Bindi

The root of love is sex for everyone. This is a topic that I've never thought about in these simple terms before, and as I haven't come to any conclusions myself yet I can't respond, but It would be interesting to see what other people thought about this.

Jesus the emotional man... It doesn't seem to me that Jesus practised the non-attachment or de-attachment that Buddha promoted.

If a person operates entirely as a channel for healing, with no personal input other than that the appropriate channels have been cleared, then their own emotions will have little effect on their ability to heal no matter what they are feeling. If someone is required to direct that healing energy in any way mentally, then they might need a particular sort of clarity of mind or emotion to avoid being distracted or whatever else might block the healing.

Nothing wrong with sex per se, but whether sex energy is the only energy there is and therefore at the root of love and compassion and spiritual realisation is debatable.

This is your opinion versus 2 millennia of Christian thought and art John 2:15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple

When I take the bull whip to them and drive them out of the house after throwing their pocket money all over the garden, oddly they seem to get a bit offended, they mustn't realise how much love and compassion I feel for them in those moments.

Osho also says that at its root the love of Jesus is sex energy... He had his perspective on things, but I wouldn’t choose to take him as an authority on the source and nature of Jesus’s compassion.

So how do you explain Jesus's angry reaction to the business being conducted at the temple? John 2:15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables

And nonetheless this is how the incident was recorded, Jesus was angry, and then soon after he healed the man's hand. Your speculation as to what is and isn't possible in terms of being one with God, healing and anger remain merely that, speculation, which is not borne out by this bible passage.

This is a standard commentary on the words in question, where Christian sensibilities come into play in minimising Jesus's anger, but not to the point of saying as you have that it wasn't his anger: He looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts. The sin he had an eye to, was, the hardness of their hearts, their insensibleness of the evidence of his miracles, and their inflexible resolution to persist in unbelief. We hear what is said amiss, and see what is done amiss; but Christ looks at the root of bitterness in the heart, the blindness and hardness of that. Observe, [1.] How he was provoked by the sin; he looked round upon them; for they were so many, and had so placed themselves, that they surrounded him: and he looked with anger; his anger, it is probable, appeared in his countenance; his anger was, like God’s, without the least perturbation to himself, but not without great provocation from us. Note, The sin of sinners is very displeasing to Jesus Christ; and the way to be angry, and not to sin, is it be angry, as Christ was, at nothing but sin. Let hard-hearted sinners tremble to think of the anger with which he will look round upon them shortly, when the great day of his wrath comes. http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-henry-complete/mark/3.html

I am not clear on the extent to which Buddhists accept emotions and allow themselves to feel emotions nor how they go about de-attaching from them. Do different Buddhists have different perspectives on emotions as you seem to suggest above with the different paths?

It's hard to see how your perspective or the Buddhist perspective on anger can be used to minimise or deny examples of Jesus's anger in the NT, for another example see Mark 3:4-5 "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save a life or to kill?" But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

In this thread I do refer to the idea of pure egoless compassion as a possible ultimate state, but I also allow that the ultimate state may be closer to a passionate Jesus than to a detached and perfected Buddha, I really don’t know at the moment, and am not prepared to argue for either until I have firsthand knowledge. What I’m actually trying to get at in this thread is the value of exploring the heart in all its guises both good and bad as just one step on the way to ego liberation. It is a psychologically healthy step, but there seems to be a lot of spiritually conceived resistance to the idea.

"Theres no such thing as never getting angry. Enlightenment can and does use all the available emotions. Otherwise, we would have to discount Jesus for getting pissed off in the temple and kicking over the table. The idea that enlightenment means sitting around with a beatific smile on our faces is just an illusion." ​Yet... "When [the self drops away and] personal motivation no longer drives us, then whats left is our true nature, which naturally expresses itself on the human dimension as love or compassion." It is illogical to say enlightenment can and does use all the available emotions (including anger in Adyashanti's Jesus example, and scathing invective in mine) then say that only love and compassion are expressed when enlightened. So I am left with how to account for Jesus's anger at the temple and his scathing attack on the Pharisees. There are 4 possibilities that I can see: 1. Ignore it as an inconvenient anomaly 2. Clumsily re-package his anger at the temple and verbal invective towards the pharisees as love and compassion 3. Acknowledge that Jesus was motivated personally by his lower self and had not achieved the spiritual level that Adyashanti claims to have achieved ​4. Acknowledge that negative emotions still apparently operate in an 'enlightened' state, assuming Jesus was the equivalent of enlightened.

So it wasn't a hate-filled harangue because in a Christian context it was true and therefore justified?

There are a lot of possible answers to the issues brought up in your post. But I will try to answer your question 'Are engaged and dis-engaged so different' from a medical qigong perspective for now. Jerry Alan Johnson writes that "students of Medical Chi Kung also focus on the Middle Dantian in order to train themselves to release their own psycho-emotional patterns." This can only involve engagement with emotions. The greatest gain from this work in his terms may be empathy and intuition (see quote below), which is used to "become aware of the emotional components of the patient's energetic blocks and imbalances." But psycho-emotional work also creates "a line of communication... with [the] higher self" according to him. If I have failed to engage with any of my unpleasant emotions, then I doubt I would be able to empathise when that unpleasant emotion appears in someone else. So the blocks and imbalances in both of us remain hidden, and the particular communication between my MDT and my higher self that is enabled by emotional engagement cannot develop.

So just for the sake of examining the totality of the New Testament, if I say to you "Jeff you are a fool and a hypocrite, you set yourself up as a guide yet you are blind for you are in fact a murderer and a snake", does this sound particularly loving to you? Or would there be a bevy of complaints leading to me being moderated? I imagine the Jesus that said these words was not the glossed over Christianised version that you are promoting. It would seem that he had an opinion, he believed something was wrong, and he addressed it directly, and in this case (when referring to the scribes and pharisees) not 'lovingly'. ​At other times he showed compassion, and demonstrated love and concern where others wouldn't have. So either he had total access to all emotions, or he was not very spiritually advanced (or schizophrenic). Which do you reckon?

Jesus certainly wasn't working to the stereotype then when he referred to the Scribes and Pharisees as fools, hypocrites, blind guides, whited sepulchers, murderers, and a generation of snakes, and to the spiritually unworthy as dogs and swine.

I think you are probably right, but I do wonder to what extent the process of allowing all emotions and non attachment are simultaneous or consecutive processes, as non attachment may be used to not fully engage with unpleasant feelings.

I have been thinking of the chakras which likely control different specific emotions and their opposites as being like a stuck butterfly valve in the expression of the negative in many of us, and that healing is not forcing the valve into its positive position but freeing the valve to move easily and appropriately into its positive or negative expression depending on circumstances in each moment. I might be wrong of course.

Negative Emotions Are Key to Well-Being Feeling sad, mad, critical or otherwise awful? Surprise: negative emotions are essential for mental health A crucial goal of therapy is to learn to acknowledge and express a full range of emotions... Acknowledging the complexity of life may be an especially fruitful path to psychological well-being... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/negative-emotions-key-well-being/

Having arrived finally at non duality, compassion beyond love and hate may be a natural human expression, but beyond duality is not a place that most people actually operate from yet. Most of us still live here in duality, where we are subject to unconscious emotional drivers, fear, shame, guilt, hate - they exist as the socially unacceptable side of our dual selves, and in my understanding each of them have their positive counterpart, things like courage, self-pride, love. If the negative aspect of these dualistic feelings are denied and suppressed, I suspect that the positive side must be suppressed to the exact same degree. It would appear to be impossible for most people to even admit they have any negativity in them, words like compassion and beyond love and hate seem to be so much more soothing to the spiritual ego. But how can anyone get beyond love and hate without confronting both of these aspects first? Why should the heart level with all of its emotional wealth be dismissed as unspiritual and unworthy? If each dantian has value then so too does the middle dantian - The Middle Dantian collects Chi (Qi) and represents the body's reservoir for mental and emotional vibrations and energy. The energy of Man that is transformed in the Middle Dantian has a fluid quality, like water. A refining process also takes place in the Middle Dantian, transforming the fluid energy into more steam-like energy which is then transferred to the Upper Dantian. The Middle Dantian transforms Chi (Qi) into Shen by bringing the transformed Chi (Qi) into the Heart Fire. This alchemical process is commonly called "changing Chi (Qi) into Shen" and refers to kinesthetic energy transforming into spiritual consciousness. http://www.ichikung.com/html/dantians.php I would suggest that ignoring the 'mental and emotional' level, passing over it too quickly in favour of an assumed spiritual supremacy, will result in not laying the foundations for either true spiritual consciousness or true compassion. And to not ignore it means to wrestle with and acknowledge and be able to feel all of the uncomfortable dualistic feelings, up to and including love and hate.

For balance I imagine a broad channel filled with water, and straight through the middle, a narrow channel developed to introduce fire that can be perfectly contained as it travels from point A to point B.

And water washes them away... Wash the dust from your soul and heart with wisdom's water - Rumi