How to recognise a taoist master

[Taomeow]

That's me, wearing the little blue outfit, btw.

Can't see the image on my screen at all... boohoo.

[mYTHmAKER]

But Mythmaker, your example fits in perfectly with my premise that it is always about "something going wrong." Wasn't it a wrong thing for someone to wash his hands in your piss? It doesn't matter that you didn't "mean it" and didn't do it "on purpose." The outcome was still "something going wrong for somebody," wasn't it?

Well now that's funny. If you're a she why were you peeing in a boys' bathroom?..

 

Something wrong again...

 

Wayferer, my cyberlove, I'm not humorless. I have people in stitches when I'm in the mood, and laugh easily myself, I'm really easy to amuse. But it only means I'm not a realized master -- to me it's one of the sure signs. Not that there's no other signs of that of course.

 

 

I'm not a she mYTHISmAKER is the she who was laughing becase she saw me laughing.

The fellow was not washing his hands in my piss. If I thought he was washing his hands in my piss It wouldn't have been funny.

I had no thought of anything having gone wrong for him or anyone else.

It never occured to me that he was or would. I was laughing at the situation of what I had mistakenly done.

It was a long trough about 8 feet long - he was at the other end and the trough had water spigots above, good drainageand no one would ever touch their hands on the bottom.

[Taomeow]

I'm not a she mYTHISmAKER is the she who was laughing becase she saw me laughing.

The fellow was not washing his hands in my piss. If I thought he was washing his hands in my piss It wouldn't have been funny.

I had no thought of anything having gone wrong for him or anyone else.

It never occured to me that he was or would. I was laughing at the situation of what I had mistakenly done.

It was a long trough about 8 feet long - he was at the other end and the trough had water spigots above, good drainageand no one would ever touch their hands on the bottom.

Thanks for clarifying, I read too sloppily. However, it was still something going wrong. Not terribly wrong, just wrong. A mistake. A not-right. A deviation. A sink was for little boys to wash their hands, not for big men to pee into. You can't find a humorous situation that isn't about a shade of wrong, tiny to huge. And when someone else laughs just watching you laugh, that's because we have mirror neurons in the brain that cause us to mimic other people's behavior and emotions and even things like coughing or yawning. Try it in a movie theater -- cough a few times, someone will always respond with a cough of his or her own. Yawn a few times -- and someone will yawn in response. Laugh -- and you'll make someone else laugh. But the original seed of laughter is still what I said it is in 99.9% of cases... remember, incidentally, that's the number I used originally... not 100%... I leave some room for the kind of laughter I've never encountered in real life, I leave it room to exist, but I don't expect anyone to be able to come up with an example -- with even one joke, funny story, funny situation that, stripped down to bare facts, to "what actually happened," isn't about "something wrong happened."

[Wayfarer64]

Hey mYTHTERmAKER,

 

I've seen lots of urinals like tht in Europe... & I'm sure no one dirtied themselves in any piss tainted H2O...

 

I am not one to appologize for what I laugh at- and I am not very PC in my targeting of humorous subject matter, stoics are funny & slackers are funny, blondes, (as a steriotypical model of silliness), are endlessly funny, lawyers are never funny but there is a tacitly understood " open season" on them as they are never funny in real life...

 

Does that make them Taoist Masters -I think not!

 

And i still say we need a TOAST master!

 

What about a joke premis that begins ' Something beautiful happened when three Taoist Masters walked into a bar...

 

The first one asked for some water

the second asked for some water

the third asked for a shot of Tequilla

 

The bartender brought the shot and the waters and started to read the paper...

 

The first Master said "Good water."

The second master said "Yes good water."

The third Master said " I wouldn't know, I was drinking..."

 

The bartender interupted and said , "Why aren't you two guys drinking?"

 

They replied together ,

"We thought we were drinking."

 

No one was laughing so it was ok.

 

I just made that up only to be amusing, where is the pain? Was it even funny?

 

Who is to say if it would be or not be funny to a Taoist Master, are 6 out of 8 Taoist Masters...?

 

I don't know if I will laugh or cry... is that the crux? That middleway to leave it be...?

I am too involved with life not to laugh at/with it ...

 

And yes I know that you TaoMeow are fun and funny and have humor as I've read it here...

 

AND!_

I now have a most concrete reason to find a true Taoist Master -just to see if I can make him laugh...

Edited February 19, 2008 by Wayfarer64

[Pero]

Can't see the image on my screen at all... boohoo.

 

I can't see it either. Just says IPB Image.

[Mal]

Run (don't walk) to get a new browser because Cat's little blue outfit is HOT

[xenolith]

Interesting how this thread has turned.

...I can't possibly convince anyone of anything.

True. One of my favorite aspects of the Tao is that experience teaches best. A distant second are the actions of others. Further distant in third are the utterances of others. Utility drops off dramatically beyond these. This medium of an internet forum presents significant difficulties for purposes of teaching about the Tao. Nonetheless, I sincerely hope that you'll continue to risk failure in pursuit of said here anyway. You never know what'll stick! And heck, failure's good for subjugation of ego, which is simply good! Positive results occur somewhere in the Tao either way.

My taiji teacher laughs a lot and can be very funny, delightfully so, and is quite taoist in his leanings and lifestyle and cognitive preferences, but he isn't what they refer to as a "Real Human" or a "realized being" or a "holy sage" in taoist classics. My taoist teacher, however, never laughs. Never gets bored either... ever. Never needs to be amused, entertained, noticed... She's really hard to understand on everyday human terms. The part I understand though is that her state is what they call "more advanced" (whatever it's supposed to mean) than any 'normal' human state anyone can imagine.

Also interesting. I wonder whether you'd think that the following description applies to both:

They are positive beyond reason.

Positively yours.

 

xeno

[Wayfarer64]

Right click on image and then click - show picture when it comes up as an option

[Pero]

Run (don't walk) to get a new browser because Cat's little blue outfit is HOT

 

Right click on image and then click - show picture when it comes up as an option

 

Oh this just sucks, it doesn't work. It doesn't work in Firefox and it doesn't work in IE either.

 

2: fopen(/mnt/nas/media//13222.jpg) [function.fopen]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory

 

Line: 59

File: /mnt/nas/code/netgenie/website/htdocs/siteimage.php

[Ian]

On the other hand, Desmond Morris of The Naked Ape asserts that laughter is crying in disguise, and that humans use exactly the same muscles to laugh as they use when they cry. (There's no other two activities for which we use exactly the same muscles -- except laughing and crying.) The first experience of laughter for a baby is when something pretends to be scary but really isn't -- dad going "boo" in jest or some such. There's this moment of decision for the baby -- get scared, cry? -- this "boo" thing can hurt me? -- but no, it's dad, familiar and safe... so, cry the way you cry when you know the dangerous thing is not going to hurt you? -- an as-if bad thing, and I respond with an as-if crying. And the baby discovers laughter. The as-if mode.

 

Have you noticed that 99.9% of all jokes, if you focus your awareness on the situation described rather than the "funny" factor, are about something going very wrong for someone? About someone being hurt?..

 

I think there's also a yin/yang thing going on. For me, laughter releases more than crying. When I cry, at least, I'm keeping some of it, not willing to move on, whereas with laughter I don't care whose it is and the situation is over. Maybe I just don't cry right....

 

 

Big-m masters are useless, though, because they no longer hold attachments to their students, which make teaching in any sort of meaningful way impossible. Really what most people need are little-m masters, and the ways to recognize them depend on the student's own level of development.

 

Agree!

[xenolith]

Miss Meow, your reply to post #57 is solicited. And would be very much appreciated.

[Taomeow]

Miss Meow, your reply to post #57 is solicited. And would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for remembering and reminding me!

 

You asked (about my teachers),

"I wonder whether you'd think that the following description applies to both:

 

They are positive beyond reason."

 

Good question. We would have to start by finding a common definition of "positive." To me, positive is yang and negative is yin, but yang vs. yin isn't "good" vs. "not so good" and therefore positive vs. negative isn't either. An example of what I mean: place two lenses side by side and compare -- positive is convex and negative is concave; look at a landscape -- positive is the mountain and negative is the valley; put a t-shirt on -- positive is the outside of it which the world sees and negative is its inside that touches your body. Neither one is better or worse... each serves its own purpose -- as well as the purpose of creating its opposite!

 

So if you mean that both are positive in the sense the word is used in English (which is a wrong way to use it far as I'm concerned, and there's a not-so-good historic reason for such usage... but I won't go there now) --

 

i.e. in the sense "optimistic, affirming, seeing good in everyone and everything" -- the answer has to be no. My taiji teacher indeed has this kind of personality, easygoing and cheerful -- or at least I have never seen him in any other mood and have reasons to believe he is very genuinely content and truly feels deeply good when he acts it (which seems like pretty much always). My taoist teacher, however, is impossible to read in any simple terms, and is quite easy to misinterpret. She does seem like one of those masters to whom ordinary people are "straw dogs" (TTC). She is demanding, impatient, has a short fuse, and makes me feel stupid and inadequate. The thing is, whenever she does, she is one hundred percent right -- and I wouldn't accept it coming from anyone else, so she's my only chance to face my own inadequacies without bullshitting myself about my "level" of this and that. If it wasn't for her, who knows -- I could wind up fancying myself a great master like so many do just because there's no one there to smack them.

 

Overall they're as different as... OK, it's like that Simpsons quote from an episode where the Simpsons enter a Japanese game show:

"Our Japanese game shows are a little different from your American ones. In America, you reward knowledge... In Japan, we punish ignorance!!"

 

Now if you meant positive-negative in the yin-yang sense, then the answer is also no. My taiji teacher is very yin-yang-balanced -- an embodiment of the middle way. My taoist teacher alternates between extreme yang and extreme yin and avoids the middle way like the plague. I could tell stories if I could tell stories...

 

So, Xeno, what do you make of it?

[Pero]

Ok so I finally managed to see that pic. Cat I think you should shave your mustache, it doesn't suit you. Maybe if you grow a beard.

[Wayfarer64]

Yes a beard would bring out the Taoist master from within you?!

 

But maybe then, no one would recognize you...

[三江源]

.

Edited April 12, 2015 by 三江源

[Yoda]

What are all those taoist immortals doing laughing?

 

On the other hand...

 

You can't laugh if you are omniscient because nothing is surprising anymore.

 

-Clueless in Columbia

[mYTHmAKER]

A few months ago I was in a chinese restaurant and was distracted

so I ordered lofon noodles instead of maifon noodles. It was hilarious.

We were all in hysterics.

It went right by the waitress - when I repeated my order she cracked up.

 

You had to be there

[Starjumper]

I think maybe Taoist masters don't laugh too much but they might giggle softly, quietly, happily now and then at some good news from a student.

[Taomeow]

What are all those taoist immortals doing laughing?

I'm guessing the immortals are laughing that 0.1% kind of laughter I was talking about that mortals don't.

[i_am_sam]

A few months ago I was in a chinese restaurant and was distracted

so I ordered lofon noodles instead of maifon noodles. It was hilarious.

We were all in hysterics.

It went right by the waitress - when I repeated my order she cracked up.

 

You had to be there

 

this i find funny, even more because I wasn't there

 

 

 

You can't laugh if you are omniscient because nothing is surprising anymore.

 

 

or maybe

 

you can laugh if you are omniscient because everything is surprising forevermore.

 

whose to say? maybe all that laughter energy is returned to pure love (insert angelic smiley here), but I'd demand a refund if I attained immortality only to find there's no humour involved

 

-Laughing in London, and equally clueless

Edited February 21, 2008 by i_am_sam

[Taomeow]

this i find funny, even more because I wasn't there

or maybe

 

you can laugh if you are omniscient because everything is surprising forevermore.

 

whose to say? maybe all that laughter energy is returned to pure love (insert angelic smiley here), but I'd demand a refund if I attained immortality only to find there's no humour involved

 

-Laughing in London, and equally clueless

 

Well, animals do without, except for apes and hyenas. And -- NB -- shed no tears, except for the crocodile who doesn't shed them out of sadness but, rather, to aid his digestion. To me, one of the main attractions of genuine (pre-Confucian and pre-Buddhist) taoism is that, like all shamanic traditions, it doesn't set man apart from nature as a superior creature, and is free of speciesm. There's schools based on learning from animals -- e.g., turtle practices of longevity (very precisely imitating the ways of the turtle that can live for hundreds and even thousands of years). There's a branch of Magical Taoism that focuses exclusively on cultivating and refining the human sense of smell to match that of animals. A common house moth, that little flimsy pale thing that causes you to clap your hands trying to smash it when it suddenly appears in slow fluttering flight between you and your sitcom on TV, can smell its mate from the distance of eleven miles and head straight to a party in response to this message, which all humans would see as a supernatural ability if any one of them could exhibit it. Immortals don't emulate mortals in their ways, and don't get their kicks from the same sources of amusement as we do. The inner world of a "big M" master may well be as incomprehensible to an ordinary human as that of an ant. What is it to you looking from the outside -- "primitive?" But it's been around for eight hundred million years to our 1/800.000.000th of the time -- so maybe it knows something we don't?..

 

The virtue of tao which the most noteworthy classics talk about, "endurance, staying power," "heng" -- well it doesn't seem to bore tao to practice it... and doesn't seem to bore animals who go on and on and on for hundreds of millions of years without trying to annihilate themselves and all other species every five minutes just for the kicks and giggles. Maybe something in non-human ways is not all bad and unattractive after all?.. Maybe it's not necessarily an "inferior" mode of functioning just because it's not like ours?..

[xenolith]

An even more interesting answer Miss Meow. Thank you.

 

I meant 'positive' in the sense of improvement being manifest in those around them.

 

I humbly submit to you that both of the teachers that you've described are taoist masters by my definition.

[Todd]

Vis a vis the original question, I meant that a true taoist master doesn't laugh, because she is a "real human" and real humans smile when they feel pleasure, cry when they feel pain, but don't laugh. Laughter is an as-if mode. Smiling and crying are real. Pleasure and pain are straightforward, smiling and crying are straightforward responses; while responding to pain with pleasure is convoluted. A taoist master doesn't lose the smile and doesn't lose the tears, but she loses the laughter. I know it's hard to believe...

 

As-if is what makes the whole game go around. When we no longer try to hold up some thing, we are free to pretend, wildly. Our pretend becomes real, and disappears. This is the bubbling of life... or the song if you would like to call it that. The nature of vibration is yin and yang. Of bubbling is arising and popping. Tao is yin? Maybe not, but closer. Its funny to call it anything, since there is no yin without yang. Its not both either.

 

What is the function of laughter? One might as well ask, "What is the function of existence?" Laughter is a particularly human (and primate did you say?) expression of the movement of the Dao. This movement is return and excursion. In this way laughter can build on itself.

 

Laughter releases folly, into the Dao. All folly is appreciated, thanked for its existence, without any of that solemn gookiness that sticks in the craw. The dance is allowed to dance itself, in the light of humor.

 

There are many forms of laughter, and the human expression is only one expression. Perhaps the master you know has found another way to laugh. Have you asked her?

 

And please don't chop off my head for this question, but how would you know if she were telling you the truth?

[Taomeow]

Thanks, Xeno, by this definition that you gave, 'tis true.

 

Todd, I don't ever chop any heads off for questions, only, occasionally, for answers.

 

How do I know she's telling me the truth? When you are shopping for a pair of shoes and try a few pairs on and make this judgment call every time -- too small, too big, just right -- how do you know your feet are telling you the truth?..

 

She is a bit like the I Ching: never answers the question you've asked at the moment, always the question you should have asked at the moment whether you know it or not. It's useless to ask her without the question being impossible for me to answer myself. She knows what I can and cannot learn on my own, and the former, she doesn't bother teaching me. So about laughter, I learned on my own.

 

The thing is, people are allowed to laugh "all the way" but not cry "all the way" -- especially adults, especially men -- so laughter is like an umbrella under which everyone will rush at first opportunity so as to release whatever you're not allowed to release any other way -- and have actually lost the skill, and would have to be taught from scratch how to discern, own, and adequately express your own feelings. The world is full of stiff wooden people -- numbed out physically, emotionally, intellectually -- because of that. Laughter, one of the vanishingly few modes of expression still available, only releases as much of the genuine feeling as the very tip of its humongous iceberg just sitting there forever blocking everything. Tears would melt much more of it in many situations. And a whole-body complete genuine reaction, all of it. But who has the luxury to have that?

 

Replacements, as-if modes and as-if ideations, abound -- but their power is limited to the tip of the iceberg.

 

It's not as noticeable from a personally good comfy place in life -- but most lives visit those comfy places only temporarily. Sooner or later everybody has to face the music. Dance? Yeah... Everybody dances. To me, the sign that there's something wrong with the dance we're dancing though (a collective we, the "humanity" we) is that everybody keeps stepping on everybody else's toes... I know a harmonious dance when I see it, and I'm yet to see it in the civilized human world.

[Todd]

Thanks for your message.

 

You hit the nail on the head with crying vs. laughing, especially for me. This has to do with my particular history, including social forces, whatnot. This is at the level of becoming, however. I have sense that I will always be a the tip of the iceberg with becoming. The idea of reaching the bottom is just an idea, for me at least, and I haven't met anyone that I trust who says otherwise. It does expand, or get clearer, though.

 

There are shifts that happen. There is a time for laughter and a time for crying. A time for boredom, and for pain. A time for tying oneself up into really small knots. There is a time for letting it all go, and a time for watching it arise anew. There is a time to resist, and a time to enjoy.

 

I can't speak for the whole world, and perhaps what I have not really encountered will hit me soon. It already hits me when it wants. Then I wonder, and it is divine. That takes nothing away from the pain, or the confusion, or gracelessness of the appearance. But all those are just a few flavors, and there are so many flavors to enjoy.

 

I appreciate your call to this, and to solidity.

 

Laughter does not need to be left behind, though. It is a gift. It is one of the things that allows us to inhabit the real, without adding to the mess.