adept

do no harm

Thanks for showing me my faults Cat, without resorting to a negative comment. I like the way you did that.

I need to practice a bit more restraint.

I've still got some work to do unfortunately.

Best wishes

I have memories of Tibet as a Lama...

Oh dear.

Your 'followers' will love this.

Hi Tsode!

 

Yes, I am a believer in cultivation through my everyday life.

A sense of presence and mindfulness, being there in that moment fully.

No sense of desiring anything, no judgment, no attachment. Fully content in

what"s before you and able to continue that awareness moment by moment.

Flowing without attaching, experiencing without pointing to anything,

on the ride and totally focused on NOW.

 

Peace!

Very nice.

You've just described Vipassana. IMHO the best way to cultivate mindfulness whatever your spiritual/religious inclination.

Well, it just so happens that your point of view is very similar to mine. Remember, in this discussion I am taking the extreme counter position from 'universal compassion' as expressed by many idealists.

Yeah, idealism is something that can never be achieved.

Compassion, however, and the actions associated with showing it, are achievable.

So what the heck are you and others doing, sitting in a nice environment, operating a computer gabbing away about idealism when there are so many people starving in Africa?

 

You folks should be, according to what you are saying, selling everything you have and giving the money to charities in order to feed the starving people around the world. Where is all this compassion that is being spoken of?

 

Why aren't you out on the streets with the Salvation Army ringing bells, collecting money to support the homeless?

Sorry, I don't agree with this.

What you describe is charity, or giving which is one of the six paramitas of Mahayana Buddhism.

Compassion, on the other hand is helping another less fortunate, in the best way possible, at a given moment in time, and then moving on, without a thought of personal gain or praise. It has nothing to do with money at all. It is a feeling within us to help as best we can without any prompting.

Just my point of view.

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Here's one of my pet peeves: The way people hand you back your change in a store. The just put everything in your hand. The worst is when they make a little hammock out of the $ bills, the receipt on top of that, then with the coins just sort of sprinkled precariously on top, so you have to stop and sort of deconstruct the whole mess, balancing it while you try to put the change in your pocket, then the bills, then the receipt. It's a faintly annoying repeated daily experience.

 

Back in the day, people used to have to calculate your change, instead of the machine doing it for them. So they would count it out to you as a courtesy, usually adding the coins until it reached the dollar, then the rest of the change. Giving you the coins first gave you a opportunity to slip them into your pocket with one hand, then receive the bills in the other. It seemed so much nicer than being handed this wobbly pile of money and receipt all together, and it was a nice little human pleasantry. Oh, well. I will just have to get used to it, I guess.

Even worse is when you have your hand out waiting for your change, then the cashier puts it down on the counter in front of your hand ! How rude.

I can't stand that. Do these people have no manners ?

My advice is to find a good meditation that works for you and stay with it.

Yes, couldn't agree more. Once you get over the initial few weeks, it becomes habit to sit. Some days the meditation goes well, some days the monkey mind is jumping all over the place. In the past I would have stopped, or missed days, giving myself all manner of excuses. Now I don't.

I sit with no expectations at all, and it is wonderful.

With all the snow on the video clip I guess he's based in the UK.

The weather's been atrocious here for the last couple of weeks.

Is this life-affirming...?:

 

'In a talk the Dalai Lama gave at UCLA in June, 1997, he read the following text:

 

"Most attachment to women comes from

the belief that womens bodies are pure.

But in actuality there is no purity

in a womans body at all.

 

Her mouth is a vessel of impurity,

with putrid saliva and gunk between her teeth;

Her nose is a pot of snot, phlegm and mucous,

and her eyes contain eye-slime and tears.

 

Her torso is a container of excrement,

holding urine, the lungs, liver and such.

The confused do not see that a woman is such;

thus, they lust after her body.

 

Like unknowing persons, who have become attached

to an ornamented vessel filled with filth,

Unknowing and worldly beings

are attached to women.

 

The Dalai Lama was reading from the Precious Garland of Nagarjuna, who is sometimes revered as a "Second Buddha."

 

Life affirming....?

Oh dear, this will upset the Buddhists.

I've read a lot of these anti-women teachings in Buddhism over the years. In particular, that a woman needs to take the form of a man in a future life in order to 'escape the cycle of birth and death'.

What a terribly bigoted, sexist teaching.

Compassion for all sentient beings ? Don't make me laugh.

The teachings of the Confucian sages are a joy to read and contemplate. They have much relevance to family life and working together in society.

The Great Learning

What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.

The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to. To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.

Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.

The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.

Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their persons were cultivated. Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kingdom was made tranquil and happy.

From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides.

It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well ordered. It never has been the case that what was of great importance has been slightly cared for, and, at the same time, that what was of slight importance has been greatly cared for.

The more I examine these things, the more I believe we are already enlightened, we just have had people tell us we aren't for so long that we believe it. And think about it, what better way to get people to do what you want them to do, then to offer them something that you have no way of proving exists?

An excellent observation.

Religions are a means of controlling the masses by promising some paradise in a future world or existence, that may or may not exist. If the devotee does not do the required practices, usually created by some authority figure, deified being or guru, then they will fall into all kinds of nasty hell-like worlds after death, for all eternity.

In other words, fear-based.

We do not merge with a formless level of being, we cut through even "oneness" and empty that level of clinging as well in order to truly liberate from the unconscious recycling program that is the universe, not to transcend it per say, but to truly see right through it, even while being a part of it.

This is your personal view of course.

What is there to be liberated from ?

What if some of us don't want to be 'liberated' ?

We might just want to try to enjoy life as best we can without the mental trips to other realms and such like.

Your constant Buddhist propaganda seems to be infesting, once again, on threads that are not about your chosen path.

One of the worst money scams was the Reiki Master initiation by Phyllis Furumoto. After she received the lineage, she initiated 87 masters in 3 months. She charged 10,000. :lol:

 

Currently, there is Adyashanti who gives 1 day workshops that attracts thousands. In Santa Fe this year, I believe he walked away with 50,000 after expenses. :lol:

That's absolutely scandalous. Adyashanti must be a millionaire by now.

This sort of thing devalues the teachings, however good they are.

Awesome pics Gerard. Thanks for sharing.

Not Taoist but very good nevertheless Shaolin Qigong

I'm interested in this also. Sounds very good.

Thanks for posting your videos here Garry. I'm enjoying them.

I've never trained in Bak Mei but it looks awesome.

Keep up the good work.

it is polite and respectful to give to one who shares knowledge or wisdom with you that you've benifited from.

Agreed, but some of the teachers that are championed on these forums, have ridiculous prices, like as in the thousands of dollars.

Without the Changes I doubt we would have had the DDJ.

The Yijing is utterly profound. It's purpose is to reveal all the possible changes in any given situation or state of mind.

It can be used as a book of wisdom, as a method of divination, or both.

I see it as a mirror to the mind.

More experienced folks might chip in here as I have only started to read it. I have divined with it twice and the outcome was startlingly clear and extremely relative to the question I asked.

All the best.

And then, I read something like "immortality for all", from some source that is considered reliable. You can imagine my surprise!..

Would you like to elaborate on this. It sounds very interesting to say the least.

High Force waterfall. County Durham, England.

Stunning and majestic and only an hour's drive away for me.

Aside from a Taichichuan teacher I know, and an aikido teacher, the most people i know are status obsessed westerners.

Yes it is a lot like this here in the UK unfortunately. The nation is obsessed with the life of 'celebrities' (I hate that word !) and the storylines of a multitude of soap operas and pathetic TV 'talent' shows.

I must be the only guy at my workplace who has no interest in premier league football, excessive drinking, x factor, newspaper headlines or coronation street etc etc.

These people have become zombies and are far removed from the reality of being human, living on a planet that the whole race is poisoning and choking the life out of.

A very sad state of affairs.

PJS? What's that?

Patanjali Sutras. I think.

howdy just me.

a little book that helped me with some of my questions and i think it will adress some of yours

THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER

Only if it's the Thomas Cleary translation. The best description of meditation I've read, and easy to understand.

The Wilhelm book is incredibly difficult to understand, even for folks who have been on the path for a while, let alone a beginner.