Lucky7Strikes

If the Path and the traveller were one, there would be no Path, or no need for the traveller. If the Bodhisattva is at one with the sufferer, no Bodhisattva would be or the sufferer. Yet, ignorance has arisen, samsara is seen. If there is no actor, no suffering, no liberator, all this would not be so. The chains are unbound, and the shade is exhausted, the Path lies ahead, yet no longer a direction, a pathless land. A limitless Void. _/\_

Well, in my opinion, everything should be subjected to the Law of existence, the Truth. So illusions and delusions will all be subjected to it. .

It's not that masters are keeping secrets, it's more that you just don't know it. Or maybe you aren't asking the right questions. Maybe they are afraid to share their knowledge, for their own sake or for yours. "Secret" implies something unknown. If there weren't any secrets to you, you'd already be omniscient. If someone is purposefully keeping secrets away from you, you wouldn't know it anyway. So really it comes back to you. But on a practical level, safety could be a concern. You don't give big guns to toddlers. And if you do, it's your responsibility. Same with medicine. We see examples with sexual kung fu. The warnings and methods are all there, but people would rather go for "authentic sexual power" . Now with the availability issue, well, they ARE available. You just have to go look for it. It's just a matter of degree of difficulty and luck.

Reality and illusion are only comparative concepts when we talk about experience. Yes, peel the illusion piece by piece and there is nothing there. So why call it reality or illusion? There is Truth and ignorance. And Truth is what existence is and ignorance is believing otherwise. You can't experience or NOT experience the Truth. For then Truth would be conditional and therefore would not be the Way.

This is a great post. When we feel jealous or hatred, we must see that the roots of them are not so different from what propelled those men to act in this way. One may say that the "thought" and the "act" are different, but the intentions are nonetheless the same. We are the same man when lost in these disturbing emotions.

Applying meaning to something is to attach to it. And with that attachment, oppositions, preferences, egos, judgments, suffering all that stupid stuff comes to rise. And yes, this is the only meaning that is worth noting. That everything is without true essential value, empty, and subjective. So make meaningless the only meaning. Turn the mirror around. Then start off in the other direction. If there was a set "meaning" or "purpose" or a direction to any of this, it would be a binded existence. Existence has no permanence, except to continuously morph and change.

Several books on Zhan Zhuang suggest creating a concave feel with the chest and the shoulders, curving the upper back and shoulders inwards. A bit of hunched i guess. They caution against having the military style of puffing up the chest. Yet, recently, I've practiced rather straightening the upper spine, lifting the chest a bit, and curving in the shoulder lightly. Not only did this greatly "lift" the pressure from my heart center, but I feel more balanced, stable, and VERY open. The bliss from the heart center is much more palpable. I don't OVER puff my chest. Just enough so that my upper back isn't as curved as much. Thoughts?

HAHA YAY!

I think it's impossible for everyone to be enlightened. There are infinite number of beings in existence. So enlightening everyone is an infinite goal. And the process is ever blissful. But yes, other than that, everything is pretty meaningless.

Non, I really appreciate your tone of honesty. Everything you have written is a common struggle among many many people. It is a great opportunity. _/\_

We are not "social beings." We are not "un social beings." Please investigate into these concepts. You accept biology as the "norm," current sociological and psychological studies as the truth. They are not. You can balance yourself by meditating, taking a walk, qi gong. You can also never be out of interaction. Everything is interacting within you right now, 24/7, and for eternity. Question into who you are, why you seek these interactions, what interaction is, what society is, etc. All these are concepts you have taken at face value and create imaginary struggles on more assumptions. Needing something is a conditional binding, one you'll at one point will have to learn to do without. Yes that includes your body. All these are habitual thoughts which you bind yourself to. Your neediness naturally creates a situation where you are constantly trying to "get" something from others. This is most likely why you have difficulty interacting with people. See this as a great opportunity to create a better being that is "you."

I agree with fiveelementtao that you need a teacher for Daoist cultivation. Buddhist cultivation, not so.

In my opinion, this is a wrong view. You are creating a dependent condition, as in "if I have a girlfriend and many friends, I'll be healthy." I've known many people who become so attached to these "oh I must have this, or I am an outcast/unhealthy/inferior" attitude that they are always in a state of desperation and fear. All this "social norm" is complete bullshit. Find balance and health BY YOURSELF. Learn to stand and find happiness on your own. Cliche 101: be a light onto yourself.

None of this has to do with wanting to cultivate. You say you are against materialism and selfishness, but everything you have said is centered around material desires. You speak of love and acceptance but is afraid you'll never have a girlfriend, a sign of desperation. Making seeping judgments about women in general is alarming. You also seem to have many insecurities and is deferring to spiritual content in order to validate yourself. Oh wait, you need to become "powerful" or something. . Learn how to fulfill yourself. Be independent, so to know that you can truly give something to another person without wanting anything in return. Not money, relationships, friendships, or favors. People will naturally come to you and appreciate what you have to offer. I personally don't think you need to set a time to cultivate, but need to re evaluate your societal views, habits, and priorities. It is in ways more difficult than sitting meditation. .

Lame.

That Guy is asking valid questions, maybe a bit irrelevant to KAP material. But, That Guy, I'd be careful what you wish for. There have been people who have looked to experience deities, the mystical, the supernatural whatever in the past (recently in fact) and have had to face dire consequences. I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but you can see John Chang's popular videos online, meditate, do KAP yourself, do kunlun as I do, to experience significant internal changes within you.

I like the irony here.

No your Mind is not limited by your brainwaves. You will feel the stove as hot because of the body. And the body has come about due to the conditioned habits of the mind, or its conscious choice to be in a physical form at a certain temperature. Hence you will feel the hotness of the stove. Yes you can read the thousands of sutras and call them mental masturbation too. . Really all it is a person's intellectual ability to put words together! But anyway, it's the best way to communicate in an online forum. Those discussion revealed the many holes and misunderstandings people had regarding Buddhist beliefs (especially mine), and people have noted their beneficiary qualities. The mind is not your enemy. You can't take the mind out of equation. Everything is of the mind. The "slave" aspect you speak of comes from not realizing the qualities of the mind, eventually creating a deluded attachment to a singularity, such as the ego or the energy body. No I am not part of the divine. The brain is not the mind. The energy body is nothing but another manifestation of the mind grasping onto another entity than the physical body. It is not enlightenment. Disregarding the mind is a method of deconditioning a heavily burdened individual so the he/she can inquire without as much interruption or bias. You and I have fundamentally different notions of what the "mind" entails. Mind is simply perception and its interpretation, and the resulting habits and identities that form. The mind has not enslaved humanity. You ARE the mind, hence such assertions are ridiculous. I experience my insight all the time as Truth should not be conditional to an experience, but applicable to all experience. I mean, can you know anything beyond knowing? .

Your concept of nature is very romantacized. Nature is any experience, it doesn't matter whether you are among trees or on concrete. But one can obviously be quieter and less bothersome than the other. Right, better or formal "education" has nothing to do with any of this when we talk about the intellect. When I mention intellect, I mean analysis and inquiry instead of exercises such as following the breath, mantras, asanas, etc. Yes, the mind will always grasp and create a duality of observed and observer. Absence of mind happens only relative to the presence of mind. Intellect is necessary to see into experience, and it need not be in the form of words per se, but the conscious effort to analyze must be there.

Cultivation happens 24/7 and attainment is not conditional. So the analogy above isn't very accurate. Simple experience can easily lead to deluded insights. The Mind itself functions as intellect, and it will always analyze experience into dual perspectives no matter how much energy cultivation you do. Beings can attain powers, become gods, immortal, etc. for billions of years and not yet have insight because they become attached to experience. Critically inquiring into the mind and the self is the most direct path.

I agree with most of the post, except the part about using the intellect. Intellectual inquiry is necessary. It is a practice onto itself, and blindsided energy cultivation IMHO, is utterly pointless without discerning wisdom (if enlightenment is the goal). Compassion too must be practiced with insight. . But it was a great post!

Life is absolutely meaningless. All values, goals, structure, the physical world, phenomena, the Buddhas, the immortals, etc. all amount to absolutely no true value or meaning. They are there and you see it because you have given it meaning and purpose. There are no gods, no self, no enlightenment, no end. On a blank space, forms are seen and given life and their characteristics. In this made up dream you create a story for yourself. You laugh in it, cry in it, realize in it. Everything is like thus. Everything has come before us because of this. Ok, now that sounds depressing. But really it isn't. Realizing meaningless unbinds you. Once anything is valued, you become chained by it. See it's very simple. In this meaningless there is great freedom. The Buddhist have decided to make compassion their eternal refuge. And rightly so, there is great happiness there. And this is NO TRUER than valuing anything else. It just leads to great happiness. But it is not any truer, because compassion too has no inherent meaning to it. In other words, you DONT HAVE TO be compassionate. You don't HAVE TO do anything. First understand that everything is really meaningless. Then cultivation doesn't become a disciplinary act, and meditation doesn't become a "Oh I have to go meditate to become enlightened" thing. It's kind of like what the existentialists say. You are the one giving meaning to life, how you create your reality, how you create your experience is all of your own doing. But existentialists think there is an objective world your are giving a false meaning to. But really, there is no objective world. There is only you and your intent traveling the endless path called existence. So yes, the only meaning there is is this meaningless freedom of existence. Don't limit yourself to anything else otherwise. Thoroughly realizing meaninglessness is important to getting you to the next step of "why not?" . Just thoughts today after meditation... ...

"God" is such a flexible concept, sometimes ones uses it to label anything one is in awe of. Like, as you mentined, this very existence. Me typing, you reading, us interacting. It's very very cool in a way. I don't think we are limited in any way to observe the "vastness" you are speaking of. The vastness, or infinity, that is unmanifest (as in, all the "what if"s to a given situation) exists only as a potential relative to the very experience you are having now. It is almost irrelevant except as a confirmation of the freedom available to one's awareness. Of course, this is only earned when the attachment to identity is seen as an illusion. There is so much conditioning that binds us. The question of "will" is something I struggled with very much, because when one believes in the non-dual experience to be the Truth, it is easy to conclude "oh, I have no will, there is no morality, I will just go with the flow." But experience is actually inherently dual between a subject and a object. Time, space, identity all stem from the reflective nature of awareness. Now the actual subjects in this relationship, as in "me" and "you" are illusory. Find the real "me" or "you" and you won't find any definable source. It is often an assumption. The constancy is only in the relationship between the subject and object: the dynamic relativity. And this always changing relationship is guided by, or rather is: the will, the intent, the desire, or whatever you wish to call it. It ultimately shapes the immediate experience of being. The Bodhisattva chooses to revel in a state of an compassion relationship with everything/one. The Taoist may put more emphasis on harmony. (But the two are really the same). Of course, life is a very complex array of subjects, objects, and intentions intermingled. . So the knots from the past must be untangled through cultivation. So no, I do not believe in absolute non-duality, as in everything is "God." Nor do I believe in the "letting go" to the divine. Acceptance has its place, but the Way is to ever evolve and transform. Don't be a dead tree! .