goldisheavy

This reminds me of a story I read. One time there was a famous samurai who was known to be unbeatable. Someone challenged him to a kendo duel using the wooden swords, and this samurai lost. Then six men attacked him with real swords and he killed all of them in the blink of an eye without even thinking. The point was that in a formalized competition, he was confused by all the rules and had no idea what to do. Obviously he is not allowed to kill, and he knows he has to follow some rules, and since he's a Japanese, there is no (or not much) bending of the rules for him either. On the other hand, in a life and death situation, he was completely relaxed and just focused on killing everyone. In a sports competition you cannot usually produce an intent to kill. People who watch sports and the managers that organize the bouts do not pay money for blood baths. They want a nice "fair" fight. They don't want a one punch death. They don't want belly skin torn open with all the internal organs falling out, or eyeballs laying on the mat. This doesn't attract customers. So the intent to make money and the intent to present a "fair" fight completely nullifies the real martial art by taking the "martial" aspect out of it. It's no longer a war art, it is a spot art at that point. One of my dad's friends could tear the skin straight from a horse's corpse, just by grabbing it with his hand and ripping it off. He could easily do the same to a man. He could hold two 70lbs weights on stretched out arms and juggle them like they were tennis balls. Now, do you think a guy like that would have legitimate competition in UFC? I mean, he could break anyone at UFC in half or just grab their skin and rip it right off their body. He just wouldn't be allowed to exhibit any of that behavior though, and since he actually was a pretty good guy, he wouldn't disobey the rules just to show what he can do. Even in boxing, if the boxers came out not to box, but to kill, what we would see, even with the same techniques, would be so vastly different. In particular someone who wants to kill someone else rarely plans to spend 12*3min rounds on doing so (unless they want to torture the guy, but then then intent is more to torture than to kill). On the other hand, you cannot train to kill or spar to train to kill. If you spar with the intention to kill, you will very likely kill or be killed. So you won't be sparring that much with such intent. But sparring with the intention of a "fair" fight teaches very little about how to be in a life and death situation. If you guys watch UFC or Pride or whatever, you will notice that usually the fight splits into a dominant and submissive. The submissive guy plays a role and has already lost before the fight even started. They are like actors who take on certain roles (usually subconsciously, or consciously if they were paid to lose the fight). On the other hand if you have two dominant guys, there is no way to have a long lasting fair fight. Either they have to kill each other or they have to stand away from each other and barely touch. This is why some duels ended with two masters circling each other, bowing, and leaving. That's because they both recognized that the other had no psychological vulnerability to exploit, so it wasn't worth the trouble to try and fight. So most of the time, right at the beginning of the fight, you know who will win.

As long as you see yourself as an individual among individuals, you limit the scope of your intent. This means you have to interact with the external world through energy output and input. Storing chi energy is similar to getting fat. A fat person can starve for a longer time because they store up some food energy as fat. So is being fat a good thing? Well, if you expect a period of starvation, yes it is. However, if you live in good times where you don't expect periods of starvation, being fat gives you increased chances for heart disease and it puts more wear and tear on your ankles, to name a few problems. Accumulating anything, be it fat, money, or energy, beyond a certain point is not without repercussions. The attitude that more is always better is a surefire way to end in misery. If you seek great power, you need to transcend the limitation of individuality. As an individual you will never be very powerful. You'll always be answerable to other individuals and to forces of nature, because a big "part" of your intent will be used to maintain the external world rather than your person. So, if you enjoy the feeling of being a person among people, you have to look for moderation or else you will have problems. On the other hand, if you simply must have infinite power, you cannot afford to be a person. You will have to forgo being a person in that case. Either way, storing more energy is not something that's necessarily good.

I mean no offense, but it sounds like idle curiosity then. Part of the problem with this is that intent is whole. In other words, in reality it's not your intent competing against your student's intent. At the highest level, you and your student, as one whole, have already decided to make that nasty bruise, and there is no way to resist that. To put it from your student's perspective, the second he consents to a demonstration, he's very vulnerable, because he opens his intent to receiving any amount of damage to his person. So your success against a cooperating student is not very impressive. A mad lunatic who doesn't understand what you know and just wants to tear you apart will most likely kill you with 2 body shots, because his intent is unhinged and you don't understand how to understand the mind of a lunatic -- these guys are not normal. The point of this is not to scare you or anything like that at all. The point is to show that what you are doing with your student is somewhat deceptive. It's educational if you look at it the right way, and mostly I don't think there is a problem, since both of you enjoy playing like that. However, don't fool yourself into thinking you are actually competing or acting against some resistance. In reality the intent is one whole and it has no opponent at all. It just manifests whatever it wants. This is why fighting, unless it is used to gain wisdom, is a complete waste of time.

Hi lostmonk, I empathize with your difficulties a great deal. My friend likes to take valerian root. I used to drink chamomile, in two different countries. In my original country, we gathered it in the fields, and it was quite wonderful. In the West, maybe I am just too cynical, but I have a feeling that chamomile loses some of its strength through processing when you buy it commercially. Finally, in my experience the organism tends to develop tolerance. This means that if you drink chamomile for the first time in 10 years, it will have full effect. But if you drink it every day, it stops having any effect at all after a while. What this "while" is depends on the person. I really like the effect a single glass of wine or a single beer has on my body and mind. If you are disciplined or if you are naturally modest in your desires, it will be no trouble at all to take one glass of wine or one beer every few days. Unfortunately tolerance develops here as well. So if you do it once a week, I think it works and it doesn't get you either drunk or buzzed. But if you do it once every 3 days? Maybe it works, maybe not? I don't know. There may be a way to rotate between many calming agents to keep yourself from developing tolerance. However, all this chemical intervention is good in emergencies, but not good long term. Long term I strongly suggest contemplation and meditation. In order for contemplation to be effective, the questions you ask yourself in it have to be somewhat radical and your willingness to explore and to change your beliefs has to be somewhat radical. If it's not, it lacks the bite necessary to accomplish change. The key word is "somewhat". It should not be TOO aggressive either, because that brings unnecessary pain of its own. As a medium term solution, I really like using a good hypnotherapy tape. You can make your own tape, and there are books on how to do so. It's not hard. You can buy a tiny voice recorder that records straight to MP3. I believe Sony was the only one that made one like that. Last I checked, all other voice recorders require file conversion if you want MP3s. There are also some recordings in CD and MP3 done by professional hypnotists. It should not be hard to find a powerful relaxation recording. I've been using these myself when I had a tremendous problem in my life, and it worked better than percoset that I was taking, by far. My body would relax to the point of disappearing, the pain would go away to the point of not being there, it was pure magic. Percoset did not have nearly as strong of an effect on me. If you like to hear more about my particular problem, I can type it up. I hope your life goes as smoothly as you wish. EDIT: I just wanted to stress how powerful the hypnosis recording have been for me. They are POWERFUL. I wouldn't hesitate to put them on the same level as the strongest drugs like morphene derivatives or similar. Do not underestimate what can be accomplished with hypnosis. However hypnosis tends to be very specific to individual. What hypnotizes one person can have no effect on another. The only surefire way to get something that works 100% with minimum effort is to go to a qualified hypnotist. If you are willing to put effort into it, you can make something that works even better by recording your own tapes, since you know yourself better than the external hypnotist. Everyone can be hypnotized, so if you believe you cannot be, that's just prejudice that I suggest you put aside long enough to try some options.

MTS is still "sharing", and I am glad that he is. However, he's not really sharing much or at all, because he keeps 90% of it confidential. Mostly it's like throwing out some bait to see if anyone bites and wants to sign up or become his personal student or something like that. Then out of 100 students he's going to teach 1 or 2 people the real stuff. That's the "closed door" tradition that I loathe so much. So he's not sharing in the Western sense of the word "sharing", which is definitely a sense I strongly prefer and I think for a good reason too. So we're essentially getting little brochures of his sect. If you enjoy getting them, that's fine, and I am not against it too much as long as he doesn't say something that's too awfully wrong, at which point I will comment once again if I am still reading this forum. He kind of does. Maybe not in exactly those words, but there are plenty of examples to see what he means. What a cool example! And yes, I see what you mean. And you know what? I think you are wrong. Real masters, the immortals, were not afraid of any silly emperor and didn't care if they died or lived. In fact, if they were not 100% happy, they had a habit of dropping their body right on the spot. The immortals-to-be, the master-in-training were driven into the mountains because of this. So a guy like Zhuangzi might be somewhat like what you describe, but he made sure to remove himself as far as possible from politics. Since sages like Zhuangzi were seen as non-participants and non-contenders, they could speak more honestly and get away with it, because they didn't agitate the people for a rebellion or anything like that (with some exceptions I guess?). Zhungzi declined serving the emperor precisely to be able to preserve his honesty. In today's age we have no emperors. We can speak a lot more freely. We really should take advantage of that! Western society is every taoist's wish come true when it comes to freedom of speech values (confucianists would probably hate it though!). Sure we have all kinds of cultural problems, especially greed, but we have many good qualities that the sages would praise. And we are actually a lot less greedy than the Chinese, as a culture. I aim to rise above the materiality 100%. If that means some day some emperor will kill me, I accept it. I might kill the emperor before dying though. Or leave the emperor without an eye. I have no pity for fools and don't mind ruining their bodies if they are a big fool, like would be the case with an emperor.

Well, I guess you are the only one. Most people just believe they know what they believe, which is not the same thing as truly knowing your beliefs. I know, certainly, that I don't know all of my beliefs, because I still find them hidden in my actions. In other words, I do something and then I wonder, why do I do that? Then I realize, oh jeez, that's because I believe so and so, that's why... And I've been at it for a long time now, and my practice is very focused and purposeful. And here you are, you already know your own mind! How wonderful! I don't understand why you'd ask a question though? If you know your beliefs, you should have ZERO questions.

I think that's a very good question. Mostly it's not so much about being immortal but it is about disliking dying. And what is dying? Dying is any event that diverges the perception of your self-image from your idealized self-image. So many people have a certain idealized self-image. That's how they would like to appear to themselves and to others. And then there is what actually appears. The more there is a difference between these two, the more one suffers. So what happens is that people tend to believe in a relatively constant idealized self-image, while what actually appears (unreal as it may be) changes all the time and not only is there a mismatch, but the mismatch tends to increase with time in old age. So when it comes time to die, people mentally say (they don't actually have to pronounce this in their mind, but that's the meaning they hold in the mind, be it tacit or otherwise), "I don't want this experience. I don't like what I see happening to my body, because I imagine that I should look like that, but instead I look like this." So encountering a disagreeable opinion, catching a disease, getting wrinkles, losing some mobility, losing some sharpness in the senses, all of these threaten the idealized self-image, and all of them are death to some extent, although we don't call these "death". And the person deduces (quite logically) that death must be very similar to these changes, but vastly more drastic, and therefore vastly more unpleasant. So all this mess of fear and suffering comes from a divergence of intent. On one hand, the people really believe in physicality without any question (mostly). On the other hand, they believe, truly, that they are these idealized self-images. These two beliefs conflict with each other. The intent that enacts these beliefs into life acts against itself. This is the basis of internal conflict (all conflict is always internal). But instead of questioning one's own beliefs -- Is belief in physicality an unassailable belief or is it very questionable? Is my idealized self-image really who I am, or am I something else, or something more? -- people usually seek to change external reality. So they cling to their idealized self-image, and most effort, physical and mental is directed toward getting the outward reality into compliance. There are some exception. For example sometimes a smoker, someone who identifies with other smokers, becomes a non-smoker and thus changes their idealized self-image, but mostly people prefer to leave their self-idea alone and try to affect the external appearances instead. Immortality is a natural wish that arises from that. Fulfilling this wish while leaving unchanged all the factors that cause the wish to arise in the first place -- that's a recipe for great suffering, just as picnic said. Spiritual immortality is getting into a state of being where your intent is non-divergent. In other words, when appearances are exactly what you intend them to be, that's immortality. This can happen after the person challenges the big mass of beliefs one holds so dear. It's the beliefs that fracture intent! External world -- that's a belief. There is basically just what appears. Calling some of it "world" and some of it "my mind" -- all that is just your belief network structuring your experience. Structured experience is always and necessarily fractured experience. And fractures within experience are painful. So the taoist practice is mostly about a gentle, progressive, natural, smooth destructuring of one's beliefs which leads to destructuring of experience which leads to a manifested unification of intent. In reality intent is already, always whole. But we don't feel this, do we? That's the effect that beliefs have on experience. And magic is nothing other than intent acting directly toward appearance without intermediary of rules, laws, and other structures. If you have to store something in dan tian, you rely on many structures. You rely on the notion of "energy", and then on "dan tian", and you have ideas of internal and external world, and so on. You'll never feel true magic that way. You'll never feel grace that way. All you can feel is just a little more freedom because in addition to expending energy through hands and feet you also now have qi-jing energy output as another option. That is certainly an improvement over the naive physicalism that most people adhere to, but in the grand scheme of things it is a very small-minded approach to magic. An immortal person is inherently magical, because to them intent is appearance and appearance is intent and their life is a life of endless wish-fulfillment and fearlessness. To an immortal there is nothing within appearances to protect as a dire necessity, no appearance to strive for as a necessity, and things have meaning, but the meaning is gentle. The meaning is not a bind. It's like when a person plays a game of chess. That person still wants to win and enjoys the game, and if they lose they get upset, but it's never a crushing defeat. It's always fun. Win or lose the game is fun. There is always the next game. That's the attitude. So there is a level of involvement or care, but it's not drastic like for most people. Ordinary people are devastated by many changes in life. They get so deadly serious about so many things and get so very affected and offended and shamed by certain displays. They don't get the game. They don't see it as a game. They take it seriously. But an immortal gets life as a game. In the game, we still care and love but never devastated.

I agree. I always take into account what everyone says. However I've been a very analytical and contemplative person for a long time now, and my belief structure is vastly different from that of other people, but at the same time, I used to share my beliefs with those of other people. So, I'm in a place where I have steadily and consciously, over a long period of time, moved away from mainstream beliefs, but at the same time, I know what those beliefs are, because I used to espouse them myself. So it shouldn't take a genius to understand what my general attitude is going to be toward the mainstream beliefs. Obviously if in my contemplation I've consistently been finding reasons to question and to weaken my beliefs, and I've been thinking that most of my beliefs have been a hindrance to me, and then I see other people pronounce the same exact beliefs that I have found to be a huge hindrance, am I going to be cordial and receptive? Not at all. I think there is no value in superficial politeness. One should speak from the bottom of one's heart all the time, even under the threat of death. It may be hard to live up to that ideal all the time, but that's my aim, and if I fail to speak honestly, it's because of some weakness or some interfering belief that I have, etc., and I am in the process of eliminating those. Zhuangzi said the same thing too about speaking what you truly feel (from the bottom of the heart). He said that not to speak from the bottom of your heart is a (spiritual) crime of hiding from heaven.

Sure! Don't you? If you don't, you are fucked for life.

I think your English is pretty good. I think you are confused based on how you are asking the question. It seems you have many beliefs and assumptions embedded there. Not everyone is interested in challenging assumptions. Most people just want to work WITH their assumptions, and that's fine, but that's not a spiritual thing to do. Working WITH the assumptions is just materialism and if it has a spiritual flavor to it, then it's a spiritual materialism. Spiritual path is all about opening up the mind. It's not about storing or hoarding something, like energy or money (which is also energy) or fat (that's also energy). If it's not good to be fat, and if it's not good to accumulate wealth (beyond a certain healthy amount), why would it be good to store energy? It makes no sense, right? Acquisitiveness is a bad trait to have in the spiritual domain. Now, if you feel weaker and weaker every day, that means you expend more energy than you store, and maybe then you should work on storing energy. On the other hand, if you are a healthy human being, your energy is naturally in harmony -- you spend as much as you take in, so no need to get energy-fat. All real power comes from intent. And what blocks intent is conflicting beliefs. Intent is what enacts beliefs into life, and if you have conflicting beliefs that means your intent is working against itself. That's spiritual friction, dissipation, scatter-mindedness or multi-mindedness, etc. A good trait to have is single-mindedness, but single-mindedness is impossible for someone with a lot of beliefs. The more beliefs you have the more they will conflict with each other. That's just how beliefs are, but don't take my word for it! Please examine your beliefs and see if they conflict with each other or not. The role of contemplation is to resolve or pacify these beliefs. Once that's done, your intent will express itself in a manner that is powerful, glorious, always-successful, healthy, effortless, magic, etc.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to dream practice. First, the mind is a lot more open during the dream, so you can practice things you couldn't do in the waking state for a while yet. This is important, because it gives you a taste of how the life might be. You can get a taste of it in your dream, and if you like it, and the blocking beliefs are purified through contemplation, it eventually manifests during waking as well. That's pretty advantageous. The disadvantage is that you can't just crush into bed when tired, which can be a pain in the ass disruption to your natural rhythm of life. The first step to doing dream practice is to learn how to become lucid. Before learning how to become lucid one has to learn dream recall. Both dream recall and lucidity are explained in detail in many other places, but the keys are very simple and intuitive. If you direct your mind to it you should know naturally and intuitively what is to be done. Briefly, to recall, simply make an attempt at recall every time you wake up. Make it consistent. This should be enough. If that's not enough for you, then keep a dream journal as well. Write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. The point of this is to show yourself that you are serious about dream recall. Doing this solidifies your intent. However, if you are in tune with your intent and you know what you want, you can skip all that and instantly intend to recall all your dreams and instantly get it without practice. The practice is necessary for people who are not 100% in touch with their intent and don't quite know what they want, because they have many conflicting beliefs operating in their minds. To be lucid in a dream, again, intent is the key. You simply intend to be lucid and you will be. If this doesn't do it for you, add a little ritual to it. You can say three times, "I will be lucid easily and naturally when I dream." Or you can do something else. Make this practice your own. Make it mean something to you, and keep it sacred to keep it working best. "Sacred" just means you don't mentally piss on or degrade your practice. It doesn't mean you have to worship it or become a zealot, and nor does it mean you are stuck to that practice or anything like that. If you know your intent though, you don't need any of this. You just intend to become lucid and it is done, and there are no intermediate steps involved to cajole and convince your mind (yourself) that you really mean it. Once you realize you are dreaming from inside the dream, the sky is the limit. What I suggest is that you challenge yourself with this question: "Are dreams different from waking?" Run many tests. Run them many times. See what happens. Good luck.

Adam, I agree with you completely. SpiritApe, May I suggest that you reword your question in English, and let us start over. Please ask in English. I have a feeling that behind your usages of the Chinese terms lies a big mass of ignorance which will become instantly exposed once you translate everything into English. So what do you want? Please state it in English.

See, my problem is not with the attitude. I don't mind a little bit of arrogance if there is some insight in the post. However, this guy showed arrogance without the corresponding insight. So my qualm was with his delusion and not with his attitude. I don't mind if the attitude is very pleasant or a little rough. There is plenty of room for the attitude to roam around, but I reserve this roaming around for people who bring something valuable to the table. On the other hand, I don't suffer fools no matter how golden or silky their attitude may be (unless they sincerely want to improve their condition, in that case there is no problem with ignorance). So while some people here didn't like the arrogance, I didn't like the message. In other words, while many have disagreed with HOW he said things, I have disagreed with WHAT he said. Saying it nicer wouldn't have made me happier at all. Secondly, I'm an ESL person myself. English is a second language to me. So I know a thing or two about the whole process of learning a new language. And believe you me, this guy was not making a linguistic mistake! I'll never ever believe that. I know what language mistakes are like. I've made many of them in my time (and probably still make them from time to time), but this guy ain't it. He's English is alright. He certainly knows what he is saying and how he comes across. Hey, if he is the real deal, and wants to help people (as opposed to find recruits for his temple, and with his talk of opening the lions in order to bring more people to burn more incense, I do wonder), he won't mind genuine criticism and honest contradiction. I've debated many, MANY times with all kinds of people, and trust me, the real deal people do not back down so easily. They enter into debates and actually discuss matters. They are never afraid to directly address all the issues raised and feel quite comfortable with an occasional put down, as long as put downs is not all there is to read. Every one of those true sages understands the concept of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen". These people realize that they are lions teaching lions. They don't expect people to meekly and compliantly lick the honey of the razor blade they offer while saying "yes master... yes yes... oh master". My opinion is that this guy has no real knowledge. If he disappears, it's like losing a pimple at the tip of your nose. No big loss. He talks about charms, but he says they have to be done in Chinese. It's obvious this guy doesn't know the principle behind the charms if he seriously believes that. On the other hand, if he knows better but deceives us knowingly, then he is an evil man who is much worse than I believe he is (and I believe he is semi-innocently ignorant).

It's possible to be honest and yet not speak from the heart. This happens when you give something factually correct, but something that doesn't connect to a deep purpose or deep longing or the true intention of the heart. I'm not an asshole. And fuck you.

Ohhhh... I put a little more meat on those bones than that! Give me a break.

Well, considering that each train always ends up back at the train depot, if you keep sitting on the same train, you end up back where you started. So if you want to travel very far, you almost certainly have to hop from train to train, and at the end you have to completely hop off the train altogether.

LOL!! What irony!!! Oh my. I guess you don't see it. Once upon the time there was this guy Jesus. He said, mostly I like Judaism, but I will stress this part, and this part we no longer need to do, blah blah.... Here's how it is, what I say is the truth...but on the other hand, I didn't come to change the law, only to clarify it. Blah blah blah... the end result of this impure mishmush is what we now call "Chrsitianity". So, don't you get it? All these things that you want to access and/or keep in their pristine forms are not pure, not pristine, have NEVER had a pure form, and are a result of chaotic mixing of everything. And culturally Christians have summarily borrowed pretty much all the Celtic festivals as well. Christianity is a mutt and you want to keep its purity? Taoism is a mutt, and so is Buddhism. Open your eyes! You want to preserve purity that doesn't exist. Spiritual authenticity does not reside in some concrete well-defined form! This lesson is taught over and over by many masters, saints and bums, but some people just fail to learn it. You are one of them, lostmonk. That's a patently false assertion. I am going to call you a liar.

I agree that translation is always problematic. But non-translation is even worse! When you keep entire concepts in the foreign language, and yet you have to relate those concepts to the ones expressed in your own language, this kind of non-translation is a linguistic transplant that inherits all the same difficulties that appear during translation efforts, and for all the same reasons. You have to recognize that spiritual masters have appeared at all times in all kinds of conditions. Some of them had a lineage, and some had no lineage. Some were popular and some were not. Some were executed. Some were expelled from the monasteries. You name it, and it happened. Imagine it, and it was so in the past somewhere. But one thing is certain. The language is alive. The language is always in flux. The languages are always copulating with each other. Random linguistic mutations often become the norm after a while. Mispronunciations become standard pronunciation. This truth simply reflects the emptiness of language. Now, it's funny you mention Judaism. In Kabbalah you will learn that language, even Hebrew, is completely insufficient to learn the spiritual truth. Have you read anything by Rebbi Laitman on the topic of language? So, learning Hebrew will not necessarily help. Everything depends on your ability to understand your own internal symbolism. If I recall correctly, Rabbi Laitman said that trying to describe the spiritual truth with language is like trying to describe the structure of branches and the tree trunk by referring only to the leaves. This problem is the same in all languages, including Hebrew. I guess I won't even mention the fact that all the original writings were made in Aramaic, which is a dead language. So Hebrew is completely insufficient today for the "purity" sake, you really need to learn Aramaic. But it's a dead language. Just how accurate would your learning be when you learn something that's no longer in use? How can you be sure you're not learning a fantasy? And then an obvious series of questions arises: If Hebrew is the best language for learning a spiritual path, why bother with Chinese? If Chinese is the best, why bother with Hebrew? If they are each best for their respective path, certainly there must be a perfectly valid and good path that involves the use of the English language. Wouldn't then that path be most suited to us, who already speak English? That's just the tip of the iceberg. There are many more questions to ask. Only the intellectually lazy won't perceive all the many questions that arise in this situation. Different, yes, of course. Even Sakya Buddhist sect and Nyigma Buddhist sect are different, but so what? If you look at it that way, everything is so different that we need to stop comparing and stop talking. Go lay in a coffin and wait to die. Are they very very different? Heck no! They are not very very different. They are just different but not too very different, no sir. In Tantric Buddhism one works with the energies as well. It's called "prana" or winds, but it's not that much different from qi. You listen to how the prana is described and you'll be damned if you don't see similarities. Working with the energies at a concrete level of manifestation is something to be criticized though, but that's a different topic. True. Due to the forum's diversity, there will be people here I do enjoy reading. But more importantly, I do not have prejudice against that guy. We can easily become the best of friends. This will happen when he starts sharing from the heart and spares us the traditional dogma that is not only irrelevant in a spiritual path, but that is actually an obscuration that has to be actively purified away. Nothing is beyond reproach. When I say what I say, I am also "just sharing". Had I said it even slightly differently, the meaning wouldn't be exactly the same. Both feelings and reason have a place. When I say something, I don't expect a universal acceptance. I don't expect respect. I do expect someone to read what I say with an open mind and then if the criticisms appear, I sure would like to hear them. So I don't have any internal issues posting the way I do. In other words, I am congruent, but I do thank you for your help in keeping me on my toes. Guys like you won't let me stray too far from the truth. And I am to that "taoist master" what you are to me. I perform the same function for him as you for me.

There is no contradiction at all. I don't come to this forum thinking, "Gee, whom shall I disrespect today? Let's look for a target for my seething disrespect! Let's look quickly now...." I don't think and I don't feel like that when I come here. On the other hand, had I simply said this man was deluded and made no other comments, you'd be right about taking me up on that line. However, I said so only after making many posts explaining quite clearly and in detail what I think is wrong with this guy. Anyway, I don't aim to personally attack this guy at all. As soon as he starts sharing from the heart and not from his tradition, and as soon as he talks in plain and straightforward manner without all the artificial politeness, I think he'll get plenty of warm reception from many people, and certainly from me.

If one has an actual experience of wuji, then that person knows the birth place of all appearances. As such, there is no way to stop such person from talking if that person wants to talk. And if that person wants to be silent, there is no way to untie that person's tongue. So someone who has had an actual experience is going to behave as a lord of appearances. And how would that be? Actually there is no way to tell! There is no "should" for a lord. The "shoulds" exist only for servants and slaves. And what validates the classics? And what validates the teacher? Let's check it out, eh? I guess you can say the teachers validate the classics, since they are the ones teaching them and calling them "classic". Had they not done so, would you conclude something was classic? In fact, do you know of one classic, right now, that no teacher ever has called "classic"? If yes, please name it and show it to me. How about teachers? Who validates them? Usually the answer is other teachers. Which ones? Is it a group of peers? Well, not usually, because among peers we always witness disagreement. Even in the Daoist classics such as Zhuangzi this is well recorded! In fact Zhuangzi was delighted to talk about disagreements. That was one of his favorite topics. Ok, so obviously the peers do not all agree, but where can we trace an agreement then? Aha! That's where the lineage comes in. So most often it works this way. The agreement is between the teacher and that teacher's teacher, and the teacher's teacher's teacher and so on. This is similar to a situation where one time there was a lady in a philosophy class. And she said, "The earth is supported by a giant turtle." The philosophy professor laughed and said, "ok, but what supports that giant turtle?" And this lady replies, "You're a clever one, ain't ya? It's turtles all the way down!" Now, everyone thinks this lady is the butt of the joke, but I interpret it to mean that the lady was mocking the professor for his intellectual arrogance, since whatever the professor wanted to say was empty of essence. But no matter how you take it, the meaning is the same anyway! There is nothing to ultimately support something. At some point all things hang "in the air." Rainbows in space. Mushrooms in the clouds. The visions of a blind man. The tortoise fur, etc. So the last is the most interesting one. Where does one's own certainty come from? I am tempted to leave this for you as a homework. But I'll give you a hint. If it comes from others, or from any entity that's deemed to be external, then you will easily lose your certainty in times of trouble. Should the external entity or entities stop liking you, they can withdraw their support. If that's a possibility, how would you ever be certain by basing your certainty on an external factor? Think it over please. Oh, incidentally, this is why the lineage is so great! The dead teacher cannot withdraw his support.

I am not impressed with the Dalai Lama. So it wouldn't be an automatic yes from me. Many "less important" Tibetan teachers impress me far more than the Dalai Lama. I'd like to see that happen. Books can't teach you to think critically either. On the other hand, I don't understand why is it that the spiritual people so often denigrate books? I don't get it. A symbol is a symbol. It's an appearance in the mind. A book is as much a living breathing entity as is a human being. Both books and human bodies are symbols in the mind. They are both nothing other than meanings. When you read books, what you get from them is the light of your own mind. When masters talk to you, once again, what you get is just the light of your own mind again. You get the light of your own mind in either case (if you are lucky!). There is no guarantee that the person will always perform better than a book. Where does the belief in inferiority of books come from? (Ha! I know where it comes from, actually) Let's discuss the root concerns instead of dressing ourselves up in flowery language. Let's talk about what hurts and what we want from life. Let's talk about why we care about spirituality. Is it just a social club? Is it because we need a sense of belonging? Why? These are the serious questions that any serious practitioner should ask (of themselves first, and of others second). To come and to skip all that, and to proceed straight away to the superficial trappings of religion is a completely wrongheaded approach, especially for someone who claims to be a "master".

I get it. You are doing us a favor. You are posting this almost against your wishes. Nice (not so) subtle way to put us all down before you begin. Wow, just wow. Does anyone understand the subtle significance of this? What this guy is doing is he's degrading your symbolism (English language) in favor of a foreign one (Chinese language). He's basically spitting in your soul. But it's worse than that. What he says is that English language has no power, and that only Chinese has power. Never mind the fact that not a single Chinese Shaman cast a single spell in the foreign language from another continent in order to gain power! Ahaha... So all of them did it in their own language and they did just fine. Also look what happened with Tibetan Buddhism. When Buddhism came to Tibet, ALL OF IT was translated into Tibetan. For example in Dzogchen, a lot of highly technical Tibetan vocabulary appeared for all the relevant phenomena of consciousness. Not a single Sanskrit word remained in wide use. But the Tibetans will not do the same for English. They come over here and you read their books and they are just peppered with Tibetan. Do you realize that Tibetans can't even pronounce the Sanskrit mantras correctly? "Peme" LOL!!! What PEME?? It's PADME. But none of this has impeded the spiritual development of Tibetans! They did just fine in their own language and with the incorrect pronunciation of the Sanskrit mantras, which surely should have destroyed the power of the mantra! The same happens in many spiritual traditions. The West is being spiritually raped in this way. It's one thing to bring wisdom and to enlighten our understanding of our own symbols. But it's an entirely another thing to come here and insinuate that our symbols have no power, and that the power comes from this tightly guarded secret source, from far away. One way to do this kind of power play is to denigrate the native language. Let's put an end to this once and for all. Let everyone become awake to the full power of our internal meaning. The English language is not deficient in any way. It's exactly, precisely every bit as powerful and as magical as Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Egyptian, Greek, Latin (see how many times we have been raped in the past?). Restore the power back to your own mind. Restore the power back to your own symbols. Look at me. I came from another country too. I learned English as a second language. I don't go around putting down English. When I talk to English people I explain to them that English has limitless power, magic and potential. I don't say, hey, your language is for n00bs, learn my language to be a master.

Hi Ya Mu. So if Pope started to post here, we should respect him too? How about Dalai Lama? Personally, I respect good insight and not good people. If "good person" posts bad insight, I will not respect that. But if a seemingly bad person posts good insight, I will respect it. A title does not indicate anything whatsoever about the person's spiritual standing. Old masters were respected not because they had fancy titles, but because the students naturally loved them. The masters didn't have to BEAT the students into submission to get respect. They didn't have to beg for it. It was given naturally and happily as a result of being grateful for wisdom. On the other hand, when someone comes in spouting something bordering on delusion (not to say lacking in wisdom), what I am going to show that someone is my honest opinion. I don't aim to disrespect, but I am not going to sugar-coat or offer unnecessary bows or flowery arrangements of language just to pay dues to titles and social position. You know, it's paying too much attention to the titles and social positions that makes us (mentally) stuck in this (appearance of the) lower realm to begin with.

This is not exactly right. While an experience can occur that feels like you have disappeared and entered a dimension outside of the universe, in reality this is not what actually occurs. The universe is just an appearance in the first place. Your appearance in the universe is also an appearance. The disappearance is another kind of appearance. Energy is an appearance as well. There is nothing substantial behind energy, matter or mind. If you think there is, you should examine the basis of that belief and see if it can stand up to questioning. What we see is a play of appearances. The difference between a "master" and an ordinary being is that an ordinary being is very comfortable with only a very narrow set of appearances and is terrified and is very uncomfortable with anything else. The "master" is, on the other hand, more open-minded. The "master" is more familiar with the full array of possibilities of experience and is less concerned about self-preservation than an ordinary being. So the dimension is not out there or in here or anywhere else. Nor is it nowhere. Basically all relational language is introducing an error in thinking, because the mind is not something relative and nor is it something absolute (that's the "beyond extremes" part). Energy is naturally abundant. To think that you have to suck the energy from somewhere is absurd. In fact, sucking, as an action, requires energy! Understand -- the energy is infinite and doesn't need to be sucked, stored, or manipulated using a structured step-by-step manner. In order to get the appearances to comply fully with intent one must only question the limiting beliefs. Ha! This is funny. Obviously you haven't read Zhuangzi! Because right there, in that Taoist classic, you would have read how a master was forsaken by his student in favor of a shaman who could use the features of the face to foretell one's fortune. This guy had amazing abilities! And the master was just an ordinary boring guy. Or so the student thought. So the master had him bring the shaman and have him predict something about the master. So then the shaman made a series of predictions, all of which ended up being wrong. And finally the shaman becomes scared and runs away, because as the last appearance, the master shows him great instability, which is scary to anyone with a fixed mindset. So, the point is this -- it's ALWAYS been hard to tell a real master from a fake. Not just today!! This is not something new that just started happening in the last few years or even the last 100 years or even the last 1000 years. There are fakes running around, running temples, with students, you name it. Fakes are all over the place. Unfortunately no one can tell you who is fake and who is real. This task falls squarely on your shoulders. It is up to you to decide who is real and who is not. And the best way to do so is to see what kind of effect the person has on you. Obviously this is dangerous, because, for example, many people like the effect sugar has on their tongue, but if you can't trust your own mind, you cannot trust any master either, because the master only makes sense in your own mind and not somewhere outside your mind. So you can begin today by taking full responsibility for your own spiritual progress and stop blaming the masters or the lack of masters for your own success or failure.

One accesses it by questioning beliefs. An effective way to question beliefs is to seek the underlying core belief and to question that. If you find that the belief you have been questioning is just a cover for an even more fundamental belief, then you proceed toward the core again. In this manner you move toward the root concern. Eventually your beliefs will become completely resolved, but you can't take my word for that. It's not something that happens suddenly, but the resolution of concerns occurs gradually over time and it doesn't progress in a smooth straight line. There can be ups and downs, but if your heart is true, which is to say, if you are sincere in your questioning, examination, awareness, the long term effect is the gradual resolution of concerns. Concerns arise due to conflicts between various unexamined beliefs (which lead to mutually conflicting intentions within a person, which cause pain and suffering). How does it relate? The practice is a bad word. Normally practice involves conditioning. For example, if you want to run well, you practice running. So you run every day. You begin to condition yourself for running. Eventually you can run pretty well. That's what practice is. In Taoism you ask, "Why is it that I already can't run flawlessly? What is holding me back?" Then you might realize, "Oh, it's because I believe in the reality of physicalism. I believe muscles have limits. I believe...." You may not realize right away that it's your beliefs that are causing the problem, but if you practice lucid dreaming, you might notice that you can run arbitrarily fast in a dream. Why? Because in a lucid dream you don't have strong beliefs to hold your intent back. So the Taoist practice involves deconditioning. So it's an unpractice. This is why following formalized and heavily structured method is contraindicated. The idea is to allow the intent to express itself freely without being filtered through a network of limiting beliefs that are perceived to be obligatory. If the limiting beliefs are no longer perceive to be obligatory, they can serve in ornamental capacity, and are no longer truly limiting. In that case beliefs can become expressive and sacred, but only when you are the master of your beliefs and not a slave of your own beliefs.