Does Taiji require a structured belief system??

Discussion in 'Tai chi' started by Dan Bian, Oct 8, 2007.

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  1. inthespirit

    inthespirit ignant

    LOL... you guys are nuts! :D
     
  2. jkzorya

    jkzorya Moved on by request

    Hi Kembang - re-read my first post on the thread. I think it is important for people to have a benevolent morality, but probably not just any belief system.

    The problem I have therefore is when people argue from a standpoint where the concept of goodness is seen as an illusion or even as a source of evil. So whereas some see religion as bad per se, I see it is something which can be very beneficial for many people. I do not see moral "open mindedness" on the issue as beneficial because I am allied to specific moral values. I think is is good for martial artists to have a sense of morality, but this is not unique to Taiji and absolutely no more relevant to Taiji than any other fighting art.

    I'm not attacking you personally, but you have been targetting me (by name) and my comments a lot lately for criticism, so it is perhaps apparent that we have some very different perspectives which might make things feel quite antagonistic towards us. Your satire in post 64 was aimed at me (2nd poster) in a very obvious, petty and quite personal way, based on your overall knowledge of my beliefs, rather than staying pertinent to the thread and in such instances, comments like "it's hypothetical" don't hold much water.

    I've always been ordinary - just like you or anyone else. None of us are extraordinary, or all of us are, which means we are all of equal importance on an abstract or objective scale. Sure, I can be a little partisan, like most people, but I work at not being so. Regular people are deep enough; self absorbed people just often miss that and start believing they're special. If we're all special, it's no badge of honour.

     
  3. Fire-quan

    Fire-quan Banned Banned

    I believe you use the tern parties loosely!
     
  4. Fire-quan

    Fire-quan Banned Banned


    Well here's my thing - all people are special, but there again, that works for me because when I meet people, I try to experience them as a unique being, free from my own judgment- just let them be what they are - amazing, magical being.

    Ordinary in the sense I mean it here means fitting in, being just another cog. You're not just another cog - you just feel you should be. There's a difference. As for self absorbed - you know what? We've talked pretty much exclusively about you.
     
  5. Rebo Paing

    Rebo Paing Pigs and fishes ...

    Not quite yet, and I don't smoke. Up until 10 months ago I was working crowd control at a licenced premise. Since then the licence has been suspended (due in part to the amount of spill over violence and general levels of property distruction) but it appears that the place will re-open in some form or other soon ... there's plenty of work in me yet.
    As in lethal close quarter combat while performing my duties? None.
    I've had to physically control & detain people while performing airfield defense duties and while part of the ready response group during the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.
    I've experienced street fights & carpark,pub & rugby brawls a few times variously in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and in Singapore, and Hawaii. I've been involved in an inter-clan 'silat war' in Yogya during the mid '70's.
    The particular incident I was thinking about in my original post, happened in Penang where members of my platoon (on R&R prior to leaving the country) were severly beaten and had to beat a hasty retreat. The result was a few concussions and a couple of broken ribs from a furious papa-san wielding a jimmy bar and some bruised egos. Someone (I don't recall who) had had an argument about paying for the services of a transvestite prostitute ... and next thing the entire street erupted ... seemed unreasonable at the time, but NEVER try to gip a papa-san.
    I have been trying to clarify my point of view or asking you to clarify yours, joining in the discussion ... not 'targeting' you. This recent set of posts though, I thought maybe I should be clearer and go straight to the point. You see, I can't see how you've been 'targeted' by anyone up till the point you spit the dummy and go personal? All it's been is differences of opinion ... and this is a discussion forum. When people give an opinion other people with different opinions will respond ...
    I was responding to this post you made ...
    agreeing with PB on a comment he made immediately after my post ... it seemed to flow as a result of my post, and as you tend to generallise about (I'll paraphrase) eastern-mystical-mumbo-jumbo it does in the end include my system of beliefs ... even if your intended target is primarily FQ.

    My satire was an attempt to point out that you practice blanket attacks ... when you carpet bomb ideas, your're no longer just targeting the person you think you're reacting to, but it (the satire) didn't work. I should have just said it straight, which I subsequently did.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2007
  6. Rebo Paing

    Rebo Paing Pigs and fishes ...

    So if we're all experienceing conceptual space, is there a way out in your view? And even if the answer is 'yes', can the conceptual space provide an answer, pointing to a potential reality outside of its own creative experience?
    I feel as if I've answered my own question ... how can it be possible for a world of conceptual space describe or know of anything beyond it's own conceptual space ... it would only end up being like the matrix within a matrix within a matrix. Is it a dead end?
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2007
  7. jkzorya

    jkzorya Moved on by request

    That's because you keep quite deliberately singling me out for personal critique, FQ. Your post 15 on this thread speaks for itself. Your comments are aimed solely at undermining my comment rather than with the subject matter of the thread. You'd already said what you wanted to say in relation to the OP.

    Overall, the subject matter of a great many of your comments over numerous threads has lately been focussed on me and whatever wild accusations, twisted arguments and inappropriate comments you can throw at me. I know how you're likely to respond to this because you have too much pride to let it drop, so as far as I'm concerned we'll leave it there.

    Think what you like, Kembang Alas. You have a certain specific agenda which means that if you read back through all my recent discussions with people here, you won't read the situations the same way I do.

    I leave you to your matrices.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2007
  8. Fire-quan

    Fire-quan Banned Banned

    You're asking a deep, deep question my friend. As you said on another thread, maybe it's the wrong question - first of all, in this sense, maybe we should ask is there a way "in"? How would we even get "in" to this universe, this reality??

    First off, how can we know anything beyond our conceptual space. Well, this has already been solved by Ludwig Wittgenstein. He had a famous thought experiment - the beetle in the box. Two boys have a beetle in a box, but they let no one see it. How does each boy know what the other boy has? Cant hey just call anything "beetle?"

    If they did do that on every level - i.e. just use words randomly, we wouldn't be able to interact. "Language" is the core of the "matrix" we have built - word language and conceptual language - even visual language etc. So language comes from a social source - it is "installed" in us, and when it is installed, we don't just get a language installed, we get our world view installed with it - it is "sub messaged" - carried beneath it as a sub programme - like the computer language for mircrosoft windows produces the windows that you see.

    In other words, a large part of what is "our" reality is "hosted" on a social nexus. And that means a large part of what is the "I" is also hosted on a social nexus, even if everyone else dies - the nexus stretches across time.

    So other people experience similar things to us - the same reality - which we know because if they didn't then our language and conceptualisation wouldn't have allowed us to to function as a society - we share a group view in other words. The importance of wanting a group view is tied up as well with emotions and ego.

    Thing is, why would we want to get deeper "in" to that? Wel, ask JK - because she's an example of someone who is trying to do that - to "fix" not only her version of the nexus more strongly, but actively attempting to recruit others in to it, so it is a wider nexus, and so that it will replicate in that form across all of society - until the world shares her world view.

    To get "out" of it, well - stop it. Stop the world view - empty mind, drugs, alcohol, sleep - lots of things "stop" the world view. The devil is int he detail - if I say, how do "I" get out of this world, I have to notice and recognize that the "I" is actually a part of this world - the "I" was part of the programme installed by language - so then the conundrum becomes how do I take my ego out of the thing which actually generates my ego? Difficult...

    If i get so drunk that my ego ceases to function as such, well - what have I achieved, really? Trick is, how can I stop the world but that be a moment that I can be aware of, IF I am part ofthe world... tricky thing.

    So I strip it down another way - awareness. First of all awareness of the chains that bond our awareness in "dull awareness" of the world - no awareness of the artifiicality of our beliefs etc, and work to dis-connect those chains - disconnect from herd views; stripping down the connections to the nexus - the beliefs in the reality of the "Matrix" one by one, suspension of judgment - returning, effectively, to a more ape like awareness. But apes have a nexus too - a conceptual nexus of sights sounds and meaning, so we have to go even beyond that - stripping down ego to just a point of awareness with minimum human self-awareness - just the fundamental point of "intent" - like, keeping a hold of the very point of self awareness, but nothing more - the minimum ego. That, I believe, is the great gift of becoming human - to get an ego; only, it becomes bloated. But as a gift, it's an astounding thing.

    Then if we say, well, is it possible for the ego to survive after death, I say first of all, recognize desire to survive after death - ego afraid?? Let go of that. Is it possible for that minimum ego to do it though? Maybe. It's possible, as the "self" is not even "in" this world - it createdits own space, just as our universe created its own space out of the 11'th dimension in M theory. The laws of our universe don't apply to the 11'th dimension - so why should they apply ot conceptual space? We may be able to generate yet another dimension - we already did it once. Or, it may be possible that the "stuff" that the ego is made of could exist "hosted" in the 11'th dimension - who knows? Just crazy theories at the moment!
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2007
  9. Fire-quan

    Fire-quan Banned Banned

    Oh, te dums! Lol.. I quite like you personally, I think you're smart and articulate; but I'm targeting your beliefs. It just so happens though, that the reality of belief structures it that they are connected to ego; there's a reason why we believe everything that we believe.

    "You" are being targeted because you agreed to it - you laid the rules when you started targeting people who didn't believe in what you believe. Effectively, you said "I believe in this God stuff, and it's my duty to get out there and challenge other people's beliefs and spread the word about mine. Those are the rules by which I play."

    Well, ok - those are your rules. At what point have I broken the rules that you laid down? See, JK, that's a good examle of how we design our lives - cycles... you laid downt he rules, others play by them, and then at the end ofthe game you get to feel like the "victim" of your own rules. Not seeing that is what i call "dull awareness." You had all the power.

    Besides, I'mnot "targeting" you out of malice - just seeing if you have it in you to see what I'm saying.


    Well, those are your rules, JK. Maybe I'm on a crusade as well? Well then, then we're both crusaders, aren't we? So what right has one crusader got to complain about another?

    Really? Oh, well.. good for you! Thing is, I notice you are still here, talking about you, to me.... heh....

    Actually, I talk to you because I think you're really smart. I enjoy our discussions.

    Goodness! Do you really mean it? He may think for himself? You know how dangerous that can be... Ask Julie.

    You are not the victim of other people's agendas - you are the product of your own.


    "Or are we really all the cause, and the victim of it all...."
     
  10. jkzorya

    jkzorya Moved on by request

    Crusade away. The floor's all yours. :D
     
  11. SickDevildog

    SickDevildog Lost In The Sauce

    I know its been a while since this has been posted but I just gotta say:

    LAMFOROFLCOPTER
     
  12. Fire-quan

    Fire-quan Banned Banned


    Back so soon?
     
  13. Sandus

    Sandus Moved Himself On

    This has gone too far. Closed for a few days while I clean up the stuff that doesn't belong.
     
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