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Everything posted by Bindi
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Contentment to me will always be something settled for, not the ultimate prize. From Yogapedia: If the left and the right are properly ordered, and the above and below can come together and consciousness be established there, then Iâd reckon sat-chit-ananda would be a real possibility. My journey hasnât ended yet in acceptance of what is, because what is internally as it is right now isnât as good as it gets. To be content in this moment is to accept what is less than ideal within.
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Love, Loving-Kindness, Bonds, Attachment
Bindi replied to TranquilTurmoil's topic in Buddhist Discussion
Signs of progress are so dependent on which path is followed, and these signs can be ultimately meaningless in the greater scheme of things. How would one know? -
Traditions which refer to them are Yogaâs Shiva and Shakti, Sufiâs lover and beloved, Daoisms Hun and Po. To me, literally energies that start from the soles of the feet and travel upwards, and cloud like energy that descends and enters in from above. Undeniably a âpleasurable feeling which doesnât impinge on the mindâ because it is heart based.
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What I have noticed in a general sense is that both committed Christians and Sufis seem to accept pain and suffering, I see this as tilling the ground in which bliss may develop, it also may not. I see these certain Christians and Sufis as seeking âGodâ anyway, not bliss, bliss is more just a byproduct. My own personal view would be that bliss is related to âearthâ and âheavenâ energies converging in the heart, nothing to do with being free. Energies are freed to flow, they just do their thing, and as a consequence the heart can start to develop, and it feels blissful because it is being filled with the energies that it has been starved of, but which are its birthright.
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Bliss isnât the problem, the system that they followed is the problem. On the other hand some Sufiâs know about bliss, some Christians know about bliss, and maybe some tantrics, though their systems are highly likely to be flawed as well and probably not worth following. Tell a Sufi to stop seeking God and I reckon theyâd run you out of town.
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Can there also be as many translations of any given word, so that it can come to reflect whatever one personally feels and knows? There actually are clear definitions of ananda - Ananda Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com ananda [ ah-n uhn-d uh ] noun Hinduism. perfect bliss. Compare Sat-cit-ananda. Origin of ananda From the Sanskrit prefix Änanda- joy, happiness Ananda refers to the deeper and timeless dimension of happiness, not just a higher degree of the joys that we normally experience in life. To infer that it means anything else is misleading. Bliss may not be your aim or dwaiâs, but bliss exists nonetheless for some who have discovered this within themselves as a perfect and permanent experience.
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Contentment is a poor substitute for bliss⊠Ruined in the tavern of love we can taste the intoxicating wine of His presence. This is when the bliss begins. At the beginning it may come as a gentle loverâs foreplay, like butterfly wings at the edge of the heart, but in this gentle touch the whole of oneself is saturated with love, a love that runs through the body and soul, in which nothing is excluded. Then one is really reborn, reborn in love, in the deep knowing of oneâs true nature and the love that is present in oneself and in everything. Later the states of bliss deepen and intensify, become almost painful and one wonders how the body can bear it, and yet it continues, sometimes for hours. Sweetness, intoxication, drunkenness, these are the words the Sufi uses to describe such states: the ecstasy of love: What is the nature of this bliss? In the moments of intoxication one does not know, one does not care, there is no mind, no self, just the currents of love that have taken one away from everything one knows into a different world, a world without difficulties or conflict, in which everything is alive with love. And in these states the heart can grow and expand, until the heart is everything, the call of every bird, the taste of every tear. https://goldensufi.org/divine-intoxication-rumi/
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Very nice 3bob, it makes me think I read Gibran far too long ago, when I knew hardly anything. âIf you could hear the whispering of the dreamâ reminds me of one of my favourite lines from one of my favourite texts, âWhen the green immortal spirit passes over and communicates with me, there is a distant echo.â Thereâs something that I do want to hear and see, and itâs not emptiness, and itâs not a void, and itâs not even primordial space, its more akin to spirit pointing to the actualising of spirit within my body.
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Iâve got to say how I understand the three channels and how to work with them is entirely peculiar to me, but Iâm happy to put forward my thoughts on them. Give or take the two main side channels are the dual ones, one side being male, and one side being female, the Ardhanarishvara figure (below) is a graphic demonstration of this, as is the yin/yang symbol. Where I differ is in equating the female side with emotions and water, and the male side with thoughts and air. So for me, to work on clearing the two main side channels is as straightforward as working with emotional âmudâ and itâs concomitant stuck thoughts. On a more subtle level this allows water to flow in the female channel and air to flow in the male channel. Opening these channels took me decades, but I think that work is mostly done for me. What happens in the central channel and other channels in the legs and arms is far more esoteric, and doesnât really mean anything or make sense or is even needed to know until a lot of initial work with the two side channels and the lower dantian is done.
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I like what you are saying about sexual love, emotive love and aesthetic love being associated with the central channel where it intersects with the dantians, though Iâm not quite sure what you mean by âaestheticâ love exactly. I think there is some sort of subtle âseedâ that has to travel from the LDT up to the MDT and then the UDT that in a sense has to be fully realised and transformed in each of these centres, and this ever broadening of âloveâ is a fundamental part of the journey. edit to add: Christianity has âAgapeâ as the highest love, âthe love that is of and from God, whose very nature is love itselfâŠit is His nature to love and He must be true to His nature.â
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"Buddha nature" is often described in terms of three qualities: boundless wisdom, infinite capability, and immeasurable loving-kindness and compassion. If this is true, and Mind is equivalent to this, then I agree that it means much more than that which thinks. Since Iâm a hopeless case Iâd break up the above mentioned three qualities into the fully realised potential of pingala, Ida and Sushumna respectively.
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Removing a single proton from the nucleus of a mercury atom transforms it into gold, thus the ability to manipulate atoms at a quantum level would be all that is needed for external alchemy to become a reality. Not a car to a chair, but it would be an interesting demonstration of some sort of quantum ability.
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Compare the above to this: Bhagawan Sri Ramana Maharshi (B) taught that the heart, not the head, is the true seat of Consciousness; but by this he did not mean the physical organ at the left side of the chest but the heart at the right, and by 'consciousness' he did not mean thought but pure awareness or sense of being. He had found this from his own experience to be the centre of spiritual awareness and then found his experience confirmed in some ancient texts.When his devotees were instructed to concentrate on the heart, it was this spiritual heart on the right that was referred to; and they also found it the centre of an actual, almost physical vibration of awareness. However, he would also speak of the Heart as equivalent to the Self and remind them that in truth it is not in the body at all, but is spaceless. https://www.speakingtree.in/blog/sri-ramana-maharshi-on-heart Ramana also refers to awareness, but itâs centre is within the body, the âspiritual heartâ as opposed to the head, which can be felt as an almost physical vibration. He goes on to say it is spaceeless, though itâs hard to square that with âalmost physical vibrationâ and an exact location. Maybe nonduality đ± But then I just now come across this from Wikipedia: Dzogchen texts also describe how rigpa is connected to the energy body. Dzogchen tantras explain that rigpa can be located in the center of the human body, in the heart centre. The Realms and Transformations of Sound Tantra states: "The jewel present within the heart in the center of oneâs body is great pristine consciousness."[21] Furthermore, the Self-Arisen VidyÄ Tantra states: I have the idea that what is important is centred within us, and that it is important to establish it first within as the source, before identifying with everything âout thereâ and maybe missing whatâs âin hereâ.
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When I read something from the nondual traditions for example dzogchen. Below is an explanation of âmind-itselfâ, I understand itâs not mundane mind, but it still seems mind based if the word gnosis or even awareness can be applied to it. Dzogchen theory focuses above all on mind-itself, which is seen as a primordially pure, empty, and luminous gnosis (yeshe) or awareness (rigpa), which must be distinguished from unenlightened âordinaryâ mind (sem). Awareness is not only the true nature of each individual sentient being but the very source and substanceâin Yogacara terms, the foundation (alaya)âof the cosmos itself. Rigpa is conventionally divisible into essence, nature, and compassionate energy, and includes within it all of samsara and nirvana. Beginninglessly pure mind-itself is captured symbolically in the figure of the primordial buddha Samantabhadra (luminosity) and his consort, Samantabhadri (emptiness). https://www.lionsroar.com/empty-pure-luminous-mind-in-dzogchen-and-mahamudra/
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@Apech, you suggested earlier that "mind" equals mind plus spirit, but it still seems to be limited to specifically 'mental consciousness' when I read it in a text.
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From what I can gather things are not reliable and constant on the quantum level but when it comes to visible things they are. If quantum reality can be manipulated, maybe a car can become a chair.
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If sound is vibrations, then the falling tree certainly does make a sound, because it produces vibrations in the air. Even if thereâs no person or other animal around to hear the sound, a recorder with a microphone could certainly record those vibrationsâas sound. Another definition is that sound is the sensation we experience when our ears detect those vibrations and send information about those vibrations to the brain. In other words, by this second definition, sound is what we hear, i.e., the perception in our brains. So if sound is what we hear, and no one is around to hear the tree fall, then it doesnât make a sound! Thatâs opposite to the answer we had earlier. Which answer is correct? Hereâs how to know: When someone asks you, âIf a tree falls in a forest, and thereâs no one around to hear it, does it make a sound,â first ask, What do you mean by sound? Define sound! Once you hear the definition theyâre using, youâll know the answer. If they say that sound is vibrations in the air, then the answer is yes! If they say that sound is only what a person hears, then the answer is no. https://www.nsta.org/q-if-tree-falls-forest-and-theres-no-one-around-hear-it-does-it-make-sound
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In a sense the linked article proves what I was saying earlier to manitou, one can find just about anything to support their view, doesnât mean itâs right. And you are drawn to those papers and wisdom traditions that confirm your own view/experience. So you are trusting your experience and itâs confirmation to be the truth. Statistically speaking, what you believe to be true is more likely to be one part of the elephant.
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The linked article refers to reality as âobjective physical realismâ. You donât doubt that there is an objective physical reality?
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New experiment demonstrates that reality might actually be real Forget theoretical physics, let's talk about experimental reality April 19, 2022 - 9:12 pm A team of scientists recently conducted an exciting quantum physics experiment allowing them to demonstrate that reality might actually be real. https://thenextweb.com/news/new-experiment-demonstrates-reality-might-actually-be-real
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The phrase âForm is emptiness; emptiness is formâ is not a necessary foundation of subtle body cultivation IME, and I wouldnât need to unravel the meaning of this phrase if it doesnât affect my subtle body cultivation. It seems more likely that we have different concepts of what the subtle body is and how it is cultivated. I donât need to understand this phrase to feel an emotion, or do a specific posture, or have a working understanding of dantians and chakras and Nadiâs, and these are the basis of subtle body work for me.
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The object exists in all its undiminished glory whether it is perceived or not. FWIW the subtle body too exists in all its potential glory whether it is perceived or not. The object doesnât require someone to perceive it to exist. Once perceived the perceiver can affect the object according to quantum physics, but fundamentally the object exists whether perceived or not. The only difference is whether the object is acted upon or not, not whether it exists or not.
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Donât you have an existence beyond my perception of you? Planets exist whether I know of them or not. My perception is limited, but it still gives me some small clue about what exists in the world and the universe/s.
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Different objects might be perceived differently depending on the senses of the perceiver, but objects have their intrinsic nature, even if not perfectly perceived. Lymph is not mind, it is lymph, and we comprehend part of its nature. The body is beyond amazing, and we comprehend part of it, but it exists beyond mind, and beyond perception. If no one was here to perceive a body, there would still be the object, it doesnât disappear just because no mind perceives it. When mind turns inwards, there are also a myriad of possibilities that mind perceives. My mind perceives something different to your mind. You perceive the ânatural stateâ, I perceive a subtle body that wants to develop according to a blueprint that I am not privy to except in bits along the way. Mind is limited, granted, but it doesnât mean that what it perceives doesnât exist, what exists is always more complicated than perception, but itâs existence doesnât change, only the perceptions of it change. If you have found that your mind can disengage from suffering that is a good thing in the short term if you were initially suffering physically or mentally, but beyond the issue of suffering there are other developments within that are not intertwined with suffering or not suffering, there is another agenda that is barely heard, that is more important than not suffering.
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As to what the âSelfâ is capable of, maybe itâs what you say here, maybe itâs not, experience of the Self is the only way to be sure to me.