Bindi

I agree there are some things that need to be uncovered, perhaps this is the work we can do, while the building up happens spontaneously and can’t be engineered by us.

I don’t think they’re equivalent myself, though any knowledge of rainbow body I have is only from reading.

Ok, I didn’t recognise it as neidan, it seemed more Buddhist sounding to me. An awakening in the lower dantian? That doesn’t make sense to me, I relate awakening to some sort of consciousness shift associated with the mind.

I have long held that there is a difference in the aspirations of neidanists and buddhists, as well as their potential achievements. You present a Buddhist perspective, but the neidan perspective is not simply equivalent. Something is constructed and produced and developed, what neidan calls the immortal foetus, but its endpoint is not the void of unbounded potential. From my own perspective, it’s endpoint is something that transcends the void, but it is not formless. IMO it is most likely that the Buddha just never found the way to get beyond the void and the undifferentiated and formless, because he never produced what can exist beyond the void, ie. the foetus that is produced first in the lower dantian, and then brought up to the higher dantians. If this immortal foetus is not even initially produced, and I would reckon for the Buddha and Buddhists it isn’t produced, then the unbounded void can be presumed to be the highest aim, and whole philosophies can be built around this concept. Edit: I find myself thinking of the form Jonathon Livingston seagull turns into after he perfects flying, the book was written by a Christian but perhaps not that far from the immortal body as envisioned by the neidanist.

But the neidanist, and Damo is one of these, doesn’t believe that he is trying to find what has never been lost as in your quote “all this discomfort just for a few extra decades of life! And why? To gain more time to find what has never been lost!” The neidanist is specifically trying to create an immortal body, which doesn’t exist until it is created, and which involves working with dantians and energies.

What I really like in this concept is the pivot as the point of stillness or the Dao, and yes yin and yang being eternally in motion and balanced, it was like the complete picture for me. I’ve never really understood the concept of stillness, this is the first time it made sense to me I guess. But I also liked the intrinsic pointer to wuwei, though it is its opposite that is referred to here in the “reckless working out of one’s own ruin” if the central stillness isn’t discovered.

Being able to truly allow and feel these negative feelings was his ultimate key to resolving suffering, and led directly to his enlightenment.

I read astra Zeneca uses the same principle as the Sputnik vaccine, so that’s all good and well, but now I read that astra Zeneca is not effective against the South African variant, I don’t know about the Sputnik (which isn’t available in Australia anyway, so not an option for us). Apparently we’re not out of the woods yet, maybe astra Zeneca and then a booster for the variants when it’s available.

Yes Pfizer will also be available, I read up on it just now and it seems to work safely and effectively, but it is an RNA vaccine. No one’s bunkered down here, we had one community transmission case in our entire state and our entire state closed down for five days! For the rest it’s been life as normal, or nearly normal, except that international travel is banned. When Australia does open up I plan on being vaccinated, as does my mother.

I read it, and tend to agree I’m not interested in gene therapy for cancer. I looked into vaccines that might be available in Australia and I found this list, it seems very upfront, and might take some research to figure out which vaccine might be best for those that do want a vaccine. https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/about-covid-19-vaccines/australias-vaccine-agreements

The current perspective suggests this is correct, Gnosticism was around before the time of Jesus, and his teachings were given a gnostic perspective. Is it possible that Jesus himself was a gnostic? Very unlikely. From the perspective of Jewish Christians, Jesus’ life was not spent inventing a new religion, but in proclaiming the kingdom of God. What religion was Jesus, then? Jesus (Yeshua) was a rabbi – a teacher of Judaism. What he taught pointed the way back to the heart of Jewish faith - salvation as it always has been offered: by faith in the God of Israel and His Messiah, through God’s grace or undeserved favor. https://jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/what-religion-was-jesus

As far as I understand it from my own experience the upper dantian is where ‘original mind’ starts to interact or overlap with our normal conscious mind - it seems quite possible to me that original mind is contained in the right hemisphere and conscious mind contained in the left hemisphere. Following this perspective, this is a video of the right hemisphere gaining dominance by disrupting the left hemisphere, but the better option would be fully integrating the two hemispheres on a metaphysical level which requires following a deliberate system.

@dwai has mentioned the truth of the “Dao/Brahman/God/Buddha Nature and so on” as the end goal, but in both Waidan and Neidan, the practice is said to not only “grant transcendence (a state described by such expressions as "joining with the Dao"), [but also] immortality (usually meant as a spiritual condition), longevity, [and] healing (either in a broad sense or with regard to specific illnesses).” https://www.goldenelixir.com/jindan.html This isn’t to say that following a neidan or waidan method will deliver these things, but I’m fairly confident in saying that this is neidan’s and waidan’s aim.

Dantians are formed, they don’t just appear naturally. My perspective comes from what my mother ‘sees’, I got her to experiment once and see the lower dantian of my cousin, my mother saw a ‘field of potential’ but there was nothing actually there. A lower dantian that is formed has a constantly moving energy signature which powers how the system operates. Take the Neijing Tu as an example, or at least the bottom section, A boy and a girl (yin and yang) are working a very mechanical device, the water wheel, that creates energy, and it is this energy further down the process that is used for healing. I don’t think kundalini is associated with healing energy, at least not that I’ve ever heard. Depleting your energy is like using the water but not replenishing it, so it will soon run out if you’re using it for something like healing. See this link, it talks about the buffalo planting a golden coin, this and the water wheel is where neidan starts, it’s the basis for everything else, it gets you out of your head and in a way grounds spirituality in the body. Ultimately it can lead to the answer to your question, ‘now what’. edit to add: actually, just thinking about it now, it’s not the water wheel which powers qi healing, it’s more to do with the developing of the gold coin that was planted in the LDT and in good time brought up to the middle dantian, it’s this gold coin that is developed along the way that is fundamental in healing.

Yes neidan has a grasp on some fundamental truths for me too, though personally I don’t get into any official neidan methods that are offered in the present. In terms of what to do with your energy, IME it is fundamentally about healing energy, it would be interesting to know whether placing your hands or just your thoughts somewhere is effecting healing. That said you do have to be careful that you’re not using your ‘qi’ without replacing it. If your energy system is developed properly energy is constantly being produced in the dantians and you’re not depleting your own qi.

This is an image from neidan, a dragon and tiger both sending energy to the lower dantian (just below the navel) which is depicted as a cauldron. It’s about working with yin and yang energies on an energy level. Reading up a bit on dantians would give you an overview of the Chinese understanding of energy centres, and might be something for you to pursue following on from your intuitive impressions of dragons and tigers.

This is what spirituality’ means to me, developing the spirit. Some practices seem to develop a Frankenstein spirit, but they’ve developed something and are pleased with having any result whatsoever, while some will develop the spirit according to its authentic blueprint. I always found dreams were a good guide towards authentic development, one good dream can set you on the right path for many years.

11 people per million are having an anaphylactic reaction to the Pfizer vaccine, with no recorded deaths from anaphylaxis. Most of the people who have this reaction have previously had an anaphylactic reaction to something else. It looks relatively safe to me, especially considering the alternative for at risk people. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775646

Jesus himself is recorded as praying often, “But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray,” even on the night before his crucifixion, “Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” In the NT, Jesus is praying once again, and one of his disciples ask him to teach them how to pray. One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: "`Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.'" What makes a gnostic superior to the master himself (and his disciples)? Especially a master who states the exact opposite, Blessed are the humble in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. We should be able to find our own ‘Christ’ within, I mean logically it makes sense, and it suits our individualistic nature. I only ever relied on myself to find whatever ‘truth’ lay within, until about a year ago that is. The way I work is very personal, I could say I ‘travel’ through my energy system, and there are points I have to pass and things I have to do. Sounds a bit weird but this is what I do. For 6 years or so I passed all the points on my own, but I came to one last year where I had to complete a metaphysical task, specifically I had to put a 3 pin plug into a socket. It was in the dark, and though I tried very hard for a few days in a number of ways, I was unable to get the three pins into the socket, and thinking this dilemma through I thought if I had some light I would be able to see, followed by the thought that Jesus was the name associated with Light par excellence. The next time I tried to get the plug into the socket there was a small light, just big enough and bright enough for me to see the pins and the socket and I put it in easily, and continued on my metaphysical way. I have mulled this over since then, and I am more and more drawn to the conclusion that the whole Jesus thing is real. This is a light that I couldn’t supply within myself, at least I don’t think so, though who knows if I had called on some other deity or God, maybe a light would have appeared, maybe not, it’s not something I can experiment with. But it also goes to explain why I am anti-gnostic, because a gnostic relies only on him/her self, and for me personally I came to a point where I didn’t believe I could pass without this added ingredient i.e., light from some other source. “I” was not enough.

I was drawn to focusing awareness on the lower dantian and I used this as a sort of meditation in that I just stayed open to what was there, and what was there was primarily thwarted basic emotions. Apart from a couple of brief energy work instructions from dreams I stayed (painfully) with that one ‘meditation’ for 20 years or so, and only then was I ready for more complicated sorts of ‘energy’ work.

Here’s a parallel theme, but the positions that are taken are completely opposite. In Thomas - 14 Jesus said to them, "If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give alms, you will harm your spirits. In the NT gospels Jesus enjoins unostentatious almsgiving, together with prayer and fasting, as one of the pillars of the religious life (Mt 6.1– 16. There are 100’s of other references to the value of charity, prayer and fasting, this one is just representative). So one has to choose on these specific topics, fasting, prayer and charity, between Thomas and the NT, it can’t be both. 55 Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate father and mother cannot be my disciple, and whoever does not hate brothers and sisters, and carry the cross as I do, will not be worthy of me." Mt 10:37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Mt 10:37-38, Lk 14:26 Wouldn’t you like to know which was the authentic text? So that following it you can brush up on hating your father and mother and brothers and sisters, or alternatively you can keep loving them but just love Jesus more. Knowing which came first, and was therefore closer to what Jesus actually said, would help in making that choice. Well yes I’d take the Pali canon more seriously, and I’d go on my take on it first. This is an article regarding the Pali canon by an author who has the same intent in regards to Buddhism as I have in Christianity. He describes how in the second council 100 years after the Buddha dies the Mahasangikas desired a more visionary and mystical ‘Dharma’ practice that would establish the Buddha as a god and one of many Buddha-gods extending without limit to the past and future, as well as claiming that the Buddha’s life as a human being was merely an apparition. This revisionism seems to parallel the gnostic revisionism that was going on in Christianity, the original voice is overwritten by more visionary and mystical perspectives, and these seem to have a wide appeal. I’m not interested in these secondary voices, I’m only interested in the original voice. Yes but there’s a conspiracy theory for everything under the sun anyway. I have looked into this particular theory, maybe a year or so ago, and I wouldn’t waste my time in pursuing it any further.

Similar in its form as a collection of sayings of Jesus without any accounts of his deeds or his life and death, not similar in content. Have you read “Q”? Here is a link. If you were talking about “Q” I would happily agree. Jesus lost a lot of sleep over the Pharisees interpretation of the Law, and the Buddha didn’t accept blending of myth and reality regarding his words, calling it slander if “One who explains what was not said or spoken by the Tathagata as said or spoken by the Tathagata”. I don’t see why I need to blur the lines regarding their words. P.S. I’m not against you or anyone having gnostic beliefs, if that’s what does it for you good luck to you, what I’m against is saying these are the words of Jesus.

Without approval or scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the discourses and verify them by the discipline. If they are neither traceable in the discourses nor verifiable by the discipline, one must conclude thus: “Certainly, this is not the Blessed One’s utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu—or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder.” In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it. - Maha-Parinibbana Sutta Monks, these two slander the Tathagata. Which two? One who explains what was not said or spoken by the Tathagata as said or spoken by the Tathagata. And one who explains what was said or spoken by the Tathagata as not said or spoken by the Tathagata. These are the two who slander the Tathagata. - Abhasita Sutta Buddha recommends absolute discernment regarding his own discourses, and needless to say I am very much in line with his approach for all purported spiritual texts. The dating of the gospels is more indicative of their historical truth than what they’re called, and after reading a number of ‘the historical Jesus’ kind of books I believe a gospel’s resemblance to Judaism is key, after all Jesus was a thoroughly Jewish man.

From the Wikipedia article “The text's ‘ [gospel of Thomas] authorship by Thomas the Apostle is rejected by modern scholars”.

This reminds me of spotless’ description of feeling like the Michelin man made of multiple rotating magnetic hoops. I wonder if it is the result of doing qigong.