Eric23

Season's Greetings to all TaoBums!!! It's been an interesting few months slowly going through and processing all of the information and insights on this sight. Thanks to all of you for making this journey so facinating. Peace. Eric

George Carlin, Robin Williams (on stage). My all time favorite is Rodney Dangerfield's stage/lounge act. Never did like his movies though.

I'm new to meditation so trying to pass on advise would be foolhardy. At this stage, what makes a good meditation is when I discover a new place within myself.

I went through the site that was linked by Dan (Thanks ). Very interesting stuff. Wound up re-alligning my yoga/ stretching routine based on their suggestions. As Thaddeus mentioned the longer time spent in each pose adds a dimension that I find very agreeable. So far I'm really liking where this is going.

I have 2 Lesiem albums. They more on the order of Enigma. Probably not contemplative, however they are pretty good. I like to listen to them while painting. I usually have ambient sounds on (Steve Roach) while doing my morning stretching/yoga/meditation routine. My house (really my family) is very noisy so the amient music drowns out the distractions and helps me focus. When the time for meditation arrives, I make sure that whatever is playing does not have singing or anything with a beat.

Not knowing anything about the pros or cons of the various translations I randomly picked Hua-Ching Ni. I wasn't all that thrilled with it mainly because it translated Tao as "the subtle reality of the universe that cannot be described" every single time. I recently picked up "A New Translation Based on the Recently Discovered Ma-wang-tui Texts" by Robert Henricks. It has a couple of chapters explaining the history and process of the translation. It doesn't read that smoothly (like the Mitchell version I've read on the web) and it has a mystical quality to it (kind of like the King James version of the Bible). It's a fairly literal translation that sometimes doesn't work that good in everyday english, but it's growing on me. BTW, my daily practice is to pick out a chapter to read using a random number generating website.

Greetings to all from Arizona. My name is Eric. I've been reading the Tao now for about a year and have also read The Watercourse Way and The Multi Orgasmic Man. Looking forward to learning from the group.