goldisheavy

That's wrong. You're implying that some experiences, namely those prior to the special DO dissolving experience, are experiences of something other than DO. In fact, all experiences are experiences of DO. The view of DO cannot dissolve. What happens is that a naive understanding of DO dissolves so that you don't have to defend or explain DO as "if this, than that" simplistic formula. What you get then is called "skillful means". Then you begin to see how you can use anything to explain anything, because of the empty nature of all phenomena. Then you get skillful. This means you don't need to follow other people's recipes, but you become the Chef who can come up with his own recipe. Something like that. What you describe is a lot more constipated then what it really feels like. In reality you experience limitless boundless freedom. It means you can feel pride if you want. You can be the father of everything or the daughter of an ant, or anything. You can be anything or nothing. You feel a wide-open sky of endless possibility. What you're describing is like looking at the sky through a straw. Avoiding pride is just a method in the very beginning, BEFORE you become a contemplator. When you begin to contemplate, very quickly, I would say in about 5 years or less, you will transcend all issues of pride and will move completely beyond having or not having pride or any other emotion for that matter. Pride is important to people who cannot contemplate. Basically teachings on pride are teachings for morons. Morons always like to fixate and to adhere to dogmatic views. Then when they feel they have adhered to "the right view" they get all puffed up and proud and feel they've reached the limit of truth. For these people there exist teachings that instead of explaining the subtle error just tell them to "stop feeling proud", which is a brute force approach. Instead of explaining the cause of pride and the illusory nature of both the cause and pride, you tell the person to "stop it!". That's brute force. Brute force shouldn't be used, but spiritual teachers are lazy bastards and have no patience with the most hard-headed students and so give these really bad teachings to basically shut the student up and make him/her go away. It's not nice, but it's what happens. Then someone like me has to go around and fix the shit for the lazy teacher.

I read many of Rav. Laitman's translations and books (in English and in Russian). I think that site is what I call "worth considering". Kabbalists have many interesting insights, especially ones about the dynamics of desire and the properties of spiritual objects, to name a few areas. However I have to say I got soured up on Rav. Laitman after I saw him say in a video clip that, paraphrased, "Buddhism is preparation for Kabbalah". Then, no matter how interesting some of their insights may be, I am not interested in that kind of dogmatic elitism. If he had some concrete and to-the-metal criticism of some particular Buddhists writings or philosophies, that's fine. But just making a blanket statement like that is BS, especially since I respect Buddhism a lot. I don't consider Buddha to be perfect (at least not more perfect than anyone else), but if you're going to criticize him, it damn better be something good.

That's actually a damn fine question in all kinds of circumstances.

Very well said! And yet qi gong is also supposed to be pragmatic. So it's odd indeed. It spans a range where some of its effects could be testable via science and some could not. If we raise qi to the level of an ornamental phenomenon, then it goes completely outside the testable range (like love, sense of humor, etc.). The need to test things stems from pragmatism, and pragmatism stems from fear. Fearless beings cannot understand how any phenomenon be anything other than ornamental, since they are not driven by the need to survive and thus feel no threat from anything. I think we're studying the implications of our views and also we're studying whether or not views have any implications at all. I don't think we're actually studying any objects per se, although we may think we are.

And yet...if dare mention this to most scientists, even to quantum physicists, they'll laugh you out of the room. If you say that matter is made by consciousness, they will laugh very hard indeed. I think that Heisenberg has put a major dent in the physicalist self-assurance, but he hasn't demolished physicalism, which is alive and well today. May I suggest you look at this: http://www.edge.org/q2005/q05_print.html The problem is that what we are trying to discuss here is not discussed in the scientific community. Scientists don't gather to discuss their metaphysical beliefs, because: 1. They perceive it to be irrelevant to science that they are doing. 2. They think that their view is the only right one, and only insane people will disagree, so it's taken for granted that what they believe is what's real, thus there is no need to get together and discuss it. After all, we don't get together to discuss the color of the sky. We all agree it's blue, right? This is the same thing. And yet those metaphysical beliefs affect profoundly what sorts of experiments the scientists will be willing to make, and what's perhaps even more important, what sort of funding they will receive. Don't forget, the scientific community has to kowtow to the low-brow politician. Scientists themselves have big trouble understanding the implications of the uncertainty principle, and you expect politicians to get it? And yet that's where a lot of the money comes from. Another chunk of money comes from the private sector which only gives a damn about money and profit, and those guys are also too dense to understand the implications of Heisenberg. A strongly related finding comes from pure maths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27...teness_theorems However, outside of a small elite, most people still act as if the world is physical. This still demonstrates a commitment to an objectivist view. It may be more subtle now. Now what is objective is no longer "gross matter", but the "laws of the universe". So the object that objectivists cling to has become more refined and subtle now. The focus of physicalism has shifted, but is not gone. In another thread I gave an explanation related to this. If you state that dependencies work like this: "Because of that, this". You are imputing substantiality into that statement, because you're saying that the dependency is solid, reliable, works every time, etc. The true understanding of interdependent origination requires one to contemplate endless contextuality of information. So then it becomes: 1. If this then "because of that, this" holds. Otherwise it does not hold. 2. If this then (If this then "because of that, this" holds. Otherwise it does not hold.) holds. Otherwise it does not hold. ... And so on. And there is no "last step". Information is contextualized endlessly/beginninglessly. Thus, there is no stable "if this, that" dependency! Because to assert a stable dependency you have to impute substantiality onto it. Since scientists think that these dependencies exist in a stable and reliable manner, they are still a species of a physicalist. Some rare few scientists are beginning to ask this question: "What if what we are studying are not the laws of the Universe, but just the laws of our locale and nothing more?" THOSE guys are the few guys that are waking up! Only those! Everything else in the scientific community is still fast asleep.

One thing that sucks about IRC is identd. That's a hold over from the 80's. I'm shocked the stupid IRC admins didn't rip that out of the IRC code. identd gives you no security at all, but it does serve to annoy the person who wants to use IRC. Live Chat doesn't have an annoying identd hoop to jump through.

You just said you wanted to have fun. That sounds like a goal to me. Goals don't have to be all serious-like. It seems like you wanted to have fun and so you had. What's strange is that you're asking what to do next? Isn't it obvious? Just have more fun! Are you asking to be told what to think? You want other people to set your goals for you? Is that it? What do YOU WANT TO DO? Really? You might not mean that. The capabilities of the mind are limitless and some things the mind can do you may not be ready for. You're also assuming that hypnosis is going somewhere without you. In other words, you don't want to take responsibility for setting a goal. I suppose that can be fine, but it's all too easy to behave that way without being aware that that's what you're doing in fact -- dodging responsibility. Hypnosis doesn't have a self-interest independent from you, so asking where it would go "on its own" as it were, is a bit of a nonsense. Nothing happens "on its own". There's nothing that's on its own.

Can I save the log of the chat on my computer? Not that I need that feature often, but someone might want that. Also, what's the scroll back like? Can I have 10,000 lines of scroll back? Perhaps Live Chat can be improved. With newer browsers coming out all the time, it's getting easier and easier for web sites to match the speed and features of the specialized client/server applications. I still prefer IRC. It gives more and better control over fonts and offers many other creature comforts that I like.

The same thing can and must be said about other things we take for granted: - dreams - love - thoughts What have you. And yet, no one questions the existence of those, right? That's bias right there. We accept ephemeral experiences if they are the right kind, the socially acceptable kind. And we don't accept them, even if they are very very similar, if they are not the kind we know and love. See, the premise of the science is that the universe is objective. Without this premise the scientific method makes no sense at all. The scientific method only makes sense if we can assume that the universe is independent of mind, first, and second, that it is self-consistent over time. If making observations changes the universe, then what are you observing? If the universe is not guaranteed to be self-consistent over time, then, again, what are you observing and testing? How do you know that test A and test B test the same thing? What if, as Buddhists say, there are no things? What if objectivity is just an illusory cognition of the primordial mind? In that case, scientific method might be useless with regard to testing Chi and/or providing some kind of insights on the ultimate level of understanding. This is why serious scientists pretty much reject out of hand the idea of Chi, because it breaks Science in a philosophical sense. Chi as an idea makes sense in a non-physicalist view of natural phenomena. In a physicalist worldview Chi either makes no sense at all, or it has a very limited purpose and play, just one force among many, a castrated version of its former (as defined originally by the Chinese shamans/mystics) self.

IRC is much better than any web chat I've seen for many reasons. The main reason is that IRC clients are so much more faster and comfortable to use than any web site I've seen. With an IRC client you are also allowed to save a log of your conversation. The scroll-back is only limited by the memory on your own computer and is not limited by the website in any way. IRC clients are very sophisticated in some cases and allow you to color code conversations to make them easy to follow. You can follow multiple conversations in a public room or rooms and then carry on a private conversation too, with the only limiting factor being your mind and not the software. The downside is that IRC servers are sometimes blocked by the filtering software. This can be an annoyance. Another alternative to IRC is a chatroom on one of the instant messaging services, like AIM/MSN/Yahoo/Google Chat/generic XMPP/whatever. I think IRC servers have some stupid hold-overs from the olden days and some things have failed to evolve, but generally they are the most convenient way to talk as a group, IMO. freenode is dedicated to open-source programming though, so I am not sure if that's the best choice. It seems like TaoBums would be off-topic on freenode.

Not even close. It's actually more like this: When there is this, then "when there is this that follows" is true. When there is that, then "when there is this that follows" is false. Then even further contextualizing it: When there is this, then "When there is this, then 'when there is this that follows' is true. When there is that, then 'when there is this that follows' is false." is true. When there is that, then "When there is this, then 'when there is this that follows' is true. When there is that, then 'when there is this that follows' is false." is false. AND THEN IT IS CONTEXTUALIZED EVEN FURTHER. And it goes on until infinite. So the "end" result is that nothing depends on anything in reality, because everything depends on everything. It's damn hard to understand why that's true, but it is. DO demolishes itself when you actually see it correctly. Phenomena are utterly empty because they are endlessly contextualized. There is no final context. No definitive context or last or first context. Etc. So one basically cannot draw any conclusion. The way YOU say it is wrong, because if one hears what you say, one thinks it is safe to assume that when there is that, then this is true and one feels safe making a conclusion. When someone hears my explanation, they understand they cannot conclude anything whatsoever and actually whoever hears my explanation they don't even know if they heard it or didn't hear it. Only then they hear it well. But when someone listens to you, they come out thinking they know what you mean. So you are cultivating a false sense of certainty in a doctrine. Basically you are misusing the doctrine of DO and you're making it into a poison the way you explain it.

I know. The reason for this is because while the scientific method itself is largely agnostic to your metaphysical beliefs, in reality most scientists hold to certain metaphysical beliefs and are very far from agnostic, but have certainly taken a side (biased) on metaphysical issues. These beliefs that they hold are in conflict with the beliefs of those who believe in chi. To a scientist, something like chi is not even worth investigating, since to them the idea of chi is bogus on its face. They don't even want to make one experiment with it, since they object to it on philosophical basis. That's not to say that those scientists are philosophers! No way. They are actually morons when it comes to philosophy. I've been reading http://www.edge.org/, and it collates many many many scientists' opinions, and I've come to believe that most scientists are airheaded morons when it comes to deeper issues in cognition and awareness. They are just good in certain types of thinking, very narrow types of thinking and their skill is not really applicable outside their domain more or less. They lack the wisdom to step outside their own box and most of them are intensely committed to their views, however flawed they might be. One might argue that this kind of ignorance is necessary to drive science, because if the scientists felt more impartial toward various views they may not engage in science so dramatically. In particular the scientists are extremely unlikely to investigate anything that might violate their belief in physicalist nature of phenomena. I hear people claim that this bias is now changing, but I am not holding my breath. On the other hand, I realize that anything can happen. However considering the intense pain and difficulty that new ways of thinking had experienced when they tried to penetrate the scientific community, I am skeptical. Scientists are extremely closed minded people. Their openness only works within the allowed set of beliefs and assumptions. When you violate that holy set, they get as closed minded as the most fundie Wahhabist Muslim and there is no further discussion possible.

Not exactly. Just keep reading. Don't assume. Buddha was more complicated of a character than you might think naively. For example, did you know that one time he got fed up with all the monks and nuns and ran away from them? Also do you know that Buddha said that true monks are not attached to the virtues? Even to the Buddhist ones? It's all in the Pali Canon. Too bad I don't have the time to look all of that up for you, but if you read the Pali canon every day, you'll come across it in no time.

No kidding. It's even more flexible than that. You can even receive shaktipat that will be given in the future and on another planet today. Or you can get one from the past. Or you can get a shaktipat from your future self to your present self or vice versa. It's endless.

In Dzogchen tradition also the mirror and the peacock feather can be used in rituals. In Taoism there is horse tail whisk. Mak Tin Si notified us that its primary function is cleaning (like to sweep out ghosts or bad energies or something like that), if I remember correctly. In the Western traditions an obvious thing that everyone knows is the crystal ball. Sometimes a bowl of water (or some other water surface), a candle (or some other fire), or a pyramid might be used for something. Generally these things are creative and left up to the practitioner. They are not strictly prescribed because mystic paths teach mental flexibility and critical thinking instead of dogma.

Not quite. Dependent Origination is a contemplative topic and a method of contemplation in Buddhism. It's not "THIS IS HOW UNIVERSE WORKS". It's not a definitive description of reality. Buddha was not in the business of stating what reality is or is not. Buddha was in the business of ending suffering, which is very very different from setting oneself a task to accurately describe the world you find yourself in. So DO is a method. In particular it's a method of contemplation. It's not a "how it is" statement. Remember that the sublime doctrine (including DO) is beyond the 4 extremes of "is", "is not", "neither is nor is not" and "both is and is not"? Remember that? I guess you don't remember it since you're a new convert to Buddhism.

Try me.

I think that's good advise for those who are just starting to depart from the views of physicalism. It serves as an antidote to the tendency of the physicalist mindset-affected mind to cease up. However, at some point one sees that concepts and non-conceptual are hardly different, or at best, are a a single continuum rather than a set of discrete realities. DO is good at showing people how everything must belong to a single continuum or it cannot be what it appears to be. DO is a method to get people to switch to seeing continuum instead of discrete/quantized spaces. It's like switching to analog from digital. But once you see the continuums, once you see that the meaning of "essence" and the meaning of "empty" are also on a continuum and are not extremely different, once you see that phenomena are beyond ALL extremes (and not just beyond SOME extremes), you really can't be so proud about your doctrine and so dismissive of another doctrine that associates descriptions of essence with consciousness. At some point physicalism can be safely integrated and dissolved. At first it's good to reject it, as it clogs the mind. But a subtle mind can absorb it and melt it without rejecting it. Kind of like the endless sea rolling over the sea floor. It just washes right over... it doesn't fight or have an antagonistic relationship with the floor. Something like that. And I don't mean to say that the limitations of physicality are accepted! Quite the opposite! Once physicality melts away into a non-rejection, it vanishes together with its limitations. So what does DO depend on? Is it self-caused? That'd be a no-no in Buddhism. Body listen... you tAke me too seriously and too literally. Don't be so dense if you want to fly. Relax. I speak in poems and songs. Don't worry about defending your doctrine because I don't really attack it. I have high esteem for Buddha because I understand what he's saying. Why so? How do I know I understand Buddha? I am his mother and father. That's how. His intent is my intent. I know what he wanted to say because that's what I want to say. He's my minion in the world of appearances. He can be your minion if you begin to own the concepts instead of being owned by them, which is your current modus operandi.

I see what your problem is. You think that Advaita and Buddhism are different descriptions of reality and that Buddhism is an accurate description while Advaita is an inaccurate one. Oh my. And you know what? Maybe even many people inside those respective movements really believe that too. But all that is wrong I say. Both Advaita and Buddhism are methods. They suggest a way of living and a way of looking at things, topics for contemplation, that are said to lead to sublime insights and better life, and dare I say it, fun. Yup. Just good old fun. It's damned hard to pin a definitive description on it. This is why in all the sublime paths we deal with methods rather than descriptions. This is why science is half-failure. Science has a method (a decent method which relies on some assumptions, which makes it good in some domains and bad in others), but science also struggle to find a perfect description, which is a strong departure from the secret wisdom. How many Sutras and Tantras are there where when the Buddha or Bodhisattva is asked for a final statement or some conclusive and definitive line, they remain silent? How many? A SHIT-TON. That's how many. One would think the message would be able to penetrate our thick skulls. How many poems? How many tantras? The other name for Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra is "Reconciliation of all dichotomies." Why? Why? Why? Why would you want to reconcile the dichotomies when you can just pick your favorite viewpoint and battle all the enemy views? Isn't that better? Quotes from Vimalakirti Nirdesa: "The Buddha said, "Ananda, this exposition of the Dharma is called 'The Teaching of Vimalakirti,' or 'The Reconciliation of Dichotomies,' or even 'Section of the Inconceivable Liberation.' Remember it thus!" "Manjusri replied, "Lord, it is difficult to attend upon the Licchavi Vimalakirti. He is gifted with marvelous eloquence concerning the law of the profound. He is extremely skilled in full expressions and in the reconciliation of dichotomies. His eloquence is inexorable, and no one can resist his imperturbable intellect." Yea... concepts and what we consider to be non-conceptual are of one flavor to a contemplator who attempts to find a solid difference between them (and fails miserably). To be a Lord you have to think like one. What would you do if you created this world? Would you defend a piece of it?

Ding-ding. Someone is paying attention.

So long as you distinguish wisdom from foolishness, it's an aspect of discriminating awareness, and as such, is conceptual in nature. A concept is a discrimination. That's all. Not all concepts are trivial. Some are sublime and the discriminations they embody are subtle and hard to fathom. But they are still concepts, even then. One thing I want to encourage is to gain some respect and new appreciation for concepts. Try to understand what it really means for a concept to be a concept. It's not as obvious as you think. Trying to elevate your pet doctrine to a higher status is really a mark of a fool. "Well my doctrine is not a framework, it is wisdom." Sure, sure... And your penis is 3 times as large as well. We're not in kindergarten here, are we? If it's structured and if it's expressed in words, it's a framework. Dependent origination is taught as a contemplation method, it's a way of thinking about phenomena. As a method, it has a certain structure, and its effects are claimed to be distinct and distinguishable from those of other methods. So it's conceptual through and through, no doubt about it. Buddhism has many useful methods, and if people start to think that instead of having useful methods Buddhism is a description of the truth or "how things really are", then they miss the point. In particular, dependent arising is not the truth. Nor is it "how things really are". It's a contemplative method. If you like, it's kind of a mind trick or a skill to be applied temporarily. When one reflects on dependent origination, the flavor of one's reality changes. It does not mean this new flavor is really how it is, and it does not mean you now have pure vision, or any of that. Hopefully it means you enjoy this new flavor better. That's it! It means no more than that. All manners of seeing are not the whole truth. Not even the sublime manners of seeing like the ones that Buddhism claims to lead toward are the whole truth. You cannot even state that they are a preferable truth. At best you can say you like it better right now. Even later you might not like it as well as you like it right now. When nothing has any essence to back it up, what you see depends on your mindset. It also means that all mindsets are equally valid, and that preferences only arise within those mindsets, and it's not fair to judge one mindset by the preferences of another mindset. So when I say that all mindsets are equally valid, I don't mean that we shouldn't have any preferences, but I mean that there is no way to prove that anything is superior to anything else.

Sorry, but I disagree. Death is a compliment of birth, and for both birth and death to happen, one needs life as a context/environment. In other words, death is a process of becoming, just like birth, and life has to be there as a background for death to move forward. If life somehow stopped for the people who are dying, then the dying people could never finish their dying process and would permanently freeze in time, and remain in an indeterminate state. Another way to think of death is when something passes beyond recognition. When this happens, the recognizing context is not itself gone. Alternatively, if the context were gone, there is no telling what could be recognized as what, since context serves to narrow down, to structure recognitions. I don't think context can ever be gone though. It can change, but it cannot be gone altogether.

This is only for those who are non-attached to this realm.