adept

The Six Harmonies Of Xingyiquan.

The unity between Mind and Intention, Intention with Qi, and the Chi with Power is referred to as "The Three Internal Harmonies". The unity between the palm and the foot, the elbow and knee, and the shoulder and hip joints is called "The Three External Harmonies". This means that the palm is always above and correlated with the foot - when one moves, the other also moves with it. When one stops, the other also stops. While performing any movement, there should always be harmony between the Internal and the External.

UNEXPECTANT

Meditate with no thought of gain.

Expect no ambitions to be fulfilled;

Only then will the inner force manifest.

In the competitive world, we give expression to our ambitions, shrewdness, and aggressiveness. We must do this to survive. In the meditative world, we cannot use these attitudes. What works well on the outside will not serve us on the inside.

When we meditate, we must expect no gain. If we look for results, then those results will elude us. In contrast, if we suspend our ambitions, then the results will manifest very quickly. It may sound like absurd mysticism, but it is an undeniable, empirical truth. If you have no expectations, you will feel the divine. If you strive and have selfish desires, then you will feel only frustration.

When the mind is occupied with meditating for gain, it creates a barrier to precisely the results that you want. Spirituality is a mode that is far beyond the machinations and imaginations of the rational mind. It is created by an aspect of the mind that is not a part of everyday thought. In fact, the part of the mind that brings spirituality is very nearly antithetical to the common ways that we think. Therefore, we can only reach this type of spirituality by suspending our everyday thinking.

Great quote adept. Now, will you continue your membership at TTB? Love the poems that you share. And 365.

I will continue to post because of the kind messages from some of you.

I'll take Marblehead's advice, not to get involved in pointless arguments, or religious debates.

Thanks.

I guess you don't believe in many of the Zen authors of the quotes in your Zen Poem thread. They all believe in previous lives and afterlives, and their beliefs generally speaking come also from direct experience as you are quoting from Zen Masters who are all masters of meditation in the Buddhist tradition.

I've deleted all my Buddhist related posts.

You and your cohorts on this forum have beaten me to death with your fundamentalist preaching and claims of superiority.

Your 'Death is an illusion of perception' quote was the final nail in the coffin for me. It's disgusting.

I have no further interest in Buddhism or religions of any sort.

I'm also considering quitting this forum altogether.

I'll have to have a long think if I want to be part of this.

Based on this premise, if death were that final, you would not be here now, would you? Do you not at least see some of your ancestors 'living' in and through you? Well not completely in the physical sense, but in the 'traits' sense? Would you not say some parts of your parents, for example, has taken form in this person called 'you'? This is only one way to see that death may not be that final... There could well be other ways of verifying for those who are open and willing enough to explore further.

 

Time to move on, i guess.

I agree that traits from my ancestors are present in me.

There are also traits of mine in my children.

But that is not 'me'. We all have separate lives and are different individuals.

My ancestors are physically dead.

The quote 'Death is an illusion of perception' is an ignorant and foolish thing to say, especially to those who have lost loved ones.

I'm sorry, but it makes me angry and quite upset.

These are the emotions that make me human I'm afraid.

What are these 'other ways of verifying' that you speak of ?

Well another dogmatic statement. Do you have a proof? Or better...have you experienced it?

 

Eager to read your answer. Actually, I can't wait!

Well, all my grandparents are dead, as are there ancestors before them. That's all the proof I need.

Actually it's not dogmatic, it's provable. They are dead

Where is your proof of the afterlife. Nobody has come back from death and talked about it.

I don't want to hear quotes from 'holy' books either.

A poem on Sitting In Oblivion.

In a thatch hut all day I sit and forget opportunities,

Peacefully listening to the flowing spring my worries are lost.

Beyond the mountains and stars the birds have all returned,

I am imbued with poetic thoughts of flying into the clouds.

Lou Xinhu (1880-1950）

Death is an illusion of perception

Whaaaat! Death is death, the end of life. Period. When you die, you die.

It is belief in a rebirth or afterlife that keeps the coffers of religious institutions overflowing.

Buddhism is a religion of death, of what happens in the next life, and if you don't adhere to precepts(commandments in Christian faith), then you'll be reborn in hell or an animal, or a hungry ghost, etc etc.

Horseshit.

Try saying "Death is an illusion of perception" to the mother who has lost her child. How foolish.

APPEARANCES

Some look fierce, but are mild.

Some seem timid, but are vicious.

Look beyond appearances;

Position yourself for the advantage.

Without experience, we are easily fooled by appearances. A large man speaks loudly, so we judge him crass and belligerent, but he may turn out to be quite kind. If we approach him defensively, we may not notice his good points. On the other hand, when we meet a petite and quiet woman, we may become complacent in our attitude. If she turns out to be a treacherous person, our laxity contributes to our victimization.

Sometimes people are exactly as they appear. Other times, they are only showing camouflage.

Humans, like animals, have different strategies for survival. Coloring, movement, scent, and so on are all ways in which animals practice deception. People are no different. They promise a great many things, but they seldom come through. They proclaim lifelong friendships, and yet they never return again. They promise you many things, but they are only looking for a way to take advantage of you. We must learn to clearly discern the personalities of others in spite of the facades they project.

Position yourself in the most advantageous way at all times. Use experience to pierce the trickery of others. That is the right way to cope with appearances.

and I don't think you have converted any Taoists to your "superior" Buddhist version (and it is a version) of the Nature of Reality, so why not give it a rest and discuss things from a less preacherly/fundamentalist place?

He has probably turned a lot of people off his form of Buddhism. I know some Buddhists personally, away from these online debates, and they would NEVER knock anyone's practice or claim superiority over another.

Still... the treatment of the path is given much more subtle analysis in Buddhism, and Buddhist liberation is also concerned with a subtler comprehension of the cosmos than the intellectual, emotional and experiential excuse of "one-ness" makes.

Here we go again !

This thread is about zuowang vs christian prayer.

Why ruin it with your supposed 'superior' views.

Get off your soapbox man.

CHOOSING

One side of a ridge is cold and foggy,

The other is hot and dry.

Just by choosing where you stand,

You alter your destiny.

Those who follow Tao talk of destiny. They define destiny as the course or pattern of your life as it spontaneously takes shape. They do not think of destiny as a preordained set of circumstances. There is no rigid script for this mad stage that we are on.

Those who follow Tao then talk of location. By this, they mean something as literal as where you situate your house or where you stand politically. They think that these factors are very important. Let us imagine for moment that you had a job offer in another city far from where you were born. You move there with your family. Do you think that your life would change? We can refine this perception : If you went to a certain school, you would be educated differently. If you went into a different profession, it would change your outlook. If you lived in one neighborhood or another, you would be a different person. Every choice you make changes you.

No matter how minor or how great, you must make choices each and every minute that passes. The irony of life is that it is a one-way journey. You cannot go back, you cannot make comparisons by trying one way and then another. There are no double-blind studies when it comes to your own life. Therefore, only wisdom will suffice to guide you.

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How coincidental these forums are.

I'm currently recovering from keyhole surgery to repair a hernia.

Laying off the physical stuff for a couple of weeks, but the upside of it is, that I've got more time to devote to meditation.

There are a number of excellent examples of this kind of behavior on this forum. I don't have to mention names.

 

 

ralis

No, we all know who they are. The fundamentalist, preaching type. :lol:

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INTERNALIZING

People think they don't have to learn,

Because there is so much information available.

But knowledge is more than possessing information.

Only the wise move fast enough.

The amount of information available to day is unprecedented. In medieval times a few volumes could form an encyclopedia of all known facts, or a despot could control his subjects simply by isolating or destroying a library. Now information is available to us in tidal proportions.

Some people take a lethargic approach to this enormity. They feel that if there is so much at hand, they do not need to actually learn anything. They'll go out and find it when they need it. But life moves too fast for us to rely on this laziness. Just as the flow of information has increased exponentially, so too has the pace of decision making accelerated. We can't be passive; we have to internalize information and place ourselves precisely in the flow.

It has been stated that the average human being utilizes 10 percent of his or her mental capacity. A genius uses only 15 percent. So we definitely have the capacity to keep up -- if we unlock our potential. This requires education, experience, and determination. One should never stop learning, never stop exploring, never stop going on adventures. Be like the explorers of old. What they acquired for themselves will always surpass those who merely read about their exploits.

But that really doesn't matter in regard to how we are going to live our life.

I think the big question is, "Are we going to be content with the way we have lived our life when it is our time to die?"

I think that if we follow the Way of Tao we will have that contentment.

Peace & Love!

Yes. There is far too much time talking about what will happen after we die or before we were born. It is all mere speculation.

Better to actually LIVE life in a wholesome way than to worry ourselves about what may happen next.

CONSERVATION

Don't let a thread fall without noticing it.

Don't rake dry brown leaves carelessly.

Think how difficult it was

For something to take this existence.

Frugality is lauded in almost every culture. Nearly all of us have been taught to conserve and save. Those who do not waste and yet do not become misers are most admirable.

We can be aware of conservation every day. We should think whether what we discard can be reused or recycled. We should consider whether our expenditures are really necessary. We should be aware if we are wasting our time and efforts on frivolous activities. We should not abuse our environment with garbage, pollutants, and recreational activities.

Conservation is impossible without a sound understanding of the wholeness of cycles. Unless we remember how precious something is, how much effort it took for it to come into being, we will not value it. Unless we think about its proper transformation into its next phase -- a leaf withering, a flower browning, a lake drying up -- we will not know our relation to it. Everything lives or dies in its own time. We too are part of the same cycles, only we have the option of contemplating and acting within that context. To do so with grace and awareness is the essence of one who follows Tao.

SMOTHERED

It's daybreak and already

The prostitutes are on the street,

Addicts are searching the corners with a feral glint.

An obese woman, winded from a few steps,

Passes an anxious man scavenging a garbage can --

Jester to winos in a fiefdom of pigeons.

The summer sky is obscured with leaden clouds.

Tao is all around us, but sometimes the weight of our poor habits, our bad circumstances, or our lack of exposure to philosophy hampers us. Although every person should be equally valued as a human being, not every person is equally sensitive to Tao.

Ignorance is our predominant mode in life. We may pass through ghettos and consider ourselves more fortunate, but don't we all have dense layers of misfortune, confusion, and selfishness to dissolve?

Tao can be known by progressive purification and cultivation. The opposite is also true. Ignorance can be compounded, made denser, until the light of our spirits is smothered.

The light of the soul is bright, but dense clouds of human ignorance obscure it. Where are you in terms of your effort to make your life brighter?

Since you thought of it as an all absorbing principle that truly exists from it's own side.

Tao just IS. Is doesn't have 'it's own side'. It isn't a 'principle'

What the hell is that supposed to mean ?

Nice.

Let's keep the Tao alive on this sometimes crazy forum.

Back to the topic in question,

Seriously folks... you people want some new age all absorbing fundamental principle, imperialist concept of oneness, messy thought consciousness, all roads lead to Rome but really don't, to take over the world?

No, we're just interested in the Tao and it's myriad manifestations.

Life, and the beauty of being involved in all that it is.

Since when was Taoism 'new age' ?