talk about honesty, I would ask that we start with wondering why we are starting such a topic in such a forum, or any topic in any forum, and be very clear, very clear with ourselves and each other. Do you / we have the courage to do that? Is it valuable enough to sit in front of a computer screen for hours, indulging our intellect and ego while our lives pass us by, tick, tick, tick? Honestly

Honest and Integrity are two of the core values that I attempt to reflect in word and action. It is very tricky to do consistently. We have so many predetermined patterns of behavior and responses and we have created so many images about and around ourselves that it is virtually a lifetime commitment to dismantle all of that. In my mind it's worth the candle. And I appreciate the honesty of others, whether they are in accordance with my views or not. My best friend (a TaoBum who's not at all active) is militantly honest, sometimes to his own detriment. He is a mirror held in front of my face reflecting any masks or games that find their way in. Priceless!

Thanks for the reply, I have some different perspectives from you on a lot of this stuff and that is the variety that is the spice of life! In particular, it's important to recognize that there is no such thing as solid matter or substance. This has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by physicists. This is analogous to what some say amounts to the fact that nothing exists. What appears as matter is nothing other than energy (or perhaps strings) but there is absolutely nothing solid in the universe. It feels solid and looks solid because that is our brain's interpretation. If it were not for cerebral pattern recognition, all that would be out there is incomprehensible patterns of energy of a variety of wavelengths and frequencies. In fact, there is also another entire universe of experience that humans have no comprehension of whatsoever because our sensory apparatus is not tuned to notice it - things like ultrasonic sound, light on either end of the visible spectrum, and things that we have no idea how to even measure. So you are welcome to feel secure in the knowledge of the objective universe but it is more slippery than you think. Finally, who/what exactly are you that is born and dies? Are the cells that currently make up the body you feel is you the same cells you were born with? Did the elements that make up the proteins that comprise "you" begin when you were born and end when you die? You are a whirlpool, a current in the ocean, that exists at the time and space that "you" currently inhabit. And you've been blessed with a mechanism that creates this "I" experience. This thought that separates itself from all the others and claims ownership, claims control. But it is nothing more than a thought with a specific and unique marker, like memories or dreams have a certain marker that makes them feel different than "regular" thoughts. The only difference is this "I" thought has the "I" marker so it feels different. But if you look at it closely for long enough it evaporates and this may open a whole different perspective. If that happens, the universe doesn't disappear or change in any way but "I" relate to it and experience it and understand it differently. And it's just as likely to be just a pigment in my imagination! PS I didn't mean to comment on your posts being materialistic, just this one... PSS I think this is a critical part of looking at Daoism. After all what are they telling us but to see through our "objective" reality and become one with it... completely merged.... completely subjective....

So Marbles took the opportunity of the Taoist thread to post his materialistic ideas where the Buddhists can't find him!?!?! JK, JK In fact, we can also look at the foundation of Daoist cosmology - Wu Ji, which gives rise to (one can also say resides within or is another aspect of or lies behind...) Tai Ji, and so forth. So to me, this is similar to the Buddhist concept of emptiness and Tai Ji is analogous in many ways to dependent origination. Sorry to bring the B-word into this but I think it offers a useful illustrative example to an alternative position to yours. The other aspect of subjectivism that I have come to appreciate comes from examining what experience is. Everything I experience occurs in my brain from a neurophysiological point of view. Sight occurs in the visual cortex, hearing in the auditory cortex, etc... What you are seeing is not something outside of you, you are seeing an electrical pattern in the neurons inside your skull. Same with every sense. I'm not saying there is nothing out there, just that no human being alive can every really know whether there is or not. Because everything you (and everyone else) experience occurs inside your head. The other piece of the puzzle boils down to "Who Am I?" Am I a subject and everything that happens to reside outside of my bag of skin is object? I contend that this is purely an illusion created by our sensory apparatus, particularly sight and touch. I, in fact, don't end at my skin. I am the whole works, come self aware by virtue of the multitude of sentient creatures that comprise me. So at this level there is no me and you, no subject and object, there just is this. So this is utterly and totally subjective because it is non-dual. But at a relative level, your Ying to my Ying, we can certainly say there is objectivity. 2+2= 4 as long as we all agree to accept certain ground rules. If those rules are flexible, it no longer works....

Agreed - I do as well. My shifu has always said that Taijiquan contains the other two. I agree with that but the specific training methods of the other two also develop very complimentary skills. Very good point - this is the reason I gave up the hard stuff when I hit 40 and started on the internal path.

I'm pleased to see the introduction of the new Taoist Discussion forum and look forward to participating.