Taoists: Here me roar! (creation, mission, myths, doctrine, LDS)

[Chimalma]

Hi guys,
This is how the teaching of the beggining looks like in spanish:
(From the book Tao Te Ching of Lao Tse)
El principio
El tao que puede expresarse
no es el tao eterno
El nombre que definirse puede
no es el nombre inmutable.
La no-existencia origen es del Cielo y de la Tierra.
La existencia es madre de toda cosa.
Por ello, lo que carece de anhelos
contempla sus perfecciones,
mas lo que colmado está de deseos
observa sus límites propios.
Ambas cosas, qu3e son una y la misma,
tienen nombres diversos al manifestarse,
mas juntas constituyen el misterio,
misterio mas profundo que el misterio,
puerta de acceso a toda maravilla.

[Bennu]

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

Ever looked into Taoist Internal Alchemy NordicBearskin?

I haven't, but it sounds interesting, so far I've mainly focused on western early-modern alchemy. May there be a book or online resource devoted to this which I could peruse?

As an aftertaste, from Deng Ming-Dao:

Kites harness the force of the wind.
They express our intent,
But they cannot change the wind.

(Hey Chimalma! *waves*)

[PureX]

I would like to share the term/idea of "wabi-sabi".

(This from wikipedia)

Wabi-sabi (in Kanji: ??) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centred on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" (according to Leonard Koren in his book "Wabi-Sabi: for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers"). It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the first noble truth -- Dukkha, or in Japanese, ?? (mujyou), impermanence.
According to Leonard Koren, wabi-sabi is the most conspicuous and characteristic feature of what we think of as traditional Japanese beauty and it "occupies roughly the same position in the Japanese pantheon of aesthetic values as do the Greek ideals of beauty and perfection in the West." Andrew Juniper claims, "if an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing, then that object could be said to be wabi-sabi." Richard R. Powell summarizes by saying "It (wabi-sabi) nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect."

An excellent site explaining "wabi-sabi" aesthetic:

Wabi and Sabi: The Aesthetics of Solitude

Wabi

The two dominant principles of Chinese and Japanese art and culture are wabi and sabi. Wabi refers to a philosophical construct, a sense of space, direction, or path, while sabi is an aesthetic construct rooted in a given object and its features, plus the occupation of time, chronology, and objectivity. Though the terms are and should be referred to distinctly, they are usually combined as wabi-sabi, as both a working description and as a single aesthetic principle.

The original connotation of wabi is based on the aloneness or separation from society experienced by the hermit, suggesting to the popular mind a misery and sad forlornness. Only by the fourteenth century in Japan were positive attributes ascribed to wabi and cultivated. As Koren1 puts it,

The self-imposed isolation and voluntary poverty of the hermit and ascetic came to be considered opportunities for spiritual richness.

Indeed, wabi is literally poverty, but it came to refer not to the absence of material possessions but to the non-dependence upon material possessions. Wabi is a divestment of the material that surpasses material wealth. Wabi is simplicity that has shaken off the material in order to relate directly with nature and reality. This absence of dependence also frees itself from indulgence, ornateness, and pomposity. Wabi is quiet contentment with simple things.

In short, wabi is a way of life or spiritual path. It precedes the application of aesthetic principles applied to objects and arts, the latter being sabi. The Zen principles informing wabi enjoyed a rich confluence of Confucian, Taoist, Buddhism, and Shinto traditions, but focused on the hermit's insight and the reasons why the hermit came to pursue eremiticism. These philosophical insights are familiar: the recognition of duality as illusion, the clinging to ego and the material world as leading to suffering, the fear of death precluding a fulfilling life, the appreciation of life's evanescence as a prompt to living in harmony with nature.

The life of the hermit came to be called wabizumai in Japan, essentially "the life of wabi," a life of solitude and simplicity.

Although several fifteenth and sixteenth century figures in Japan stand out in making the transition from wabi to sabi (Shuko, Rikyu, Ikkyu), the process was an organic one already occurring among poets and artisans. The tea ceremony was the first "contrived" expression of sabi, meaning that the wabi principles would be embodied in specific objects and actions.

Sabi

Sabi as the outward expression of aesthetic values is built upon the metaphysical and spiritual principles of Zen, but translates these values into artistic and material qualities. Sabi suggest natural processes resulting in objects that are irregular, unpretentious, and ambiguous. The objects reflect a universal flux of "coming from" and "returning to." They reflect an impermanence that is nevertheless congenial and provocative, leading the viewer or listener to a reflectiveness and contemplation that returns to wabi and back again to sabi, an aesthetic experience intended to engender a holistic perspective that is peaceful and transcendent.

Sabi objects are irregular in being asymmetrical, unpretentious in being the holistic fruit of wabizumai, ambiguous in preferring insight and intuition, the engendering of refined spiritualized emotions rather than reason and logic. Ambiguity allows each viewer to proceed to their capacity for nuances without excluding anyone or exhausting the number and quality of experiences.

The Japanese haiku poet Basho transformed the wabizumai he experienced into sabi poetry, and the melancholy of nature became a kind of longing for the absolute. But this longing never fulfilled -- the "absolute" is not part of Zen vocabulary --makes the tension between wabi and sabi an enriching and inexhaustible experience.

Sabi is literally solitude or even loneliness. This is the atmosphere created by poetry and music, the sensibility provoked by art and drama, the reflectiveness provoked by a landscape. The design principles of sabi were applied to the spectrum of Japanese cultural expressions, including gardens (Zen and tea), poetry, ceramics, calligraphy, tea ceremony, flower arranging, bonsai, archery, music, and theater.

The confluence of wabi and sabi led to using the two separate terms as one.

Wabi-sabi

Here are two passages from Juniper2 that summarize wabi-sabi:

The term wabi-sabi suggests such qualities as impermanence, humility, asymmetry, and imperfection. These underlying principles are diametrically opposed to those of their Western counterparts, whose values are rooted in the Hellenic worldview that values permanence, grandeur, symmetry, and perfection. ...

Wabi-sabi is an intuitive appreciation of a transient beauty in the physical world that reflects the irreversible flow of life in the spiritual world. It is an understated beauty that exists in the modest, rustic, imperfect, or even decayed, an aesthetic sensibility that finds a melancholic beauty in the impermanence of all things.

The contrast to Western principles of aesthetics is rooted in the contrast to Western philosophical premises of power, authority, dominance, engagement, and control, whether of others or of nature. The art produced by such a culture is a visual and tactile expression of its values. The two cannot be separated. Nor, on the other hand, are wabi and sabi usually separated in wabi-sabi art.

[Scarlett Wampus]

Originally Posted by NordicBearskin

I haven't, but it sounds interesting, so far I've mainly focused on western early-modern alchemy. May there be a book or online resource devoted to this which I could peruse?

Peter Marshall's book 'The Philosopher's Stone' is very good. He went travelling around the world to find the secrets of alchemy and its entertaining & informative to read what he turned up. He begins the book with a look at Chinese alchemy especially Taoist Internal Alchemy. I've not come across a better overview of it anywhere else, brief though it is.

Other than that you're likely to come across its influence in all sorts of Taoist related texts. Taoist Internal Alchemy brings together meditation, Chi Kung, traditional medicine, philosophy, psychology, just about everything! The cultivation techniques of Taoism are Internal Alchemy. As Peter Marshall says towards the end of his investigations in China, "Not only are all alchemists [in China] Taoists, but all serious Taoists today are practising alchemists."

[Bennu]

Keda felt her heart was breaking with a love so universal that it drew into its firey atmosphere all things because they were; the evil, the good, the rich, the poor, the ugly, the beautiful, and the scratching of this little yellowish hound.

Mervyn Peake, from 'Titus Groan'

@SW: Thank you for the suggestion, I'll check it out!

I only really got interested in alchemy by accident, but after starting to read into it I was fascinated by the way alchemical themes not only tie in with a lot of Taoist teachings, but with wisdom (For lack of a better word) from all sources and in itself.

*scurries off to Amazon*

EDIT* Remembered this article on Wabi Sabi... http://www.beliefnet.com/story/176/story_17661_1.html

[Scarlett Wampus]

Originally Posted by NordicBearskin

I only really got interested in alchemy by accident, but after starting to read into it I was fascinated by the way alchemical themes not only tie in with a lot of Taoist teachings, but with wisdom (For lack of a better word) from all sources and in itself.

I came to it mostly through Jungian psychology and interest in Magick. Its only as I'm getting older however, that I can appreciate just how spiritual inner transformation really is like an alchemical process. Wonderful stuff.

PureX I wasn't familiar with wabi sabi. Very interesting. They are much like mono no aware, the gentle sadness (and in a way, beauty) of desolation/impermanence, only more concreted as concepts. This feeling has permeated my life for the last few years.

[PureX]

Originally Posted by Scarlett Wampus

PureX I wasn't familiar with wabi sabi. Very interesting. They are much like mono no aware, the gentle sadness (and in a way, beauty) of desolation/impermanence, only more concreted as concepts. This feeling has permeated my life for the last few years.

I think a lot of westerners have this awareness, and the corresponding feelings, but our culture doesn't much recognize it, or condone it. Such a subtle and philosophical melancholy is not conducive to material production (the God of the west), and so would mostly be considered a character flaw, unless perhaps you're a poet, and we all know that's just a hobby for spinsters and homosexuals (*smile*). And that's too bad, because we're working ourselves to death in the west trying to get rich at the cost of our awareness and appreciation of life in the moment; melancholy and fleeting though those moments may be.

I feel as though I've spent most of my life accutely aware of the impermanence of being, and of the "sweet sadness" of a reality that never stands still long enough to be fully grasped. It's only in more recent years that I've come to finally appreciate the gift of this constant change, and of my own ignorance and finitude in the face of it.