silent thunder

My wife and I sleep on a queen size, cotton outer shell, rubber internal air chamber mattress. We each set to maximum firmness, though on occasion my gal will adjust her side to accomodate residual back issues. The mattress rests on a platform of wooden planks. No metal aside from a few screws in the framing. When possible, I prefer to sleep in pitch dark. I have come to deeply and increasingly appreciate complete darkness over the last decade. We have heavy curtains in our bedroom and for the last several years, I sleep with a mask to aid in creating a light free sleeping environment.

Hello My Friend Thank you One of the most wonderful aspects of any vacation for me... is the moment of opening the door and returning home. it's good to be home.

These preperatory and maintenance stretches are invaluable to me. http://zenmontpellier.net/eng/lotus/lotuseng.html

my son and I at the museum. walking by an oil painting of adam and eve at the apple tree... with the serpent. my son: Dad? me: yea? my son: why do they always paint adam and eve with belly buttons? what were they supposed to be attached to? me: i love you.

why not just install the profanity filter while we're at it... sheesh.

I for one, deeply appreciate an authentic fuckin' potty mouth. Particularly the Irish and Scottish varieties.

Been raining on and off since about an hour before dawn. I love Deuter. But he's particularly awesome on overcast, drizzly days.

Hi ben. Welcome to the Bums. Two of my three teachers speak almost no english. And my chinese is limited to phrases and words. As there is not always a translator present, a fair amount of my training has taken place without explicit verbal instruction. While I deeply appreciate this aspect to how my training has unfolded, I have found the words of Dr Yang Jwing-Ming and Damo Mitchell to be particularly resonant and beneficial. I find their words to be based from deep experience and to be very clear and direct in their descriptions of processes, practices and energetics. I recommend any works by either of them, but particularly from Dr Yang... Embryonic Breathing and The Root of Chinese Qi Gong and from Damo: The Dragon Dao Yin Exercises stand out for me. I also still routinely spend some long wonderful hours perusing old conversations here and highly recommend that as well. Either entering a particular term or concept, or simply ambling along through a section. There's no stigma here against reviving old conversations. Cheers mate!

I so agree! Highly recommended. This film is stunningly well crafted in story, acting and photography and sound... and resonates long after viewing. A simple, beautiful story, told with subtle, artful grace.

I don't move much at all while I sleep. This is how it is for the last decade or so... The only movement that occurs is when I wake in the middle of the night, I'll roll over to the other side. I carry the chest pillows with me, resettle my legs and I'm back out in moments.

full, authentic presence complete release in the now... as it is playful bouyancy... blissful loss of self in action and raw connected presence a softening of the notion of a boundary between a self and an other a dissolving of certainties a sense of awakening after a long nap

Shunryu Suzuki! How I Love that old dead zen dude!

whales have the largest brains on the planet and seemingly spend the majority of their time, flying through water and singing... i'm convinced.

I can close my eyes and cease all input of light. If only I could as readily close my ears and stop the input of sound for but a moment of true silence, in which to saturate... Ears are always on, while eyes completely shut down regularly. When working with Wang Li Ping... the most challenging aspect of turning within for me, without a doubt is to turn hearing within. Think about how often in your life, you hear something approaching, and then turn to see what the potential incoming natural force may be...

http://www.philmultic.com/home/instruments/ here's a site dedicated to classical chinese instruments.

The Guqin has always epitomized daoist music for me.

Well said. Your words resonate with my experience that politics describe and demonstrate our society's communal spiritual perceptual climate. As such, politics display as spiritualism in practical action to me. It is often untenable for me to participate in certain aspects of political discussion, in a similar manner that it is untenable for me to go for a walk in certain climates outdoors. When walking in certain climates, I take precautions to ensure not only survival but when possible, vitality. When the communal political climate in which I find myself is non-conducive to my own personal health and longevity, I take precautions when engaging, or when I can't maintain sincerity and grow too judgemental, rigid and triggered, I withdraw engagement entirely. It's simply not always healthy to go for a walk outside after all. However, how spirit could ever be disconnected from any process, noumenal or phenomenal lies beyond the ken of my mind to imagine and my body to experience. Spirit, Matter, Mind...are no longer perceived as separate at all, but in my mind they coalesce like facets of a fluid gem... distinctly apparent aspects of one fluid process. They can be taken of themselves (looking at only one facet of a gem at a time) but the other facets are not irrelevant, negated, disconnected or non present and impacting when one reduces focus onto only one aspect at a time, for whatever purpose. All aspects are as interconnected for me as a wave is expressed in crest and trough. There are no waves with only crests. Break a stick in half and one does not have two tops of sticks. There is a transactional interconnectedness to the fluid process of awareness in presence. Like buying and selling, that always manifests simultaneously and each aspect depends on and codefine each other aspect. While these words oversimplify to try and explain a complex experience of presence, they seem to be beneficial to me at times in the say a menu is useful at modeling in conceptual notions, the experience of a meal to come. Spirit, Matter, Mind (and those that lie beyond words to even communicate) all interrelate and express fluidly in presence and coarise and seemingly codefine, bringing each other into being as any one arises. For many years the more politically bent verses of the DDJ seldom resonated with my own experience, I could not perceive the connection and relevance to my experience, they seemed disconnected, or non-relevant. Recently, this has shifted and I see that political expressions are but another aspect of expression of spiritual perception, another intrinsic layer so to speak of one multi-faceted interconnected fluid process. I'm so grateful for this place and all its dialogues, including those that are not beneficial for me to participate in. Sometimes I more fully come to realize my own true nature, by encountering that which seems utterly counter to it... neti neti. (not this, not this). I deeply appreciate finding the dialogues that cause me to want to lash out, the places where I sense I am not allowed to laugh. For long ago the realization settled on my awareness that "wherever i feel not allowed to laugh... there is where my work lies". The topics and opinions that deeply trigger me are invaluable gifts of presence and clarity that cut through the fog of assumptions and illusions like a clarion bell. Unfortunately that bell is often too intense for me to be willing to sit in its presence for long, or at all. So I am judicious what I wear and where I choose to walk, when I enter the communal climate. I don't blame the climate for seeming too cold and the wind too biting and bitter when it's winter, I stay indoors where it's warm, or bundle up... in a similar manner I no longer blame the climate of politics when they seem to be out of step with my own projections and appear to me discompassionate, brutal and overly judgemental and selfish. While it no longer seems necessary or beneficial to be serious in any given matter. Sincerity seems of unmost significance. Play has become a most powerful tactic. The most significant daily, moment to moment practical application of spiritual process for me. Engaging in life playfully, sincerely, bouyantly and childlike, not seriously, rigidly which leads to the childish.

Things appear as they are perceived. Perception is partial and interpreted.

ufettered... unencumbered... liberated... they all resonate... I can veritably feel it in the soles of my feet with every breath. for me the word that describes it is unfolding the experience of life... of awareness, is one of continual unfolding in simple presence just me as i am, within the all that also is... all one interflowing process with many aspects the simple sensation of my feet touching the earth and releasing into bathing in the sounds of my family and neighborhood unfolding in what is, as it is... and that is it simple one flowing unfoldingness many rivers, one ocean all flowing

Thanks for sharing your teacher's question. i appreciate living, fluid questions. The type that seem to arise with no implicit unshakable answer of certainty other than those we manufacture and then either cling to... or not. This exercise he proposes resonates with a notion that arises in awareness regularly of late. Particularly when i start taking conditions of life personally. are there any separate events in nature? truly separate from each other? are there any truly separate events that are in no way interconnected? where do "I" end and the rest of the universe begin? I have no answers for these questions, though some strong persistent suspicions arise.

I'm so woke... my lightbulbs have two settings... nirvana and samsara. ~unknown