Living Life is a totally misconstrued taoist concept

[Harmonious Emptiness]

Does this reflect your spiritual practice, or use of Tao Bums? You might want to rethink your approach if so..

 

[tulku]

those two things aren't mutually exclusive. we're all higher dimensional beings whether we realize it or not, and i hate to break it to you, but some higher dimensional beings have fun.

 

i hope your heart and mind soften. bless your path tulku, may you find the peace you seek.

 

when one is ready to face death, one would have found the peace needed..

 

true peace comes when you finally found the courage and the heart to accept death if and when it comes..

 

am i ready to death? almost ready..

[Harmonious Emptiness]

"Eating, Sex, Fun and anything that indulge the senses is WRONG!"

 

 

hopefully you will listen to your teachers and learn what they want to show you; perhaps they would admonish you for indulging in internet quarrels as well, though they can be FUN which is in PLAY which is more or less a virtue in Taoism

[VCraigP]

Tulku = Wall

 

Other Tao Bums = Banging head against wall

[Marblehead]

Tulku = Wall

 

Other Tao Bums = Banging head against wall

 

Thanks. I needed that. An alternative perspective.

[ralis]

"Eating, Sex, Fun and anything that indulge the senses is WRONG!"

 

 

hopefully you will listen to your teachers and learn what they want to show you; perhaps they would admonish you for indulging in internet quarrels as well, though they can be FUN which is in PLAY which is more or less a virtue in Taoism

 

I would say that you are indulging your senses at this very moment. One cannot not indulge one's senses. Further, to say that there are degrees of indulgence is absolutely absurd! :lol:

[deepabidance]

imo daoism, spirituality, realization, truth, all run far deeper than the superficial forms practiced and celebrated by most people, particularly from what I have read in this thread, although I didn't read much because there is a lot of argument and repetition over and over.

 

If you think you are only enlightened if you go in the caves, if you need to live in the caves, then you are either very longing for truth and also very troubled by the pollution of the world, a hopeless romantic, or both. Often, its best to get this out of your system, or live it if that works. Go for it. Don't go on a forum and talk about it. If you think living in a cave is the only answer, go ahead and do it. More power to you if you can become enlightened like this.

 

On the other hand, the bookstore spirituality that others are talking here is very superficial also. Unless you have delved deep into madness of duality, esctacy, suffering, given yourself to life really and that means not following desires - not because desires are bad or for energetic reasons - but recognizing what is desire that is self-recreating and repeating and what is authentic and real and needed, and really given yourself to samadhi and life and experience, you have not even begun to touch on dao. IF you are seeing dao in people at mcdonalds or in this place and that place, your relationship with the dao is still extremely feeble and mystical and not really anything real - akin to an old woman looking into your eyes and saying that you are loved or a child of god. True, yes, beautiful, penetrating, real? Yes, but it is not the penetration into the dao. Dao is not known through form, but through the formless, the nameless, the land of not being able to stand on anything, the land of giving and of fear and difficulty and surrender. Then it can be known in form. Not before. Then it can be known as an expression of life, in the world or wherever you choose to live it. Not before. Only after you delve deep and penetrate into the dao and give yourself to it, can you come out and see it in all form. Until then, it is window shop, or even photoshop spirituality sometimes. You can call a smile a dao. A tree the dao. A squirrel the dao. Beautiful, but fleeting. You are looking for something, not giving yourself to the very ground of your existence and of esctacy and madness. Often you are recreating experiences, your are looking for something and recreating, somewhere, a mystical feeling of oneness or union. It is not transformative, not deep, not a real penetration, not something that rips you apart and reveals the nature of reality and love to you.

 

When that starts happening, if that starts happening, you will not see the dao here and there. You will not see the dao anywhere. You will be consumed so much by the dao, that nothing will be visible NOT of dao - and not in the sense of something new happening, or a constantly recognition of 'the dao is here, the dao is there!', everything that was unreal, illusion, and not of the dao, will be burned in your system, and all you will see is dao, without seeing it, without feeling it, without knowing it. The knowing that is given when you are emptied utterly, not when you are still looking here and there, looking mystically at the grains of rice and calling them dao. The knowing that it is so destructive that is challenges everything, destroys everything about you and what you know, in silence and awe you remain, your life unknown now, a movement - moment to moment, in this dao. You switch dimensions - from the root up and down you are constructed anew. It is is something else, not this photoshop spirituality, it is immensely deep, and immensely real, not fleeting or playful. It is cosmic playfulness, beyond playfulness or laughter, a playfulness that contains all seriousness as well. Not just a cup of tea and a laugh with a friend, seen from a mystical and seeking eye, looking for dao in it. It razes your reality to the ground and reveals something else entirely. All these things are the mild callings of the dao. Calling you - o ye living so banefully self content and self protected in your little life, see here, see there, the vast shimmering treasure, vast possibility, vast life that suddenly shuts you up when you are laughing with a friend, and turns you inward, serious. Something in you has stopped, is even afraid, but recognizes the realness. The laughter and the friend just a gate, something else was revealed. Your boredom of the laughter, in truth, of the endless conversation and personal relating and stories back and forth. When you shut up, and face the hollowness of it all - or perhaps it is more giving and you see it in beauty - as a beauty, in the people you are spending time with and it enriches rather than demolishes. But these are glimpses. Callings. the mystery, the dao, is calling you, showing you little cracks and glimpses into its sacred jewel, eternal reality, depth and wonder - and the seriousness and implications of the presence of something like this behind the entire universe. But it won't call forever, neither will these sparks and glimpses hold your attention forever. Either you will jump - jump into the crack, and abandon the world before you, behind you, entirely, as you throw yourself into this ocean, this unknown - not because it is blissful. You know it is not. It can be terrible, terrifying, it will wreck you, destroy you. But something about it, its realness, its calling, its mystery, just causes you to throw yourself into it and abandon the spiritually unsatisfying and limited ways around it. Not that you were consciously unsatisfied, but as it revealed itself - you knew - knew that you were wasting yourself, living life falsely, living something false and really unworthy. When the crack opens, you are faced by the smallness that you are, the stupidity that you are, the dullness of the way you are living. And you will throw, cast yourself into that crack, if there is a fragment of sanity or integrity or truth in you. Somebody you will simple throw yourself into that crack, because the world just does not satisfy, the world is simply senseless and weird. You will throw yourself into that unborn crack and vanish. Maybe you will come back, who knows? Maybe. It feels like you will not.

 

Or you will not, you will choose to follow your dullness, cling in fear to the stupidity of the world and your ways and your misplaced trust in it and yourself and your life and your own intelligence. Then you will waste, waste your life away, while the immensity of the jewel is just a crack away, just underneath you, sitting on it. Waste a life, into the grave, just being a fool and living a foolish, self centered, self protecting life. Maybe you will be a mystic, looking here and there still, reminding yourself that the dao exists when you are down, reminding yourself of the dao in the rocks and the trees because it makes you comfortable.

 

It is a frightening, dark night, a fight for survival, a giving, a hell, a heaven, an esctacy, a pain, a madness, a falling, a rising. It is intense, and has deep valleys. Voids, blackholes. This is how you reach the dao - not because of some tradition or because only these paths that talk of this lead to the dao - but because the dao is an inutterable, vast, consuming reality, and all that will happen, can happen, when facing it, is immense inner transformation, intensity, and immenseness. It is not, small, not fleeting, and not window shop spirituality.

 

To know it, you really have to give. Including seclusion, reclusion, giving up. It is not easy - not meant to be easy. It is the sum of all your evolution as an individual and an individual consciousness being destroyed by something else. Not a building upon, not a gentle breeze, or a beautiful song somewhere. It is a destruction, violent as it is beautiful. Crazy as it is sane, wild as it is the only permeating tameness and calmness. It will shake your world and leave you upside down, then turn you up again and then down again. It will keep doing so till you are its', and its' entirely, no part of you left to yourself any longer. It will own you, forever and forever more.

 

hope this helps

 

much love, truly

 

Nitaant

I would say that you are indulging your senses at this very moment. One cannot not indulge one's senses. Further, to say that there are degrees of indulgence is absolutely absurd! :lol:

Edited August 22, 2011 by deepabidance

[~riverflow]

Two monks were traveling together, an older monk and a younger monk. They noticed a young woman at the edge of a stream, afraid to cross. The older monk picked her up, carried her across the stream and put her down safely on the other side. The younger monk was astonished, but he didn't say anything until their journey was over. "Why did you carry that woman across the stream? Monks aren't supposed to touch any member of the opposite sex." said the younger monk. The older monk replied "I left her at the edge of the river, are you still carrying her?"

[ralis]

[Harmonious Emptiness]

I would say that you are indulging your senses at this very moment. One cannot not indulge one's senses. Further, to say that there are degrees of indulgence is absolutely absurd! :lol:

 

Whatever joker man.. read the post

[Kali Yuga]

if everybody think like me, the race of human beings would be transformed into higher dimensional gods

 

but obviously, too many lay people in this world world prefer the baser lower-dimensional activities of fun,good food and sex than to be a higher dimensional being

Hold on, can me and the other tao bums laugh a minute here?, GREAT joke bro!

 

LMAO!

[tulku]

.

Edited September 8, 2011 by Mal
copyrighted material removed

[lifeforce]

 

Give me a break. You ain't a daoist.

 

You think that reading a few daoist books and doing a few qigong makes you a daoist?

 

Don't make me laugh.

 

I never mentioned me being a Daoist. I reject all labels especially authoritarian religious and spiritual belief systems.

I did however say I was a cultivator of the Dao.

How do you know of my level of neigong cultivation.

Or of who I have met and have acquaintances with.

Or of my meditation practice.

What Daoist books have I read that you speak of ?

I have no interest in becoming enlightened. Only to live a long, happy and healthy life, and to enjoy that life with my family.

I have no intention to make you laugh, only to advise you that my lifestyle makes me happy, regardless of your viewpoint.

[lifeforce]

Body of Light, is that you?

 

I think it is also. The same arguments and viewpoints.

[thelerner]

if everybody think like me, the race of human beings would be transformed into higher dimensional gods

 

but obviously, too many lay people in this world world prefer the baser lower-dimensional activities of fun,good food and sex than to be a higher dimensional being

. If everyone thought like you, they'd be like you, and somehow I doubt you're a multi- dimensional god.

 

Good luck to you, but I kinda hope you indulge in some kind of fun, sometimes at least. Without fun we risk getting bitter, without honest conversations we risk becoming dogmatic and stale.

[mYTHmAKER]

:D Has anyone noticed that all great beings have a good sense of humor and love to laugh. :D

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Im moved by the charity being done in this thread, too bad it's not being appreciated.

[Ambrose_Bierce]

so many taoist, buddhist and spiritual masters have accomplished spiritual attainments in seclusion and written so many books about the path of renunciation ..

 

are you saying all those masters are wrong and fake?

 

such arrogance and disrespect

 

You seem to see the "so-called" arrogance and "so-called" disrespect.

 

How did they all become Masters? Are you wrongly assuming that hermitage or renunciation was the only method and apex of their life path?

 

Let me explain how that last statement is not arrogant.

 

Other Life Situations + Renunciation Path = The Masters you spoke of.

Thus since a Master (you spoke of) is a SUM of all his situational experiences. Renunciation does not equal Master, just like the Other life situations do not equal Master. Thus, my conclusion is common sense not arrogance.

 

My words dont seem arrogant now do they? Deep in your heart you know what I am talking about. Did they lead another kind of life at other times before they chose the path of renunciation? If they did, do you know what it was that made them great? Does it say they got along well with people? Or have you missed that point (reiterated for emphasis).

 

No, it just simply means that you are searching. It is not always prudent to exclaim "Eureka" at the first find.

Edited August 22, 2011 by Ambrose_Bierce

[steve]

Read my first few posts again.

Why?

[konchog uma]

when one is ready to face death, one would have found the peace needed..

 

true peace comes when you finally found the courage and the heart to accept death if and when it comes..

 

am i ready to death? almost ready..

 

i really don't care to discuss it further.

 

bless your endeavors.

[steve]

Body of Light, is that you?

 

I think it is also. The same arguments and viewpoints.

99.99% certain

 

Interesting that he's back again to tell us that he shouldn't be here because he's way beyond any of our levels.

 

I truly wish you peace tulku - I think you're in a lot of pain and looking for a way out.

Hopefully you'll find it in your asceticism.

Acceptance is even better...

[goldisheavy]

The only difference between taoism and buddhism is in name.

 

The enjoyment of things prevent the cultivation on non-dualism and non-attachment of the mind.

 

Even the master taoist sages will retreat to caves when attempting the pinnacle of spiritual cultivation.

 

Check out Wudang, Emei and other taoist sects in China which seclude themselves in the mountains. Why do you think is so?

 

They enjoy that lifestyle more.

[宁]

am i ready to death? almost ready..

 

that's nothing really, most teenagers go through this phase at some point

 

the toughest part is being ready for LIFE, takes alot more courage

 

imo, your practice led too much Qi into your head, and at some point, it should descend, yang reaching the highest peak turns into yin, it is the law of yin yang dinamics between heaven and earth.

just be aware of it and let it happen when it will, because it's close.

many seekers have gone through this phase...

 

smiles

 

L1

[tulku]

You seem to see the "so-called" arrogance and "so-called" disrespect.

 

How did they all become Masters? Are you wrongly assuming that hermitage or renunciation was the only method and apex of their life path?

 

Let me explain how that last statement is not arrogant.

 

Other Life Situations + Renunciation Path = The Masters you spoke of.

Thus since a Master (you spoke of) is a SUM of all his situational experiences. Renunciation does not equal Master, just like the Other life situations do not equal Master. Thus, my conclusion is common sense not arrogance.

 

My words dont seem arrogant now do they? Deep in your heart you know what I am talking about. Did they lead another kind of life at other times before they chose the path of renunciation? If they did, do you know what it was that made them great? Does it say they got along well with people? Or have you missed that point (reiterated for emphasis).

 

No, it just simply means that you are searching. It is not always prudent to exclaim "Eureka" at the first find.

 

There is a reason why so many masters of all spiritual traditions renunciate.

 

It is because the pollution of the material world cloud their senses.

 

They become masters because they were able to achieve a permanent state of samadhi, something which is not easily done if your senses are clouded by the material world.

 

This is why they are called masters and not because of their other life experiences or because they get along well with people bla bla bla.

 

Searching? I have already found what I need. Samadhi.

 

You on the other hand don't even know what you are searching for.

 

This is why I say your words are both arrogant and ignorant.

[tulku]

99.99% certain

 

Interesting that he's back again to tell us that he shouldn't be here because he's way beyond any of our levels.

 

I truly wish you peace tulku - I think you're in a lot of pain and looking for a way out.

Hopefully you'll find it in your asceticism.

Acceptance is even better...

 

I am looking to evolve myself into a higher level of being than the rest of the ignorant masses out there?

 

Am I in a lot of pain? When I see how the masses are unconsciously being tortured by their desires, hardly.