Barnaby

I'm curious to know what you mean by lineage here. Whether you're referring to lineage in its traditional semi-supernatural sense, or simply as a corpus of knowledge...? It seems to me that the Western teachers who are honest all admit that they have drunk at many wells. So where does that leave the traditional concept of lineage (outside the religious/monastic traditions)? Does it no longer exist in any meaningful sense? Or has it been resynthesized into untried amalgams, with unpredictable karmic effects?

Hope this doesn't sound nit-picky, it's all in a spirit of sincere discussion. Couple of things here... First off, I don't think it works if you're trying. I think it's something you need to allow to happen, by letting go. The second thing is about terminology. For me, an "uncontaminated mind" is a contradiction in terms, because the mind is an aspect of manifestation. I'd say it's more about going beyond the mind, towards pure consciousness. In my experience, if you try to resist it, you're giving the mind a free pass. I think it's more about accepting that this is what your mind is going to do. It's the old taming-the-monkey thing again. Your mind does not want to be doing this. If you try to keep it on a really tight leash, it's just going to rebel even more. But if – with equanimity – you let it hop around and do its thing, it's eventually going to get bored and go to sleep. I don't know, but I plan to find out That said, I've come to realize that what I was taught as "Daoist meditation" was actually basic Buddhist samatha technique. So maybe I know more about it than I think I do! Anyway, best of luck with your meditation practice

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but my attention just got drawn to the Yijing section... Anyone remember this? Seems germane to the OP somehow...

Could you elaborate? I’d be really interested to hear more…

Just quoting this because it is such a good post

I totally hear you. But as I said above, in this case I think Damo Mitchell is reaping the karmic consequences of his self-styled "irreverent" take on the biz.

Yeah, but there has to be an element of "those who live by the sword, die by the sword" here. If you devote that much effort to crafting an online public persona in what is essentially a visual medium, I don't think it's surprising if you end up attracting superficial, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous commentary. You brought it on yourself. The cigars-and-whisky video I just found distasteful. Felt like a scene out of Scarface. All it was missing was the mountain of cocaine... But I'm old enough to feel fazed by many aspects of modern "look at me" culture, so I'm probably not the best reference

Speaking as someone with no horse in this race, I find it weird - borderline creepy - how half the threads on here end up revolving around Damo Mitchell, with instinctive defense of everything the guy says or does. Really most peculiar. If you look back through the archives, it didn’t use to be this way…

OK, got it. I see what you meant.

Especially when both groups seem hell-bent on achieving the same result...

Interesting. What do you have in mind?

Freeform has already given a good answer to this, which tallies with the way this feels to me. Ethics and morality are part of it. But I'd see them more as by-products of the spiritual experience, rather than the things that define it. And as for spirits themselves, I've never experienced them as anything remotely "spiritual". They've always felt to me like energetic phenomena, like specific manifestations of energy. Maybe it's different for others...

Sorry, only just found time to respond to this properly. There are people here with more experience of meditation than me, but my tuppence ha'penny... Maybe some people have a natural gift, but I'd assume that meditation is hard for most people at first. For the ego-mind, it's an unnatural activity. The old taming-the-monkey thing. The mind wants to think it's right to be hopping from one imagined preoccupation to another, and it takes time and subtle effort to change that. But it is something you can train, just like physical training. So if you're interested, I'd encourage you to fit it into your daily practice from the get-go, however inconclusive it might feel at first. You'll be progressing, even if it feels like you're not. If you're getting enough sleep, lethargy is usually another tactic used by the ego-mind to escape the practice. It's good to find counter-tactics to confront it and get beyond it. The energy work definitely helps, in my experience. The more energy you've got, the more physically fit and supple, the deeper you'll be able to go into your meditation practice. I tried to provide this a bit in my last post. It's a hard thing to put into words. It's something which is infinitely bigger than you (as an ego-driven, mortal, manifested being), which can be experienced in states of non-duality, and which exerts a transformative effect via that experience. It's the opposite of ego consciousness. Not a very satisfactory definition, huh? I don't really feel like naming names in public. Doesn't feel right, somehow. But I have come to suspect that all the "big names" are probably pretty similar, if you scratch beneath the surface of their personal idiosyncrasies enough

Yeah, send money!

OK. I wasn't meaning to be presumptuous at all, sorry if it came over like that. Just that compassion has taken on new meaning for me lately – if only on my base, microcosmic level.

Interesting post. I see what you're getting at. I suppose we all approach this stuff differently. But it's kind of like: you aim for 10%, you're maybe going to end up with 4 or 5? But if you aim for 100%, maybe you'll attain 40 or 50... And speaking personally, something really profound happened to me over the last week or so. Like an illumination (don't want to get too spiritual on y'all ). It's like I suddenly "got" compassion: actually felt what it meant and how it could apply to every aspect of life. So for me right now, it's compassion that feels like the virtue most worth pursuing. As an aside, I'd like to sincerely thank everyone contributing to this forum over the last few weeks. The various exchanges have helped me see that Buddhism may be about to play a much bigger part in my life.

Mastery of dangling breezeblocks from the balls is important, but – needless to say – this is what really grabbed me. I bow before the attainment of a true cultivator of Ow!

It's cool, coz I'm not attached or anything...

Can't help myself, I've seen my share of the successful online school biz. Anyway, each to their own... I'm going to do my nei gong, then take some smack. Might post a YouTube vid of me and my mate nodding out after

Keeping them in cigars and whisky?

In the light of recent threads – and aided by the time of the year – I've been thinking about this a lot. Recent discussions here have heightened my misgivings about purely "energy" practices. I've got some experience in them. I've derived a lot of benefit. I'm more relaxed. I have more energy. I think they've contributed to freeing up some emotional blockages, enabling me to feel more in control of my life. But if I've made any "spiritual" progress over that period, I think it's been as a result of something completely different. What is "spiritual", anyway? I think it's something to do with reassessing your relationship with the universe, and then using that reassessment to transform your relationship with the other occupants of this planet. In that latter sense, it has an inherently moral component. It's to do with the way you behave. There have been ample examples on here lately of how people can be all fired up on their energy practice, and still behave like total arseholes. Nei dan/nei gong/qi gong etc does not appear to be a magic bullet in that respect. Because at root, the spiritual is about reducing one's sense of self-importance. Questioning – not amplifying – the self. Hexagram 54, the Image (Wilhelm): Thus the superior man Understands the transitory In the light of the eternity of the end. In my experience, the only thing that gives you that is meditation practice. Not slow motion arm-waving with reverse breathing. That's not to say that's no good, just that it's not inherently spiritual, no matter how much incense, gongs, ethnic garb and ethereal flute music you dress it up with. For me, it's only serious meditation that can lead you to question your assumptions about the self, go beyond them, and thus reassess the basis of your relationships with other manifested beings. So as far as this is concerned: ...it's like, well, what do you want? Is it just some sort of feel-good hobby? Or is it real spiritual transformation? Because if it's spiritual transformation, it strikes me that you need to start stripping away the self right now. I actually think that the volunteer at your local homeless shelter is probably more "spiritual" than your average nei dan/nei gong practitioner. Because, by necessity, they checked their ego at the door. And the "big names" that I'm aware of aren't encouraging people to do that. They want their students to go on working in investment banks, so they can go on buying their courses. It's a business. The ones I know of all started out as boxing teachers anyway. But who's going to pay 2, 3, 4, 5 grand a year to learn how to box? Not many, right? But what if you tell them you're going to help them sanctify their immortal souls? How many then?

Wu style ? In Yang style, maybe... Not in Wu.

And that's pretty much what we did in the Wu family nei gong I was taught. Not entirely without muscle strain for me, though...

Very interesting... So basically, you're positing, per Johnson, that China underwent a very similar evolution to the West – a devaluation of traditional spiritual beliefs and practices – at around the same time?

Merry Christmas y’all