The vinegar tasters

What do we think Yea Forums? Does it hold up? Why does lao zi think its sweet? Also just eastern philosophy general. Hows your practice¿? How have you applied these ideas in your life in ways that have improved it?

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Because Lao is kinky

I’m currently not using any sauces, dressing or condiments in my food. Just like natural flavors it’s very easy going

Buddha finds it exactly as it appears to him - pure without attachment or aversion. Thus he enjoys both the bitterness, the sweetness and the sourness exactly as it is.

>Why does lao zi think its sweet?
He doesn't think it's sweet, that's a stupid westernized misunderstanding. Lao Tzu *enjoys the vinegar* for *what it is*, because vinegar too is a flavor, and can improve many dishes.

Basically the way it breaks down as a metaphor is that the vinegar represents life: Confucius dislikes it because he thinks it ought to taste different and that shit sucks in general for not meeting his expectations; the Buddha doesn't think the vinegar even exists for real so he's indifferent to it (and Buddhists regard this as the highest possible attianment), but Lao Tzu accepts the vinegar on its own terms, embraces the flavor such as it is, realizes that if he cannot relish the vinegar *the fault lies with him*, and enjoys it (thus giving the lie to both Confucius and Buddha and their pissy philosophies of discontent and butthurt).

TL;DR the Way is the true way (duh) to happiness, tranquility and contentment, Buddhism is by and for depressive faggots and Confucianism is just infinitely below regard.

Lao Zi think it is sweet because he has heavy metals poisoning from his homebrew "elixir of life" pills and is also about to pass out from retaining semen for sixty years. Confucius meanwhile is justly disgusted at the sight.

Buddhism is not the teachings of Siddhartha

Explain.

>he has heavy metals poisoning from his homebrew "elixir of life" pills and is also about to pass out from retaining semen for sixty years
Kek, but immortalists are pretty distinct from philosophical taoists, they're like suicide-vest makers and Sufis.

Siddhartha preached a critique on Vedic asceticism, and ultimately a description of his individual path to moksha and wisdom the obtained.

Buddhism as a religion these days tends to focus on the cultivation of ones “Buddha nature” as well as providing places of contemplation and charity.

Outside the writers of the canonical texts, how many philosophical Daoists have there been in China? The tradition is practically immortalists the whole way down.

Interested to hear your sources for Siddhartha's teaching. All we have is Buddhist books. Your reconstruction sounds plausible to me, but who really knows.

There were fifty temples and a hundred shrines on Wudang Mountain according to tradition, and none of those were operated by mercury-eating faggots.

The Communists ruined everything as is their wont, of course.

It is an artistic motif that preferences Taoism. He finds it sweet because things are 'as they are'; the vinegar tastes like vinegar, and thus is good in its natural state.
I believe the Confucian finds it sour because man needs rules to establish and maintain social and cosmic harmony. The Buddhist finds it bitter because conditioned life in the cycle of samsara is suffering.

>philosophical Daoists

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Monastic Daoists practice alchemy internally (as meditation) and have their own weird beliefs. For a really philosophical Daoist you'd have to look at someone like Wang Bi and his friends in the xuanxue movement. But they turn out to be more a weird kind of Confucian when you investigate deeper, so...

Internal alchemy is very different from Immortalist shit however, it's a system of describing and understanding what are ultimately body mechanics. Sure, the system sounds bizarre and arcane to modern Western ears, and sure, degenerate forms of it polluted with folk-magical beliefs eventually became abundant (notably chi as some sort of telekinetic wizardforce), but at the time the system was conceived of, they were simply describing something with the vocabulary, terminology and epistemology they had.

In any case I do agree with you that they could be regarded as tryhards who automatically fail because they try to make a whole thing out of the Tao and lack the simple, unaffected purity of Chuang Tzu, a minor bureaucrat who knew how to live and what to laugh at, but who can blame them? I don't have it either.

I think I read/saw a different version. Lao Tzu enjoys it for what it is, as you said, because without vinegar sugar wouldn't taste as sweet as it does, Confucius is kinda bothered by it because he thinks proper government is needed for people to be truly good, and the Buddha thinks it tastes really vile because existence is inherently dukkha.

Also, I should say that even the Immortalists were impressive in their own way and for their time. Following the Taoist precept of discarding the classics in favor of personal experience in the form of observation and empiricism they arguably became the first real chemists. Sure, one of their major discoveries was that pure mercury actually isn't absorbed at all well by the body and that you have to make it form compounds which are more bioavailable if you want someone to get properly mercury-riddled, which arguably isn't the *best* form of chemcial progress, but being able to work it out at all is still impressive for a Qin dynasty huckster.

I actually think immortalism/alchemy has a lot to offer and Western tao bros lose a lot by reading them out of Daoism. But that doesn't seem to be where your headed. Cool.

Laozi didn't include it in his only book for a reason