Taoist God of Liquor

The caption says something about banishing the God of liquor to Malaysia, which is home to perhaps 350 million Taoists today. Anyway, I thought this was a humorous example of salt of the earth Taoism which is popular among tribal people, and can be considered a religion of the poor and working class, who are not expected to act dignified all the time and tend to have things like harvest festivals. Their sense of humor is one of the things I've always admired about Taoists.

 

Five precepts (Taoism) - Wikipedia


Do Taoists Drink Wine, Beer, or other Alcohol?


Alcohol, especially watered wine, is permitted in Taoism only in religious ceremonies or for medical purposes or for social bonding in feasts. Regular drunkenness is frowned upon in Taoism.

 

Wikipedia is run by militant atheists who are not terribly trustworthy when it comes to such things.

Religious Taoists are about as mainstream as it gets and similar to Protestantism in Christianity for morality. They just tend to sometimes express a more outrageous salt of the earth sense of humor. Believing 8,000 gods inhabit the human body alone, makes for fun at times I'm sure.

 

Taoism has an emphasis on jian or moderation. In balance all the opposites are harmonised and in imbalance due to immoderation there is confusion and disarray.

An aware and equanimous mind tends to bring balance and harmony in external situations and circumstances as well.

Krishna similarly states in the Bhagavad Gita, 'Equanimity of mind is yoga.'

 

Without contentment, happiness is nothing more than cheap thrills and instant gratification, anger is nothing more than the mocking laughter of the void, and sorrow is forever misplaced. Harmony neither acts nor reasons, so I tell people to get over it already! 90% of this game is half-mental!

A study of those who called themselves moral, indicated the overwhelming majority of them apply their morality to others in a deliberate and thoughtful manner, but not to themselves. However, those raised in extended families or who regularly used their own two hands in service to their community and who cultivated contentment, thrived better in the long run and lived up to their moral ideals better. Pay it forward suckers, or pay the price! You will literally likely die younger if you don't.

Habits are the end of all honesty and compassion, the beginning of complete and total confusion. Set your words free and see if they come back to you. Treat your own words and those of others, the way you would like to be treated.

 

Yeah, cultivation of contentment is considered as one of the four gatekeepers to enlightenment in the ancient scripture Yoga Vasistha, along with the company of enlightened sages and their teachings, self-control and the practice of self-inquiry resulting in self-knowledge. Vasistha states that the diligent practice of just one of these will bring about the others as well on its own.

The Yoga Vasistha consists of the dialogue between prince Rama and the sage Vasistha over the nature of the mind and existence.

Rama there are four gate-keepers at the entrance to the Realm of Freedom (Moksha).

 

Screw that, I just tell people point blank you either cultivate contentment, as well as ambition, or you are asking for trouble! Donate the use of your hands twice a month for a few hours and see if you don't like yourself better. You either learn to like who you are, or whether you like anyone else or not becomes a moot point. Enlightenment is getting the punch lines to your own bad jokes. Using archaic language and mystical metaphysical mumbo jumbo is for people with stunted senses of humor.

Mother Nature talks to me sometimes in plain English, and I am part of the collective unconscious, an avatar of mother nature herself. Soon, there will be no doubt she is coming back to reclaim the entire planet, including her children, who have no clue just what kinds of idiots they are. In fact, I'm designing a cheap homemade singularity that will allow anyone to eventually talk to mother nature themselves, when they join the Yin World, or collective unconscious. Mother Nature can be thought of as merely the "ego" of the collective unconscious, who you could say guards the entrance to any singularity, such as the Tao Te Ching provides.

Taoism is often noted as the most feminine religion of the major religions, but I always tell people you gotta love a religion that has a sense of humor about itself. As for magic, if it isn't inexplicable and a surprise, its not magic and you are fooling yourself, so there's not much else to say about it, except I'll hopefully publish my book later this year. Manipulating space-time in rudimentary ways, is something that is much easier to explain.

 

'Donating the use of hands' or selfless charity comes under Karma Yoga ( yoga of action) in Hinduism. There is also Jnana Yoga or ( yoga of intellect) as well as bhakti yoga ( yoga of love) and raja yoga ( yoga of mysticism).

People have different temperaments, some have a disposition for action, some for intellectual activity and some being emotional or mystical, and some in varying combinations of these. The yogas are designed for differing temperaments in people, so that every person are not put in a singular system like a straitjacket which would be impractical and ineffective.

 

The actual physical evidence suggests otherwise, that either you use your own two hands, or your personal integrity and life suffer. We are not abstractions, but living, breathing, social animals with specific needs. Babies that are not held and loved within the first few days of life tend to die within the first year or two from "failure to thrive". It doesn't matter if you feed them or whatever, they must be held or even the survivors will likely fail to ever reproduce.

 

Which physical evidence would be that!

 

Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the by and by
Talk about your plenty talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills.

 

Children need to be nurtured properly, but this also means teaching them sound critical thinking skills, proper relationship skills, good value systems and so on. It is not just merely holding and spoonfeeding them food all the time.

Robin Williams was a great humorist but he eventually ended up committing suicide. Comedian Jim Carrey similarly suffered from depression.I remember reading a newspaper article on a mass shooter who had earlier volunteered on charity activities.

Eastern philosophy do emphasize humour and selfless charity as potent ways for spiritual growth, but not rigidly at the exclusion of other paths.That would end up as an another confining pattern or unidimensional system to constrict the human being who is multidimensional.

 

Before they were herded onto reservations, the Kung! of South Africa had one serious crime every 400 years. There are other examples, but the idea that I have to take anyone's word on what people need to live peaceful happy lives is absurd. We have the physical evidence, this is not the fucking stone age. There's no need to speculate, no need to rely on archaic beliefs or anything like that, no need to theorize or get mystical.

The eastern mainstream is no better than the western. Seriously, are you going to take advice from the people who are maintaining the current status quo and running the entire planet into the dirt? I once spoke to the head of mental health in the US for the entire country, and I told him his ideas were worthless, because I can see the results. Show me the money people, show me the good life that you keep talking about, and stop wasting everyone's time.

The Athenians killed Socrates for cracking a handful of the lamest jokes imaginable. Not because his jokes weren't funny, but because money and the guns did all the talking worth listening to and insisted his jokes were a threat, crass, and socially unacceptable. That comedians in modern Babylon commit suicide more often should come as no surprise, considering one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth, because they have so much love and respect for their third grade teacher.

Once again with emphasis: Show me the money! Show me people living happy productive lives and stop attempting to warn me about your personal nightmares. Show me the physical evidence and put it in clear contexts. People who become professional comedians have mental problems by definition, because they live in a violent culture! Since the death of Socrates, it has become traditional for comedians to beg their audiences not to lynch them. Next you'll be warning me not to vote democrat or run down the street naked, because its socially unacceptable.

 

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao;
The name that can be named is not the eternal name. - Lao Tsu

That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. - Kena Upanishad



Obviously you can see here that Taoism or Advaita Vedanta for that matter is not about theories and speculation but direct experiential understanding through meditation and present moment awareness.

You can go through the example of Matthieu Ricard, a French academic in the field of molecular genetics, who is also considered by scientists as the happiest man in the world.

The happiest man in the world?

How To Be Happy (According To The World's Happiest Man)

A 69-year-old monk who scientists call the 'world's happiest man' says the secret to being happy takes just 15 minutes per day

 

I spent 20 years studying six versions of the Tao Te Ching and another decade studying linguistic analysis, then I spent the last 13 years writing the book I'm writing with the help of a dozen witches and mother nature herself. Trust me, the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao, because its what's missing from this fucking picture, and as such, it obeys rather complicated mathematics and physics. Information and energy are yin and yang and, therefore, interchangeable. My words have a will and a life of their own, and I do not tell them what to say for fear of my own sanity. Time is the simplest way to think about the Tao, because time is never what you think it is, until that time rolls round again. Like time, harmony neither acts nor reasons, and is the fountain source of all the myriad good things.

 

*When a beautiful fat housecat rolls in the sunlight, that is yoga. - Nataraja Guru

I don't think you need to know complicated mathematics and physics to understand the Tao. The mind that is still, relaxed and not restless by thinking and emoting due to various cravings and aversions, is in a better position to perceive the Tao or Brahman.

 

The Vedas are similar to calculus, very pretty if you like French Curves like every engineer I know. They are more organic than the Bagua, specifically designed to help individuals improve their physical and spiritual health. A great accomplishment by any standard for an ancient logic, but what I do is the algebra of nature, which makes sense out of the calculus. Together, they are yin and yang, but only as good as their algebra is simultaneously explicit and vague.

I'm just updating the mathematics. The early Chinese civilization made it taboo to extrapolate more poetry, turned Taoism into a religion, and derailed a 12,000 year old tribal tradition. But, you can't stop mother nature and the collective unconscious, and the turning point is now upon us. Oh, the mathematics are known as "Intuitionistic" and are metaphoric using emotional-logic. All of which I had to figure out for myself the hard way, because people tend to not share their words and play nice as often as they really should.

Technically, the Vedas should use differential calculus, and express a subtle sense of humor. You could use Fast Fourier Transforms to design personalized solutions. Wave mechanics basically, making quantum chromodynamics a good choice as well. I'm sure the US government will make some of the Gita classified as well.

 

If I may say so, mathematics came up in the east. The concepts of the numeral system,zero, decimal system,trigonometry originated in India and were transmitted to the Middle East, China, and Europe and led to further developments that now form the foundations of many areas of mathematics.

But I assure you, the Tao and Brahman are not known by mathematics or intellectual activity but through your own consciousness purified of its cravings and aversions.

 

LOL, my words talk to me and tell me what they mean, not the other way around. There is nothing you can say that will change that. Seriously, my words sometimes rewrite themselves, substituting words that I like better. Once, I threw a temper tantrum and mother nature crashed six computers in a row on me, just to prove she was not impressed by temper tantrums. I could not tell my words what to say if I wanted to, because mother nature took that choice away from me and never lets me forget it. She insists I make her look pretty.

When you can talk to her in plain English, I'd love to hear what you have to say about her, because then you will be part of the Yin World, and a shaman. Sitting on the bottom of a pool for an hour, does not a great shaman make. Get with it, this is the modern world.

 

See, what it means is that you are being dominated by your thinking process and corresponding emoting, because every thought brings with it an emotion though it may differ in degree. You are identified with them without the necessary space for yourself.

Life is rooted in reality, not in the psychological drama created by your thoughts and emotions.


I have elaborated on this in this thread....

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev on the mechanics of human suffering...