Induction and Taoism

Thanks Glen. Rings so very true.

J

I just noticed this today!!! There is so much hidden on this forum! The Tao of Pooh is a wonderful example, thanks for that!

I think that mindfulness meditation is another tool that helps train the mind to just be present from moment to moment, with no agenda. The Shambala Centre has beginner meditation classes at Manning/Bloor. This is a Tibetan form so very gentle, non-punitive.

I have had a 2 week blog on the TSHM website on induction. I would sure love some contributions to the discussion that I can post there.


Andrea

Andrea, I think the best way to discuss it is to show people whether they're being inductive or not. If you just say this is induction, people think they know it without actually knowing it. It's very hard to know something if you aren't aware that you don't know what it is...just like when we didn't know about healthy menopausal women not having the usual menopausal Sx's or just like in our diagnosis discussion where we we didn't know we were diagnosing in the mere act of taking a case. If you don't know that you don't know, then you can't know that you don't know and be open to knowing.

So to show help people become aware of whether they're being inductive or not is to use the topic of Andre's clinical experience about menopausal Sx's. Don't tell people that it has anything to do with induction...just ask people for their thoughts on what they feel about a homeopath's observation that a healthy woman in menopause should not experience hot flashes, etc. Once you get a bunch of answers...and you'll get many saying no...you can pretty much say what I said to Raha...with the bottom line being that we should be saying, "I don't know," as this is no doubt new information for many if not all. This means that anyone who said, "No," could only have done so if they've been testing it clinically with many patients.

Since I've started to observe myself more and how I speak, I've realized that I have a lot of opinions...now don't get me wrong...opinions on movies and what a new dress on my wife looks like is ok...but when we're talking about things that have to do with facts...or what people claim to be true...we have to be inductive. So when in conversations now, if I reflect on a subject when asked and I become aware that I don't know, rather than giving in to that natural human tendency of having an unsubstantiated opinion on something, I give way to my inductive self and say, "I don't know." Since doing this, I've only realized how much I don't know and it's like the world around me has exploded open and I see things in a completely different way because I now know when I don't know and in being this way, I open myself up to know. When you know you don't know, that's when you begin to know.

There's a great Zen story about this...a university professor contacts a Zen master and asks if he can meet him to learn about Zen. The master consents. The prof shows up and the master, without saying a word, sits down and begins to pour the prof a cup of tea. When the tea nears the rim, the master doesn't draw back the tea pot. The prof starts to wonder what's going on. The tea starts to overflow onto the table. The prof is becoming agitated by this. The tea spills onto the floor and finally the prof can know longer hold his tongue, "What are you doing?! Can't you see the tea spilling onto the floor?!"

The master turns to him and says, "Like this cup, your mind is already full. How can you learn about Zen if your mind is not empty?"

This story tells the tale the world over of human behaviour...it's a mindset where someone's already committed themselves to an answer before you even finish your question. With this full-cup mind, it's easy to see why so many students of homeopathy have already veered off the path and become Sankaranian "homeopaths", essence prescribers, etc. and have no room in their mind to be open to what homeopathy really is...or they're not even open to know the basis of how homeopathy was discovered, i.e. pure, objective observation; not speculation. If you ignore reality, you live in a delusion.

So if you pose the question to people and, once you get their responses, let them know about Andre's inductive clinical observation and ask them what they're basing their answers...induction or deduction? If they said no without actually having had this information beforehand and without having had tested it clinically, they're being deductive. If they had knowledge of this healthy physiological state of menopausal women and tested it their own practice to verify or refute its claim, then they were being inductive. If they never knew about this info and never tried to test it and the said, "Yes" or "No," then the correct inductive response should've been, "I don't know."

Allow them to go through this process so they can become aware of whether they were inductive or just merely said that they were inductive without actually knowing that they weren't. To read about an apple is not the same as tasting an apple. Let them feast.

Thanks, Glen. The purpose of my blog is to talk with people, in the vernacular, about homeopathy. This is where potential students go, it is where alumni go, and where the curious who have never heard of homeopathy go. I could get buried deep in cases such as the menopausal woman but I do not think that is appropriate for such a wide-ranging audience.
On our little forum here we can talk about cases with specificity and detail and get into true meanings of words.
On my blog, I am a journalist, who just happens to be a homeopath. I have to appeal to the person who knows nothing, most of all, since the rest of us will recognize the conversation.
The more you know about homeopathy, the harder it is to convey it simply, something I have to do every day.

Andrea

ah, i understand about you having to put things out there simply...as a teacher of elementary school kids from kindergarten to grade 8, i find that developing the skill of taking a subject and breaking it down to its most simple explanation is challenging but very valuable. parents of young children are especially in a great position to develop this...when Yasmin (almost 4!) asked my wife the other day, "What's "deception"?" she was a little stumped so she passed the question off to me. I reflected and thought in terms of what Yasmin would understand and said, "Deception is what mommy does to daddy." lol...I keed. I said, "Yasmin, deception is when someone doesn't tell the truth. They don't say what really happened."

i think you can still speak simply about the menopausal health observation in a way that conveys the importance of induction in homeopathy without getting buried deep in cases. as you've already been talking about induction on your blog, you could say something to the effect of:

as homeopathy was founded on the principles of induction and its most successful practitioners strictly adhere to inductive principles, it's important that potential students of homeopathy understand and learn to become inductive. it is not an easy thing to learn, for example, i did not know that healthy menopausal women can be almost asymptomatic (i.e. no hot flashes) and shouldn’t have any changes in mood, body shape, etc., perhaps just some menstrual irregularity like periods coming a little early or being a little long, light, copious, or with erratic flow that eventually just stops until I understood that a homeopath with 30 years of clinical experience was able to repeatedly and predictably confirm this in his practice. through induction, i realized that a long-held belief of mine and the medical establishment was wrong.

I think this is simple and not beyond the grasp of most people...if it is...perhaps this could be viewed as a good screening process...I keed again.

what do you think?

Thanks, Glen. Your input is always valuable. I dont' assume people are unable to grasp things but I am also journalistic and won't bog down in details or semantics at the expense of conveying a new concept. Induction is induction, noun, verb, adjective, I think it is best to remind ( say remind even when people have never heard of it because it is so deeply resonate with us living organisms) people of a concept that they know innately, in the simplest form possible. That is all I am trying to do.

I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!
Andrea

sounds good...keep up the great blog and upi have a great weekend, too!

upi? my fingers were over 1 to the right on the keyboard..was supposed to 'you'!

just wanted to chime in about an episode with me today while i was teaching where my assuming, speculative nature reared its behaviourly well-conditioned head yet again.

my gr. 5 students were designing bridges today made out of newspaper to see if they could make it strong enough to hold a 2kg weight. the bridge had to be at least 50 cm...2 girls had built one part large enough and another part only 20cm. i said to them, "that's too short and it won't work." one of the girls said, "oh, that's not going lengthwise down the bridge, it's going perpendicular to the bridge [criss-crossing the longer part of the bridge]."

i thought, "dang, i assumed and because of it i was wrong." as i've been working on being inductive, i should've asked, "why is that part of the bridge so short?" it may seem nitpicky, but this is what it means to be precise and not be led by our assumptions...but instead be of the inductive "i-don't-know, empty-cup mind"

Not sure which post you mean when you say "lead post"? I think I have everything.

Sorry, I mean the original post that I put up with the article on The Vinegar Tasters and the story of the Tao of Pooh.

Hmmmmm....I think I downloaded that one to my home computer. I am at work for the rest of the day and into the evening. I will see if I can find it this week.

ooh...that would be great!

No luck on this Glen...I have some other things from before this forum format but not the Vinegar Tasters (sounds like my children! They LOVE vinegar! They didn't get that from me!)

Andrea

thanks for checking anyways, andrea...me's appreciate it.