Vajra Fist

I've been working my way through a course by Daizan, and have arrived at meditation called 'soft ointment' or 'Nanso no ho'. This is from Hakuin's Yasen Kanna: Now this type of meditation is completely new to me. But I'm guessing the benefits of it come less from the visualised 'ointment' but rather from the 'sung' releasing or letting go that arises as a result. Is this an early step in the neigong process too - releasing downwards in sitting meditation?

I came to realise pretty much the same thing quite recently. In the majority of wisdom traditions, you won't get the full system online. The only way is through years of practice and direct instruction from a qualified teacher, in person. Then you have the problem of telling which teacher has real attainment or not. Conversely, I've come to realise that the practice that is more powerful than any esoteric energy practice is your basic anapanasati. Just sitting and following the breath for a couple of hours, is more likely to be genuinely transformative than spending that time waving your arms around or doing complicated breathing patterns. Of course, you still need a retreat setting at times and direct feedback from a teacher, but in terms of the heart of the method being publicly available, the only place you see that is in theravada and some schools of zen.

If you look at it purely from a theoretical perspective, there is no reason why a certain course of action should be inherently good or bad. Those are qualities we ascribe to behaviour based on our acquired notions, which come from religious or societal conditioning. But as a cultivator, I think it would be particularly difficult if not impossible to enter samadhi after murdering another human being. Any action that causes another to experience a great degree of suffering, inevitably causes a great degree of mental karmic obscurations. You'll sit and sit, but your mind won't become quiet. This is why the five precepts are so important in Buddhism. Its not so much about being nice to other people as it is a means of keeping your mind in a pristine state, so you can enter samadhi. Therefore acting in a way that causes others suffering is not so much evil, as it is unskillful.

This is a fascinating question. The obvious answer, which is perhaps most fashionable one among cultivation groups in the west, is that it is an impersonal natural law that dictates this. Through some unseen mechanism, our actions that cause suffering toward others, generate karmic obscurations in our mind. Those obscurations create potentialities, that at the point of death result in a favourable or unfavourable rebirth. The so-called uneducated see this as a kind of divine punishment. What I find fascinating is the question of where these karmic laws come from. If it is the structure of the universe, then who designed it to operate in that way? Moreover, is there the possibility that deities encountered during the bardo state are not allegorical constructs, created to illustrate the operation of this natural law, but rather higher lives? For instance, the deities that attend Yama and offer judgement in the intermediate state, according to the bardo thodol, are very similar to those described in the Egyptian tradition (I.e. the weighing of souls and the mirror's reflection).

You guys probably know I spent about a decade practicing Falun Gong in a fairly intense way. I quit about five years back and have been on a sort of hiatus in my cultivation, dabbling here and there with various practices and systems. Among the systems I've tried in recent months have been two that were also banned alongside Falun Gong in 1999 - soaring crane and fragrant qigong. Now Falun Gong places its primary focus on morality. According to the teacher, one's level of energy refinement is based solely on your moral standard. As you improve your xinxing (integrity), your gong (level of refinement) grows. How you practice the exercises is less important. Indeed the main text doesn't even include descriptions of the exercises, which are instead in a smaller, supplementary book. Despite the fact that daily practice of all five exercises takes up about two hours of the day, re-reading the text is regarded as the main practice. As well of course, putting it into practice in terms of turning the other cheek in conflicts, or else being kind to those who have ill will toward you. Now I always imagined Falun Gong was unique in this sense. You don't see many qigong styles or internal arts these that place a primary or even sole emphasis on cultivation of virtue as an engine for change. But from my time in the wilderness, I've discovered some interesting things about other styles that were common in the late 90s and were banned in China at the same time as Falun Gong. The first, fragrant qigong, also places an emphasis on morality. This from Tian Rui-Sheng's text Chinese Fragrant Qigong. Soaring crane (the precursor to the now widely practiced Zhineng Qigong) was also one of the styles that was banned in 1999. Here from the book Chinese Soaring Crane Qigong by Zhao, Jin Xiang. So I find this fascinating, both on a historical and theoretical level. I have two theories. The first is that these styles were all taught in the years following the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the early pioneers of the qigong boom were treading on eggshells. At the time, the government was under Deng Xiaoping in the process of rehabilitating Confucius, who placed emphasis on the cultivation of character and morality. These qigong styles thought that by stressing morality, they could latch on to the political and social momentum, and thus be perceived as non threatening. The second possibility is controversial, and is my main point of posting this. Has qigong since it entered the West, lost a key part of the internal training by stripping away the early focus on morality? Have we in the west, living in a society that has emerged fairly jaded after centuries from Christian hegemony, deliberately played down the importance of moral cultivation, whenever we see it in Eastern practices like qigong? And is morality important in qigong or neigong? This is of course all fairly moot, I have no horses in this race. I'm keen to hear your thoughts

No. If you truly have overcome fear of death, you also must have overcome the desire for this or that. Very important distinction here between "fearing death" and "appreciating life". I believe its possible to experience overwhelming joy at the simple fact of being alive, and yet not have the clinging to that experience, or the fear of death.

I had a brush with death a few years back when I had cancer. I remember standing outside the hospital after my operation, and it started snowing. I was listening to this beautiful song: And watching the snow fall, and it really struck me how grateful I was to be alive, yet at the same time how comfortable I now was with my mortality. I think an understanding of impermanence is often something that enriches one's life, rather than having the opposite effect. In the Theravada tradition, there is a practice called maranasati, or mindfulness of death. Buddha apparently took his disciples to meditate in graveyards. Here's a specific guided meditation on this principle. https://insighttimer.com/peacebeyondsuffering/guided-meditations/charnal-ground-meditation

Also, another possibility that just jumped to mind, was that many styles of qigong originally emerged from within the religious context - particularly Chan. In that sense, many of the original practitioners were already operating by default within a strict moral framework, such as the Buddhist precepts. The modern qigong styles that popped up with the 90s didn't have that religious framework, but nevertheless recognised that morality was an important part of the cultivation process, so attempted to artificially graft it on by appealing to Confucianism. Some, like Falun Gong perhaps took it too far and became (using as charitable language as possible) 'new religious movements' in themselves.

Most monasteries have week-long or 10 day retreats. The Goenka vipassana lineage is probably the most common in that regard, but if you're interested in vajrayana specifically the Samye Ling monastery in Scotland is very well regarded. Not sure about temples elsewhere in Europe or in the US

Interesting thread here. The general consensus is that people have been known to be kicked off retreats for (reportedly) not following instructions. But then some other people have experienced what they believe to be path attainments. For instance I don't believe its possible to enter nirodha, let alone for that long, without at least stream entry. So I guess individual mileage may vary. I'm doing a 10 day online retreat with them next month (it's free anyhow, not really much of a gamble). Will report back to the Bums.

Recently bought a pot of this from an ayurveda shop. Any bums use this jam regularly and what benefits have you noticed from it?

Will have to swap notes with you on taiyi swimming dragon. I learned from Hans Menck, but Liping seems like a great teacher. Welcome!

I've discovered recently how powerful smiling is, particularly in meditation. Bhante Vimalaramsi, a Theravada teacher, believes that the fact that Buddha statues have a gentle smile is a practice clue. He has incorporated it into his metta practice, and I believe its also been picked up elsewhere of late by Thich Nhat Hanh and Leigh Brasington. Some qigong practices like Spring Forest also emphasise practicing with a smile. I believe Chunyi Lin has even turned it into an acronym - Start My Internal Love Engine (SMILE). The childish part of me finds that hilarious

There's a good list of astral projection resources, methods etc, in the subreddit wiki. https://reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/w/index?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app I agree that a lot of fears about possession etc, are largely based on misunderstandings about how out of body experiences work. But from what I gather, many guides also teach some form of psychic defence as part of their method, for when you run into entities. While I also agree that there a lot of crackpots, a common thread throughout a lot the stories people post on the sub involve some sort of figure who somehow attempts to block them on the threshold as they are leaving their bodies. Many say its part of your own psyche, like a personified layer of consciousness that acts as a sort of gatekeeper. Personally I would find that terrifying! But it's something I love reading about though. Let us know how you get on, I'd love to hear your experiences!

I sometimes stop by the astral projection subreddit. My god, some of the stories. It looks incredible, exciting but also terrifying. Definitely a high risk/high reward approach. Lucid dreaming seems a lot safer. I listened to a guru viking podcast with a guy called Andrew Holecek yesterday who is a master of Tibetan dream yoga. That's something I want to explore at some point, seems like a lot more systematic than the Western approach from Stephen Laberge and co. I had a few lucid dreams when I was younger and was surprised by how realistic the experience felt. Like waking up in the matrix.

My shaolin teacher used to tell me that qi was the Chinese word for breath, and qigong was basically just movements for regulating the breathing, with a bit of light stretching. Think there's a danger of important things being lost in the process of dumbing down.

Accurate https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=coronabum

Having had the same experience, I fully agree. Thankfully if Damo ever intends to be a cult leader, he'd be utterly shit at it. Inflatable pink flamingoes would probably factor into it somehow.

I've spoken quite highly in this thread about Damo, but I'd also like to offer a counterpoint. I do find him quite absolutist. For instance, he is quite disparaging of other styles and systems. Even major traditions that have produced many enlightened masters over the centuries are treated almost with disdain. I won't get into the specifics, because it was said on a private Facebook group, but the implication is that only what he teaches is correct, and everything else is wrong. I don't doubt his path is a true one, and perhaps even one of the most direct and powerful that is publicly available. But I also don't think it's the only one

Honestly, might as well move it to a different forum altogether, and name it the CovidBums. As at this point it seems to be the only thing some members regularly post about.

Not sure that's 100% fair. Zork is an old hand here, and has a fair amount of experience in internal arts. But while I accept he probably has a good basis for an opinion, in this instance, I don't believe he has a good enough basis for a statement of fact. Apologies Zork, no offence intended.

The trouble with these arts is that you aren't supposed to learn some amazing new meditation every single week, and bounce from one practice to the next. In between learning new stuff, there are lessons that specifically refer back to previous material, to give you a new insight into practice. There were lessons in the taiji syllabus that I initially wrote off as 'filler'. I was frustrated at certain points that I wasn't learning a new sequence to the form every week. But I went with it, and those lessons, like kua opening exercises, or revisiting the grasp sparrow's tail sequence using different principles, eventually became invaluable. In the meantime I was revising and practicing all the previous content. So, when I started learning new sections of the form, I had a more sophisticated understanding of where the attention should be directed. Personally I didn't find much in the way of padding or filler in the course. There's so much material and if anything it was at a quite challenging pace. Sorry if I seem dismissive of your criticisms of the course. I genuinely feel though that those best placed to judge a practice are those who have at least tried it. You say people shouldn't have any faith that what Damo is teaching will yield results. But believing it won't, without having tried it yourself is another form of blind faith. It's like what the Buddha said in the Kalama Sutta. Try it for yourself. If you don't feel that you are getting results, then discard it. Come and tell us all about it then. But with respect, as someone who hasn't tried it, I don't think you're able to speak with the same authority, as other students here who have tried it. (It should be said, that I haven't practiced his neigong, and I don't feel qualified to offer a firm statement on whether or not it does or doesn't work. Just my own opinion, that I believe it most likely does.)

There are plenty of qigong teachers selling "knowledge" in the form of a video package of several hours long, for double what Damo charges for a year tuition, without a proper framework for learning or a single concern for student safety.

I spent a while on Damo's online academy learning his taiji. The neigong was there too, as well as bagua, but I didn't ever get into either at the time. I will say I think a teacher like him is extremely rare in the west. Someone who offers such a practical, down to earth approach to these esoteric arts, to so many people, all the while engaging daily with students through a Facebook group and answering questions in as clear and honest a way as possible, is really as much as you could ever ask for in a teacher. He's a great guy, doesn't take himself too seriously, but has such obvious care and consideration for his students. Honestly, you can believe that what he's teaching is a legitimate path or not (I strongly believe it is), but don't bash the guy. He's doing brilliant work in spreading and preserving these arts, and from what I see on the FB group, has already benefitted the lives of many of his students.

We've bought a new house and should be moving in a couple of weeks. While the previous owners were a happy family, so there's not really a concern over lingering bad energy, I still think it's a good idea to do some form of space clearing. My initial plan was to get some tingsha, and sound them from each corner of every room. But this isn't really my field. Would welcome some tips from fellow Bums.