goldisheavy

I know one way he changed the world. He caused there to be more advertisements to appear in connection with the monetization of the "Bruce Lee" trademark. Arrgg.... Can't we bury our dead? Study what Bruce Lee said, sure, but why dig up the bones of the old man and try to examine them again? Let the dead die.

My first answer is that there is no such thing as "the defining quality" for an immortal. But if you have to pin it down, I would say the immortal's mind is beyond fixated viewpoints. That is to say, an immortal can entertain various views without becoming fixated on them, or taking them as the absolute truth. A mortal fixates on certain views as absolutely true, and thus experiences the life of a limited identity with birth and death.

Zhuangzi said something like this: "The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you have caught the fish, you can forget the trap. Words exist because of meaning; once you have grasped the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?"

I think the problem you have is your own narrow understanding. For example, when you hear "there is nothing to be done" what do you imagine? I bet you imagine you should sit and refrain from moving, right? Or maybe you imagine you should continue the same routine as you always have? Right? But is that really the meaning? Or is there a larger meaning? I think there is a larger meaning. There being nothing to do means that the urgency is gone. But what about playful activity? Let's say you enjoy playing. Should you stop? Nope... nothing to do also means nothing to stop doing. In particular, putting an end to something natural is a doing. On the other hand, if some routines are unnatural and lead to suffering, stopping them is not a doing. The opposite is the case: perpetuating something that's hard to do, that leads to suffering, now that's a doing. That's the kind of doing you don't have to do. But you can. If you still want to. And that's another thing. There is nothing to do, does it mean we must do nothing, or does it mean that we don't HAVE to do anything, but if we want to, we still can? I think the latter is the case. So everything depends on your own mind. If you're narrow minded and stubborn, a non-contemplator, then you need many specific step-by-step directions, you need goals, you need brainwashing to function. But if you're a responsible person who contemplates, who thinks critically, and if you have a broad mind and large understanding, there is nothing to do, and that's OK. It's not a limiting teaching. It's a teaching that's mean to take down the limits, not to create limits. But in the small mind, a sky-wide teaching like "there is nothing to do" seems oddly limiting. That's because the mind sees its reflection in everything. A tiny mind sees constricted tininess even in the sky. But a wide mind doesn't need directions, doesn't need to be told what to do. And it can see wide open space in everything. Even imperatives are like suggestions of possibilities rather than orders of how it will be. That's patently false. Read Avadhuta Gita and see for yourself. It states over and over, in every section, that there is nothing to attain. Avadhuta Gita is an old, fucking old teaching.

Which medicine is better? Prozac or Preparation H? Depends... There is no such thing as "the best medicine" any more than there is "the best disease". If we can have such a thing as "the best disease", then we can also have "the best medicine". However, for each disease there is effective and ineffective medicine, but it's hard to say that there is something called "best", even for a certain specific disease. But people fight to maintain separate identity. If, after all, you say that Buddhism is the same as other teachings, it loses its own identity. That's the fear of death. That's the folly of self-delineation that Buddha talked about. Ironic, no?

This is kind of cool in a mind-expanding way. However this ascribes transformative agency to the body, which is not the best move, philosophically speaking.

So you believe in energy? You want to stimulate it and use it for your own purposes? Well, take a number then, because you're one among many. Only few people go beyond the need for energy cultivation. In case you want to play with energy, just understand the meaning of it, and you won't go wrong. First, what is energy? Energy is defined as ability to cause change. For example, if I raise a brick off the ground, we say this brick has potential energy. This is just straight physics. But it's important to understand this concept, because the language we use to describe phenomena is crucial. So the brick has some potential energy. It means that if conditions change, this energy will be released, and something will change as a result. For example, the brick will begin to accelerate, that's one change. We say the brick acquired kinetic energy. Then the brick hits the ground and it creates a dent in the ground, some sound and a tiny amount of heat. All that change is said to be the result of this potential energy of the upraised brick. This is kind of how we use that word, when we use it intelligently in the Western sense. Another meaning of the word energy is this -- it's a process that would take effort to stop. So for example, if something is flying around the Earth, like say, moon, we say it has a lot of energy stored in its motion. Why do we say that? We say that because we imagine that if we tried to stop the moon, it would take a lot of doing on our part. That's also known as inertia. Now when people want to practice energy, why do they want it? First of all, people don't believe their own intent has direct influence on the appearances. People believe that intent has certain rules or channels along which it flows. For example, I can intend to move my hand, because that's allowed by my deeply ingrained, semi-unconscious belief system about who I am, what is the meaning of me, etc. "Who I am" includes into it understandings such as "what I am capable of", "how I influence the world", "how the world influences me" and so forth. So, for example, I may not believe that I can intend my arm to fly off my body arbitrarily and lift something 300 meters away from my body. That's against the rules. And yet... people somehow still believe that something is possible that's not completely described by the conventional physics. They figure (wrongly) that like with other things, it's got to follow its own rules. So instead of trying to understand if the physics rules are true or not, or if they are habits of mind, people enthusiastically set out looking for these rules. And many many teachers are only happy to oblige. They say, "yes, I know the subtle rules... I know how you can achieve all kinds of uncommon and unconventional results using secret/subtle energy". And they tell you a story. There are many many stories. They are all different, but the stories that come from Eurasia tend to be similar (the stories in the Americas are very different, for example, and Kaballist view is at least somewhat different, if not very). The idea is that energy has to rise to the head and sometimes even out of the head and beyond. Another idea is that energy must move around, if it's blocked, it piles up and hurts. So without any critical thinking people enthusiastically rush forward, like madmen, to get their energy to rise quickly to the head! Or to get it moving around! OR ELSE! But if you study the nature of phenomena, invariable you will have to understand, eventually, that phenomena are empty of essence. In other words, that at the ultimate level nothing makes phenomena what they are, not even causes and conditions, that ultimately phenomena are inscrutable for the reason of there being nothing guaranteeing the stability of identities. And identities without stability are useless, ultimately. Because if the same identity means various things over time, even as you pronounce the sentence, by the time you're finished pronouncing it, its meaning is not the same as when you have started saying it. That's the implication of instability of identities. So when it comes to energy practice, the implication is that energy is not substantially real, nor is any other sensation. It's like a vision, or like a dream, or like the sunset seen by a blind man, or like the beautiful violins herd by the deaf, like the fur on the tortoise, or like the rabbit's horn. So, if you don't take energy seriously, and if you don't depend on it for anything of substance, if you just do it for fun and coolness and self-expression, then it becomes safe. Still, you need to check your beliefs first. For example, do you believe that energy has inertia? If yes, and most people do believe that, then do you realize that if you summon energy in your spine, it will take equal amount of work to get rid of it later when you discover you don't enjoy the sensation and that you've not been made wiser or more impressive by it? If you realize it, great! In order to check your beliefs, look at how you act, not at how you talk. If you say you believe that there is no such thing as inertia, but you act as if there is, you believe that there is. Belief is how you ACTUALLY LIVE your life and not how you talk. So to know what you believe, check what you ACTUALLY DO in real life. Don't lie to yourself, be honest, but do keep an open mind. Today's truth can become tomorrow's lie. Energy is moved by intent. So understand intent! How does intent work with regard to your own body and the world? First, the intent, within its scope, is miraculous. It works without the "how". For example I move my hands spontaneously. Sure, my movements are constrained by certain rules, but within the allowed freedoms, the movement is spontaneous. Which is to say, I don't produce intent to produce intent to move my hand. It's not a two step process. I don't even want to move it before I move it! I move it AS I want to move it. It's instant. Within the scope of intent the manifestation is instant, without rules, without steps, without explanations, without procedures of any kind. I call it the no-how (as a play on "know-how"). The true know-how is a no-how. So why do people spend so much effort on skills? That's because outside the scope of intent, things work according to rules. For example, if I want a certain change in the outside world, I must pull a lever, for example. My hand will, within its constraint, move miraculously, and I don't need to worry about that. But as I want to affect further change, I must interface through the self-imposed rules. The lever won't move itself unless I push it with my hand. Why not? Because that's how I set up the scope of my intent. Intent, intentionally, fractures itself into "within my intent and outside my intent". It can also intentionally de-fracture itself. When it does so, you won't need to follow any rules for any manifestation, because all manifestation will become like your body, and will move naturally, without you making special effort at it, as you wish. But people cannot believe that! So they work at energy. They think if they can project energy from their hands, they can heal or kill and so on. This is better than what physics allows, so it's like a tiny step forward in freedom. But understand the roots of your intent! Meditate on what it means to intend something. First, is intent yours or not or neither? Does intent have a start and a stop? Does intent have a boundary? How is the boundary maintained? Can it be proven? How? When you think this, slowly and quietly, feel it with your whole being. Move your hand as you contemplate. Touch the surfaces of things. Move objects. Watch intent. Does it have beginning or end? In what sense is it yours? In what sense is it not yours? Where is the boundary? What holds the rules? How do you know what is miraculous and what is normal? Or for that matter, how do you know what is normal and what is just rare? Don't just think. Feel. Reflect. Observe. Be. I just scratched the surface, but to summarize: Understand the nature of phenomena. Understand your own intent. Don't take anything too seriously. Don't become obsessed. Your health is not that precious. One good way to lose one's health is to become obsessed about it. Your life is not that precious. If you have to stay alive at any cost, that's the ticket to hell. Hell beings exist in conditions that would kill any being on this planet in a split second, but they don't die. Why not? They suffer greatly and yet what would kill you in .0001 second, doesn't kill the hell being. Why not? BECAUSE hell being CLINGS TO LIFE AND REFUSES TO DIE, no matter that their life is TRASH. They say, "I want to live, no matter what it means, even if it means my eyes are being gouged out." And the Universe, the mind, is happy to deliver, because at the ultimate level there is no good or bad. You want it? OK, you got it. No problem. There is no moral judgment from the Dao. If you want a seeming eternity of pain, you can enact it for yourself. If you want a seeming eternity of bliss, that's also possible. Just visions! Like having a good dream or having a bad dream is still a dream. To live happy you must be willing to die at the drop of a hat. Die early, die often. Die to the bad life. You have to be very very fragile. If you are very strong and robust, you will sustain a LOT of suffering before you die. But if you a fragile, even a tiny inconvenience will remove your field of attention from the phenomena that's causing the incongruence. So see? Sometimes being strong means being a moron. There is nothing to be proud of if you are strong. I am very strong, but I am not proud of my strength. It means I suffer unnecessarily and make trouble for myself. I don't have the strength to be intentionally weak. Lalalala.... Energy practice is a dream. You're not moving anything. There is no spoon. The rules you're working with are empty. If you keep this in mind, and just use basic common sense, it will be safe. Start of slowly, and if you don't like how things are evolving, just stop. What kills people is STUBBORNNESS. Like the person will get a bad sensation, but THE GURU SAID THIS IS THE WAY, and so the person will disregard their own body and mind and will rape himself or herself until they can't even live, and THEN they will consider that maybe they are wrong and the Guru is also wrong. But not until then. People have incredible pigheadness like that. They'll do the wrong thing until it kills them, and sometimes even when they are dying, they don't attribute their bad condition to the thing that's killing them, but blame everything around them. So listen to yourself. Listen to your body and mind and feelings. Pay attention. Respect yourself. Don't saddle yourself with something just because someone else said it was good. Inspect it. Is it good for you? Then do it. But don't do it based on mere hearsay.

I agree. I disagree. You're confusing appearances with wisdom. What you're talking about here is creating an appearance of a pure realm. But you can be enlightened long before such appearance is created. Alternative we can say that as you get closer to enlightenment you realize there is no such thing as enlightenment, and thus other people seem to be close to enlightenment as well. No matter how comprehensive your understanding of yourself gets, you are still left with yourself. That's not to say alone, but your mind is what it is... it doesn't become some other thing.

Not all questions have to be answered. Why can't coincidences be powerful? Why can't the apparent cause-effect relationships be coincidental? I don't see anything that can prevent or limit anything. All expressions are possible within the field of awareness. If you enjoy using reason and logic, then you have to admit that if people can feel you feeling good they can feel you feeling bad as well, yes, OF COURSE. That's because good is a kind of bad and bad is a type of good. Why? Because these evaluations/impressions lie along a continuum. Bad is not something fundamentally different from good. Bad is not something altogether alien to good, or discrete from it. Both bad and good belong to the same continuum of feeling. If you can feel any point on the continuum you have the ability to feel all points along the continuum -- that's how continuums work, that's how they are defined. I have a similar story. One time I was going around contemplating/meditating when I met a girl. She was interested in what I was doing. I said I was "doing" Dao. I wasn't being very serious, since I know you can't "do" Dao, so basically I was giving her some nonsense to see how she takes it. She got all excited and started telling me how she knows so much about Dao, etc. But very soon we got into a disagreement. I listened to her for a bit and realized she didn't know what the hell she was talking about. So I mentioned to her that not only did she not know anything about Dao, but she was pigheaded as well. Haha! Oh my... she just blew up into a storm after that. She started berating me, and she was getting all out of control. But what I did was, I just sat down next to her into a half-lotus posture, relaxed, and enjoyed the show. I felt a lot of feelings going around up and down my spine and my whole being. She was stirring something very powerful with her rage. So I set there and let it go. I noticed how she started to bounce back away from me. Like she couldn't be too close or something. Or if she got too loud, she had to bounce back a little right after that. So I let her go on, and soon she petered out... After she was done, I told her that I wasn't even being serious about "doing" Dao, since I did no such thing in reality, etc... She said something like, "Good for you" in a kind of respectful tone, a little surprised. And then she left. I had a good day after that (this was in the first half of the day).

No, you don't need wisdom for that. Separating real from imaginary is what all samsaric beings do all the time, and they are good at it. To stop separating real from imaginary though... that takes wisdom.

I think this is very well said. This is very appropriate. I am probably guilty of this some of the time. I hope not too much, but if someone accused me of this and gave even a half-decent example, I would probably not hesitate to admit my fault in this. This is why I try to caution people about teachers. Teachers are just little kids of the universe themselves. Teachers see a cool thing and they want to share it no matter what. Often the teacher doesn't consider what it means to share this cool thing from the point of view of the student. So, it's like excitedly throwing a ball to someone, which is very light for you, but weighs 200 tons for another person, and accidentally killing them in the process. I don't think this can even be prevented. Teachers feel the world with their own senses. To a teacher this ball is light. They have to use a lot of imagination and speculative thinking to try to imagine and think that perhaps it's very heavy for some. It's more easy and natural to rely one your own perceptions of the world and to not consider your student's perceptions. Teachers don't have time to interview students for 1 month straight to get all the ins and outs of the student's world view, and the potential for damage is immense. So, if we can see teachers as kids, and students as other kids, both playing together, we can avoid a lot of trouble. The trouble begins when we think that teachers are adults and that they somehow take full responsibility for the students. In reality teachers are irresponsible rascals who want to have as much fun with life as you, even if that means they have to kill you accidentally.

---- So to come back to the safety of energy practice, One should limit the amount of micromangement, because one should see how intent is not something with beginning or end or any kind of boundary. Since this is the case, there is no real unruliness going on and the universe is not fighting you. You're not up against the universe. You then have a vision of wholeness. Without the vision of wholeness what happens is that the person sees their own body as being to some extent outside their intention, and the person starts to fight it. So, for example, the person thinks that the body's make up is making them un-enlightened and that enlightenment is biological or energetical in nature (as opposed to utterly mystical and transcendent). Then the fight begins. Then the person judges their current state: "My body is not good enough... if my biology was better, I would be enlightened by now... but my biology sucks... I need to give it a push." Or, the person thinks this way, "My energy is not good enough. It's not circulating in a healthy manner naturally. I have to give it a little push, or a little encouragement, because if I don't, it will move in ways contrary to my self-interest and contrary to my intent, because I believe intent has to do with effort only, and if something is effortless I am stupidly believing that it's outside intent. So I feel like I need to subtly push or pull on my energy, or otherwise I feel I need to cajole it, and no matter what, leaving it alone is just not good enough." This kind of thinking and the beliefs and assumptions that underpin it are nothing other than PSYCHIC SELF-VIOLENCE. You're being violence to yourself. And when you enact such inner violence to your being, the result can be a disaster. So a safe approach is something like this: "I am naturally whole. There is no boundary between the universe and what I am, between mind and matter, between what's within my intention and what's outside my intention. Since there is no such boundary, without struggling, everything is already perfect." This is the attainment of non-attainment. Once you attain the non-attainment, you then realize, "But without struggle and without violence, I have natural playful tendencies. I like to play. So not for the purpose of enlightenment and not out of any sense of desperation, like being desperate for enlightenment or desperate for an elevated/loftier spiritual status, just out of the sense of easy-going bliss and playfulness, I want to play with my energy." Since there is no violence and no desperation behind this kind of approach, it is safe. Then energy becomes nothing but an ornament of what you are. It's not a mean to achievement, it's a means of beautification, a means of having fun! This removes violence from it and makes it safe. Also, when one realizes the endless and whole nature of intent, one doesn't have to struggle with so many specific instructions for one's own energy! You don't have to tell your energy in very specific terms, tiny step by tiny step where and how to go. Just give your entire being a general direction and TRUST that your entire being is WISE and will spontaneously follow your direction, intelligently, without you having to intervene at a very micromanagement-type level. Energy has its own wisdom. You don't have to treat it like it's dumb. In physics energy is dumb. It can only do basic things and it's not alive in any way. In spirituality energy is not dumb. But if it's not dumb, why do you tell it what you want done in so specific a term? Why do you circulate it in some orbit? Is the orbit your END GOAL, or are you doing the orbit for some higher purpose? What if this higher purpose is better served by another flow? Why are you imposing orbital flow on it? See? So the assumption there is that energy is dumb and not alive and cannot decide what to do intelligently and that its default state is one of harmfulness, and that unless you manage it, it will not be good for you. See? So, to do energy practice safely, either completely don't do it at all. That's the highest level. OR, give broad, general directions, based on the highest wishes, the highest goals and the highest aspirations, and then trust that it will develop itself correctly. This is what it means to unify intent, to make your intent endless. There is no more me vs. universe struggle and this should change how you act, not just how you talk. Many of you Taoist dudes come here and say "I am one with universe". Nice talk. Then you go and practice the micro-orbit. Your practice is saying much louder than your words, "I am not one with the universe... I am different from it, and I have to give it orders on how to behave itself or else it will be no good."

You haven't broken your experience enough then. Contemplation allows to eventually break or morph one's experience of what it means to be oneself so much, that it's like becoming a non-human, at least for a short time. I don't mean "broken" in a literal sense. I might as well say "fixed" or just "changed". Prior to contemplation one naturally believes certain things and naturally disbelieves others. That's normal. That's how the mind works. Mind has a certain disposition or tendency. It agrees with some things more easily than others. It's true that we are taught what to believe by society to a large extent, but also we have internal inclinations and some things we are glad to learn while others we learn slowly or resist learning. So even from a dualistic perspective one should see that not everything comes from society. One's own mind has a certain kind of make up to it. This make up is not always explainable to the public with easy descriptions. You don't have to apply conscious effort to have this kind of "default" make up. So in a sense, you are right. You're right in the sense that you didn't have to work to create these rules that you observe. So you might think since that's the case, these rules exist externally. Consider a case of dreaming. When you dream, dream worlds also have rules. Are they external to the mind? I think even the materialists will easily accept that the dream-world rules are internal to the mind. But then the question arises: if the mind can maintain so vividly and so accurately all these rules, why do we need some substance or physics to explain it? Alternatively, does physics explain just how it is at the time, or does it explain how it can ever be? Most people take our current understanding/descriptions/science to mean "this is how it ever is". They don't think, "This is a visionary experience that's temporarily like this, and can change to a different set of rules at the drop of a hat." These are hidden assumptions. Most people don't voice them and don't even think about such things. The problems comes from thinking that effortless equals non-intentional or extra-intentional. The thought goes, "I don't make anything to make the street appear how it does, therefore, since I don't expend effort on it, it is that way ON ITS OWN, external to me, which is to say, external to the scope of my intent." However if you contemplate intent, you have to understand that if effort is to have any meaning, one must be able to have different degrees of effort, in other words, one must have a continuum of degrees of effort from little effort to a lot, and then effortlessness must be a PART of this continuum and therefore cannot signify anything extra-intentional. Alternatively if effort has no degrees, it loses its meaning. Then it's not a state we can exit or enter. It's a constant. This is not congruent with our, and definitely not with my own experience of exertion. To me effort is something that can gradually build up all the way from effortlessness to maximum exertion where I begin to lose sense of myself (over-exertion which jeopardizes one's identity-integrity, for example bursting a vein from an effort and dying, thus at least temporarily not being able to recognize oneself as one used to shortly previously). Also, if effort is constant, then we cannot conclude that such thing as effortlessness exists, since it's then not detectable as a change in anything, and therefore the state of the street is one of effort too, then again you get to a funny point where you realize that this branch of thinking also leads to the same place. The place of there being nothing extra-intentional. If you go further you can eliminate things being intra-intentional too, etc... and that's the entry into a complete mystery. Then nothing at all can be said at that point. Even if you say "things are spontaneous" that's also not entirely correct from this level of insight. At this point one sees spontaneous and intentional phenomena to be identical in their nature and perhaps hesitates to specify what the difference might be, or comes up with 10 or 10000 seemingly contradicting types of differences, etc., in other words, exhibits an intense freedom of mind.

The process is easy to understand. People cling to life due to their beliefs about life. Beliefs like: I enjoy this experience and I believe this experience has an end. + I don't want enjoyment to end. = I am afraid of death. So the approach is to dismantle or to soften up that formula above. First, do you really enjoy this experience as much as you think you do? Examine the bad things in life. Are they enjoyable? Buddha advocated this approach when he asked people to consider impermanence of things and to take it further, he asked men to consider the bodies of women to be rotten corpses. Why? Because that's a technique that undoes one's attraction to a thing. It's not that the corpses are literally rotting, but if you look closely on the human body, it's not that clean or pretty. You notice it has sweat, oil, zits, etc... it gets sick, it sticks from time to time, etc... when you give mind to this, you don't think the body is as great as you once thought. Same thing with other aspects. Is society great? Look at it. There are things we enjoy, but also, much misery exists because of the society. Etc. Ultimately I don't think there is an objective way to determine whether life is good or not. The point of all this is to approach one's life in as honest way as possible, taking in the fullness of it, and not just the good things as many people tend to do. Not for all, but for many people, when this is done, much of luster of life goes away. Life is still good, but not SO GOOD that one's has to cling to it AT ALL COSTS. That's the key point. The zealotry about the value of life goes away. So one has a sense of basic goodness but can't be in all honesty a zealot about it, because one has given mind to the bad things in life too and knows that dying is a wash, and not a net loss as one once thought (prior to contemplation). Second step is to soften the second part of the formula. Is there an END? What does it mean to have an end? This should be investigated. The eventual result, for which you shouldn't take my word, is that one comes to understand that all ends and beginnings are illusions of mind. Nothing truly begins. Nothing truly ends. So the new formula becomes something like: Life is good, but not good enough to guard it zealously + things have no beginnings and no end = I am not afraid to die. It can't work any other way. You cannot brute force your way to non-fear. Fear is a result of a certain mental structure. That structure has to be either dismantled completely or softened, or more flexibility has to be introduced into it to see real change. If you leave all your basic beliefs in place and just attempt to eliminate the fear, it's like trying to cure the symptom without addressing the cause. It's a self-lie and it doesn't work. I want to know how you avoid affecting other people.

This stuff is just begging to explode. First of all, meditating is not the same thing as emotion control. Emotion control requires not just meditation practice, but intention and resolve to control one's emotions. This is probably very applicable and very true of a certain class of meditators, but I say not all. It all depends on the surrounding framework and the role the meditation plays for the practitioner. It's kind of like saying that people who are physically stronger tend to be more gentle. That's probably true, because they feel more secure and feel less need to try to assert themselves physically, hence gentleness. But the flip side is, should they become violent, strong people are a lot more violent. So a meditator who loses control of their emotions can be vastly more emotional than a non-meditator. That can very well be the flip side of a certain class of meditation practices. Etc. What I am trying to say is, this study is like one data point. A stab in the dark. It's not entirely useless and it's not nothing, but I wouldn't conclude anything based on it. And I certainly don't feel like my practice has now been somehow validated or bolstered thanks to this study.

Daoism, if we can call it that, is not a skill like making pots. Even comparing two expert potters is impossible except for another expert, but even then, there will be a lot of arguing and bickering about who is better and consensus will be impossible to reach. With something as subtle as understanding of the Dao all comparing is useless. Of course people will have their opinions. Kind of like Lieh Tzu thought highly of the traveling shaman and didn't think much of his master at one time. His master could have just left Lieh Tzu to his opinion. People at that level have nothing to prove to anyone. They don't need to impress anyone. They're happy just rotting away in a ditch, without renown, if that's what comes to pass.

So you have no opinion about his teaching, but lots of opinions about alcohol, eh? You're a moron. This is a large reason why I was telling awake to rely on his own devices. There have been Dzogchen masters who've attained rainbow body and who drank alcohol too, never mind other things, like prostitution and whatnot. Don't judge the book by its cover. Look at the message and not the messenger, unless the messenger happens to be the message, which is a very rare and special case (like in fashion or art).

It's not dangerous if you understand the principles behind it. But since the principles are never explained, it is often dangerous in practice. The reason the principles are not explained, is because if they were explained, then people would understand how silly energy training is, how no one can have any secret worth a damn about it, etc. In other words, it would be like knowledge that water is wet, it would become so obvious and common place, as to make it a commodity knowledge. Knowing principles makes knowledge accessible to general population without the need for teachers. On the other hand, if you can keep principles in the dark and only give out step by step directions, no one knows why they are following those steps, how to check what went wrong, how to check if things go right, and so people follow the steps blindly and go wrong, then go to a teacher who likely also goes wrong, so you get a double whammy. If anyone is interested, I can make a separate post on the principles behind energy practice.

She'll know where to go next time she's in trouble.

What really matters is what you think of it. If you try to solicit the opinion of others before "wasting" your time reading it, you may think you are valuing your time highly, but what you're really doing is devaluing your own opinion. Why not read 20 pages? Read 2 pages at the front. Read 8 pages 30 percent into the book. Read another 8 70 percent in, and read 2 at the end. You'll get a very good feel for what the book is about and for the character of the author, at least as it pertains to this particular book. If you're in a hurry, shrink everything by half, to 10 pages total. Assuming very conservatively 2 mins per page reading speed, the process will take you from 40 to 20 minutes. If you do this process often, you will learn to read faster and you'll get it down to 10 mins eventually. 10 mins to form your own impression. From that you'll know if you want to explore it further or not. You won't be deceived. But relying on the opinions of others, as if they mattered, as if they are informed and not influenced by any manner of ignorance is just asking for trouble. Feeling out how everyone feels before taking any step of your own means you really think your own opinions and mental faculties are shit. On the other hand, this kind of constant deference to others might earn you some useless respect among the weak minded. It might actually come in handy in life, especially if you don't have any lofty goals.

Are you now becoming more attached to the chatter-free state? Is that your new fixation now? Also, if you're so good at clearing the "irrelevant" chatter, why can't you clear the "irrelevant" feelings? Do you seriously believe that chatter comes from you and feelings come from the environment? Is that why? Finally, you refer to chatter as unnecessary. I have to ask, "Unnecessary for what?" What are you trying to achieve? What's your goal? If it's wisdom or immortality, then high quality chatter is quite necessary, in a healthy moderation. It appears to me that what you're tying to do is, instead of understanding and dealing with the full extent of your experience, you're cutting yourself off from it by drawing a boundary between yourself and the world (and other people), and then you're attempting to eliminate the traces of the outside world by controlling the chatter. Let's say you succeed. Then you will probably attempt to control your feelings next. Let's say you succeed again. Then you have succeeded in wiping away the imprint of the world on your mind. Your mind will be motionless, changeless then, dead. Wouldn't that be nice? Then you can finally rest in peace. I think you have some good insights, but you're posting them too soon for feedback. You just scratched the surface and already you want advice? Give it like 3 years, then ask for advice. That's my advice. It's kind of like, I heard about eating, so I pick up a spoon, and before I even fill it up with food, right away I need advice on how to proceed. That's nonsense. How about having a few meals on my own first?

This is my opinion. The only time you should control your feelings is in an emergency. Controlling (a.k.a. micromanaging) the feelings is NOT a long term solution, and should not be practiced for the long term benefit. What you erroneously call "no-mind" is a better approach for the long term. Understand the implications of controlling. When you control something you are saying that this thing you're manipulating is inherently unreliable, not yet of benefit to you, that its natural state is one of detriment to you, that its natural state is one of unruliness and therefore it should be controlled to bring it in line with your expectations, etc. Understand these implications well and be careful. Do you want to foster such implications? I would say that to eliminate control altogether is also very bad, that's another extreme, which is equally as bad as trying to control everything. When controlling is done with few expectations, playfully, for the purpose of enjoyment and not for the purpose of survival, in other words, when it's non-essential, it's OK. Or, if something is very important, and you control it for a short time due to an emergency, that's also OK. But becoming obsessed with controlling one's experience so that you do it day to day (not an emergency) and at the same time you take it very seriously (make it a formal path), that's asking for trouble.

Yes. Otherwise what would happen is that Buddha's awareness would disappear with the body, which would go against "nothing is produced, nothing is destroyed" doctrine. As well as what would happen is that Bodhisattvas of the 6th bhumi and above would fail to reincarnate. Since Bodhisattvas of 6th bhumi do incarnate, they do incarnate fully realized, for the benefit of all beings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhumi_(Buddhi...2C_the_Manifest Yes. That's due to the peculiarities of your vision. You will continue to see it this way for a while longer. You still think that Earth is a real place, etc. It's not a problem, at least, nothing that you cannot handle.

Ok, good. We're back on track, cause now I know what to say again. It sounds like fun. The only thing I can do is try to be here and participate. So you maintain a strong distinction between the organic and the inorganic types of knowledge. I don't maintain the same distinction as you. I have no way to convince myself that such a strong distinction exists. The best I've come up with is to say that conventionally we accept that there is a difference between theory and practice, but in reality I find very little difference. Because theorizing involves practice, and practicing involves assumptions, thus theory. Intent, at a relative level, involves assumption. At an absolute level, it doesn't. However, the cool thing is that the relative level is an expression of absolute. In other words, the relative is not something you abandon in favor of the absolute. Another way to say the same thing is that assumptions arise spontaneously and do not depend on more assumptions. That's the nature of assumption -- it is a mental construct that has no support. Assumption is literally outside cause-effect-condition chain. If it was part of cause-effect-condition, it wouldn't be an assumption, it would be a logical effect of some cause and conditions. But that's now what we mean by "assumption". We mean precisely the opposite. We mean that there is no logical continuity, no reason for it, it just appears and seems to be in common use. We agree not to dispute the most common assumptions. This non-disputing of assumptions is at the basis of convention. You should find it interesting that assumptions arise spontaneously. Since this is the case, unless you have found a way to control spontaneity, you're assuming at all times, even when you "just perceive". In fact, to detect a change of state from active thinking to "just perceiving" relies on an assumption about what it means to "just perceive". How do you know that "just perceiving" is not an active state? Why do you think it's passive? How do you know it's different from thinking? Are you assuming that it is? You might say you feel that it is. But how is assumption different from a feeling then? Isn't assumption a kind of feeling? It's something that feels right but you can't explain why, hence assumption? It sounds to me like you're a failed contemplator who gave up before reaching results. You were contemplating and facing some challenges. Instead of wising up to your challenges, you just abandoned the entire approach. And that may be OK for you. After all, you decide what works and what doesn't. But from my point of view, telling me that you no longer contemplate is not a bonus point for you. It's not to your credit. Also, I notice you seem to imply that contemplation is similar to "spinning thoughts". That's very wrong. This also makes me think perhaps you've never tried authentic contemplation. I don't see how change can be brought. Change comes of itself, due to the impermanence of dharmas. I don't see how you need to force the change to happen or cajole it to happen. It happens whether you like it or not. What you can influence is the ornamental expression of change, but not the fact that there is a change. So ornamentally, playfully, you like your flavor of change better. That's not the same thing as saying you're creating change via your approach. Also, your change is not real. It's ornamental. Like my change. Perceptions are ornaments of reality, they are not reality. So to get big-headed due to perceiving something is wrong. It's like getting a big head because you're wearing a golden bracelet whereas I wear a rubber band on my wrist. You're getting a big head over an ornament. Alternatively, it's OK to get a big head, as long as you don't take yourself seriously. If you get a big head AND take yourself seriously, that's a deadly combination. But I won't be judging whether or not you take yourself seriously or not! I can't say from your words. You know what it is and I trust you to take care. I don't want to be responsible for determining just from the content of your writing whether or not you are serious or not. I want to leave those honors to you. Experience is not really behind the concepts. To say that implies that concepts are non-experiential and that experience is non-conceptual. I'd like to say that's completely wrong, but if I am very charitable, I'll say it's not entirely right. To see why, you have to examine concepts in detail and experience in detail. Look at it and you'll see.

Depends on the scales. You are the final judge though. And you want ___? Some people are happy that way. Others are not. Are you happy with how you are, but want to be more average in terms of society? Or, are you unhappy with how you are? This means your being is withdrawing from your body. It's a sign that you don't like being in this realm. You don't want to inhabit this place, so you are withdrawing, and extremities are the first things that get cold when you begin to withdraw. This can mean a few different things. Do you enjoy life? Do you have a purpose in life? When you wake up, do you have something you look forward to? Or do you wake up thinking, "Oh shit, I woke up... crap... not another day... not again... ok geez here we go again... blah" When a happy and content person wakes up, there is something they look forward to. It may not be a lot, but it has to be something. Without that something, energy will drop, because energy comes from intent. If you don't intend to do anything in the day, the energy will not appear. It could mean sleep is no longer enough to clear out your stress accumulation. If that's the case, you must cut some stress that occurs in the day. Stress can be a tricky thing to detect sometimes. Many people are very stressed but don't understand that they are. It's like they are numb to it because stressed is the only state they ever remember, so they can't conceive life could be any different. There are many ways to cut stress. Changing environment is one way. Changing your thinking process is another way. However, for the thinking process change to work, it has to be a radical change. If you just "think positive" that won't be enough. You'd have to change your thinking process in an important way and not just add some sugar on top, which is what positive thinking is, just meaningless sugar, something superficial. So if you know how to change your thinking pattern in a way that touches your very core, in a significant way, you can cut your stress that way. Otherwise the best option is to control your environment to some extent. Spend more time in the forest, on vacation, fishing, hicking, biking, in a different city, in a different job, surrounded with different friends, etc., all of the above, some of the above, whatever you can manage. Yea, you're tired in a big way. It's obvious. This one can be tricky to overcome when you're assaulted from all sides by bigger issues like not wanting to wake up. On the other hand, this could be at the root of not wanting to wake up too. So the exact order in which to tackle the issues depends on your psychological structure and dynamics. Resisting life, pulling away from this realm. Simple suggestion is to work on PC muscle. Just exercise it a little, without going overboard. Then relax. Erections happen in a state of relaxation. This might appear paradoxical, but it's true. If there is tension in the pelvic area, it inhibits the erection. This has to do with externalizing authority too much. You don't believe that your word and thought are authoritative enough. This is especially a problem for a man, because a man is naturally more authoritative than a woman. Looking for external authorities can make you even more girly, so be judicious. This doesn't mean you shouldn't accept any advice, but it what it does mean is that you should weigh your own thoughts at least on par with all the advice you get, if not more. So let the advice become an extra side dish to your own plan of action. Don't take it as your main dish. You have to own life. But the thing is, if you ask externally to own it, no one can tell you how, because people don't want to go around making others stronger than they are themselves. People want to make others around them weaker to appear stronger themselves. At least most normal people. This is why most people disempower others in every way they can, covertly and overtly. They tell you why you can't do it yourself, why you need them, why you're not good enough, why you don't have what it takes, why you will fail and so on, and then they say, OK you have one CHANCE to succeed... you have to follow me, that's your best chance. So be very careful! Don't fall into this trap. Examine everything you are told and check: IS THIS EMPOWERING OR DISEMPOWERING ME? If it's not empower you, then flat out reject it. So what I am saying is that no one, or almost no one will just hand you real power. You will have to take it. That's the nature of it. If someone gives you power they can take it away, so it's not real power. And taking power is a big part of what being a man is. So you don't ask, like, "please give me power". You come over and take it and deal with the consequences. And the best way to do this is one little step at a time. Otherwise you risk a huge explosion in your face if you take too much too fast. Notice the tone of my post. I am saying things like "It's this, it's that, do this do that." That's not a very good way to explain things. A much better way is to ask questions, but then I have to ask you many questions and hear many of your answers, etc. This takes more time and is hard to do on a forum (as opposed to say IM or IRC, etc.). So please take everything I say with a grain of salt.