Zen Pig

Been thinking about the ancient idea of Sun gazing. I have done this practice in the past for about 6 months, taking my shoes off, summer, winter, rain, snow, and watching the sun rise for about 2 to 3 min's. Will not go into my experience, because it does not matter, and at some point, I dropped it. The technique of most sun gazing yoga, is just looking at the sun when it first comes up, or about a half hour before it sets. not at the day time sun, but just at sun rise, and sun set, with shoes off, connected to the earth, and connected to the sun. not complicated. I dropped this practice, not because it did not have results, but probably, looking back, I was doing a lot of different techniques, along with my 2 to 3 hour a day meditation, and could not suss out what made my personal experiences. Today, I started to review my original practice of sun gazing due to a conversation with my acupuncturist. So being a skeptic by nature, (not a debunker, but the ancient definition of the Greek idea of skeptic-- look it up), I tried to see if there was anything, anything at all, that showed a history of ancient sun gazing, of any kind of research for possible benefits of sun gazing, or anything written other than the usual YouTube, online bull shit. I found nothing..... nothing at all other than the constant and universal "scientific" belief line that : "any looking at the sun at all, will end up destroying your eye sight, burn your eyes, cause cancer, and make you the devils bitch. (that last one was a joke).. So the western view point is, across the board, to "Never look at the sun with the necked eye" never, never, never, you will go fucking blind, your pigs will die, your fields will go fallow, and your balls, (or ovaries) will drop off. My spider senses always go off when i can only find post, or so called research that is completely "right or wrong" "all or nothing". At some point in looking for information, it occurred to me, that our family lives in a mountain valley in northern Colorado, and we have spent our lives, both me and the wife and all of our kids, running out to see a wonderful magical sun rise, or sunset, year around. Then it occurred to me, that most folks who live on the land, or even in the cities, will stand outside and watch a sunrise or sunset, and not only be amazed, but THERE IS NO DOCUMENTATION OF ANYONE OF THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, YOUNG AND OLD BEING BLINDED OF HURT FROM WATCHING A SUNRISE OR SUNSET........... So I got to call the western debunker online or YouTube post Shenagigans, or Bill shit. Never trust a socity that demonizes a practice out of hand, or the other side that says it is a miracle cure. Just use your own judgement, and play.

going to go with a "Yes" on this one. LOL!

LOL. I like the old sufi saying, "the only reason fools gold exists is because because real gold exists" . yea, from my experience 99.9 percent of the folks who claim to be enlightened, teachers, guru's are narcissistic self deluded used car sales people. (much like fools gold).......then there is the .01 percent that are the real gold, hard to find.

just spit balling here, not trying to make any points, just curious, do you happen to be a "spiritual teacher"? no need to respond if this is a personal question. thanks for the comments.

thanks for the comments on unconditional love. Hard to argue with Love, not that most folks would want to. yes , love feels good, but the definition of "unconditional love" has the aspect of the term "unconditional" right in it. So, then for me, at least, if love is truly unconditional, then even having it and not feeling good about it, should not prevent me from showing it. after all, if the condition of having "unconditional love" was to "feel good", then by definition, it would not be "unconditional"...... sorry for the logic rant, and it is very possible you meant your post a bit different. The Greeks used the term "Agape' love, or unconditional love, or God like love. A love not done for any kind of self benefit, even the feeling better benefit, "selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love', it seems in many mystic and religious traditions, this is the love that we all aspire to, but cannot reach as humans. Maybe someone like Gandhi or Mother Teresa, might have come close, who knows? sure as shit don't have it, but life is a work in progress. maybe God grades on a curve. LOL

not to get into the whole "I don't exist but I still like to argue on social media with others, who don't exist either" conversation, but the other side of the coin on Form= Emptiness is that Emptiness=Form. two sides to the same coin as they say in zen. Also, the English word "Emptiness" brings up an image in our brains, which was programmed in since we were born in this society that Emptiness = Nothingness. And Nothingness is just a belief, or concept. Or as Robert Thurman is fond of saying, "show me nothingness, where is nothingness,? No one can point to or weigh, or define nothingness, it is just a belief" So I prefer the zen term, "suchness" which does not bring up any mental images, as it too is a kind of meaningless term, that points to something that has to be directly experienced.

Good question, but this is a learned western reductionist materialist view point. that we can take the "science hammer", and smash everything down to its component parts, and see how it all works. not good, not bad, but just a belief. Like asking "what is love made of" or "what is consciousness, made of, or what is the experience of the color red made of"? Most of reality, form what I have seen so far, cannot be broken to its component material parts.

as I stated a few time's in my post, i have no problem with people doing this. But being a newbie in meditation compared to folks who have meditated for most of there lives secluded in caves or huts, all I can reflect on is my own experience. could be completely wrong. But.. I don't see this idea as being mutually exclusive. for me, sex, food, living life is not excluded from being enlightened or seeing behind the curtain. that's all I got.

yes indeed. I always wonder why one would seclude themselves from the world for most of there lives, searching for something that has always been right here. No judgement for folks who have gone into caves for several years in order to get something that is an "itch on the back of there neck" so to speak. But then comes the folks who say that food is bad, to starve yourself, sex is of course the worst, as it drains our energy, and makes bad karma. (which i take umbrage too, as my "bad karma" has produced 8 great children, and many grand children, who look like they will be vastly better people than I am- so fuck that idea). So you don't eat meat, don't drink a cold beer, don't fuck, don't dance, or laugh, or play, you just sit and really hide from the world. Not knocking folks who do go into seclusion for a few years, as I really get the work on long meditation in order to break things loose and see what we need to see, but to make it a nest we can hide away from the world in, is not my cup of tea. (not that I drink tea, but sounds better than "my mug of beer")

I do agree that there is a time to find someone who can show you the basics or meditation, and can also be a sounding broad for the common problems that arise. this saves time, and a lot of head ache's trying to figure it out for oneself. While I never had a guru, I have gained much form folks who could help me when I got stuck. But from my experience, my path does not include comparing myself with an Olympic spiritual athlete. In martial arts, there is always someone who can do things, move, react, focus better than me. When young i trained every day, hours a day in MA. today, i train with friends about 10 hours a month. Just playing. for me, meditation is like play. like exploring the forest, just for the hell of it, without trying to find anything, to become anything, to get better at anything, to improve myself, never going to be a guru, or a holy person, or even Bruce Lee for that matter, or even an enlightened person, what ever that means.... just laying here in the mud .

thanks for the comments . interesting take. but as far as my original post, who said anything about hate? Hate, for me, is a holding on to anger, of giving normal human anger power. Normal human anger comes, then goes. I am reminded of the old Zen Buddhist story, (well think it was Buddhist) that reminds me of holding on to something, (hate), and being human, getting mad, sad, glad, happy, etc, and letting it go. "A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her cross to the other side.The two monks glanced at one another because they had taken vows not to touch a woman.Then, without a word, the older monk picked up the woman, carried her across the river, placed her gently on the other side, and carried on his 
journey.The younger monk couldn’t believe what had just happened. After rejoining his companion, he was speechless, and an hour passed without a word between them.Two more hours passed, then three, finally the younger monk could contain himself any longer, and blurted out “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?”The older monk looked at him and replied, “Brother, I set her down on the other side of the river, why are you still carrying her?”

I am really not in a position to say if someone knows, or has had experiences in person, not to mention social media. Never sat down and had a beer with anyone here, so I can only comment on my personal experience, such as it is. and no one really knows how full of shit i probably am.

what are you "trying" to visualize? for me, watching breath, is just that, just watching, I watch it come and go, and very important in my meditation, is to also watch it when it is changing from in/out, to out/in, that moment of change. what moves, moves, If i try to make it move, it doesn't move. As far as being able to "not breath", I have also done this, where i can just kind of open my lungs, not taking air in, not letting it out, and it seems to get stable. don't do it any more, as at this point it does not matter to me. but maybe others get something from this. don't know.

good post, and I agree, but I also relate to Rideforever on the subject of letting ourselves get angry. I am reminded of Jesus, when he got really pissed off at the folks using the temple to sell there shit. he was mad, angry and made a whip out of braided rope and kicked some ass. In today's pseudo spiritual western society, we want to give a "look" of being spiritual, which in our minds never means getting angry. when my kids were young, would get up at night to take a piss, and I would step on Barbie doll parts like sharp little high heels laying on the floor. I cussed, danced around, cussed some more, then dropped it and took a piss, went back to bed. anger is natural, holding on to it , or stuffing it makes us sick, in many ways, just my two and one half cents.

I like the old metaphor of a "system or teaching" as being like the training wheels on my bike when I was little. Like most kids, was scared to just grab the bike and try to ride it with no idea what that meant, so put training wheels on until I got the knack of how the bike worked. then my pop took the training wheels off, and said, "now you are on your own, you can do it". scared, wrecked a few time, but I learned how to ride with no training wheels on my own. felt great to ride off on that old ranch road.

your my kind of crazy my friend. "When you see Buddha on the road, kill him". LOL Like every spiritual tradition, someone comes along, has a deep abiding experience, then others go on, and say, "I want to be just like them", and we try to copy that person, which is not our unique path. I have no problem with Buddhism, or Taoism, or Christianity, or any other belief system, after all, why the fuck would i want folks to see life like i do? But it is fun to see others points of view, and especially there personal experiences. cheers

good points. I just retired a bit over a year ago from our local university, and also worked for the federal government in a GS-09 position in an agency, In which I was an administrate officer. so, i get what you are pointing to. but from a zen point of view, (because i am not daoist, but of course it is all connected), everything always works out, maybe not in the way we think it should, but when I look back, it is all perfect. this does not mean that I don't have goals, but my goals are not written in stone, as I have said in other post. fluid living, having a flexible mind. not taking our ideas, or beliefs, or social pressures to seriously. One of my favorite sayings is, "Just because life is perfect doesn't mean that it can't be improved on". LOL.

Not to get into semantics, but for me, it is not so much as "getting past" this love, light, goodness, etc, but to see that it is all in the stillness, which is also the fullness, nothing is separated or separable. but that's my take, could be wrong.

wow Steve, you just let the cat out of the bag. Now who is going to write all those books on complicated relaxation methods and guided meditation music in YouTube, or get a spot on Oprah? From my path so far, it seems like the real things in life are so simple that we completely miss them looking for something more complex.

well, none what so ever, as far as i can see. Like zen, Daoism seems to be the act of just looking with out belief, or judgement, to just travel the road, not to get anywhere, but just for the joy of going into the unknown. laughing all the way. good luck

sounds like fun. in Pencak Silat we use different "sticks" for the stick fighting part, bamboo works well, and so does PVC, got to be careful with the weight aspect in realistic combat sparing, but for the flow, and training, it works and like you say, cheap. good luck

Interesting. kind of off topic, but years ago, was sitting in meditation, and my throat felt like it was becoming tight and blocked in a very physical manner. All I could compare it too was the feeling of turning on a hose in the summer, letting the water run out, then pinching the hose together to stop the water flow. it felt just like my throat/energy was being pinched off. not affecting breathing, but a more powerful pressure, much like the pressure of pinching off a garden hose. I had to discontinue my sitting that day. I looked up the throat chakra, and yoga exercises one can do to open it up. hence getting into hatha yoga to strengthen my sitting meditation. It did open up, and to date never returned. so something was opening up. got no visions or anything, might be too dull to get those. LOL

yes. for me, being happy is being both grateful and at the same time freaking amazed at life/universe/god. When the dark clouds come, that just means that my garden will grow. still amazed. (and cannot overrate a good sense of humor about life, keeps us from getting a stick up our asses, and thinking we really know something, taking ourselves to serious)

Glad too, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990190/

In many traditional forms like watching cheng man ching tai chi which is a modified short version of traditional 108 movement yang tai chi, he is wearing very loose clothes , which hide not only his rooting to the earth, but the way energy is transferred from the ground through the middle of the foot, (the bubbling well) up through the legs, into hips, waist, and very importantly through the shoulders, (shoulders are very difficult to connect) , and then into the hands. even with open teachers who do not try to hide anything , the internal movements are just that, internal. that does not mean that they are not also physical, because in the end, it is all one thing, but the body structure, your alignment, your posture has to be centered and correct for the energy to transfer. it takes years. If one wants to really use tai chi in the real world, in self defense or in good applied push hands. most folks with a good teacher can't use tai chi for at least the first 10 years, unless they live next or with the teacher 24/7 and work at it 6 or more hours a day. My suggestion is to start with some good jujitsu, or maybe more external gung fu, in the end they all arrive at the same place, only from a different starting position. what that means, is that one can start with a "hard style" karate, or gung fu, or judo or jujitsu, and in several years become more internal, more relaxed , being able to express chi/ki. On the other hand, one can start in one of the "soft" internal arts, starting out relaxed, and over the years become physically more capable, stronger, being able to express chi/ki. most of it depends on your own personality, what you gravitate to, and your own physical make up. that is one of the reasons that there are so many different gung fu forms in china. people are different, but it all ends up at the same place if you stick with it. good luck