Lucky7Strikes

It occurred to me that I have always viewed patience in terms of degrees. As in common phrases like, "you just need to be a bit more patient" or "developing patience." But perhaps the divide between impatience and patience is not along a scale. Only impatience is measured in degrees, like how hard we can suppress our urges at a give moment to be enduring. The transition from impatience to patience is rather a leap of a state of mind than an effort. An unattached, eternally relaxed, sky like mindset never enters the scale of impatience or restlessness. Instead of being patient, maybe the right way is to become patient. So when meditating or doing difficult standing postures, I used to push myself to be diligent, kind of like an Nike ad commercial inspiration. But I find that when I rest in the natural flow of my being, and in non-attachment mental states, there is no such thing as a scale of impatience or patience. Just good enough balance of when to let go and when to push. When I become bored, especially meditating, I notice I've fallen to that scale of impatience again that is goal oriented. Boredom stems from the desire to do something else than the present moment, a slip into restlessness and anxiety. And the remedy hasn't been to tell myself to "hold on longer" but to consider that moment in thought just as it is, another decoration to my eternity. Just a thought.

No, maaaaan. You are missing some love from yourself.

Love between human and sentient beings is a significant aspect of cultivation. It's the basis for Mahayana vehicle in Buddhism. You don't aspire for enlightenment to liberate yourself or attain siddhis, but for the sake of all sentient beings. This is a vow to unconditionally love and engage with others for their benefit. The union of father and mother, of guru and disciple, master and consort, bodhisattvas and deluded beings, sage and nature, on and on, all about intertwined relationships Also, it seems like you quite enjoy being the outcast and derive pleasure from all the attention you are getting from your topics. Just a thought.

Haha, yea. Now that I read it over I see the context better. You're right, the path or an arhant does not include psychic powers. It is the insight into anatta, annica, and dukkha. But the Buddha in Mahayana and Vajrayana is not a mere arhant.

I might have mis read that quote because I haven't slept much, but doesn't the Buddha by the end criticize Susima for saying he declares emancipation without attaining any of the powers? "So just now, Susima, didn't you make that declaration without having attained any of these Dhammas?" Then, throwing himself down with his head at the Blessed One's feet, Ven. Susima said to the Blessed One, "A transgression has overcome me, lord, in that I was so foolish, so muddle-headed, & so unskilled as to go forth as a thief of the Dhamma in this well-taught Dhamma & Discipline! May the Blessed One please accept this confession of my transgression as such, so that I may restrain myself in the future."

This is not true. Visualization and bodily energies are utilized for expedient means to enlightenment at the samboghakaya and the dharmakaya levels. The usage of energies is a siddhi and so are meditations on deities and mandalas. Tantric paths also use sexual energies and shamanic practices like chod to purify themselves. They are only considered distractions in some schools who favor their own methods, whether it be vipassana or zazen.

I agree with Sunya. In the lower vehicles siddhis are not important, but in the higher vehicles, I believe they are necessary to display the degree of one's enlightenment and penetration into the illusion of the physical world, also to aid other beings.

In Buddhist language compassion is love. If you look through tantric and mahayana scriptures they all come down to the union of emptiness and compassion. Love is compassion. Compassion is bliss. It is bodhicitta and buddha nature. So if you want to preach emptiness and sit somewhere like a piece of log, go ahead. If that's your idea of enlightenment, I don't think I want any part of it and I feel many others will feel the same. Tulku, you need to attribute your quotes. None of them are from the Buddha but from other practitioners with varying view points.

In a somewhat unrelated note, Isn't John Chang Christian?

I just wanted to share certain things I came across during meditation over the summer. By no means I am perfect in any of these things. 1) No-self, self, emptiness, God, whatever, doesn't really matter when it comes to effectiveness of practice that engenders compassion and open mindedness. The approaches are just different. If it leads to detachment from selfish objectives and leads to lighter and freer day to day living, it's working. Whatever term you choose to describe your experiences in don't limit yourself to a set of methods. I learned the importance of forgiving yourself or looking at yourself from a higher Self as very effective ways of dealing with past emotions. These things aren't necessarily in the Taoism or Buddhism manuals. 2) In any standing or sitting posture, make sure that all your weight comes down to the earth and does not strain the muscles or the organs. This requires a very open stance at all times because the spine is located towards the back. If you align the neck, the spine, the shoulder blades, the sacrum, the weight should effortlessly settle into the earth so you feel connected and effortless all the time. 3) Not shutting down inner desires or indulgences. You crave things for a reason and instead of just dismissing them on ground of some doctrine, like dispassion or "emptiness," you should pursue them until there is an understanding of why there is the desire in the first place. And if that desire tends to be harmless, it's perfectly fine to indulge yourself once in a while. What's wrong with enjoying the senses? I guess this goes back to number one, that skillful means often triumphs over any truths or doctrine. I think honesty has helped me a lot and being okay with the way I've been going at things. And also taking things slow. I used to be in such a hurry to try to understand everything and beat myself over the head for not doing this, or doing something stupid. Just taking things slow and even being a bit lazy seems to work its own magic. Just 2 cents. Good luck to all!

Haha, yea, it's more like watching in laziness.

A lot of things you have wrong here. No, the Buddha taught that being a god is not conducive to enlightenment. Being human is the most potential filled birth among the six realms, so humanity should be cherished. The middle way is only for city people? What? The Buddha taught the middle way because he saw that extreme ascetic cultivation, which you seem to favor, did not lead him to enlightenment. Also, in Buddhism you do not become "one with the Void." You have all this stuff a little misunderstood.

I agree. Taoism has a lot of mystical veil over their teachings through metaphors and anecdotes while buddhism tells you a, b, c albeit the interpretations may be contradictory. It's more difficult to be an "armchair" taoist because you won't get any of the alchemical lingo unless you really do the practices (well, unless you are a philosophical taoist). The more you go through the energetics meditation the language kind of begins to merge as you match it with your experiences and also the relationships you notice between certain bodily aspects, like Kan and Li for instance. The language is probably written that way in Taoism for this very effect. It's easy to bullshit Buddhism to yourself conceptually, but it's not so easy with Taoism. Which makes it that much more cooler. .

IME you naturally switch to reverse breathing when your channels begin to open. Breathing becomes much deeper in a relaxed manner than the normal abdominal breathing, which can take some effort to make it deep. It kind of feels like the spine is breathing because the lungs contract. I found that when you put your attention at the solar plexus region and meditate, the breath switches easily. For long periods, my body sometimes does reverse breathing, but thats really when I'm doing a lot of meditation and energy work, so there is a positive correlation. Just 2 cents...

So these quotes are from Autobiography of a Yogi. You need to cite this, because the views of Yogananda may be different from the views of Nan Huai Chin. You have to let people have their own perspective by citing the original authors rather than hand selecting quotes you like and titling it in an extreme way, like "waste of time, energy, money" (which is not what Yogananda is saying at all. That quote is there in context of the cyclical nature of time and maya and the use of astrology to help one in cultivation. So you actually read it totally...wrong).

@ Tulku You need to start citing sources.

What? And you apparently know what all these teachers taught? If you and neither michael know, why don't you cut the crap on "most people blah blah" and a generally condescending attitude you've been displaying here and study a bit more with an open mind? You've drawn an unnecessary line here between "you" and "everyone else who are not good enough compared to me." Why does this division even arise in your mind in the first place? It's just a very unnecessary thought that probably reveals more about yourself than samadhi, void, or whatever esoteric stuff.

I think you have this a bit backwards. Samadhi is the expression of the void. If you understand voidness, samadhi occurs naturally, and everything is already in zazen. I sense that a lot of your conviction and knowledge comes from Nan Huai Chin's material. There are numerous stories both in Hinduism and Buddhism warning against falling into timeless samadhis that neither conjure wisdom or compassion. One that comes to mind is a yogi who decided to meditate on the river banks, and right before doing so he asks his attendant to fetch him water. Before the attendant returns, the yogi falls into samadhi and years pass by, but then the river floods and the yogi wakes up from his meditation neck deep in water, yet he instead calls for his attendant to fetch him water. Or something like that.

@ Tulku Your understanding of void is not the Buddhist understanding. You need to read what riverflow wrote. There is something twisted about your view here. If all biological beings all return to this "Void" upon death, what's the point of entering it while being alive anyway? Why not just wait until you die? Also, it is in my experience that people don't fear death or entering some void. Our cultures does it all the time by numbing themselves through mindless entertainment and substances.

Ok, that's not sociology. Sociology is an academic study of society. You might want to read a bit more about taoism and buddhism before you start criticizing other people's way of practice to color your own.

@ Tulku You are just advocating path of renunciation (like Hinayana or monastic daoism) . There are other paths, of transformation like in the tantras or the direct methods of dzogchen and mahamudra. Also cultivation masters get married, they don't look at women like a piece of "void." Household yogins are not any better or worse than monastics. Its just different life styles that fit different individuals. And imo, you are getting this whole thing backwards. If you suppress desires or the sense pleasures to transcend them, that is the longer path. You'd have to go about eliminating each attachment one by one as they are lodged in deeper. Renunciation comes naturally if you are at that stage and indulgence can be appropriate at time. In my experience, observing yourself is the key to know what's appropriate. Seems like you are just hot headed for some romanticized idea of renunciation, if you force things your efforts might backfire. p.s. 90 minute vipassaa session is something to boast about?

@ Todd I think a critical error in your understanding of awareness is that object are separate from it. That there is this awareness and this object it is aware of. In conventional language we say so, but awareness and its objects are really indistinguishable. Where is your awareness and where is it located? The better approach is to eliminate the thought of "objects" altogether, but rather see them as states of awareness. For instance, you become hungry and there is the sensation of hunger. It's not that there is an object of hunger, you can't really grab hunger. You can say that it is a chemical process happening in the body, but the physiology doesn't do justice to your experience of it. Likewise, matter is a state of awareness that is dense, can transform to states of touch, then to the state of holding, etc. Also, we are concerned with the boundaries of what is knowable. Even the knowledge that there may be something outside of awareness is your own knowledge. Or that it is uncertain is your knowledge. We cannot escape our subjective biases of our existence, and recognizing that imo is a crucial beginning of inquiry.

It was a whole fiasco here at the bums before you registered about Max who apparently is one of the first westerners to attain the rainbow body that is returnable. I think he is an ordained lama in the Nyingma tradition, but he also teaches shamanism and Egyptian practices. And people started seeing lizard beings...and all the talk about alien races. :lol: Max's stuff is incredible. You should check it out: primordialalchemist.com

I deleted all that stuff to avoid Kunlun questions. .

Very very strange, like someone just lifted the veils off everything. Another strange occurance happened during that period. My room in the city does not get direct sunlight because its shadowed by the buildings next door. But in front of my meditation chair during that period a bright circle of sunlight just appeared and reflected at the other side of the room! It didn't come from the outside because the sun never reached that part, and it wasn't a ray but just this circle....