goldisheavy

In that case I just take a break.

I don't know. You have the power to decide this, don't you? So it's kind of unfair to ask others about it when you are perfectly capable of deciding this for yourself. Thanks for the videos. If nothing else, they should be entertaining. By the way, we are flying right now. Also, a flying yogi is not flying anywhere.

It even transcends pratityasamutpada and anatman as well. Amazing, isn't it? When you understand codependent arising, what will you fixate on as an ornament of your understanding? Yes, without this it's not authentic. A person cannot just agree with someone else mindlessly. Someone who wants the perfection of wisdom (prajna paramita) needs to discover this wisdom as innate, and the only way to do so, is to use others only as support for one's own understanding instead of blindly following those others. So I don't expect too much agreement. A person has to attempt to chew the diamond before becoming familiar with its hardness.

Exactly. That's what prajna paramita is all about. It's not about getting stuck in one doctrine. You use a doctrine to wash away all the fixations such that even the doctrine you have relied on gets washed away as well. This leaves you perfectly capable of using any doctrine for any purpose, making up your own doctrines by the thousands, being creative or following, you are left with total responsibility and complete freedom. This means you can use Advaita to demonstrate anything you want to demonstrate. You can even use Buddha's doctrine to demonstrate all the opposite things of what we believe Buddha Gotama wanted to demonstrate. That's what flexibility and non-fixation is all about. Shirdi Sai Baba said it well. He said that the language that mystics use to instruct a person is kind of a lie. He said it's like using a thorn to take out another thorn and when you're done, you dispose of both thorns. Another example is like using a toothbrush. If you can pick it up enough to brush your teeth, that's good. But if you cannot put it down after brushing, you have a disease there. Or like a house. If you can enter the house, that's good. But if you cannot exit the house, the house becomes useless. Being able to put something down and being able to leave something behind is essential to keeping that something useful. A Buddhist doctrine becomes useless if you cannot put it down. This is also why dogmatist and people seeking prajna paramita are so far apart. Dogmatists believe there is one superior doctrine and you just use it over and over and everything else is wrong. People who prize prajna paramita see both wisdom and pitfalls in all doctrines and they can use "bad" doctrines without falling into the pitfalls, and they use "good" doctrines without entertaining the slightest idea of the extreme goodness. Remember that Buddha way is the way beyond all extremes? Buddha Dharma is not extremely correct. It's just handy if you use it well. Part of the practice for Buddhist Monks is to debate against everything they believe is right. There is a reason for that. Have you ever tried to earnestly take down (philosophically) any of Buddha's teachings? It may be worthwhile to attempt it from time to time.

Creation, Thanks for a very interesting post. Do I understand you correctly? You say that in intuitionistic logic double negation does not return you back to the original proposition? And in the "ordinary" logic, it does? Is that right? Can you give an example of intuitionistic logic at work from "Real Life <tm>"? I am curious about this. Does this have something to do with the nonimplicative negation?

It's obvious that the phenomena, since they seem to have beginning and end, are only meaningful within some larger context. A phenomena cannot carry its own meaning independently and inherently, it needs context for its meaning. Thus, when phenomena arises, the context within which it arises does not also arise, or if it does, then it needs an even larger context which does not, and so on. This way one can understand that the nature of phenomena is not extremely temporary and not extremely long term. In other words, phenomena do not enter into extremes of utter impermanence and eternity. Notice that impermanence IS an extreme, which is leaning toward nihilism. This is the error in Buddhism, but it's not a terrible error, because it helps more than it harms, but nonetheless, Buddhism is wrong to assert that phenomena are impermanent and that's that, because that's not the whole story. Buddhists focus on the passing away aspect of phenomena, but they could have focused on constant refreshment or re-arising too, but they do not. So it's biased toward perishing. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Buddhism is one hell of a stupid doctrine, like all the doctrines, including Sufism, which is really stupid as well. All doctrines are dumb. But is Buddhism useful? Hell yes! It's useful if you use it judiciously and keep your mind open so as not to overfixate. In that case other doctrines are also helpful, like Sufism and Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, nagualism and so on. Lots of very helpful things are said by many different people. But fixate on any one of them, and you become a moron. Think for yourself. You know, I know one Buddhist monk I really respect a lot. You know why? He showed me how he can disprove all of Buddhas doctrines. In other words, he demonstrated utter flexibility of his mind by showing that he can see both ways through the doctrine he follows. I bow many times to my friendly monk. He's truly admirable. He follows the doctrine without fixating on it. He knows how to disprove it and prove it. He's the kind of person I respect. But he's rare. He's one in a million even among all the monks. He's special.

What would happen if people didn't take the "shoulds" so seriously? I predict two effects: - People proposing shoulds would not be criticized, as it would be implicitly understood that it's a suggestion, and an opinion, and not a commandment or an imperative. People would be a lot more free in stating their preferred shoulds, without fearing the reprisal from the disgruntled should-followers who followed some shoulds stupidly and have become angry when the results failed to meet the expectations. - People hearing the shoulds would not be offended and nor would they feel prodded. Perhaps there is a third effect: - Bosses would find it a lot harder to control their employees using fear/threats. This may be good and fun. I would like to see this. Needless to say, the so-called "masters" would lose their special touch over the so-called "students" too. There'd be fewer cults, it would be harder to gather people into groups. Organized religion would take a hit. Two party system would collapse and become a 100 party system. People would be more like cats than dogs.

I don't like to measure mystical teachings in terms of "legit" or "bogus". These kinds of things for me always fall into two categories: worth considering and not worth considering. In reality I don't even have such clear categories either, but that's what it sounds like if I simplify my view. I think "The Kybalion" is worth considering. It speaks for itself.

I think what you describe can and does happen often. But I don't think it is the only way that life unfolds. Sometimes you get something and do appreciate it. Sometimes you even appreciate dissatisfaction and instead of thinking, "Oh well, here we go again... I am dissatisfied again... yawn, there it goes again.... how boring and redundant is that? Haven't I learned anything?", you might be thinking, "I am dissatisfied. That's great! It is time to satisfy myself in new ways. The field is once again wide open, and the possibilities are many." Dissatisfaction could be a creative state that you could look forward to as much as you can look forward to satisfaction. I think I keep repeating this, anything can be anything. Nothing has to be something in particular. It can be. But it doesn't have to. That's kind of what it means to be empty. In the language of mathematics it looks like this: "It can be but doesn't have to be" = "empty".

It seems you don't remember what omniscience is like. I do. Omniscience is not an elimination of mystery. But don't take my word for it. Conceptually speaking, omniscience is knowing what is to be known. Think long and hard about the meaning of this. Many things we know are not to be known and many things we don't know are to be known. What is and is not to be known is not up to me, it's up to you. But the known doesn't enter into an extreme, and the unknown also does not enter into an extreme. Omniscience is beyond the extremes. If you are a good Buddhist, you should understand this. Thus omniscience is not the extreme elimination of anything.

I wouldn't be so categorical. Sometimes you DO get them. But before you get them you first realize the implications. You realize what it means to get them. Then you realize you have to review your longstanding values, because they might be in the way of getting your desire. Then you make a decision as to whether say "no" to the desire or to say "no" to your longstanding beliefs/values. Often the most amazing and transformative moment, a moment when you become a different person, is when you reject an old belief system or some old core values, and begin to melt away the associated supporting beliefs and values and watch your desire come into being. Sometimes you first think you want something and that's that. Then as you contemplate it, as you bring it up in visualization, you realize you don't "just" want it, but that you must have it. Your resolve becomes diamond-like, and your ability to remove obstacles grows 1000-fold. This is what happens, for example, with enlightenment. If you realize that enlightenment is a lot more valuable than you previously thought, suddenly what you wouldn't sacrifice for it 10 years ago becomes acceptable to sacrifice for it now, and it may not even be seen as a big sacrifice 1 year later. Etc. In other words, anything can happen. It might happen that you'll realize you don't want it after all. Or you may realize you do want. After all, enlightenment is a desire too. Wanting to be wise, wanting to meditate, wanting to be kind, etc... all those are desires. We consider them noble, but they are still desires.

I agree. That post by freeform is very helpful. I hope people are paying attention. And in fact, that's the real purpose of visualization. It's to check for any reactions. Then one goes to consider those reactions and look for their roots. A person may discover that some or many of those reactions have roots that are much much deeper than the roots of the desire in question. So to accomplish one's desire one first has to perform a lot of difficult inner work to melt away the parts of you that object. For some desires, one has to melt away such deep beliefs, that it means to be insane from certain points of view. And how many people are willing to be insane to have their wishes fulfilled? Not many! Almost none! Everyone wants to be "normal" and to fit in, don't they? Thus you don't get to freely wish for what you want, because one of the implications of the wishing for anything and getting it is that reality has no firmness in it, no stability, that anything can become anything else instantly.... to most people on Earth that is pretty much the definition of insanity. It's one thing to discuss it and it's another thing to feel this on your skin. It can be the most terrifying sensation ever, to know that anything can become anything else instantly and that nothing is fixed in any way. We have learned to like a certain order and stability in the world, and it is this very same order and stability that we so enjoy that mandates that wishes not be fulfilled arbitrarily, but according to the structures of what we believe is real. Order and stability are perceived in the form of structures.

If you listen to the Buddhist contemplative Nagarjuna, our conception of time is pretty much nonsense. Moments, in particular, do not come one after another. That's an illusion, a feature of certain types of cognizance. Further, since identities are not stable, whether or not these moments are seen as new or different depends on the observer. They are not inherently new, nor are they inherently different. When one sees something as new or the same, one engages in comparative judgment. Usually if we think the commonality outweighs the difference, we call it the same. If we think the difference outweighs the commonality we call it different. So, for example, it is obvious that a person changes in shape and in weight and in many other ways, like in smell and so on, as they age. And yet we have a way to identify the person as being the same one during the 70 years or even 140 years or more. Why is that? That's because in our judgment the commonalities outweigh the differences. But this is a personal judgment. Do they really outweigh or not? It's impossible to finalize this judgment. As you judge this, there are more and more things you could consider, and there is no way to finalize it because information is endlessly contextualized. So nothing is extremely new and nothing is extremely old, which is to say, nothing is so new that it has absolutely no commonality to anything else, and nothing is so old that it undergoes no change whatsoever. This means that nothing abides in an extreme of any kind. Things are beyond extremes. The mind is also beyond extremes. I hope this helps.

I tend to use more Fire, but Water is very good and useful and I prefer it in many cases. Fire is good to demolish things, to increase activity, to agitate something, to purify something, and so on. Water is good to sooth something, to slow down activity, to pacify, to give gravity to something without making it stiff like Earth or Metal, etc. So if you have inflammation, or someone else has it, the symbol that I use for emergency is watery in nature (it's not necessarily Water itself). It also depends what level I want to heal the inflammation at. At the level of the body, maybe Water is perfect. At a deeper level I would focus on kindness or softness, which is watery in my mind. I prefer to focus as deeply as possible, since I believe that the flesh is just the outermost layer of manifestation cake, so I don't heal that. I heal at the level of the crust and wait for it to propagate. At the same time, if there is an emergency, you cannot afford to wait for the healing to propagate and you need to control the symptom right away. For explicit immediate control, I use more explicit and more concrete/reified symbols -- but those can be dangerous since they are micro-managing phenomena, and micro-managing is almost always bad in my view. For long term implicit control I use very abstract symbols like kindness or softness or even something more abstract than that, which cannot even be put into words. Fire is good when you have some opinions that are stuck and need to be dissolved. But fire is dangerous because if you get too excited about using it, it's very easy to burn yourself up inside. For example, if you are cold and you want to be warm, instead of fire I may focus on feeling good. Feeling good is the end-state, unlike Fire which would be an antidote to cold. Putting yourself directly into an end state is safer than using an antidote, but also more difficult to manifest. One can use antidotes without having much faith, but putting yourself into an end state directly requires lots of wisdom and faith to work. Just some random rambling. I am still learning these things.

Helping science and helping humanity may not be the same goal. Western science as it currently stands in the West has played a big role in dehumanization of human beings. Just look at how the Western doctors often operate. Look at how Western psychology approaches a person with a problem. The list goes on. People are treated as robots, given no kindness, no love, etc. That's because science wants to see everything as either an inanimate object or as a complicated interworking of inanimate objects. There is no room for mystery and for vagueness in science, and both mystery and vagueness are essentially human traits and are essential parts of the human experience. It is sciences goal to utterly obliterate mystery. To be alive means to be mysterious. Only inanimate objects or non-living entities operate under strong constraints that are well liked by the Western science. When you move into domains where there are fewer constraints and fewer laws and more exceptions, scientists begin to get angry, aggressive, and hopeless, and they keep promising us that very soon they will demolish all mystery and come up with a formula for everything without exception. That's a very negative feature of science. If you understand fallibility and mystery as fundamental features of cognition, then you understand that to attempt to eliminate them is madness and cannot lead to a healthy (for the individual and for society) outcome. It would. But are you assuming that people who can disprove Randi are selfless? You know those people who could do it are selfish too, just like you. They want to have good life. They won't want to be bothered. Or worse, perhaps they want to take advantage of their abilities and going to Randi might expose them and make taking advantage of their abilities difficult or impossible. So for example, if people knew I could make money with my mind, they'd probably put me under 24/7 surveillance to make sure I never used that skill, especially if that skill is real and not a fraud. Furthermore, if we examine how the spiritual abilities work, we should understand that Randi will never find them. If those abilities work due to various beliefs and due to the empty nature of phenomena, then Randi's beliefs work just as well and have just as much gravity as the beliefs of a mystic. So Randi's beliefs will cancel out the beliefs of the mystic and from Randi's point of view, nothing mysterious will happen, simply because that's what Randi wants at a deep level. After all, he doesn't want to lose his money, does he? He offers that big prize because he is damn certain no one can take it. He is supremely confident. He has stated many times that he believes all mystics are frauds, etc. We know where Randi stands. So Randi's beliefs are just as effective and just as operative as the ones of the mystic, if our theory that beliefs affect reality is true. Not exactly. Randi has a tiny group of supporters. He doesn't command anything. You choose to respect him. Randi cannot command you to respect him. You can withdraw your respect from Randi at any time.

I like this too.

Exactly. Why would anyone want to prove themselves to Randi? Is Randi like the father figure that you have to prove yourself to? If Randi's message is to have a questioning mind and to not take various claims for granted, that's all fine and dandy. But when he makes a big circus out of it, and when he doesn't even want to play fairly in many of his dealings, that's another bowl of soup altogether. Western scientists don't want to admit it, but Western science tacitly relies on certain metaphysical assumptions about reality. Chi relies on slightly different metaphysical assumptions than the Western science. Western science was born from the Western alchemy and Western natural philosophy. In other words, science is basically a very successful and sophisticated mumbo jumbo master bating kind of thing that we all love here at Tao Bums. Of course no one will want to admit that! The fact is that science relies on maths at every turn, and yet maths is a purely idealized mental discipline, a purely humanly-conceptual discipline, purely a product of imagination, axiomatic (based on assumptions that we agree not to dispute), etc. Maths is not subject to anything in the real world. For example, if you could somehow take two apples and make them into one, 1+1 would still be 2 in maths. Maths is its own world (that's what it means to say it is "purely idealized"). Current science's metaphysics is in conflict with many other systems of thought out there in the world. I think science has achieved some important breakthroughs but also science has screwed us over and held back our development as sentient beings too. It's been a mixed bag. And Chi is another mixed bag, a different kind of mix in a different bag. Trying to conceptualize Chi as electricity is nonsense. Chi should be understood on its own terms as explained by ancient philosophers. However, that doesn't mean that the West cannot develop different, its own version of Chi, that has some striking similarities to the Chinese version and at the same time takes on many Westernized metaphysical concepts too.

To me philosophy, the real kind, is love of wisdom. Philo (love) sophia (wisdom). Engaging in philosophical debate helps to dissolve the seemingly insoluble meanings. It helps to soften the boundaries. It takes what previously seemed like discrete meanings and puts them on a continuum of meaning. It takes what was once taken for granted and obviously self-evident and makes it once again mysterious. It's a first hand encounter with one's own field of meanings. It makes one more aware of the interplay of subtleties. It makes one aware of the empty nature of identities. I say "it makes", but the assumption I am making is that the debate is "properly" performed, and I am going to leave out what it means for the debate to be proper too. Let people decide that for themselves. It's a very worthwhile activity, but like any worthwhile activity, there is a way to overdo it. Sleep too much, drink too much water, exercise too much, do any good thing too much and it will take you into a world of hurt.

Pure gold right here! Many bows to you.

I hope you can say this to God too, and to all the masters combined. If you can, you are my hero. Let goldisheavy only be a starting point for you. Don't stop there. Keep going! Take all the pretentious bullshit down.

The term "actually" simply does not apply to any area of my life. I am empty and all my life events are empty. I don't have any actuality in me at all. I am not actually ignorant. I am not actually enlightened. I am not actually patient or actually impatient. I don't have any actualities at all. So if you want to fixate on how my character is actually, or in other words, if you would like to think that certainly goldisheavy's character is this way, or certainly that way, you will fail and you will be miserable, as I will disappoint you as long as you make conclusions about my actuality. Excellent. I don't care about myself either, or at least, not in an ordinary sense of what it means to be myself. I want to see people empowered and internally wise. I don't like mindless idol-chasing. Having idols is good, I think, but chasing them and adulating over them is not good. Just an opinion I operate under. I wish people cared about wisdom. I don't care if people care about me personally. If people cared about wisdom, I would end up having a good life among such people, even if no one knew my name.

That's not really true. Kung-fu has many styles, and in some strength is just strength how we understand it day to day. It means you can stand on your finger or do 20 pull ups. Just plain old strength. In other styles, internal strength is just skill, which is to say, the knowledge of how to maneuver and manipulate things to your advantage. In this case the master is more manipulative than the student. In some ways, even not seeking to take an advantageous position can be seen as strength. I mean, not even trying to subtly manipulate anything at all, but letting things take their course. That can be seen as strength too. In essence, anything at all can be seen as strength. Anything at all can also be seen as a weakness. Any virtue can be seen as a vice and any vice as a virtue. Why so? Because there is not a single thing that has even an ounce of inherent meaning.

If you are stronger, it means you can overpower someone weaker without skill. On the other hand, if you are weaker than your opponent and yet you can somehow overpower your opponent anyway, then you have skill.

What's the point of being stronger? It seems that being stronger is only good if your intent is to dominate the weaker or to outlast the weaker. However if good life or wisdom is your goal, then being stronger seems to be pointless, no? In that case, how is being stronger related to mastery? Should we revise our understanding of what the master is?

Not necessarily. It's hard to say what is a waste of time. Even making mistakes is not a waste of time. Even if we say, "this is a mistake", still, the process of mistake-making is worthwhile. Not really. Communion with the divine is a waste of time actually. What's divine? Isn't it just your judgement, where you deem something to be divine? Who made you the arbiter of divinity? On the other hand, if it is you who decides what is divine and what is not, make everything divine! Do it now. Then stop communing. Make yourself divine. So if you don't decide what's divine, you cannot discern it at all, so don't pretend. But if you do decide it, make yourself divine and stop the useless communing.