erdweir

During the Quanzhen revival of taosim in the middle ages of china, the northern branch of quanzhen or "complete reality" taoism absorbed allot of influences and people from Ch'an, which was then in decline. Actually, The complete reality reformation of Taoism was an explicitly non sectarian movement, which incorporated the teachings of buddha and confucius. So yeah, there is allot of common ground, especially between the northern quanzhen sect and the old taoist school. with the southern school there is less overlap, because the southern quanzhen sect retains allot of "physiological" practices and emphasizes energetics in the beginning, not stillness meditation like the northern school. but it not even that simple. the founder of the southern sect warned against deviant practices in his work "understanding reality", and this work is studied by the northern school as well. some parts of understanding reality seem quite compatible with zen. But picture a Mantak Chia or somesuch personage sharing much with Zen? Zen and most of the northern school, as well much of the southern school would not be in agreement. This kind of physiological alchemy is often placed on a lower level of practices in the classic hierarchies written by the founders of the quanzhen sect, whereas the highest levels of practice described by seem very much like zen.

[quote name=soaring crane' date='29 January 2010 - 11:43 AM' ='1264794209' post='174614] There is no tradition of reincarnation in pre-Buddhist China, to the best of my knowledge. There is this book called "Ancestors and Anxiety, Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China", which i have not read, but i noticed that it was about the introduction on reincarnation beliefs into china by Buddhists in the 3rd to 6th centuries. here is the link to Amazon's page: http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Anxiety-Daoism-Rebirth-Lilienthal/dp/0520259882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1264835257&sr=8-1 Anybody read it?

The secret of the golden flower has translations that are radically different from each other. the Wilhelm version translates the key phrase as the "circulation of the light" whereas the Cleary translation translates the phrase as "turning the light around". the might sound similar, but they are very different. Circulation of the light, also sometimes known as the microcosmic orbit or small heavenly cycle, is a energetics meditation, one that concentrates and moves chi in the body. Turning the light around refers to the Ch'an buddhist practice of training consciousness to become aware of it's true nature by watching thoughts without clinging to them. Cleary also interprets the "backwards flowing method" as a Buddhist technique of mind returning to itself to realize it's true nature. Cleary claims that the WIlhelm translation is corrupt, and incomplete, and gives reasonable explanations for this in the introduction to his translation. But Cleary is kind of biased in favor of the northern school of the quanzhen taoism, which is heavily influenced by zen. the one link you have there from atlantic university is a condensation or paraphrase of the key points of Cleary's translation and interprets the SOTGF as a Ch'an tradition. If you like the sound of this, pick up Cleary's book. the other translation there i have not read, but it seems to be more of a southern school/microcosmic orbit interpretation or the SOTGF. It uses illustrations also used in "Taoist Yoga", a circulation book. To make matters more confusing, there is another translation by one of Wang Liping's students floating around on the internet, which seems to be a MO interpretation as well. Wang Liping teaches the SOTGF in his seminars, and one would assume he knows what he is doing, but his students text is very short, the shortest i have seen. Even if you accept Cleary's criticism of the Wilhelm translation, which he says is corrupt and incomplete, you have to wonder why Wang Liping, with a supposedly highest level transmission, would be handing out some bunk version that makes the same mistake of Wilhelm and is even more truncated. The energetic stuff of the southern school is in my opinion more dangerous to practice without a teacher. If you are really hot for this, maybe go check out one of Wang Liping's seminars this summer in China. He teaches the SOTGF in them i think. I guess Cleary's work is probably the most accurate and complete translation, but that doesn't mean it's "the best". The SOTGF, like many things in Chinese meditation terminology, means different things to different schools. It depends on what part of the Taoist landscape you are most attracted to. The problem with all of these texts is they just dont appear to be the same thing at all, so it's really a choice between different schools, not two versions of the same text.

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How about Enlightenment as having broken through all conditioning? To see past the small individual consciousness and apprehend the world as mind?

Can you post a link to the articles?

Zhang, Am I saying you have to figure it our by yourself? not necessarily. enlightened help is good, seeing it is better What I am saying is that if you cant find what you are looking for, it may right there and you cant see it. That's been the case with me numerous times. When I do find things, it is often not what i think I am looking for, but it is what i need. I guess what i am saying is that recognizing the way is harder than finding it, if that makes any sense. It's often so simple as to escape notice, and yet takes such dedication to develop that few succeed. So maybe practice is even harder than recognition. As far as the powers go, this is that way i look at it. If you want to have psychic powers, you can get them by transcending your ordinary discriminating consciousness. By that i mean the consciousness of things as separate objects with boundaries and differences. But in order to do that you have to let go of your worldly attachments. That's part of transcending the ordinary material consciousness. So lets say you do that. what then is the point of manipulating reality when you do not identify with it?

in my opinion, the problem is this, that a goal oriented attitude in cultivation can actually hurt your efforts. this is because the desire for powers will taint your practice. You have to be sincere if you want to achieve some high levels of attainment. You may achieve something, and be impressed by it, but it will probably end up deluding you and you wont understand why certain things are "happening to you" Take a look at Aleister Crowley's life for a good example of what not to do. As far as getting the powers, you have to work really hard to attain those levels. If you cant find your way there, if you are not really seeing the way, then nothing anybody says to you is likely to help you. anybody who trains like hell for years on end with a good method can manifest something of your goals. Anybody who cultivates with sincerity and tenacity for a long time, disregarding lust for powers, will be able manifest far more abilities, if they so choose.

I get this feeling that desiring psychic powers may actually impede one's cultivation efforts, just like any other desire or clinging to phenomena will. Cultivation will earn you some psychic visions in my experience, but it wont necessarily be what you want or think you want. Transcending "illusions" (what is often mistaken for reality) gives you power over them. Happy transcendence..

It's something that happens during meditation sometimes that's all. nothing that special or scary. when the mind quiets, energy comes forth. best not to pay it much mind, just keep going and focus on your breathing.

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where can i get some goat balls?

This is awesome weirdness.. pass the salvia Anybody who takes haunted scrotums seriously is ok with me. but what's the point of talking spring forest when you've got ghosts in your sack? stick to the good stuff, man. I always wondered what KAP was for..

Cool. I always figured the Indian Martial Arts had to have some Fa Jing, they seem pretty deep to me, but they are much less known in the west than the Chinese Arts.

Gin Soon Chu is for real. He only has two students, as far as i know. He is retired from public teaching. My teacher is one of Chu Sifu's two remaining private students (the other being Vincent Chu) and he has this kind of Fa Jing as well. No acting involved. Yes, Gin Soon has the goods, but he doesn't teach anymore. His son, Vincent Chu, teaches in Boston. If your teacher cant teach this stuff, then his yang tai chi isn't authentic, unfortunately. You will most likely have to start over when you find a teacher with an authentic transmission. Gin Soon Chu is one of three full disciples of Yang, Sau Chung. Ip Tai Tak was another one, but he has passed away. I think the third disciple is in England. All three were full "inner door" students, who received full lineage transmissions and were authorized to teach by Yang Sau Chung. Gin Soon and Vincent Chu are recognized as being legit by the Yang family because they are legit. Yang Sau Chung's three daughters are still practicing and teaching in Hong Kong, along with some of Yang's other students. Many of the so called Yang style teachers out there can be traced back to students of Yang Sau Chung and his father, Yang Chen Fu, but most of them did not study with the Yang family for very long and thus their knowledge of Tai Chi is not that deep. Most of them have modified the style they learned and made it more "flowery". Real Tai Chi cannot be learned in a few months or even a few years. The reason why there are so few authentic practitioners out there is most cant find an authentic teacher, much less spend the spend the 10-15 years of studying with them.

maybe you should take another look at television, IT IS creepy. I disagree with most the rest of what you said as well, although I am not above a little detoxing.

This author has a few misconceptions about Buddhism I think. Buddhism is not about God revealed Dogma, for instance, or world negating Nihilism. World transcending, sure. Buddha and Lao Tzu were not so much ahead o their time as unbounded by it. I think Wilkinson is suffering from trying to stuff Eastern concepts into western modfels. He is repeating the old misconceptions of Buddhism articulated by Hegel, Nietzsche, and others. Also, if you want to talk about Dogma and Belief, what about The Western Scientific worldview? Of course Buddhism and Christianity, when narrowly and dogmatically debased, can be moribund relics of corrupted traditions, but Empirical Science and Skepticism have their high and low forms as well, which can be just as life negating as misapprehended spirituality. I think Wilkinson actually suffers from applying his critique too narrowly and in immoderately broad categories. If you want to salvage something from the article, maybe one could walk away with it's central point, that it is not good to place old teachings above the present, and this is ok with me.

Usually it looks pretty bad from my experience. Most people dont teach real stuff or dont teach it well. I recommend visiting ALL the teachers in your area, and expect to be disappointed most of the time. Dont be discouraged, trust your own judgement, check their lineages. It takes time, effort and luck(karma or merit, if you will) to find a good teacher. When you find one, appreciate it and follow their teachings diligently.

Absolutely. He is Chia's student. Yudelove also lost his mind for a while from too much sorcery. hope he is doing better

there are allot of problems with what Mantak Chia does, i think. Michael Winn admitted on his forum that Chia had never done the Kan and Li stuff from his books for instance. And then there is this thing about him plagiarizing his inner smile stuff from a Pranic healer in India, etc. Most of the good teachers I have met will tell you that allot of the stuff in his books is real, but you need allot of supervision and training to do it. Allot of people have hurt themselves doing the meditations from his books on their own. then there is the stem cell blood transfusion machine he has in thailand, which i find creepy. you find more weird stuff the deeper you dig.

Thanks for putting all of this out there, I took the time to read it all and I agree with most of it. It nice to have someone with personal experience with Bodri to share their view of him. What I will say about my own experience reading his writings and his website is that it is informative and I am glad i read it, but he contradicts himself allot. I feel like this is mainly just an unpolished surface though. You just have to read between the lines with him, that's all. If you read one of his books that actually has an editor, like his 25 Doors, it reads more consistently and clearly. But allot of his self published work can really be confusing because he doesn't use terms consistently, among other things, and it took me a while to realize that he is not just bashing southern school style esoteric techniques, but trying to show that they can be misinterpreted. He does over-argue some points, and the quote that started this thread is a prime example of this tendency. it can be pretty annoying, but to his credit, he does also talk about how zen can be misused as well. He mentions "dead tree zen" for instance, and says that many modern people's psyche's are too complicated to reach realization through zen or orthodox methods and therefore body cultivation techniques can be more appropriate for them as long as they dont get too wrapped up in them. I think his stuff is worth reading if you have a discerning mind. but some have said it much more simply, like for instance: Focusing on openings is easy to get into, but final realization is hard. Not focusing on openings is hard to get into but final realization is easy. It is easy to give instructions for focusing on openings, hard to give instructions not focusing on openings. - Hsiao T'ien-Shih this quote is from Cleary's translation in "Vitality, Energy, Spirit", a book Bodri recommends..

If you read Nan's Tao and Longevity he actually says one "cannot argue against" the efficacy of circulation.

Last night I went to bed here in Berlin about midnight. About a quarter to two, I woke up, got up for a minute, and went back to bed. I was almost asleep again when i felt the air in the room pop, like some pressure suddenly shifted. Then the pipes made a loud knocking noise three times in rapid succession (the heat was off and they never do this). I felt like something was knocking at the door, but not the door to the room, the door to this reality. All of a sudden this energy started coursing though my body. It didn't feel like either the hot yang or cold yin I have gotten from meditating. It had all of these pale tinted colors in it, and made psychedelic patterns in my minds eye. It was intense, but didn't hurt or feel uncomfortable like strong chi can. It felt kind of fuzzy and crystalline, and vibrating much faster than anything I have felt before. If my mind wandered away from it, the sensation weakened, but it came back if my mind went back to it. it didn't feel like my intension was driving it, it was more like I had the choice to accept it or not. It went on for an hour or so before I passed out. I am not sure if I called this to me or not, but i think I must have in some way. I have been trying to connect to my higher self in my own way and have made some contact, but it is a distant relationship at this point. I tried to invoke it last night before i went to bed, so maybe it worked but there was some time delay? Or maybe I got some of Vajrasattva's healing broadcast? I had planned to tune in, but he does it at 11pm miami time, which is about five in the morning here, and I dont get up that early... I am sure allot of you have had experiences like this, I would be interested in hearing about them, so feel free to share if you are so inclined.

oh hey thanks, but i left berlin last month..

RAW and Leary were well aquainted with Crowley and knew about his Rabelais inspiration also, they are explicitly using crowley there.