Sherman Krebbs

I always thought transcendentalism was a pretty silly. I mean who other than an overentitled rich kid can quit his job, move into his friends cabin by a serene lake in the woods for two years and sit around watching ants all day. Then he writes a book about it shaming others for having to work 9 to 5 just to keep food on the table. What a jerk. Reminds me of the record "we are only in it for the money" by Zappa. Transcendence is for people who go to love-ins to sit around and play bongos in the dirt, imnsho.

Few quotes I read about bön spontaneous presence, which I think is a complement to dependent arising. I don't have a great understanding between the two, other than dependent arising is more like a chain of occurrences, where as under spontaneous presence, all things arise from the same base. This was from a book "Unbounded Wholeness" by Ann Klein and Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

Thanks for posting this. Interesting to me how much of life can be analogized with the flow of water. Reminds me of the book Siddhartha. Also, my favorite section of Zhuangzi was the guy who jumps into the rushing torrent and emerges unfazed on the other side. Ride the current, don't fight against it. Maybe you are the current. What is it about water that has this property? Is the movement of water a reflection of something deeper. does it matter? Is water magic? Do river guides have a better understanding of life based on their understanding of how water flows : ) ?

Maybe the real question is why we feel regret. Oh dear, why did I take that third helping. If indigestion is karma, maybe it was worth it.

Is there reality beyond a person and his/her cob salad, or is the limit of reality is wherever the cob salads of ordinary beings are not?

I highly recommend watercolors. Art is not about the end result, its about the process. The final product is just a surprise, which eggs you on to keep doing more and trying new things. When admiring art, its not the result that you are admiring, it is the process undertaken by the artist. AI art, on the other hand, is like watching a game of NBA jam where the computer is playing against itself. Sure they score some pretty fancy dunks, but what's the point. Try this: write out a prompt on a pad of paper with a good old fashioned,... what is that thing called again,... oh yeah, a pencil. Then, take out some crayons (or paints if you prefer) and try to create what it is you wrote. Tip: focus on the details that are important to you. It probably wont look much like what you thought in your mind, but that's the whole point of it. usually its much cooler, and sometimes it will reveal something to you. I'll leave it up to others to come up with potential prompts for lois to draw and report back to the group, although I am expecting him to post his manually created work by the end of the week. no extensions lois.

I read the liber null part, skimming the last sections Not having any background on the subject, other than my own experiences, I thought it was super interesting. I have yet to summon anything : ), but the general concept, that through meditation, one can connect/understand/influence the realm beyond the limits of ones own realm of phenomenon resonated with me. Keeping with the thread theme, the enlightened potential in this case seemed to be first coming to an understanding of what your will is (be it good or bad), and then allowing that will to manifest in the universe. Is that correct, or is there more to it? That to me felt very similar to the principle of authenticity in the context of Bön, although maybe more clearly stated. Some of the day-to-day advice was good too. Somewhere it said remove an aspect of your daily routine and do something completely different, which I think is good advice regardless of the context.

Thanks! Emotion seems to be hardest to "recognize" and release in this context. Sometimes am not sure how to regard emotion within the pheonmenonal realm, or really what emotion is. Happiness, sadness, anger, fear, anxiety, anger. Suppose there are all just the same thing. or maybe there is just pain and no pain. Something sterling said the other day really stuck with me though, that its the story we make of these things not the things themselves, as they are self liberating.

I find I am able to do this until I'm not. Its like you recognize something, then once you think you've achieved it, you forget it, and the boulder rolls back down the hill. Daily mediation seems to be a key (for me at least), though once the boulder starts rolling its hard to stop. Also, I find working on computers puts a huge strain on this recognition, as it inherently requires your attachment to the abstract elements of the mindstream that you are trying to release.

This made my day. Thanks!

Exactly. English is great because it is so easy to equivocate. : ) I would probably rephrase your definition as Faith is an acceptance of a thing as existing, which falls outside the realm of experience. There is more happening and influencing the phenomena beyond the individual's perception. This is might be a tautology. Faith is different. Faith is the acceptance of the story or cause of the happening and influencing. The story or cause of the happening and influencing is an abstraction in our mind, which we accept to exist independently from the mind and experience. Whether the thing exists or not, is not the issue. The issue was whether Faith implies that the thing does not exist. At a very minimum, Faith implies uncertainty. It implies the possibility of the thing abstracted not existing. To have faith, one must first assert that it may be true or it may be false that there is a particular thing happening and influencing the phenomena beyond the individual's perception. In other words, if someone tells you to have faith, they are saying we are not really sure if it is true or false, but this is what we accept to be true, as opposed to simply accepting it to be true in the first place. its the difference between saying I have faith that xzy is real vs xzy is real. The second premise of my original argument "if something is, it need not be held on Faith" is the point. If you experience something, live it. You don't need to have faith in it to do so. If I sit in the local church and am moved while listening to organ music and singing Hymns (or at least attempting to; they are in a different language), listening to sermons, sharing a sense of community with locals, etc. there is no additional story or cause for that experience that needs to be accepted as faith. It just is. I guess I am objecting to the term faith, as it implies untruth (or at least potential untruth) in the very real experiences people have, whether they be in a church, synagogue, mosque, forest, nungalis garden, etc.

I know nothing of magic, and have only had my own delusional experiences. I am having one right now. I blame the black magic curse I am under. I guess the point was that if Nungali has experienced magic, he does not have to have faith in it. If you have experienced god, you do not have to have faith in that. If I have experienced a pinacolada slurpee from 7-11 (it was a long time ago) I do not have to have faith in that either.

Something is or it is not. If it is, it need not be taken on faith. Therefore, (via transposition), if it is taken on faith, it is not.

Myth or parable? There is a big difference between understanding a story as a metaphor to describe some complicated aspect of experience and believing that someone was literally gobbled up by a big fish and managed to escape after three days. Moral: dont give up or you might get metaphorically f----d by a giant tuna.

I thought @Nuralshamal's story about the lady and his toothbrush the other day was pretty falsifiable, rational, scientific evidence on magic which does not require faith. When someone black magic's your toothbrush you don't have to take it on faith. : ) I for one don't think there is falsifiable, rational, scientific evidence of anything. There is only experience. Prove to me the color green. You can come up with an abstract theory about quantum particles flopping around at each other in the void. But what I experience as green is something else entirely. I don't need faith to prove what green is, so long as its given a name (there is the bizarre thing where people cant see colors unless they are given a name. There was a whole tribe in africa that could not see blue because the had no word for it. Look it up. I believe this to be true of all experience. ) I for one have experienced and seen aural disturbances, which I have never thought of as pull a dead rabbit out of your hat magic per se. I dont need faith to know that I have experienced them. I even made paintings of some of them. You may have experienced deeply spiritual things. Those experiences do not require faith. Its the abstract story that you tell yourself around the experience that requires the faith. And on that point doesn't faith imply that the the thing itself is patently false. Why does someone have to have faith in some theory or a belief, rather than just being the thing that the purport to have faith in. I dont get it. Though I have recently realized that I might have a black magic problem, so you may give my words the weight they deserve.