GrandmasterP

It opens no problem via Bookmarks on Kindle but not by typing Tao Bums into Google using same Kindle. Doing that only brings up the Google Attack warning screen.

He's also very funny 'live'. Nietzsche ref is in the Open Secret book. Not worth buying cos it's all on his website in the main. www.urbanguru.com should find that. Tony & me have previous. Far too many years ago we lived in the same Ashram. Lot of water flowed down the Yangtze since those days though. He's retired from the day job now but still toddles out once a month to lecture plus facilitate the occasional workshop. Doesn't charge much at all but gets decent attendances so a nice pension top up.

We charge £5-00 per person per class. £3-00 for members. Workshop specials £10-00 inclusive of refreshments. Poverty is a relative concept. Being 'transport poor' here in the spiritually impoverished but relatively materially wealthy west meant to be without a car. Would agree with taomeow about historic parasitism of monasticism. The Xtian religious orders were just as bad. Hermits are fine but any monastic setup, of necessity; parasitises the host society. These days though the title 'Sifu' seems to almost equate to 'Peddler of overpriced DVDs and related merchandise'.

Everything we veggies eat is GM via selective breeding. What's done for Indian farmers is biogenetic F1 hybridised seed especially rice. By the third season they have no money for seed. The old varieties ensured a food crop plus next year's viable seeds. Bio-GM hybrids are sterile on the crop plant hence once they go with those they become locked into Big-Agri as a dependant customer. It has taken years and the suicides of countless impoverished farmers for the Indian govrnment to wake up to this.

Yep, tree Qi is super. Scotch Pine for choice here. Spring and early summer it's Yang-y. Balanced through high summer and now it's moving to Yin-y. [We are in the Northern hemisphere] Excellent place for a Gathering-Qi top up is under tree cultivation. Your trees still talking to you Sinan?

Me too. Five winters working in in India [nothing mystical, I was sent by the day job]. Bleddy hot is Karnataka and I missed snow. On topic. I posted a Tony Parsons clip elsewhere on here. He's a top chap in the old philosophy stakes. Draws on Fred here and there but solidly Taoistic in his non-duality premises.

No disrespect intended but from what limited aquaintance one has had with former alchemical cultivators the two I know well both enjoy their reincarnations this time round as domestic pets far and away more than whatever fun they had beng alchemists. Far too small a set to extrapolate generalities but there you have it. TTC 'means' exactly what you read it to mean. Everyones' copy of TTC does the same. Convincing others of a particular reading may well constitute a lineage but it does not necessarily constitute veracity. 'True believers' and their converts are always the most zealous. Zeal to a Taoist is like hard work. We can watch it all day.

Being and Doing had a race. Only Doing ran. Being won.

Mrs GrandmasterP fractured her pelvis early last year via an accident. She cultivates. Docs were amazed at the speed of her recovery to full mobility to the extent that physiotherapists were sent to learn a basic set with us and now use that as part of their practice in City General Hospital..

I have seen 61 summers and 60 winters thus far. Last time I danced was to the Beatles.... live. It was not a pretty sight as Mrs GrandmasterP is wont to remind me. One of the things that brought me into QiGong was starting out in a TaiChi class where the teacher insisted on playing bleddy awful New Age background 'music'. The QiGong class next door took place in dignified silence [apart from the occasional discreet fart] so I switched to that. Been at it ever since and now teach in the self same centre I started out in.

Sorta a wise old grandfather to me. Second relative would maybe be a second cousin by marriage. The cool one you enjoy seeing at family get togethers.

Alan Watts called it... 'The aching legs school of practice'.

Sorry, must be a different book. The one I read is that one the 'Left Behind' series was based on.

Dance! Were one to be King for a Day only two laws would be made. 1: Any man over the age of fifty caught dancing shall be heavily fined. 2: Citizens must at all times carry a bag of well rotted fruit. In order to throw it at buskers, street 'performers' and men over fifty caught dancing.

'One breath away from a paradox' is very good. Golden Flower is a rich vein to mine. Slippery concept is 'dimensions' there's always the barrier of ideas [language-baggage] around measurement or positionality. As in -'higher'or 'fourth' or 'greater'. 'That' in opposition to or elsewhere than 'this'. Silence works whereas words falter. ..................................................................... All success with this most engaging debate.

Not to spoil it for you but the ending is disappointing. Maybe there will be a sequel to tie up all those plotlines left dangling. ................................................................................................................................. Just finished Olson's Qigong Teachings of a Taoist Immortal. Edition I have is poorly edited. The trigrams are just plain wrong on some pages. Looks as though images and words have been transposed so on one page Heaven is shown as one trigram elsewhere it shows a different image. Prety poor show as he recommends the book to 'beginners and experienced alike'. It could only confuse a beginner. That said he has some nice translations of earler texts in there.

RBSA I can't respond to PMs from home via Kindle. Will reply to yours on Monday. That whole 'cogito ergo sum' Cartesian duality schtick is just so much illusion. There's... No self... Nothing at all. So no need to worry. Ever.

Stephen Whitehead's book 'Men and Masculinities' is a good starting point for anyone seriously interested in these areas.

Mrs GrandmasterP instructs me to contribute the following affirmation.... 'All women know their place'.

Richard Dawkins had a horseshoe nailed to the wall of his Oxford study. Open end up to catch good luck. Challenged about it by a supervisee Richard replied....... 'Yes it is anomalous, but I was assured by the gypsy who sold the thing to me that it works, whether I believe in it or not'.

Also, with deep respect..... Who is it 'experiencing emptiness' ?

'High is determined by low'. As via To be like water taking the easiest... [lowest in the sense of streams flowing down into rivers and rivers flowing down into ocean. Never upwards] ...natural path of least resistance. That cultivated then 'higher dimensions' may well access us. Effortlessly.

Kierkegaard bit the heads of whippets [according to Monty Python]. Thank you for the welcome. It is good to be here. Nothing much to contribute by way of cultivaton. We teach 8 Strands... 5 Animal Sports... QiGong Ruler and that's about all. The rest is spooky stuff viewable via the website link to our centre on my Profile. All are welcome, there is something on every day and most evenings.

All any of us can change is ourselves.

Sorry Sinan... typo.