Yascra

Hello Pepperbellly, and welcome to The Tao Bums Good to know you already found some interesting threads and information here. Actually The Tao Bums has a forum-structure and is not a blog, so people are free to contribute to discussions. If you would like to have a place to discuss your own practice in detail you might be interested in a Personal Practice Journal. Your introductory post has been approved, so you'll be able to post on the forum now. Please keep our Terms and Rules in mind when participating here. Have fun here, good luck and all the best to you! Yascra

Hello Nononothing, and welcome to The Tao Bums Your introductory post has been approved and you'll be able to post on the forum now. Please keep our Terms and Rules in mind when participating here. Good luck and all the best to you, Yascra

Hello YiYinYiYang, and welcome to The Tao Bums Your introductory post has been approved and you'll be able to post on the forum now. Please keep our Terms and Rules in mind when participating here. For sure you're not the only person on board who is not a native English speaker and writer, and your grammar doesn't seem to be so bad, so I'd say just improve as good as you can and don't worry too much about it Best to you, Yascra

What makes you think that guy was a master? Sounds more like kind of a negative person to me.

Aye, thank you for that clear statement. And thanks for welcoming me I have to say that actually I'm more sorry for a development that makes such a shift necessary... but without a doubt it's difficult if people show up just to cause trouble, so there has to be some way to deal with that attitude. Let's hope that times might change and things might smoothen out to some degree. I'd like to say a Thank You to everybody who's investing their time and energy to keep up this place here and contribute to create an atmosphere for positive exchange, that means Mods and Tech and Admin, and whomever I might have forgot. Good to have you here

Well, I'd say you might call buddhism a form of atheism, as it tells you not to rely on worldly gods. If your idea of god is transpersonal and above any kind of a BEING, I would not necessarily say it's atheistic, but, as mentioned, that depends on your level of understanding "theism". Buddhism is definitely not restricted to rational functions. Presenting buddhism as a form of rational atheism therefore might be a kind of using skillful means to introduce a-theist persons to a system that might open up their thinking. But it's definitely not a sufficient way to describe the whole of it.

The Zhuangzi in a German translation. Sometimes it just looks like stories and more superficial, sometimes you can detect great hints for cultivation in it. Fascinating book Especially if you've been confused by quite a bunch of buddhist teachings before

Yes, I think so ^^ Not meant in a bad sense, anyway. It's just kind of impossible to be on topic in a thread in which the OP is by itself OT, per definitionem and own suggestion. But it's funny somehow, I guess someone who'd make that would be quite a bum Ouh, and thank you @BKA, absolutely got me. As you might assume I was a little bit shocked by the perspective of no-edit in the future. :-p

You mean like making up a thread like soaring cranes "Dao" or "no thing" today, and the winner is who stays.. on topic and doesn't insult anyone while doing so? lol

So, if talking about Dao is talking about no thing, where exactly are those 4 dimensions located...?

Like you?

"Extensive research" = "I had a (one) look " Thanks for sharing!

Hi there and welcome to the forum To the guru question I would say no, actually many Yoga postures etc. will happen to you naturally if you just cultivate/practice/do your energy stuff correctly, which might well happen by kind of a "higher intuition", or even slight memories of practice in past lives. If it's happening so fast to you, this life here will hardly be your first one in cultivation And, as there are lots of not-so-useful advices in the overall "pool" of nowadays spirituality, sometimes extremely close to good ones .. it might sometimes be better to rely on your own memories of "better times" than try to find good advice here and now. I'd say you're lucky to have found this place, I am quite selective about whom I spend my time with, but some people here are really great Concerning that AYP-stuff, I've not been there, but pleease, this here is taobums.. if you want to make up things with the AYP-guys, then write this stuff to them. Different communities have different energies, aims and histories. It's understandable that you're upset due to injustice, but if you have issues with them, make it up with them, otherwise that's not very fair towards the people here .. and my experience with the overall tone here is that you are very well allowed to be critical (I should know that, I can turn into a monster when you forbid me to think ), as long as it's critical thinking, and not just running around and insulting people Chang already wrote something towards that good or bad thing. I'm afraid that you won't get far without learning a lot of new stuff. So, as learning tends to work best when you're sincerely interested in something, what are you interested in? I for my part am myself nowhere near self-realization and therefore not very patient, but actually communication hardly works purely non-dualistic, and whoever fools himself about that largely misses something, if you'd ask me Welcome here and have fun on this board All the best

Aah, Tristania =) Saw them live on WGT, thanks for reminding me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNdS8-PEILE

Cool introduction. Welcome here

How do you become lucid and are there further benefits of it? Are you sure our Nature of Mind is just like dreaming?

I'd say the appropriate way to stand up against offenses, sorry, is to make a report if it clearly insults anyone. Decibelle to me seems like someone who doesn't discuss anything anyway, so what's the point? She puts in some stuff, or thoughts, and then disappears, leaving the debate, fight, or whatever it is to those who care in some way. Care to take some of her points or "arguments", or care to "stand up" against it. I would say that standing up against persons who offend others is to not debate on the level where they want you to. You're done with that sort of as soon as you leave out your own pride, and just act, I'd say. But of course I just say that out of my own limited experience. Have a nice day

Ouh. Hm, I'm afraid you won't be able to force her to do anything. Maybe just don't feed it? To be honest, I don't go on reading something which is written in an offensive or aggressive style. Tells enough about the author. As mentioned, it's a pity, but you won't change it, or change others. And it's not so important as long as it's one thread and not twenty, though still not nice

No, it's not really that stupid. Usually one mutation alone brings SMALL differences. Small benefits, but also small disadvantages. In most cases it's the unseen differences that suddenly make a change WHEN the environment changes. So you could say, what makes the differences are the unseen potentials (or lack thereof) to adapt to a certain kind of change. My conclusion from this is that the best kind of evolution might happen on a sphere/level that's not completely physical, for most physical bodies will lack the properties to adjust to EVERY environment. Bacteria are not so successful as individuals, but only in masses, as there are good chances that in a big mass there will be few who'll manage to adapt. So extinction of the unfit is a large factor on the whole scale. The other approach is to take what you find in your environment to make it more comfortable for your properties, which is something most beings do, but humans do to an extremely high degree. In many cases there remains the disadvantage that these changes in environment require loss or damage to somee degree, and tend to disturb something like natural balance, if they're not done extremely carefully. Finally, the (or one) big problem about it is that running around with a physical form tends to be an impediment to realizing that in the end everything is consciousness. Karmic inheritage and all that.

Hm, the only thing I understood from the OP was that it was discrediting someone. Wasn't aware which someone this might be. You're not such a bad guy, are you? oO

Dear, just because society tells you that good persons cry whenever they see something that's supposed to bring up tears, that's not necessarily how it is, or should be. Obviously you were very caring - and that's the important thing. (Clinging) love is not the same as compassion, in fact, clinging love is what you HAVE to get rid of if you want to be really helpful for others. Compassion is what makes you helpful to others. So, I can't exclude that you're maybe making some mistake in your meditation - for example, of course you have to set a kind of "border" in time and space to get yourself the time to meditate and not let anything disturb you. A mistake might be, if you conclude from this that you should put yourself into kind of a social and feeling-vacuum, for that's not what meditation is for. On the other hand it might well be that you're sliding into a state of detachment, in which you simply are not affected so much by any disturbances, which also means that on some level you stay calm. That is what you WANT to reach by meditation practice You know, I had an operation once at my shoulder.. had not even known that there had been quite a lot of pain involved all the time. I just noticed AFTER that operation that this pain was gone, and first this was unusual, cause something was "missing" in the first hours - cause not everything you're used to has to be positive. But actually, a pain-less state is better, though it might feel strange at the beginning Just reflect about it and get clear about whether you really feel that something is wrong, or whether your (maybe not so correct) implications that society put on you tell you that it's wrong. Actually, this unability to be guided by Western society "standards" is one of the aspects that make cultivation difficult in those cultures. But it's just a hindrance you have to be aware of, especially at the beginning, doesn't mean you'll never get rid of it All the best to you!

LoL Evaluating other persons written stuff: (Self-proclaimed) Teacher to Student(s). "Meeeooowww": Behaving worse than any student in puberty would, thereby lowering any possible level of self-given teacher level as far as possible, thereby lowering student level MUCH more. Other perspective: "Unlike this post" vs. "Like this post" combined with (hidden?) offense for runaways

We can simply agree that someone like you is not a buddhist in practice. From this point on there's nothing to discuss, and I don't see why it should in any way be a "sin" to just state what's obvious.Quite the opposite, I consider it dishonest to not stick to things as they are. The problem is not bad behaviour alone. The problem is the firm believe that it's your personal right to stick to bad behaviour, even if it disturbs good thoughts and is thereby in any way harmful to others or to other's good intentions. You don't have the will or even in any way insight to act in a way of "changing bad behaviour", which would be "avoiding to harm beings" and "avoiding bad company". Unfortunately it's one of the characteristics of persons like you to always try to blame others, even if pure logic tells you that the fault is yours. It's not passive aggressive if I tell you that my opinion of you is negative. i have my reasons to, and whether you get angry about it I don't care. (Passive aggression means that you're angry but behave in a way to make others run wild. Actually that's more the kind of behaviour that's yours. I don't give a sh*t about you and whether you're angry or not.)

As stated elsewhere - if you're serious about it, then just don't discuss with idiots. You can force yourself to keep smiling, but actually it still drains your energy, and smiling to make oneself forget that things are already messy is unhealthy and a waste of time. A blind cow can differentiate who speaks out of own experience and who's just citing others. Unfortunately buddhist debates mainly ARE about citing others, as they are not about cultivation but a contest about study, and are fighting on a very coarse level of worldly logic. If you're a spiritual person you'll just stick away from it. My few cents. Best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them if you're not a mod.