Chinese Spiritual Quotes

Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.

Do not be satisfied with God's calling or His gifts in your life. Be satisfied with Jesus Christ Himself.

A combination of fine tea, enchanting objects and soothing surroundings exerts a therapeutic effect by washing away the corrosive strains and stress of modern life. [... It] induces a mood that is spiritually refreshing [and produces] a genial state of mind.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.

Anyone can find the dirt on someone, but very few can wipe it from their own shoes.

If we want to survive this economic collapse, new mandatory school subjects should be eCommerce, Chinese, spirituality and aesthetics.

If you feel anxiety or depression, you are not in the present. You are either anxiously projecting the future or depressed and stuck in the past. The only thing you have any control over is the present moment; simple breathing exercises can make us calm and present instantly.

All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." Benjamin Franklin never said those words, he was falsely attributed on a respected quotation website and it spread from there. The quote comes from the Xunzi. Xun Kuang was a Chinese Confucian philosopher that lived from 312-230 BC. His works were collected into a set of 32 books called the Xunzi, by Liu Xiang in about 818 AD. There are woodblock copies of these books that are almost 1100 years old. Book 8 is titled Ruxiao ("The Teachings of the Ru"). The quotation in question comes from Chapter 11 of that book. In Chinese the quote is: 不闻不若闻之, 闻之不若见之, 见之不若知之, 知之不若行之 It is derived from this paragraph: Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. (From the John Knoblock translation, which is viewable in Google Books) The first English translation of the Xunzi was done by H.H. Dubs, in 1928, one-hundred and thirty-eight years after Benjamin Franklin died.

Body practice is the root of spiritual practice. When we calm the body, the mind can expand without limit.

Society has three stages: Savagery, Ascendance, Decadence. The great rise because of Savagery. They rule in Ascendance. They fall because of their own Decadence." He tells how the Persians were felled, how the Romans collapsed because their rulers forgot how their parents gained them an empire. He prattles about Muslim dynasties and European effeminacy and Chinese regionalism and American self-loathing and self-neutering. All the ancient names. "Our Savagery began when our capital, Luna, rebelled against the tyranny of Earth and freed herself from the shackles of Demokracy, from the Noble Lie - the idea that men are brothers and are created equal." Augustus weaves lies of his own with that golden tongue of his. He tells of the Goldens' suffering. The Masses sat on the wagon and expected the great to pull, he reminds. They sat whipping the great until we could no longer take it. I remember a different whipping. "Men are not created equal; we all know this. There are averages. There are outliers. There are the ugly. There are the beautiful. This would not be if we were all equal. A Red can no more command a starship than a Green can serve as a doctor!" There's more laughter across the square as he tells us to look at pathetic Athens, the birthplace of the cancer they call Demokracy. Look how it fell to Sparta. The Noble Lie made Athens weak. It made their citizens turn on their best general, Alcibiades, because of jealousy. "Even the nations of Earth grew jealous of one another. The United States of America exacted this idea of equality through force. And when the nations united, the Americans were surprised to find that they were disliked! The Masses are jealous! How wonderful a dream it would be if all men were created equal! But we are not. It is against the Noble Lie that we fight. But as I said before, as I say to you now, there is another evil against which we war. It is a more pernicious evil. It is a subversive, slow evil. It is not a wildfire. It is a cancer. And that cancer is Decadence. Our society has passed from Savagery to Ascendance. But like our spiritual ancestors, the Romans, we too can fall into Decadence.

Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly ‘worry’ was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when—what was the point? All this useless sorrow? Consider the lilies of the field. Why did anyone ever worry about anything? Weren’t we, as sentient beings, put upon the earth to be happy, in the brief time allotted to us?

I believe there are only three businesses: my business, other people's business, and God's business.

Stephen spared her a look that was part patience and part condescension. “I’m a Chinese American, so of course I spend all my free time in a secret monastery learning kung fu and practicing spiritual cultivation. Because one day a demon king shall descend onto Houston and only my Ninth Level Thunder Fist Punch will stand in his way.

Listen to life, and you will hear the voice of life crying, Be!

You have a wellspring of beautiful energy inside of you. When you are open you feel it; when you are closed you don’t. This flow of energy comes from the depth of your being. It’s been called by many names. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called Chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In the West, it is called Spirit. Call it anything you want. All the great spiritual traditions talk about your spiritual energy; they just give it different names. That spiritual energy is what you’re experiencing when love rushes up into your heart. That is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside of you. You

In the words of Chinese Zen master Layman P’ang (c. 740–808 A.D.): My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I’m in total harmony with them. I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood.

In the specially Christian case we have to react against the heavy bias of fatigue. It is almost impossible to make the facts vivid, because the facts are familiar; and for fallen men it is often true that familiarity is fatigue. I am convinced that if we could tell the supernatural story of Christ word for word as of a Chinese hero, call him the Son of Heaven instead of the Son of God, and trace his rayed nimbus in the gold thread of Chinese embroideries or the gold lacquer of Chinese pottery, instead of in the gold leaf of our own old Catholic paintings, there would be a unanimous testimony to the spiritual purity of the story. We should hear nothing then of the injustice of substitution or the illogicality of atonement, of the superstitious exaggeration of the burden of sin or the impossible insolence of an invasion of the laws of nature. We should admire the chivalry of the Chinese conception of a god who fell from the sky to fight the dragons and save the wicked from being devoured by their own fault and folly. We should admire the subtlety of the Chinese view of life, which perceives that all human imperfection is in very truth a crying imperfection. We should admire the Chinese esoteric and superior wisdom, which said there are higher cosmic laws than the laws we know.

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning. There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives. 2. Myth: Prayer works. Studies have now shown that inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of the subject. 3. Myth: Atheists are immoral. There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominantly non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies. 4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with science. In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. We have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion. 5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive death. We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. 6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view. 7. Myth: Believing in God is not a cause of evil. The examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the justification for their evils on humankind are too numerous to mention. 8. Myth: God explains the origins of the universe. All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it is all going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law 'create' or 'build' a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, 'loves' us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? 9. Myth: There's no harm in believing in God. Religious views inform voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight.

One aspect of traditional medicine related to a spiritual cosmology—whether this tradition was Greek, Chinese, or Arab—is the belief that too much food harms the spiritual heart and, in fact, could kill it. It was commonly believed that people who eat in abundance become hardhearted.

Europeans believe that culture is something they can grasp and touch because, for them, culture is comprised of objects, or remnants of objects, and this object, this remnant, conceals within it the essence of the original. For the Chinese, the matter is completely different---for them, the essence of culture can only be preserved in spiritual form.

I believe I will not not die a minute too early or a minute too late, but exactly when I am supposed to.

…(my father) would say nothing, And I could not find a silence Among the one hundred Chinese silences That would fit the one he created Even though I was the one Who had just made up the business Of the one hundred Chinese silences- The Silence of the Night Boat. And the Silence of the Lotus, Cousin to the Silence of the Temple Bell Only deeper and softer…

In the Chinese metaphysical tradition this is termed wu-hsin or 'idealness', signifying a state of consciousness in which one simply accepts experiences as they come without interfering with them on the one hand or identifying oneself with them on the other. One does not judge them, form theories about them, try to control them, or attempt to change their nature in any way; one lets them be free to be just exactly what they are. 'The perfect man', said Chuang-tzu, 'employs his mind as a mirror; it grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives but does not keep.

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us. Donleavy

Worry! What a waste of time. All the holy books were right. Clearly ‘worry’ was the mark of a primitive and spiritually unevolved person. What was that line from Yeats, about the bemused Chinese sages? All things fall and are built again. Ancient glittering eyes. This was wisdom. People had been raging and weeping and destroying things for centuries and wailing about their puny individual lives, when—what was the point? All this useless sorrow?

The energies that flow within and around the body affect us in physical, emotional and spiritual ways. This energy is often referred to as chi in Chinese traditions and prana in Indian traditions. As a witch, you may call this energy magic.

Chinese traditionally consider shadows part of the soul. Harm done to a shadow, whether by pinning it to the ground or stepping on it, was considered spiritual damage to the person. Of course none of this really works. But the mind can certainly affect the body.

When will the West understand, or try to understand, the East? We Asiatics are often appalled by the curious web of facts and fancies which has been woven concerning us. We are pictured as living on the perfume of lotus, if not on mice and cockroaches. It is either impotent fanaticism or else abject voluptuousness. Indian spirituality has been derided as ignorance, Chinese sobriety as stupidity, Japanese patriotism as the result of fatalism. It has been said that we are less sensible to pain and wounds on account of the callousness of our nervous organisation!

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher, wrote the now classic The Art of War nearly twenty-five hundred years ago. This book has become the classic on how to achieve victory in the battlefield. He said this about the enemy: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the

America must welcome all---Chinese, Irish, German, pauper or not, criminal or not---all, all, without exceptions: become an asylum for all who choose to come. We may have drifted away from this principle temporarily but time will bring us back. … America is not for special types, for the caste, but for the great mass of people---the vast, surging, hopeful, army of workers. Dare we deny them a home---close the doors in their face----take possession of all and fence it in and then sit down satisfied with our system---convinced that we have solved our problem? I for my part refuse to connect America with such a failure---such a tragedy, for tragedy it would be.

America has its purpose: it must serve that purpose to the end: I look upon the future as certain: our people will in the end read all these lessons right: America will stand opposed to everything which means restriction--stand against all policies of exclusion: accept Irish, Chinese--knowing it must not question the logic of its hospitality.

In Zen Buddhist texts they say, “You cannot nail a peg into the sky.” And so, to be a man of the sky, a man of the void, is also called ‘a man not depending on anything’. And when you’re not hung on anything you are the only thing that isn’t hung on anything – which is the universe. Which doesn’t hang, you see. Where would it hang? It has no place to fall on, even though it may be dropping; there will never be the crash of it landing on a concrete floor somewhere. But the reason for that is that it won’t crash below because it doesn’t hang above. And so there is a poem, in Chinese, which speaks of such a person as having above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground on which to stand.

The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a “perfectly good” demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy. (Indeed, even Mr. Gere was moved to whine a bit when Mr. Segal was invested as a tulku, or person of high enlightenment. It must be annoying to be outbid at such a spiritual auction.) I will admit that the current “Dalai” or supreme lama is a man of some charm and presence, as I will admit that the present queen of England is a person of more integrity than most of her predecessors, but this does not invalidate the critique of hereditary monarchy, and the first foreign visitors to Tibet were downright appalled at the feudal domination, and hideous punishments, that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a parasitic monastic elite.

Do not localize your attention Not to localize or partialize the mind is the end of spiritual training. When it is nowhere it is everywhere. When it occupies one tenth, it is absent in the other nine tenths. Let the gung fu man discipline himself to have the mind go on its own way, instead of trying deliberately to confine it somewhere. Therefore, during chi sao, you should have nothing purposely designed, nothing consciously calculated, no anticipation, no expectation. In short, you should be standing there like a dead man. To be conscious is characteristic of the human mind as distinguished from the mind of the lower animals. But when the mind becomes conscious of its doings, it ceases to be instinctual and its commands are colored with calculations and deliberations—which means that the connection between itself and the limbs is no longer direct because the identity of the commander and his executive agent is lost. When dualism (yang against yang) takes place, the whole personality never comes out as it is in itself (letting go itself from itself).

The Chinese ideograph for forbearance is a heart with a sword dangling over it, another instance of language's brilliant way of showing us something surprising and important fossilized inside the meaning of a word. Vulnerability is built into our hearts, which can be sliced open at any moment by some sudden shift in the arrangements, some pain, some horror, some hurt. We all know and instinctively fear this, so we protect our hearts by covering them against exposure. But this doesn't work. Covering the heart binds and suffocates it until, like a wound that has been kept dressed for too long, the heart starts to fester and becomes fetid. Eventually, without air, the heart is all but killed off, and there's no feeling, no experiencing at all. To practice forbearance is to appreciate and celebrate the heart's vulnerability, and to see that the slicing or piercing of the heart does not require defense; that the heart's vulnerability is a good thing, because wounds can make us more peaceful and more real—if, that is, we are willing to hang on to the leopard of our fear, the serpent of our grief, the boar of our shame without running away or being hurled off. Forbearance is simply holding on steadfastly with whatever it is that unexpectedly arises: not doing anything; not fixing anything (because doing and fixing can be a way to cover up the heart, to leap over the hurt and pain by occupying ourselves with schemes and plans to get rid of it.) Just holding on for hear life. Holding on with what comes is what makes life dear. ...Simply holding on this way may sound passive. Forbearance has a bad reputation in our culture, whose conventional wisdom tells us that we ought to solve problems, fix what's broken, grab what we want, speak out, shake things up, make things happen. And should none of this work out, then we are told we ought to move on, take a new tack, start something else. But this line of thinking only makes sense when we are attempting to gain external satisfaction. It doesn't take into account internal well-being; nor does it engage the deeper questions of who you really are and what makes you truly happy, questions that no one can ignore for long... Insofar as forbearance helps us to embrace transformative energy and allow its magic to work on us... forbearance isn't passive at all. It's a powerfully active spiritual force, (67-70).

It was time to take the best bits from them all and build something delicious: the spirituality of the Hindus, the community spirit and family ties of the Muslims, the ancient wisdom of the Chinese, the love of freedom and equality of the Afro-Caribbeans, the work ethic of the Jews, the bloody-mindedness and wry humour of the Australians, the blarney of the Irish, the passion of the Scots, the unorthodoxy of the Welsh, combined with our own English love of justice, fair play and democracy. Put them all together and you had a vision for the future, a direction, which Bokononism could exploit.

The fox has a long history of magic and cunning associated with it. Because it is a creature of the night, it is often imbued with supernatural power. It is often most visible at the times of dawn and dusk, the “Between Times” when the magical world and the world in which we live intersect. It lives at the edges of forests and open land-the border areas. Because it is an animal of the “Between Times and Places,” it can be a guide to enter the Faerie Realm. Its appearance at such times can often signal that the Faerie Realm is about to open for the individual. In the Orient, it was believed that faxes were capable of assuming human form. In ancient Chinese lore, the fox acquires the faculty to become human at the age of 50, and on its hundredth birthday, it becomes either a wizard or a beautiful maiden who will ultimately destroy any man unlucky enough to fall in love with her. “There are several American Indian tribes that tell tales of hunters who accidentally discovered their wives were foxes.”52 This is very symbolic of the idea of magic being born within the feminine energies, and that unless a male can recognize the magic of the feminine-in himself or others-and learn to use it to shapeshift his own life, it will ultimately lead to destruction.

The wu in wuxia means both “to cut” and “to stop.” It also refers to the weapon—usually a sword—carried by the assassin, the hero of the story. The genre became very popular during the Song Dynasty [960–1279]. These stories often depicted a soldier in revolt, usually against a corrupt political leader. In order to stop corruption and the killing of innocent people, the hero must become an assassin. So wuxia stories are concerned with the premise of ending violence with violence. Although their actions are motivated by political reasons, the hero’s journey is epic and transformative—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. In the Tang Dynasty, a prominent poet named Li Bai wrote some verses about an assassin. This is the earliest example I know of wuxia literature. Gradually, the genre gave shape to ideas and stories that had been percolating in historical and mythological spheres. Although these stories were often inspired by real events of the past, to me they feel very contemporary and relevant. It’s one of the oldest genres in Chinese literature, and there are countless wuxia novels today. I began to immerse myself in these novels when I was in elementary school, and they quickly became my favorite things to read. I started with newer books and worked my way back to the earliest writing from the Tang Dynasty.

The existence of two mutually antagonistic tendencies, both striving to drag man into extreme attitudes and entangle him in the world, whether on the material or spiritual level, sets him at variance with himself and accordingly demands the existence of a counterweight. This is the “irrational third,” tao. Hence the sage’s anxious endeavour to live in harmony with tao, lest he fall into the conflict of opposites. Since tao is irrational, it is not something that can be got by the will, as Lao-tzu repeatedly emphasizes. This lends particular significance to another specifically Chinese concept, wu-wei. Wu-wei means “not-doing” (which is not to be confused with “doing nothing”). Our rationalistic “doing,” which is the greatness as well as the evil of our time, does not lead to tao.

What do all of these involuntary shakes and shivers have in common? Why do we quake when frightened or tremble in anger? Why do we quiver at sexual climax? And what might be the physiological function of trembling in spiritual awe? What is the commonality of all these shivers and shakes, quivers and quakes? And what have they to do with transforming trauma, regulating stress and living life to its fullest? These gyrations and undulations are ways that our nervous system “shakes off” the last rousing experience and “grounds” us in readiness for the next encounter with danger, lust and life. They are mechanisms that help restore our equilibrium after we have been threatened or highly aroused. They bring us back down to earth, so to speak. Indeed, such physiological reactions are at the core of self-regulation and resilience. The experience of emergent resilience gives us a treasure beyond imagination. In the words of the ancient Chinese text, the I Ching, The fear and trembling engendered by shock comes to an individual at first in such a way that he sees himself placed at a disadvantage … this is only transitory. When the ordeal is over, he experiences relief, and thus the very terror he had to endure at the outset brings good fortune in the long run.

Over a bowl of noodles [the younger Cantonese man] waxed eloquent on the subject of mantras. 'Ordinary people, Ah Jon, use mantras as spells to win good fortune or ward off disease and other evils. Perhaps they are right to do so, for the mantras are often successful, but I do not ask you to believe that. What I beg you to believe is that they are of the greatest help in altering states of consciousness. They do this by making your mind stay still instead of chasing after thoughts.' He went on to explain that, being devoid of meaning, they do not promote conceptual thought as prayers, invocations and so forth are apt to do; and that, as each mantra has a mysterious correspondence (he could not explain what kind of correspondence) with the various potentialities embedded deeply in our consciousness […] it could cause one to snap into a state otherwise hard to reach. I do not remember his actual words, but I do remember that he was the first to voice an idea which was later to be abundantly confirmed by my own experience. […] he went on to say that to use meaningful words in any kind of religious practice is useless, since words encourage dualistic thought which hinders the mind from entering upon a truly spiritual state. His last words […] were: 'People who pray with words are just beginners. Don't do it!' Several passengers who understood English glanced at him as though they thought him a bit mad and I myself was quite taken aback by his un-Chinese vehemence, but I know now that he was eminently sane.

Listen. How long you been going around with her, this sculpture babe?" I asked him. I was really interested. "Did you know her when you were at Whooton?" "Hardly. She just arrived in this country a few months ago." "She did? Where's she from? "She happens to be from Shanghai." "No kidding! She Chinese, for Chrissake?" "Obviously." "No kidding! Do you like that? Her being Chinese?" "Obviously." "Why? I'd be interested to know. I really would." "I simply happen to find Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask." "You do? Wuddaya mean 'philosophy'? Ya mean sex and all? You mean it's better in China? That what you mean?" "Not necessarily in China, for God's sake. The East I said. Must we go on with this inane conversation?" " Listen, I'm serious," I said. "No kidding. Why's it better in the East?" "It's too involved to go into, for God's sake," old Luce said. "They simply happen to regard sex as both a physical and spiritual experience. If you think I'm -" "So do I! So do I regard it was a wuddayacallit - a physical and spiritual experience and all. I really dop. But it depends on who the hell I'm doing it with. If I'm doing it with somebody I don't even-" "Not so loud, for God's sake, Caulfield. If you can't manage to keep your voice down, let's drop the whole -" "All right, but listen," I said. I was getting excited and I was talking too loud. Sometimes I talk a little loud when I get excited. "This is what I mean, though," I said. "I know it's supposed to be physical and spiritual and artistic and all. But what I mean is, you can't do it with everybody - every girl you neck with and all - and make it come out that way. Canyou?" "Let's drop it," Old Luce said. "Do you mind?" "All right, but listen. Take you and this Chinese babe. What's so good about you two?" "Drop it, I said.

She has a genius,” distinguished Simon Iff. “Her dancing is a species of angelic possession, if I may coin a phrase. She comes off the stage from an interpretation of the subtlest and most spiritual music of Chopin or Tschaikowsky; and forthwith proceeds to scold, to wheedle, or to blackmail. Can you explain that reasonably by talking of ‘two sides to her character’? It is nonsense to do so. The only analogy is that of noble thinker and his stupid, dishonest, and immoral secretary. The dictation is taken down correctly, and given to the world. The last person to be enlightened by it is the secretary himself! So, I take it, is the case with all genius; only in many cases the man is in more or less conscious harmony with his genius, and strives eternally to make himself a worthier instrument for his master’s touch. The clever man, so-called, the man of talent, shuts out his genius by setting up his conscious will as a positive entity. The true man of genius deliberately subordinates himself, reduces himself to a negative, and allows his genius to play through him as It will. We all know how stupid we are when we try to do things. Seek to make any other muscle work as consistently as your heart does without your silly interference—you cannot keep it up for forty-eight hours. All this, which is truth ascertained and certain, lies at the base of the Taoistic doctrine of non-action; the plan of doing everything by seeming to do nothing. Yield yourself utterly to the Will of Heaven, and you become the omnipotent instrument of that Will. Most systems of mysticism have a similar doctrine; but that it is true in action is only properly expressed by the Chinese. Nothing that any man can do will improve that genius; but the genius needs his mind, and he can broaden that mind, fertilize it with knowledge of all kinds, improve its powers of expression; supply the genius, in short, with an orchestra instead of a tin whistle. All our little great men, our one-poem poets, our one-picture painters, have merely failed to perfect themselves as instruments.

Daoist Ordination – Receiving a valid “Lu” 收录 Register Since returning to the US, and living in Los Angeles, many (ie, truly many) people have come to visit my office and library, asking about Daoist "Lu" 录registers, and whether or not they can be purchased from self declared “Daoist Masters” in the United States. The Daoist Lu register and ordination ritual can only be transmitted in Chinese, after 10+ years of study with a master, learning how to chant Zhengyi or Quanzhen music and liturgy, including the Daoist drum, flute, stringed instruments, and mudra, mantra, and visualization of spirits, where they are stored in the body, how they are summoned forth, for which one must be able to use Tang dynasty pronunciation of classical Chinese texts, ie “Tang wen” 唐文, to be effective and truly transmitted. Daoist meditation and ritual 金录醮，黄录斋 must all be a part of one's daily practice before going to Mt Longhu Shan and passing the test, which qualifies a person for one of the 9 grades of ordination (九品) the lowest of which is 9, highest is 1; grades 6 and above are never taught at Longhu Shan, only recognized in a "test", and awarded an appropriate grade ie rank, or title. Orthodox Longhu Shan Daoists may only pass on this knowledge to one offspring, and one chosen disciple, once in a lifetime, after which they must "pass on" (die) or be "wafted to heaven." Longmen Quanzhen Daoists, on the other hand, allow their knowledge to be transmitted and practiced, in classical Chinese, after living in a monastery and daily practice as a monk or nun. “Dao for $$$” low ranking Daoists at Longhu Shan accept money from foreign (mostly USA) commercial groups, and award illegitimate "licenses" for a large fee. Many (ie truly many) who have suffered from the huge price, and wrongful giving of "documents" have asked me this question, and shown me the documents they received. In all such cases, it is best to observe the warning of Confucius, "respect demonic spirits but keep a distance" 敬鬼神而遠之. One can study from holy nuns at Qingcheng shan, and Wudangshan, but it is best to keep safely away from “for profit” people who ask fees for going to Longhu Shan and receiving poorly translated English documents. It is a rule of Daoism, Laozi Ch 67, to respect all, with compassion, and never put oneself above others. The reason why so many Daoist and Buddhist masters do not come to the US is because of this commercial ie “for profit” instead of spiritual use, made from Daoist practices which must never be sold, or money taken for teaching / practicing, in which case true spiritual systems become ineffective. The ordination manual itself states the strict rule that the highly secret talisman, drawn with the tongue on the hard palate of the true Daoist, must never be drawn out in visible writing, or shown to anyone. Many of the phony Longhu Shan documents shown to me break this rule, and are therefore ineffective as well as law breaking. Respectfully submitted, 敬上 3-28-2015

All the substances that are the main drugs of abuse today originate in natural plant products and have been known to human beings for thousands of years. Opium, the basis of heroin, is an extract of the Asian poppy Papaver somniferum. Four thousand years ago, the Sumerians and Egyptians were already familiar with its usefulness in treating pain and diarrhea and also with its powers to affect a person’s psychological state. Cocaine is an extract of the leaves of Erythroxyolon coca, a small tree that thrives on the eastern slopes of the Andes in western South America. Amazon Indians chewed coca long before the Conquest, as an antidote to fatigue and to reduce the need to eat on long, arduous mountain journeys. Coca was also venerated in spiritual practices: Native people called it the Divine Plant of the Incas. In what was probably the first ideological “War on Drugs” in the New World, the Spanish invaders denounced coca’s effects as a “delusion from the devil.” The hemp plant, from which marijuana is derived, first grew on the Indian subcontinent and was christened Cannabis sativa by the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It was also known to ancient Persians, Arabs and Chinese, and its earliest recorded pharmaceutical use appears in a Chinese compendium of medicine written nearly three thousand years ago. Stimulants derived from plants were also used by the ancient Chinese, for example in the treatment of nasal and bronchial congestion. Alcohol, produced by fermentation that depends on microscopic fungi, is such an indelible part of human history and joy making that in many traditions it is honoured as a gift from the gods. Contrary to its present reputation, it has also been viewed as a giver of wisdom. The Greek historian Herodotus tells of a tribe in the Near East whose council of elders would never sustain a decision they made when sober unless they also confirmed it under the influence of strong wine. Or, if they came up with something while intoxicated, they would also have to agree with themselves after sobering up. None of these substances could affect us unless they worked on natural processes in the human brain and made use of the brain’s innate chemical apparatus. Drugs influence and alter how we act and feel because they resemble the brain’s own natural chemicals. This likeness allows them to occupy receptor sites on our cells and interact with the brain’s intrinsic messenger systems. But why is the human brain so receptive to drugs of abuse? Nature couldn’t have taken millions of years to develop the incredibly intricate system of brain circuits, neurotransmitters and receptors that become involved in addiction just so people could get “high” to escape their troubles or have a wild time on a Saturday night. These circuits and systems, writes a leading neuroscientist and addiction researcher, Professor Jaak Panksepp, must “serve some critical purpose other than promoting the vigorous intake of highly purified chemical compounds recently developed by humans.” Addiction may not be a natural state, but the brain regions it subverts are part of our central machinery of survival.

He went straight to ‘his alley,’ and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that wellknown couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two words,— ‘fifteen years.’ She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence smiles darted like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given to Mary, set upon a neck that Jean Goujon would have attributed to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome— it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,— which drives painters to despair, and charms poets. When Marius passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated with shadow and modesty. This did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping eyes. For a moment, Marius thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting to the feelings. This child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived. One sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income. And then, she was no longer the school-girl with her felt hat, her merino gown, her scholar’s shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her with beauty; she was a well-dressed person, clad with a sort of rich and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crape. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved, Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

The heart is the center of the human microcosm, at once the center of the physical body, the vital energies, the emotions, and the soul, as well as the meeting place between the human and the celestial realms where the spirit resides. How remarkable is this reality of the heart, that mysterious center which from the point of view of our earthly existence seems so small, and yet as the Prophet has said it is the Throne (al-‘arsh) of God the All-Merciful (ar-Rahmân), the Throne that encompasses the whole universe. Or as he uttered in another saying, “My Heaven containeth Me not, nor My Earth, but the heart of My faithful servant doth contain Me.” It is the heart, the realm of interiority, to which Christ referred when he said, “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21), and it is the heart which the founders of all religions and the sacred scriptures advise man to keep pure as a condition for his salvation and deliverance. We need only recall the words of the Gospel, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Mt 5:8) […] In Christianity the Desert Fathers articulated the spiritual, mystical, and symbolic meanings of the reality of the heart, and these teachings led to a long tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church known as Hesychasm, culminating with St Gregory Palamas, which is focused on the “prayer of the heart” and which includes the exposition of the significance of the heart and the elaboration of the mysticism and theology of the heart. In Catholicism another development took place, in which the heart of the faithful became in a sense replaced by the heart of Christ, and a new spirituality developed on the basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Reference to His bleeding heart became common in the writings of such figures as St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Catherine of Sienna. The Christian doctrines of the heart, based as they are on the Bible, present certain universal theses to be seen also in Judaism, the most important of which is the association of the heart with the inner soul of man and the center of the human state. In Jewish mysticism the spirituality of the heart was further developed, and some Jewish mystics emphasized the idea of the “broken or contrite heart” (levnichbar) and wrote that to reach the Divine Majesty one had to “tear one’s heart” and that the “broken heart” mentioned in the Psalms sufficed. To make clear the universality of the spiritual significance of the heart across religious boundaries, while also emphasizing the development of the “theology of the heart” and methods of “prayer of the heart” particular to each tradition, one may recall that the name of Horus, the Egyptian god, meant the “heart of the world”. In Sanskrit the term for heart, hridaya, means also the center of the world, since, by virtue of the analogy between the macrocosm and the microcosm, the center of man is also the center of the universe. Furthermore, in Sanskrit the term shraddha, meaning faith, also signifies knowledge of the heart, and the same is true in Arabic, where the word îmân means faith when used for man and knowledge when used for God, as in the Divine Name al-Mu’min. As for the Far Eastern tradition, in Chinese the term xin means both heart and mind or consciousness. – Seyyed Hossein Nasr (Chapter 3: The Heart of the Faithful is the Throne of the All-Merciful)

MT: Mimetic desire can only produce evil? RG: No, it can become bad if it stirs up rivalries but it isn't bad in itself, in fact it's very good, and, fortunately, people can no more give it up than they can give up food or sleep. It is to imitation that we owe not only our traditions, without which we would be helpless, but also, paradoxically, all the innovations about which so much is made today. Modern technology and science show this admirably. Study the history of the world economy and you'll see that since the nineteenth century all the countries that, at a given moment, seemed destined never to play anything but a subordinate role, for lack of “creativity,” because of their imitative or, as Montaigne would have said, their “apish” nature, always turned out later on to be more creative than their models. It began with Germany, which, in the nineteenth century, was thought to be at most capable of imitating the English, and this at the precise moment it surpassed them. It continued with the Americans in whom, for a long time, the Europeans saw mediocre gadget-makers who weren't theoretical or cerebral enough to take on a world leadership role. And it happened once more with the Japanese who, after World War II, were still seen as pathetic imitators of Western superiority. It's starting up again, it seems, with Korea, and soon, perhaps, it'll be the Chinese. All of these consecutive mistakes about the creative potential of imitation cannot be due to chance. To make an effective imitator, you have to openly admire the model you're imitating, you have to acknowledge your imitation. You have to explicitly recognize the superiority of those who succeed better than you and set about learning from them. If a businessman sees his competitor making money while he's losing money, he doesn't have time to reinvent his whole production process. He imitates his more fortunate rivals. In business, imitation remains possible today because mimetic vanity is less involved than in the arts, in literature, and in philosophy. In the most spiritual domains, the modern world rejects imitation in favor of originality at all costs. You should never say what others are saying, never paint what others are painting, never think what others are thinking, and so on. Since this is absolutely impossible, there soon emerges a negative imitation that sterilizes everything. Mimetic rivalry cannot flare up without becoming destructive in a great many ways. We can see it today in the so-called soft sciences (which fully deserve the name). More and more often they're obliged to turn their coats inside out and, with great fanfare, announce some new “epistemological rupture” that is supposed to revolutionize the field from top to bottom. This rage for originality has produced a few rare masterpieces and quite a few rather bizarre things in the style of Jacques Lacan's Écrits. Just a few years ago the mimetic escalation had become so insane that it drove everyone to make himself more incomprehensible than his peers. In American universities the imitation of those models has since produced some pretty comical results. But today that lemon has been squeezed completely dry. The principle of originality at all costs leads to paralysis. The more we celebrate “creative and enriching” innovations, the fewer of them there are. So-called postmodernism is even more sterile than modernism, and, as its name suggests, also totally dependent on it. For two thousand years the arts have been imitative, and it's only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that people started refusing to be mimetic. Why? Because we're more mimetic than ever. Rivalry plays a role such that we strive vainly to exorcise imitation. MT

So what, simply put, is the Third Covenant? It is the recalibration, the reawakening of that which is truly human, truly holy. It is truly catholic, kata-holos (Greek “according to the whole”), truly universal, sacred, and unitive. It is made manifest by a unitive noosphere, one that embraces the Monosacred present in all Abrahamic, Indigenous, Chinese, Indian, and any and all other cultures. It embraces the whole biosphere, the whole planet, solar system, galaxy, and universe. It both precedes and succeeds space and time.

Arts of energy management and of combat are, of course, not confined to the Chinese only. Peoples of different cultures have practised and spread these arts since ancient times. Those who follow the Chinese tradition call these arts chi kung and kungfu (or qigong and gongfu in Romanized Chinese), and those following other traditions call them by other names. Muslims in various parts of the world have developed arts of energy management and of combat to very high levels. Many practices in Sufism, which is spiritual cultivation in Islamic tradition, are similar to chi kung practices. As in chi kung, Sufi practitioners pay much importance to the training of energy and spirit, called “qi” and “shen” in Chinese, but “nafas” and “roh” in Muslim terms. When one can free himself from cultural and religious connotations, he will find that the philosophy of Sufism and of chi kung are similar. A Sufi practitioner believes that his own breath, or nafas, is a gift of God, and his ultimate goal in life is to be united with God. Hence, he practises appropriate breathing exercises so that the breath of God flows harmoniously through him, cleansing him of his weakness and sin, which are manifested as illness and pain. And he practises meditation so that ultimately his personal spirit will return to the universal Spirit of God. In chi kung terms, this returning to God is expressed as “cultivating spirit to return to the Great Void”, which is “lian shen huan shi” in Chinese. Interestingly the breathing and meditation methods in Sufism and in chi kung are quite similar. Some people, including some Muslims, may think that meditation is unIslamic, and therefore taboo. This is a serious mis-conception. Indeed, Prophet Mohammed himself clearly states that a day of meditation is better than sixty years of worship. As in any religion, there is often a huge conceptual gap between the highest teaching and the common followers. In Buddhism, for example, although the Buddha clearly states that meditation is the essential path to the highest spiritual attainment, most common Buddhists do not have any idea of meditation. The martial arts of the Muslims were effective and sophisticated. At many points in world history, the Muslims, such as the Arabs, the Persians and the Turks, were formidable warriors. Modern Muslim martial arts are very advanced and are complete by themselves, i.e. they do not need to borrow from outside arts for their force training or combat application — for example, they do not need to borrow from chi kung for internal force training, Western aerobics for stretching, judo and kickboxing for throws and kicks. [...] It is reasonable if sceptics ask, “If they are really so advanced, why don't they take part in international full contact fighting competitions and win titles?” The answer is that they hold different values. They are not interested in fighting or titles. At their level, their main concern is spiritual cultivation. Not only they will not be bothered whether you believe in such abilities, generally they are reluctant to let others know of their abilities. Muslims form a substantial portion of the population in China, and they have contributed an important part in the development of chi kung and kungfu. But because the Chinese generally do not relate one's achievements to one's religion, the contributions of these Chinese Muslim masters did not carry the label “Muslim” with them. In fact, in China the Muslim places of worship are not called mosques, as in many other countries, but are called temples. Most people cannot tell the difference be

Since I know only a few Chinese characters, I obviously am not a translator. These “readings” are then not attempts at faithful reproduction but ventures in personal and spiritual interpretation.

Three areas, all based on personal choice and personal action, maximize the activity of our naturally occurring self-healing capability. The first is our choice of attitudes and mental influences. When we choose to think, believe, and act from a position of power, refusing to be a victim of circumstances, the healer within is automatically strengthened. When we refuse to live under the influence of worry and doubt, the internal medicine is enriched. The second area of choice is lifestyle: nutrition, exercise, rest, relationships, finances, work, spiritual practice, play, water intake, avoidance of alcohol and cigarettes, and so on. From moment to moment, each of us personally elects whether to enhance or sabotage the healer within through our behaviors and personal choices.

As early as November 1966, the Red Guard Corps of Beijing Normal University had set their sights on the Confucian ancestral home in Qufu County in Shandong Province. Invoking the language of the May Fourth movement, they proceeded to Qufu, where they established themselves as the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison State to Annihilate the Old Curiosity Shop of Confucius. Within the month they had totally destroyed the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family Mansion, the Cemetery of Confucius (including the Master’s grave), and all the statues, steles, and relics in the area... In January 1967 another Red Guard unit editorialized in the People’s Daily: To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution. And then, to make their point, they went on a nationwide rampage, destroying temples, statues, historical landmarks, texts, and anything at all to do with the ancient Sage... The Cultural Revolution came to an end with Mao’s death in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) became China’s paramount leader, setting China on a course of economic and political reform, and effectively bringing an end to the Maoist ideal of class conflict and perpetual revolution. Since 2000, the leadership in Beijing, eager to advance economic prosperity and promote social stability, has talked not of the need for class conflict but of the goal of achieving a “harmonious society,” citing approvingly the passage from the Analects, “harmony is something to be cherished” (1.12). The Confucius compound in Qufu has been renovated and is now the site of annual celebrations of Confucius’s birthday in late September. In recent years, colleges and universities throughout the country—Beijing University, Qufu Normal University, Renmin University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Shandong University, to name a few—have established Confucian study and research centers. And, in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Committee welcomed guests from around the world to Beijing with salutations from the Analects, “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?” and “Within the fours seas all men are brothers,” not with sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book. Tellingly, when the Chinese government began funding centers to support the study of the Chinese language and culture in foreign schools and universities around the globe in 2004—a move interpreted as an ef f ort to expand China’s “soft power”—it chose to name these centers Confucius Institutes... The failure of Marxism-Leninism has created an ideological vacuum, prompting people to seek new ways of understanding society and new sources of spiritual inspiration. The endemic culture of greed and corruption—spawned by the economic reforms and the celebration of wealth accompanying them—has given rise to a search for a set of values that will address these social ills. And, crucially, rising nationalist sentiments have fueled a desire to fi nd meaning within the native tradition—and to of f set the malignant ef f ects of Western decadence and materialism. Confucius has thus played a variety of roles in China’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times praised, at times vilified, he has been both good guy and bad guy. Yet whether good or bad, he has always been somewhere on the stage. These days Confucius appears to be gaining favor again, in official circles and among the people. But what the future holds for him and his teachings is difficult to predict. All we can say with any certainty is that Confucius will continue to matter.

No matter how pure the quality of our "food," if it emanates from a fanatical, one-sided mental viewpoint, it will reflect the limitations of a thought process that perpetuates the underlying sickness of our emotional and spiritual being. An individual who is unable to achieve a balance of physical exercise, creative expression, and introspective soulful enjoyment will find it difficult to achieve a healing balance with food alone. [...] Fanatical adherence to anything, especially regarding diet, can become its own disease.

Sitting is one of the four dignified postures: walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. Zen is one of the six stages of spiritual perfection: dedication, commandments, perseverance, progress, meditation, and wisdom. Zen is clearly known as dhyana, a Sanskrit word for meditation. In Chinese it is translated as ching-lu, meaning quiet contemplation. It means to become stable and then quiet, to become peaceful after becoming quiet, and finally to contemplate carefully. For this reason the former four dignified postures and the six stages of spiritual perfection all arise from quiet contemplation. In Zen Buddhism, Zen combines the above six stages of perfection. In order to train in Zen it is proper to sit in meditation according to prescribed form. Therefore, sitting is regarded as correct for Zen training. For walking there is the method of kinhin or walking meditation. For standing there is the dignified manner of refinement in speaking and being silent in daily life. For lying down there is the way of reclining like a lion. These serve as variations of meditation. Therefore, it is said that in Zen Buddhism one of the four dignified postures is meditation. Thus there is a start and a finish in things, and a beginning and an end in matters; and if one knows where front and rear are one is near the Way. Students, please quietly contemplate this very carefully.31

The second way of practice is to remove the discrimination that comes from dualistic thinking, that separates inside from outside; ourselves from others; the subject from the object; the spiritual from the material. With no more dualistic discrimination, we have an immense freedom that is nirvāṇa.

I maintain that all spirituality must be founded on moral life; but on the other hand, moral life must, so to speak, bathe itself in the ocean of contemplation. Without contemplation, the moral life would tend to degenerate into a dry and narrow humanism. Without the moral life, contemplation would be empty and degenerate into quietism.

when we are accessing the King energy correctly, as servants of our own inner King, we will manifest in our own lives the qualities of the good and rightful King, the King in his fullness. Our soldiers of fortune will drop to their knees, appropriately, before the Chinese Emperor within. We will feel our anxiety level drop. We will feel centered, and calm, and hear ourselves speak from an inner authority. We will have the capacity to mirror and to bless ourselves and others. We will have the capacity to care for others deeply and genuinely. We will “recognize” others; we will behold them as the full persons they really are. We will have a sense of being a centered participant in creating a more just, calm, and creative world. We will have a transpersonal devotion not only to our families, our friends, our companies, our causes, our religions, but also to the world. We will have some kind of spirituality, and we will know the truth of the central commandment around which all of human life seems to be based: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God [read, “the King”] with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And thy neighbor as thyself.

Buddhism first came to Korea during the fourth century a.d. Virtually from its inception on the peninsula, the religion was a principal force behind social and technological change in Korea. Along with their religion, Buddhist missionaries introduced to Korea a wide cross-section of Sinitic culture and thought, including the Chinese writing system, calendrics, and architecture. Buddhist spiritual technologies were also considered to offer powers far superior to those of the indigenous religion of Shamanism. For all these reasons, Buddhism became an integral part of the religio-political nexus of Korea during the Unified Silla (668-935) and Koryŏ (937-1392) dynasties. Buddhism therefore provided the foundation for Korean national ideology for over a millennium.

Another classic case in point is the reconstructive origins of the canonical Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, which is attributed to the seventh-century Chinese Zen master Huineng but in fact seems to have first appeared around 780 ce, "over a century after the events it describes were supposed to have taken place." The earliest versions of the autobiography and teachings of Huineng included in this text were in fact composed by Shenhui and other purported successors in the Southern School in order to differentiate their teachings from, and elevate them over, those of Shenxiu and other teachers of the rival Northern School. While the teachings presented in the Platform Sutra— the only Zen text to be audaciously designated a "sutra"—are indeed a "brilliant consummation" and "wonderful mélange of early Chan [i.e., Chinese Zen] teachings," they can hardly be attributed verbatim to the historical person Huineng. However spiritually inspiring and philosophically rich such classical texts of the Zen tradition may be, we cannot read them as unbiased and unembellished historical records or as innocent of sectarian politics and other mundane motives.

In my monastery, as in all those belonging to the Zen tradition, there is a very fine portrait of Bodhidharma. It is a Chinese work of art in ink, depicting the Indian monk with sober and vigorous features. The eyebrows, eyes, and chin of Bodhidharma express an invincible spirit. Bodhidharma lived, it is said, in the fifth century A.D. He is considered to be the First Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in China. It might be that most of the things that are reported about his life have no historical validity; but the personality as well as the mind of this monk, as seen and described through tradition, have made him the ideal man for all those who aspire to Zen enlightenment. It is the picture of a man who has come to perfect mastery of himself, to complete freedom in relation to himself and to his surroundings—a man having that tremendous spiritual power which allows him to regard happiness, unhappiness, and all the vicissitudes of life with an absolute calm. The essence of this personality, however, does not come from a position taken about the problem of absolute reality, nor from an indomitable will, but from a profound vision of his own mind and of living reality. The Zen word used here signifies "seeing into his own nature." When one has reached this enlightenment, one feels all systems of erroneous thought crushed inside oneself. The new vision produces in the one enlightened a deep peace, a great tranquility, as well as a spiritual force characterized by the absence of fear. Seeing into one's own nature is the goal of Zen.

I once asked Master B.P. Chan if the ancient qigong and martial arts masters had superior abilities to those of the present. He said, "In general, yes. But only because they were more patient." ... Most students abandon the practice and look for a new form of "entertainment". But it is precisely at this stage that the most lasting benefits are cultivated.

The history of religions subsequent to the Primitive era bears out two important consequences. We see the expected degeneration but also the fact that numerous cultures did not do away with the entire idea of a single God above all other spiritual beings, even when the culture as a whole has been tainted by incompatible beliefs and practices. And second, we see how even for the much more developed and enscripturated religions of the Indo-Europeans, various Semites, and the Chinese, there is solid evidence for a monotheistic background.

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more. At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.

This may be at once the curse and the blessing of the modern age, that the ready availability of printed books—and now, electronic versions easily downloadable from virtually anywhere on earth—has enabled teachings to be preserved and passed down, passed around, and disseminated to anyone with even a glimmer of interest. It's a curse, because this ready availability cheapens the teaching by making it that much easier to obtain without all the psychological preparation of periods of intense study, fasting, purification, and other conditioning techniques. The effect of this is noticeable on social media and websites in which serious studies of various forms of esoteric tradition are airily dismissed by casual readers who have difficulty understanding their specialized terminology due to a lack of years of preparatory instruction or even a basic classical education, but still feel competent enough to pass judgment. Yet books are what we have in lieu of the secret society, the midnight initiations, the training by an experienced guru. Books also have preserved essential information from being lost due to persecution by enemies or opponents, or to execution or death by natural causes of lineage holders in sacred traditions (the Chinese invasion of Tibet comes to mind, and the decimation of various sects in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Islamic State, and others beginning with the oppression of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein). A deeper question than we can address adequately in this place is what happens to a tradition if its human teachers are all dead, unable to pass on the oral instruction or the psycho-spiritual techniques of initiation?

Also the fact that those engaged in battle, often (whether willingly or not) experience a heightened awareness of the transitory nature of life and death that prompted some teachers of Buddhism to include conflict as one of the potential areas for spiritual development and progression. Hence implications of martial arts training have been the prerogative condition, for the monks to heighten their spiritual awareness. From its earliest inception within India, the Bodhisattva Vajramukti was regarded as a powerful and potentially dangerous cathartic physical practice, because it dealt directly with the liberation and channeling of primitive energies and instincts. A teacher powerful in both body and mind was necessary to convey its principles and guide its students. These cautions were carried over into China and the resultant Chinese martial arts (Chuan Fa or Kempo) were likewise taught only to monks or devout Buddhists of a suitable disposition. Such cautions as existed both in India and China were often justified.

What is Reiki Healing?   The term Reiki is a combination of Japanese and Chinese characters, rei, which means spiritual, and ki, which means vital energy. Its healing principle is founded in the age-old belief that diseases are caused by the imbalance of vital energy in the human body and that Reiki healing,

God is blessing the church in China with extraordinary growth. However, when Chinese churches and ministers who had experienced God’s blessing in their rural ministries entered the mushrooming cities of China and tried to minister and communicate the gospel in the same ways that had been blessed in the countryside, they saw less fruitfulness. Over a decade ago, several Dutch denominations approached us. While they were thriving outside of urban areas, they had not been able to start new, vital churches in Amsterdam in years — and most of the existing ones had died out. These leaders knew the gospel; they had financial resources; they had the desire for Christian mission. But they couldn’t get anything off the ground in the biggest city of their country.2 In both cases, ministry that was thriving in the heartland of the country was unable to make much of a dent in the city. It would have been easy to say, “The people of the city are too spiritually proud and hardened.” But the church leaders we met chose to respond humbly and took responsibility for the problem. They concluded that the gospel ministry that had fit nonurban areas well would need to be adapted to the culture of urban life. And they were right. This necessary adaptation to the culture is an example of what we call “contextualization.”3 SOUND CONTEXTUALIZATION Contextualization is not — as is often argued — “giving people what they want to hear.”4 Rather, it is giving people the Bible’s answers, which they may not at all want to hear, to questions about life that people in their particular time and place are asking, in language and forms they can comprehend, and through appeals and arguments with force they can feel, even if they reject them. Sound contextualization means translating and adapting the communication and ministry of the gospel to a particular culture without compromising the essence and particulars of the gospel itself. The great missionary task is to express the gospel message to a new culture in a way that avoids making the message unnecessarily alien to that culture, yet without removing or obscuring the scandal and offense of biblical truth. A contextualized gospel is marked by clarity and attractiveness, and yet it still challenges sinners’ self-sufficiency and calls them to repentance. It adapts and connects to the culture, yet at the same time challenges and confronts it. If we fail to adapt to the culture or if we fail to challenge the culture — if we under- or overcontextualize — our ministry will be unfruitful because we have failed to contextualize well.

Besides robbing us of health and vitality, emotions constitute the greatest obstacle to spiritual cultivation by diverting energy and attention from internal development to external distractions, and by provoking behavior that contradicts our best intentions. Our emotions constitute our own worst enemies, yet not only does Western medicine overlook the severe pathological consequences of emotional imbalance, Western philosophy romanticizes emotions as heroic impulses to be indulged rather than recognizing them as primitive instincts that must be controlled by the higher sentience of human awareness. Herein lies one of the most fundamental differences between Eastern and Western tradition, for Eastern philosophy clearly identifies emotions as obstacles to spiritual development, pollutants to mental clarity, spoilers of human relations, and enemies of intent and reason. When Asians remark that Westerners have 'hot feelings', what they mean is that they overreact emotionally, thereby 'overheating' human relations with unrestrained emotional energy.

This flow of energy comes from the depth of your being. It’s been called by many names. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called Chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In the West, it is called Spirit. Call it anything you want. All the great spiritual traditions talk about your spiritual energy; they just give it different names. That spiritual energy is what you’re experiencing when love rushes up into your heart. That is what you’re experiencing when you’re enthused by something and all this high energy comes up inside of you. You should know about this energy because it’s yours. It’s your birthright, and it’s unlimited. You can call upon it any time you want. It has nothing to do with age. Some eighty-year-old people have the energy and enthusiasm of a child. They can work long hours for seven days a week. It’s just energy. Energy doesn’t get old, it doesn’t get tired, and it doesn’t need food. What it needs is openness and receptivity. This energy is equally available to everybody.

People have lost faith in God and the Kingdom of God because they have put God in the wrong place. If they put God in the right place, in their own heart, the spiritual crisis will come to an end. This is a spiritual and a cultural matter. In the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions there are people who have discovered that God does not belong to the future or to another place.

Anxious to let my features show': Asian American woman shares fear of harassment - CNN - YouTube channel - Comment for this video with broader perspective, Part 1 Not only America, but in many white countries, other races are getting attacked is happening here and then, Once in Australia, Indians were targeted, In USA before few years black people were targeted (Kindly stay away those genocide things - For example LTTE, Russia - Ukraine, Hindu - Muslim , these things are multi dimensional issues and can not be solved by anyone that soon or that easily), Now I focus only on racist attacks whether it happens in USA or India or Any countries, Not only asian women, all races are attacked somewhere, but why it happens? 1) Not understanding other cultural values, (For example Asian/ China food style is more unique (Noodles, spices, insects and all) why did they develop such food habit is a long way debate, because of evolution, In ancient time most of chinese and Mongolia land was affected by many pandemics and insect attacks due to so many ecological, evolutionary and spiritual reasons, thus their food habits became unique like eating insects and all, Now USA or Strong white people, they eat too much fats such as Burger, Hotdog, clarified butter, pork, beef steak, eggs and more and more eggs, alcohol, etc., their food habits are mostly attacking type or anti predatory type, why did they develop such attitude, it is because of White people that settled in North American land after defeating red - Indians or Native American or Geronimo , so after defeating those native people although America is cool place to live there are many places in America are extremely harsh not like India, those extremely harsh conditions, ecology, evolutionary, adaptation, and even spiritual reasons made them with strong life style and although they understand humanism as well they also protect neutral and orthodox Christianity within themselves just like UK, So when other races or other country people are taking jobs, places or even becoming dominating or some people are pervert in sexual relationships which may pollute society as well, extreme science which is against orthodox Christianity (If it is India , extreme science is against orthodox Hinduism), these are all some of the factors behind racist attack, the solution is understand other culture and try to assimilate and embrace rather than oppose it. Because in this world there is no perfect culture,

Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.

Gao Jianfu came to India at a juncture when many Indian nationalist leaders and personalities like Gandhi and Tagore were sympathetic to China under the notorious Japanese aggression. Gao was an ardent reader of Rabindranath’s poetry. However, it is hard to trace, from the available data, the extent of his exposure to contemporary art in Bengal since he did not visit Santiniketan and look up its artistic activities. But many of his drawings and sketches bore evidence of some interactions. It is interesting that while the artists of Bengal were eager to assimilate certain elements of Japanese and Chinese art, a celebrated Chinese artist and intellectual visited Bengal almost in the same trajectory, and we do not have enough record of this event. Gao Jianfu, during his long trip to India, also visited the Ajanta caves and made a large number of copies of the Ajanta murals. From these copies, he did a great many sketches and drawings as if he were putting together a visual travelogue interspersed with narratives and footnotes. Fascinatingly, some of his drawings of ruined stupas and Buddhist sites that he visited in India were evidence of their impact on him, working behind his growing inclination to Buddhism and spirituality during the later phase of his life.

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. —Chinese proverb

If our descendents don’t study our times closely, they will find that they have again exhausted the planet’s fossil fuels, that they have again died by the millions of influenza and The Green Death, that the sky has again been turned yellow by the propellants for underarm deodorants, that they have again elected a senile President two meters tall, and that they are yet again the intellectual and spiritual inferiors of teeny-weeny Chinese.

I’m a Chinese American, so of course I spend all my free time in a secret monastery learning kung fu and practicing spiritual cultivation. Because one day a demon king shall descend onto Houston and only my Ninth Level Thunder Fist Punch will stand in his way.

The organs and elements either generate or destroy each other in a particular pattern. This idea is a reflection of the Chinese principle of restoring equilibrium through balancing opposites (yin-yang) or of wuxing, which refers to the interlocking nature of the five elements. The idea of wuxing explains that each element exerts a generative and subjugative influence on one another. Wood will generate (or feed) fire and fire will generate new earth. Elements also subjugate or destroy each other. A practitioner diagnoses which elements might need to be generated or decreased and will figure treatment accordingly. Understanding this cycle is the key to creating balance within the system. GENERATIVE INTERACTIONS wood feeds fire fire creates earth earth bears metal metal collects water water nourishes wood DESTRUCTIVE INTERACTIONS These are often called “overcoming” interactions, as they involve one element being destroyed or changed by another: wood parts earth earth takes in water water quenches fire fire melts metal metal chops wood The ancient Chinese had a different idea of anatomy than Western physicians. Instead of being characterized by their position in the body, the organs were understood by the role they played within the overall system. They were therefore described by their interdependent relationships and connection to the skin via the blood (xue), fluids, meridians, and the three vital treasures described below. Just as organs flow in five phases, so do the seasons and points on the compass. There are four directions, with China representing the fifth (at the center). Unlike the Western compass, the Chinese compass emphasizes the south. This is summer, the hottest time of the year. It is appropriately linked to fire. West is the setting of the sun and is associated with autumn and metal, while north is winter and water (the opposite of the south). East, the rising sun, is linked with spring and wood. Earth is related to the center of the compass and late summer. If any of these phases are out of balance, the entire system is unbalanced. Blocks or stagnation anywhere can result in problems, as can excess or lack. A proper diagnosis will integrate all of these factors. FIGURE 4.20 THE FIVE CHINESE ELEMENTS THE THREE VITAL TREASURES The Three Treasures, sometimes called the Three Jewels, are keystones in traditional Chinese medicine. From the Taoist perspective, these three treasures constitute the essential forces of life, which are considered to be three forms of the same substance. These three treasures are: •​Jing, basic or nutritive essence, seen as represented in sperm, among other substances. •​Chi, life force connected with air, vapor, breath, and spirit. •​Shen, spiritual essence linked with the soul and supernaturalism. Most often, jing is related to body energy, chi to mind energy, and shen to spiritual energy. These three energies cycle, with jing serving as the foundation for life and procreation, chi animating the body’s performance, and shen mirroring the state of the soul.

From approximately 10000 BCE onward, central and eastern Asian peoples began to rely on hemp to make rope, fish netting, canvas, and fabrics—and it became a staple source of food for the Han Chinese and their animals.

Zen is eminently practical in seeing nature as a model for human behavior to learn and practice the way of the dharma. For example, the pine trees weathering the harsh winter storms teach a lesson in the value of dedication and determination in pursing the path to enlightenment; bamboo branches that sway but are not broken by the breeze teach flexibility and the need to overcome stubborn one-sided or partial views; and evaporating dew, which accepts its brevity and inevitable demise, shows the demise, significance of adjusting and abandoning resistance to the impermanence of reality. These natural images, which are used extensively in the Chinese and Japanese poetic traditions, frequently enter into various styles of Zen verse and prose, not just as rhetorical flourishes but as indicators of inner spiritual transformation.

Ricci's attitude toward Buddhism must be placed in its religious context-that of aggressive Counter-Reformation Catholicism engaged in a spiritual battle to win over Chinese society to Christianity. It is perhaps inappropriate to condemn him retrospectively for his lack of tolerance, when the very notion of tolerance would have seemed perfectly irrelevant to him. This virtue was associated with atheists like Voltaire and with whorehouses (maisons de tolérance), as in Claudel's witty remark: "Tolerance? Tolerance? There are houses for that" (Etiemble 1964, 50).

Cannabis serves not only as an important sacrament for Hindu mendicants, but also for Islamic Sufis, Chinese Daoists, members of African dagga cults, and Jamaican Rastafarians.

According to this doctrine, man’s destiny—both mortal and immortal—depended, not upon the existence of a soul before birth or after death nor upon the whim of a spiritual force, but upon his own good words and good deeds.

The art forms of the Western world arise from spiritual and philosophical traditions in which spirit is divided from nature, and comes down from heaven to work upon it as an intelligent energy upon an inert and recalcitrant stuff. Thus Malraux speaks always of the artist “conquering” his medium as our explorers and scientists also speak of conquering mountains or conquering space. To Chinese and Japanese ears these are grotesque expressions. For when you climb it is the mountain as much as your own legs which lifts you upwards, and when you paint it is the brush, ink, and paper which determine the result as much as your own hand.

In contrast to most of the examples given in this chapter, it is occasionally recorded that even solitary confinement imposed by enemies can be the trigger for psychological experiences of lasting value. Anthony Grey, who experienced solitary confinement in China, and Arthur Koestler, who was similarly imprisoned in Spain, discussed their experiences together on television. The transcript of their discussion appears in Koestl’s collection of essays, Kaleidoscope. Both men were grateful that they did not have to share a cell with another prisoner. Both felt that solitude enhanced their appreciation of, and sympathy with, their fellow men. Both had intense experiences of feeling that some kind of higher order of reality existed with which solitude put them in touch. Both felt that trying to put this experience into words tended to trivialize it, because words could not really express it. Although neither man subscribed to any orthodox religious belief, both agreed that they had felt the abstract existence of something which was indefinable or which could only be expressed in symbols. Anthony Grey thought that his experience had given him a new awareness and appreciation of normal life. Koestler concurred, but added that he had also become more aware of horrors lurking under the surface. Koestler also refers to a feeling of inner freedom, of being alone and confronted with ultimate realities instead of with your bank statement. Your bank statement and other trivialities are again a kind of confinement. Not in space but in spiritual space . . . So you have got a dialogue with existence. A dialogue with life, a dialogue with death. Grey comments that this is an area of experience into which most people do not enter. Koesder righdy affirms that most people have occasional confrontations of this kind when they are severely ill or when a parent dies, or when they first fall in love. Then they are transferred from what I call the trivial plane to the tragic or absolute plane. But it only happens a few times. Whereas in the type of experience which we shared, one has one’s nose rubbed into it, for a protracted period.17 So, occasionally, good can come out of evil. Anthony Grey recalled being shown a painting by a Chinese friend in which a beautiful lotus flower is growing out of mud. The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.

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This is the path that goes to the shore of no-birth and no-death, leading to the end of suffering and calamity. On the spiritual path, there is no longer the discrimination between friend and enemy. You do not need to know who has worldly power or who has not.