Mal

D asked if I wanted to go out for dinner tonight, as soon as she asked I didn't really want to, besides it's practice day So my friend Mal came over and we did 2 hrs of kung fu after work which was great fun. (Sifu calls him Cookie but won't call me Mal_S {say it out loud }) Then I went out to dinner at cactus jacks with D, had fobbed her off the last 3 times. It was alright. But I'm having more fun surfing the net now and probably would have preferred to save the $$ and have food here. Especially as she is now asleep and I still have heaps of stuff I want to read etc before I go to bed. I'm very anti social. I've always had fun after I go out i.e. in retrospect but I hate the lead up and the actual doing part. How sad is that. p.s. We had margaritas, but I had to drive us home so no fun there! p.p.s. Although cultivation has made me more social than I was in my 20's I still don't really like socializing. edit p.p.p.s In the cold light of day it could read like I didn't have much fun with D, which isn't true. I always like spending time with her so I guess going out was good because it let us do some "human watching" which we both enjoy when we are together.

Apparently capsules are the way to go!!! ROFL yes making tea is such a big hassle

A question that interests me too. I got some Anxi Benshaun wulong http://www.enjoyingtea.com/anbeoo.html which is suppose to be good for weight loss too. Not that I can drink any because my order has not turned up yet Worried that customs might have got it Fire up the billy Stig

Racism can not be condoned, I am upset that you were to subjected to that Growant. Am I the only one who finds persevering with Procurator useful? (Probably) Sure his tone is very negative but I feel there is information there, just have to work hard to dig it out.

Yes. Its a difficult read, takes time to digest, but very rewarding.

A bit but it's only 11 pages long. Talks about the Buddha. Then reads a bit like an aditorial for itself saying why WSM is so good:) Talks about the increase in sexual energy. Talkes about actually being able to see bones. Gives the method itself. Then a bit on why certain parts are important. Then this really cool Soma Cream meditation "The hermit sage Hakuyu taught Hakuin the following remedy: Your condition is pitiable. By contemplating on truth too strenuously, you have lost the rhythm of spiritual advance, and that has finally brought on a grievous malady. And it is something very hard to cure, this Zen illness of yours. Though the sages of medicine frown over your case and put forth all their skill with needle and cautery and drugs, yet would they be helpless. ..." (sorry to tease but sound usefully if you have done a few different practices over your life) and then 7 special tips

Sorry, about all I know about the inner smile is that the book is siting on my partners bookshelf I think Bill mentioned that because you are visualizing the entire body (by virtue of visualizing the skeleton) you will be smoothing all the chi channels and meridians etc throughout the entire body, rather than just a part of the body. But like I said I have no idea. Try both methods and see if they feel different. I just want to know how to practice WSM correctly

I hope not, I appreciate your help. Thought this was interesting, ripped from The Magus of Java, (don't really want to get distracted by a John Chang debate ) To fill you your dantien with (yang) chi requires 81 hours of absolute meditation. A beginning student can not hold his concentration for long. Perhaps in one hour of siting he is actually in meditation for 1.3 minutes. i.e he is only meditating 2.2% of the time and needs 10 years of training to get his 81 hours of meditation. In actual meditation there are no thoughts and no sense of time. If you are thinking or aware of yourself you are not in meditation. Working Towards Enlightenment. The word samadhi has two entirely different meanings; "the samadhi that is neither thinking nor not thinking," and "the samadhi without thinking" IMHO the WSM allows you to achieve the samadhi that is neither thinking nor not thinking by stopping your thoughts with the visualization. I have not experienced the other type of samadhi with WSM yet but I believe that holding your mind still with the visualization will allow you to experience the samadhi without thinking. Naturally when that occurs you won't be holding any visualizations etc they will naturally dissolve / dust etc....

I want to get my ashes turned into a diamond Although, surfing for a link, I found out that you can also turn your ashes into ~250 graphite pencils ..........

Totally get you (hopefully ) What sort of visualization practice you have done previously will determine how "steady" the visualization is and how well it silences the mind. My own personal idea, which could be totally wrong. I use this as a very quick one point focus. Close eyes, dissolve flesh, shining white skeleton, dust....... about one second each and linger in the nice emptiness for a few seconds. I find that is working well for unwanted sexuality or other thoughts. The "real" meditation is a 20~30 min session first thing in the morning after my chi gungs, a lot more intense on the visual of each of the bones and integrating them into the whole skeleton visualization. I'll be emailing him sometime next week, apparently if you do a little review he will send you another ebook as payment for the testimonial Web site is http://www.meditationexpert.com/ less than $10 highly recommended (unless you really hate doing visualizations)

Ummmm..........Hello Rafael Welcome to the 'bums. Hope you have a fun time here

I was not good at visualization, took me lots of practice and I still tent to feel rather than visualize. Looking at the skeleton model / picture whenever you need to will help. And sticking with the bigger bones, going for an entire skeleton, rather than trying to get every individual bone, just right, might help too. You don't want to be frustrated it should be fun. I learnt to visualize by practicing visualizing a HB pencil in empty space, and once I could do that I would rotate it, addd shadows etc. Not starting with a wood grain pencil with an eraser attached to the end would have made things easier

Hi KoHsuan, I must admit I though that staying in stillness was the most important part too. Not to start an argument but in the audio Bill said "Once you can visualize a stable skeleton you let go...... visualize all of the chi in your body shining white using the skeleton as the basis you let go....the whole point of the practice is to get you to rest in emptyness." Stillness is the bit I "want" although visualization is fun too IMHO it's just the "trick" (if you like) that gives you stillness.

I love bananas and my granddad played with model train sets all his life Oh crap I find it very sad that the only think getting advertised on tv late at night is phone sex and impotence medicine. The decoupling of sex and love is IMHO a huge problem with our modern society.

Nice Intriguing and reassuring. Perhaps the effort in trying to understand is more important than actually understanding what we can explain in words. Especially since the understanding is done by the ego "I" and drags us into the mental realm away from the reality we are trying to understand.

I beleive most chi gungs improve the skin over time. Perhaps a side sffect of being healthier? Thanks for the tips, I'm kinesthetic so even my visualizations have a lot of "feel" in them. Lots of bones in a skeleton, a nice taxing visual, can see why people like this method.

Greetings Tozan, Always nice to see a long term practitioner, hope I'm still going in 20 years. Have fun here at the 'bums

Hi sdefe730 I hope you have success in your search for a teacher. In the meantime try not to let being in a crapy town get you down, it could be worse you could live here I hope you have some fun here at the 'bums

Nice to see everyone having fun Back to the skeleton I'm one of the ones misunderstanding I thought the stillness at the end was the important part. Things that stood out to me, from reading not from a lot of practice. when striping flesh, go fast or slow depending on you purpose, being joyful is very important. when left with skeleton. Visualize all bones sequentially in white light starting with left big toe, apparently very important and mentioned in his other books. Use visual reference if needed. Once visualization complete or partially complete remain with it (visual reference to refresh) until you can feel the chi in your bones (unsure how long, once I get a stable visualization, I go to) When chi balanced blow away to dust Remain in emptiness as long as possible and in time you will enter samadi The emptiness part is where I would be trying to spend the majority or at least more than 1/2 of my practice time yes? I see you can also use this as a one point concentration exercise "visualizing your shining white skeleton...practice this until you reach the point that the visualization totally absorbs you and eventually becomes a constant habit" So 1x 2x a day, often as you can for as long as you can p.s. M thanks for the cd link, looks useful.

Hi Natty, Nice to meet you on your way I almost forgot how pretty that banner really is. Nice to be reminded. Have fun here at the 'bums.

Why start a new thread when you can find a really old one Questions about WSM How long would / should a session last and how often? I'm looking for something I can do regularly every day and a 1h20m meditation makes this really difficult for me After you dissolve the skeleton visualization when your mind starts up again do you:- ignore and just drop back to stillness re do the visualization and dissolve again or stop the meditation there for that session. Also is this method "complete" by itself. because I don't know any breathing methods Does anyone have an easy to read Buddhist scripture with this method? Why WSM, apparently its a good one for martial artists and I probably should brush up my visualizations, been getting a bit slack. Will leave with this nice quote.

Possibly I've really only kept reading 30 day free trial, I got bored with the other topics. Traffic is high at the moment so I'm only reading a few threads here and there. Don't really care how many people come here to sell stuff, or preach religion or talk rubbish (like me) as long as they don't spam across multiple threads its pretty easy just to not read that post if you are not interested. Am I the only one who thinks the raincoat photo looks alright. I admire people who don't care how they look & I'm sure it was better than freezing in the rain

So the clay I got is Hydrated Bentonite a 15ml dose contains 730mg Microfine Bentonite. Its distributed in Aus but is made in the USA. The health food shop said its the only one they can get so I guess I will see how it goes. It's in a plastic bottle too so I hope sonne's "Clay leaches petrochemicals out of plastic" isn't correct, but it probably is I wonder if 50 yrs in the future we will still be using plastic bottles...... Interestingly it reminds me of eating chalk, which would be a very old memory! So far I feel like I have.... well eaten some mud lower belly feels strangely full and a little bit off color.