To compare is to judge?

[Avolith]

Yes, I no longer suffer, but not because of avoidance but because of pushing through it - transcending it - in the light of understanding its nature, and using this wisdom to do what needed to be done to bring it to an end. The Tao te Ching, the subject of this thread,

Do you see the irony in the situation where you're saying that it's against the tao to assert value judgements, which is in itself the assertion of a value judgement, given that you value the tao and the end of your suffering

Good thought and I see your point. What is unique about philosophical wisdom texts (to include the Tao te Ching) is that their central message is that of non attachment, but of course in order to receive the value of wisdom of non-attachment one must first become attached to the wisdom text and not only attached, but passionately attached. So I concede to your logic and assert that because the Tao assists in the end of suffering caused by attachments, the Tao is valuable. Of course, my assertion means nothing unless the reader hears some truth in the assertion and is inspired to study/meditate on the Tao te Ching for his or herself.

I think that the assertion of value judgment as far as the tao te ching itself goes is just an example, I imagine it might be wise to assert all kinds of (relative) value judgements not directly related to the tao or the tao te ching itself, eg with the dog example, or, as is done in the tao te ching itself. So one should be free to speak their mind if they know something is true and should be said

[Santiago Odo]

But I do believe quite strongly that wisdom in some person ultimately can't be pinned down, and the only way to really know it is to experience it for yourself. I can see that you genuinely believe that there is something seriously immoral happening here, but it's just not so.

Wisdom being *pinned down* in a person is different from the general question about the wisdom that you discern here. You have offered nothing.

I take it then that you do not have much of a basis for defining wisdom. That is a fair answer (were you to have given it!)

David is on the lookout for people just like you. Off balance in some sense within themselves. Isolated. Uncertain. Sexually ambiguous. You are probably some skinny virgin with woman issues. Creatively thwarted. Smart in some sense but adrift intellectually. Very shaky relationship to Occidental categories.

Needing a 'specialness' affirmation . . . Eh David? Is that about it?

Immoral? That is an interesting term. I don't think I have used that word in this context. But now that you mention it I would say that if David's definitions of wise action are to be the standard -- they are so bizarre and stoned-out that I can't see how they could -- but if they were taken as a standard I believe that I would say that they are immoral.

But then I'd have to define what I mean by that . . .

[Avolith]

But I do believe quite strongly that wisdom in some person ultimately can't be pinned down, and the only way to really know it is to experience it for yourself. I can see that you genuinely believe that there is something seriously immoral happening here, but it's just not so.

Wisdom being *pinned down* in a person is different from the general question about the wisdom that you discern here.

I take it that you do not have much of a basis for defining wisdom. That is a fair answer (were you to have given it!)

The challenge you directed to me, was to define what wisdom I perceive here at geniusrealms in particular (due to your concerns), and not to give a definition of wisdom in general. This is why I was talking about discerning the presence of wisdom in a particular context or individual, eg 'pinning down wisdom'. You can't have already forgotten that - it seems to me you're disingenuously setting up a straw man to prove me wrong.

Immoral? That is an interesting term. I don't think I have used that word in this context. But now that you mention it I would say that if David's definitions of wise action are to be the standard -- they are so bizarre and stoned-out that I can't see how they could -- but if they were taken as a standard I believe that I would say that they are immoral.

But then I'd have to define what I mean by that . . .

Very well then. what do you value, anyways?

[Santiago Odo]

Very well then, what do you value anyways?

I start here, and please, fellows one and all, Jupi, Visheshdewan, Diebert, Pam, David, let us intone all together!

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky,
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

I've just give it to you in Spectrascope!

[Avolith]

And now we've come full circle, you're back to the Santiago I met when I first came here - poisoning the well, using shaming tactics and sarcasm. As far as I can tell this is again becoming a pointless discussion that's going in circles

[Santiago Odo]

Genius is a discussion forum that is passionately dedicated to the nature of Genius, Wisdom and Ultimate Reality and to the total annihilation of false values. It is an unconventional discussion forum suitable only for the brave hearted. It is for those who like their thoughts bloodied and dangerous. That is to say, it is a forum intended solely for men - of either sex. It is sometimes said that genius is "the infinite capacity for giving pain." This is very apt. If one is not deliberately causing pain to the ego, both in oneself and in others, then what is the good of one's life? One might as well not exist at all. It is by challenging and overturning our cosy assumptions, habitual thought-processes, psychological refuges and mental blocks that our minds can be opened up that little bit more to the wisdom of the Infinite.

We hope you find this forum stimulating and challenging.

[Santiago Odo]

I just really think that the total annihilation of false values is a wonderful and delightful pursuit!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I am speaking here of the constitution of the forum as an idea-project within Occidental ideation.
--
I just really think that the total annihilation of false values is a wonderful and delightful pursuit!

You mean you want to kill the fathers, steal their cars and drive it into the same ruin whence it came from? In the thrall of your Oedipal death cult! Your aim is to challenge the nihilism, in culture, in our minds but you're not yet seeing your isis in your i's?

[jupiviv]

So you're saying that as a sage, you don't (ultimately) need to compare different translations of the text to find their intended meaning, because you are simply using the words to guide yourself to rediscover your own thoughts? And/or the sage doesn't need comparisons because... I guess I'll go think about that

I don't think I'm a sage, but sage or not, wise texts are just guides for thought as others have also pointed out. Actually *anything* is a guide for thought, even error and guilt, if the desire for thought is strong enough. An honest search for wisdom cannot fail even if it makes many bad judgments or reaches a lot of wrong conclusions along the way.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Let's say you prefer small dogs to large dogs. If your judgment (your preference, your meaning, your valuing of) of dog size ends here, you are in harmony with the Tao. If, however, your preference for small dogs over large dogs causes you to debate or to argue with those who prefer large dogs over small dogs, then you are out of harmony with the Tao.

Judgements can simply result or be integral part of debates or arguments, the laying out arguments, about the reasoning involved.

The very act of trying to make a "pure" judgement between large & small and any "messy" judgements happening within the discussions, reflections, self-searching or putting pressure on habitual knee-jerk reactions could become itself out "out of harmony" because that distinction would only serve oneself, as it's here a personal preference where one puts the arbitrary line between size judgements on the one hand and more complex assessments and dialogs on the other.

That said, a discussion can lead to truth, to the source, origination, reason and causality or cause distractions and endless diversification. But I'd say that even this is a distinction relative to the person and his character, e.g. the issue of quality!

[Santiago Odo]

Now Diebert!

[Diebert van Rhijn]

Hello David, great reading you again and some timeless nuggets you're throwing around there. How have you been?

It begins as an intellectual exercise of dismantling false thinking and discerning truth, shifts into the mode of single-minded determination to overcome all attachments, and ends in a life of spontaneous wisdom in perfect freedom.

There's often this question in the eagerest of minds wondering what to imagine when something is being stated like about a life of spontaneous wisdom in perfect freedom. It's clear something different can be expected than the ordinary life of scripted foolishness in some badly maintained prison complex. But it does sound very poetic or describing some inner sensing and intuiting?

[Avolith]

Now Diebert!

Do you mind if we split our discussion into a separate thread, where the rest can also engage if they please?

[Santiago Odo]

Splitting never works. Keep to the points here that are important to you. Be wonderful, and know you are loved!

[David Quinn]

A minor suggestion for the book, assuming i'm correct: When it comes to daily practice, another thing I imagine I could focus on is the idea that there is no do-er, and that really things are happening by themselves.

That would be part of the larger meditation on cause and effect. Meditating on cause and effect can be approached in thousands of different ways and the approach you describe here is just one of them.

I am not saying that your approach here is wrong. There are certainly benefits to using it, but it is also important to keep connecting it to the rest of your thinking on cause and effect. Apart from anything else, it will help you gain an ever-deepening understanding of "no-doer" and "things are happening by themselves".

[David Quinn]

Hello David, great reading you again and some timeless nuggets you're throwing around there. How have you been?

No complaints, thanks Diebert. I am starting to feel relieved that the Trump administration and the vile alt-right movement in general are beginning to collapse under the weight of their own bullshit. About time. Now perhaps the human race can start to deal with far more serious issues like climate change, lack of education, and the malignant nihilism of the ultra-rich.

It begins as an intellectual exercise of dismantling false thinking and discerning truth, shifts into the mode of single-minded determination to overcome all attachments, and ends in a life of spontaneous wisdom in perfect freedom.

There's often this question in the eagerest of minds wondering what to imagine when something is being stated like about a life of spontaneous wisdom in perfect freedom. It's clear something different can be expected than the ordinary life of scripted foolishness in some badly maintained prison complex. But it does sound very poetic or describing some inner sensing and intuiting?

It’s a direct description of what an enlightened person experiences. No resistance in any aspect of his life. His every movement flows without impediment. In contrast, the average person is permanently locked within a state of frustration, misery and fear, which means that his every movement has to battle through these impediments before it can actually begin to accomplish something.

[Diebert van Rhijn]

I am starting to feel relieved that the Trump administration and the vile alt-right movement in general are beginning to collapse under the weight of their own bullshit. About time. Now perhaps the human race can start to deal with far more serious issues like climate change, lack of education, and the malignant nihilism of the ultra-rich.

So you're still single-mindlessly determined on that evil alt-right Trump thing then? It seems to me that more serious issues are out there. Fighting climate change, more education and redistributing wealth never saved any one from idiocy. It seems a waste to even suggest it! But politically we can disagree, it all depends on the perspective we have developed in life, gained or released.

It’s a direct description of what an enlightened person experiences.

There's no such thing as direct descriptions since a description would be descriptive and relative, indirect, by definition. But I'll settle for succinct or short-handed.

In contrast, the average person is permanently locked within a state of frustration, misery and fear, which means that his every movement has to battle through these impediments before it can actually begin to accomplish something.

So what have you accomplished then which would bring the human race closer to what you stated to be "serious issues" like battling climate change, general education and fighting the rich. I mean, what does that differ from for example the SJW? Or my old mother's concerns about the world ? Of course I know you have played an important part in re-appropriating wisdom of the absolute but the average person is not interested in all of that and seems happy to entertain, work, live and die for their beliefs.

[Santiago Odo]

Robert Frost wrote:

I have kept hidden at the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't be saved, as Saint Mark says the mustn't

Gustav Bjornstrand often said to me in the course of my initiations:

"To you, Santiago, I reveal the mystery in direct and unalloyed form. Your mind is sufficient to this. You grasp the subtle and you understand, therefore, hidden dimensions in all the *worlds* that dance before us and in us. But for those who are outside of this understanding, I speak only in parables."

'What do I mean by parable?'

He answered: "Parabolē in Greek could be translated as comparison, illustration or analogy. I prefer the Hebrew mashal: 'riddle' or 'dark saying'."

'But why, Master! (here I choked up). Why not just reveal the facts directly to them? They are not that stupid!'

"Santiago, your kindness and compassion is admirable but misplaced. I speak in parabolē so that they hear but not understand, and when hearing never grasp -- lest they succeed in breaking the spell that imprisons them! For 'obstinacy makes it impossible to hear for all that one has ears'.

[Pam Seeback]

Alex: All my critique, my dear Pam, take place within a larger context which, it seems to me, you cannot even visualize. Therefore, 'what I am on about' is not intelligible to you

When you call me "my dear Pam" and assume what is or isn't intelligible to me, your patriarchal ways are showing. Head-pat me if you will, but it seems to me that in doing do, you are alienating the very youth you wish to save from, to paraphrase your terminology, 'their neurotic rebellious ways.'

The Tao te Ching is a text -- a message -- presented within a larger frame as well. For that reason anyone, here, who touches on any aspect of it, in idea or recommendation, is an exemplar of 'the larger frame' speaking to or interrelating with the text-message.

I assume you are referring to your larger frame of "Occidental, Greco-Christian Renewal/Revival." And for this reason, I reason that your reasoning of the Tao te Ching is poor reasoning.

I am here in this conversation because an aspect of fate or destiny has established that this be so. The *great causal chain* opens my mouth and . . . I speak. :-)

No argument here, as am I.

Once again, Pam, I do not have objections to your personal choices and I am pleased that your choices work for you. I would have no reason not to be! But as I have said many many times the context of this forum is larger than your unique existence.

This reasoning applies to you also.

Its terms and its reach extend many many times farther than your personal limitations. I am speaking here of the constitution of the forum as an idea-project within Occidental ideation.

I suggest that because you are fixated on, thereby limited by, your Occidental ideals that your assessment of Pam-as-limited is an ignorant one.

You do not conceive of this, you have no relationship to it, you do not *relate* to this, and thus it does not appear in your discourse! But in my own case -- for good or for evil -- this is my main concern. And all my reasons for laying stress here can be explained and have often been explained in detail. No one of those reasons has inspired or moved you and I am content with that.

Believe it or not, I can relate to your desire to bring back the old-dressed-up as the new, I really can. It is how I was, not how I am. And, in relation to a specific project such as your project of Occidental ideation, I can see how such a project could keep one infinitely occupied. However, it seems reasonable to conclude that this infinite occupation would be of the infinite loop variety, returning always to the same ideas rather than one of reasoning things.

As I said, I understand the fear of letting go of one's infinite loop of ideation- it is comfortable, it is familiar, it upholds the status quo. And for this reason, as far as I know, you haven't found a single 'taker' on this board, a board whose stated mission is to upend the status quo. As I see it, just the opposite is happening. Perhaps unbeknowst to you (or known to you, who knows? :-)) you are here as the force of resistance required for the idea-fixated-nest-leaver to leave the nest.

[Pam Seeback]

Let's say you prefer small dogs to large dogs. If your judgment (your preference, your meaning, your valuing of) of dog size ends here, you are in harmony with the Tao. If, however, your preference for small dogs over large dogs causes you to debate or to argue with those who prefer large dogs over small dogs, then you are out of harmony with the Tao.

Judgements can simply result or be integral part of debates or arguments, the laying out arguments, about the reasoning involved.

The very act of trying to make a "pure" judgement between large & small and any "messy" judgements happening within the discussions, reflections, self-searching or putting pressure on habitual knee-jerk reactions could become itself out "out of harmony" because that distinction would only serve oneself, as it's here a personal preference where one puts the arbitrary line between size judgements on the one hand and more complex assessments and dialogs on the other.

That said, a discussion can lead to truth, to the source, origination, reason and causality or cause distractions and endless diversification. But I'd say that even this is a distinction relative to the person and his character, e.g. the issue of quality!

This is sound reasoning to me. My example of preference of dog size was a poor one in relation to asserting judgments - to assert such a preference would indeed be an assertion of poor (pointless/emotionally-driven) quality.

[Pam Seeback]

Splitting never works. Keep to the points here that are important to you. Be wonderful, and know you are loved!

I posted my last post before I returned to pages 3 and 4 of this thread. Had I seen this post, I would have included in mine. Do you not see how manipulative at the worst and patriarchal at the best you are being by telling us to be this or that way and telling us what we should know about our relationship with love? An example of seductive safe Christian ideals that at their heart, are as poison for the seeking soul.

[Santiago Odo]

. . . your patriarchal ways are showing.

That's good! Because I am thoroughly committed to what the term means.

Out of curiosity, do you see the following as paternalistic? (I need a guide as I sometimes can't distinguish):

Now Avolith, harken unto me my gorgeous little one. I remember with tremendous nostalgia -- I was a child quite like you -- when Bjornstrand first sat me on his paternal knee. He said then, and has repeated time and again since then, these lines. I now bequeath them to you:

[Pam Seeback]

. . . your patriarchal ways are showing.

That's good! Because I am thoroughly committed to what the term means.

Just as most who post here (and I dare say, the enlightened ones of the world-at-large) are thoroughly committed to letting go of what that term means. I see the coming of Trump in the same light as I see the coming of Alex - I shall use biblical symbolism here - as the fire of the apocalypse, the fire that is burning away the shadow cover of human idea-fixation to reveal the nature of its causation (suffering rebirth into repetitious idealism). Because Trump is famous and you are not, his fire of "keep the ideal of the patriarchy strong!" is hotter and brighter and has more causal influence than yours, but a flame of repetitive idealism causality is a flame of repetitive idealism causality. I do not interpret Trump's coming as the coming of evil as does David -- why? -- because it is solid reasoning to reason that because the shadow world of idea-fixation is caused, that it is meant to be, and because it is meant to be, that it is good and only good (real, true, has purpose).

[Santiago Odo]

Just as most who post here (and I dare say, the enlightened ones of the world-at-large) are thoroughly committed to letting go of what that term means.

I think ‘they’ are far more interested in recovering what it means. Since it does deal with masculinity and what that means.

Enlightened ones of the world at large? You mean there are others?

Who else do you refer to?

[David Quinn]

I do not interpret Trump's coming as the coming of evil as does David -- why? -- because it is solid reasoning to reason that because the shadow world of idea-fixation is caused, that it is meant to be, and because it is meant to be, that it is good and only good (real, true, has purpose).

You're right that nothing is intrinsically evil, but as philosophers it is still valid for us to label things as "evil" if they are in opposition to the things we label as "good".

Given that Trump is literally basing his administration on constantly assaulting A=A, there is no question that, by the standards of this forum, Trump is evil.