goldisheavy

I can teach you these. It's very easy. Have you ever done it in a dream? How did you do it? It's the same "in the waking", since both dreaming and waking have the same source -- mind. Warning: if your psyche is not ready to accept this kind of experience, you will be very very frightened, because if you're not ready and you fly like that, it's like going insane, where you no longer know what is real and what is not real. So it's best to leave that alone. When the right time comes, you will fly without any effort anyway, because it will be as natural as breathing and eating is right now. There is no need to force anything.

Let's take this a step further and assign it a number, like -5. Of course this is pure crap. How is knowing the answer to this question going to be beneficial? Questions should have a purpose, preferably a weighty one. If you don't have a weighty purpose in mind, it's best to not to waste time asking idle questions, from a spiritual seeker point of view. Asking pointless questions is a favorite human past time, but it has nothing in common with serious spiritual aspirations for wisdom. Waxing lyrical about various nonsense is for the poets. Why waste effort in such vain evaluation? (Like evaluating the substantiveness of shadows... what a waste...) Is it just for entertainment?

Understanding in terms of thums-upping and thumbs-downing ideas is really flawed. I suggest you thoroughly examine both free will and determinism and see that both ideas are flawed. Eliminate extremes, and middle also disappears. And yet here you are! You have to really work through it in your mind. That doesn't mean you will definitely reach a conclusion. As you work through it, something happens. It's not a conclusion, and it's not like "the answer" to the question either. Call it wisdom, call it whatever you want. It cannot be really described until it happens, but it cannot happen if you don't examine very very thoroughly the basic foundational assumptions involved in all these questions. It's like you are meeting your own mind for the first time. People think they know their minds, but nothing is further from the truth. Habitually reacting to situation, thinking that you totally know who you are, all this is nonsense that only deluded people can take seriously. Once you look at your mind, you might see you have no clue what it is like. All your preconceptions about your own mind go out the window, eventually. Your own mind is Buddha, Tao, but if you think your mind is just your mind and if you think you know how it works and what it does, then you get only a very limited use out of it. It's like if you have a wish-fulfilling gem but you think it's a potato, you only get one potato's worth of use from it and no more. But just telling yourself "my mind is Tao" is not sincere either. It's not authentic. Authenticity comes after you examine the root of your mind, on your own, for a long time, consistently, creatively, and maybe luck plays some role in it too. Getting a "yes" or "no" or "neither" or any such answer to the free will question is pure garbage that's not worth your time. All that is only my opinion of course.

Me too. I just enjoy reading Chuang Tzu. It is funny and it says something to me, something that is not well said by other sources. I think as long as the actual goals remain elusive to you, you are on the right track. If the actual goals become obvious to you, that is a sign of danger. It's a sign that your mind has clamped down around an explanation and has stopped questioning. For me Taoism is just a set of books. I don't mean to denigrate it by saying that. There is the way and the mystery, but I don't call it "taoism". When I read Lao Tzu, something is evoked within my being. I cannot tell you exactly what it is, but my mindheart responds definitely to the writing. When I read Chuang Tzu, I laugh and laugh and laugh. How funny is my mind? How funny are people. How funny is everything. Truly we are idiots. It's good to know that. And if you want some really interesting stories, then look up Lieh Tzu. It's fun and it does something with the mind. I learn best when I play. How about you? Other than that, it's not really Taoism that's important. It's your life. Your mind. Your heart. There is an authentic energy. I can't say what it is. It's not subject to definition and it cannot be pointed out. Nonetheless, eventually it can be intuited. Then you can relax. All things happen just right. No heavy chronic worries for you. You might have a little fun worry here and there. But you know that this authentic energy is right, no matter what the mind can think about. It's not subject to analysis. It's not an object of perception. It is only discovered when the trash is taken out of the mind -- it is what's left. I am it. You are it. What is this "it"? I cannot say. "it" is not really an accurate way to speak of it, but I don't have a better word. Don't look for it...just clear away your confusion. Confusion is a side-effect of certainty. Clear away certainty and confusion is gone. When the mind is not certain, it is impossible for it to be confused. Ok, enough ranting for now. you asked for it.

Once upon a time there was a great being. This being found some delicious peaches. He started eating those peaches and soon became strong and healthy. He continued to eat them and soon he learned to display remarkable abilities for his own amusement and that of others. People saw this, and started thinking -- "This being is the source of all great abilities", and in order to attain those abilities, they sneaked into this person's bathroom and ate poop out of his toilet. It made sense. The being is the source. The poop is what came out of the source. Eating what comes out of the source results in transmission. Doesn't it? Alas, no matter how much poop they ate, they got nothing but disappointment and hunger. The great being was either cruel or stupid and just failed to mention the peaches to people he kept finding in his bathroom. It's a shame, because the peaches grow all over the place, but the bathrooms are rare and hard to get to. You have to make a special arrangement to eat poop out of someone's toilet, but no such special arrangement is needed to each the peaches. The end.

Yes, you heard that's what it was, therefore that must be it. Looks like Paul took it a step further and actually contemplated it, so his mind didn't remain at the "this is what I've heard" stage.

There is something, when attended to, that allows one to discover anything you want, including your very own, unique, perfect just for you martial art. People should be introduced to it and empowered to use it. Instead, every day people are disempowered when they are not told the source of all the interesting abilities and are instead told to follow some after-effects of something that's more intimate to you than the veins in your own neck. That's what I call spiritual theft. People have no faith in their own abilities. That's a disease that should be remedied directly as opposed to indirectly by following someone else who does have faith in their own ability. People have trouble with understanding. That should be remedied directly by pointing at the root of all understanding. Instead people are following some expert and thus never ever discover the root of all understanding and ignorance in their very own heart. People like Zhuangzi said this -- "Even a fool has his own mind for a teacher." But no one takes this to heart. If today, right now, someone takes this to heart, and start practicing every day, every day using only their own insight, I guarantee that the resulting ability will defeat all Wudang masters put together. That's my challenge to anyone who seeks understanding, wisdom and power. If you are stuck, look at the problem in your mind. Don't look for solutions from teachers. A good teacher should be telling students about this. But instead most teachers simply cultivate a state of perpetual dependence. I went to a Tai Chi class recently, just to see what's up. AAAA yup. Not a peep about how to discover any wisdom. Only "just follow me" type instruction. Shame. One cannot get any wisdom from following shapes.

It's not a matter of judgment, as I see it. It's a matter of understanding. Attention to detail is necessary to master something conventional. It's not necessary if you are not using convention as your vehicle. Is Tai Chi just a set of conventions? It does look that way, doesn't it? And maybe it is. Its value then decreases dramatically, because conventionally there are far better martial arts that focus on getting the job done (defeating the other guy) and do away with various high-minded metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Instead they rely on physics and simple principles like breaking the structure of your opponent, and you don't need to be an internal practitioner to realize the value of that. For some people Tai Chi is a token convention that leads to a world beyond convention. In that sense, the form is not that important. It's just a symbolic token to get you started on the way. You will be doing away with the token as soon as you sense something that is not amenable to characterization, and therefore is not amenable to "proper form" type instruction. So, if you understand Tai Chi as just a motion without any wisdom, then you need to stick to the form. But if it's wisdom that you're after, then guess what? You can discover your own form. And guess what? This happens all the time in China, doesn't it? People constantly introduce their own forms. People have new insights all the time. They meditate and contemplate and come up with their own form. That's how every style has started. It started from someone who was inquisitive and attentive. Wouldn't it be better to cultivate the same traits in oneself then to fallow the shadows those inquisitive and attentive individuals have cast? Be inquisitive and attentive and cast your own shadow. Then let the fools follow you if they have nothing better to do. If someone is interested in magic or in deadly abilities, you just need to open your mind and practice every day. You don't need any guidance or teacher or form. The only reason I don't do that myself is the same reason I don't heal every hurt with my abilities and I don't warm my body every time it's cold. Although I can do that and did in the past. We are doing people a disservice when we don't tell them the truth. Enough shadow following.

In order for there to be integration you need two things to integrate together into one. If you penetrate the meaning of non-dual, the notion of integration becomes only a half-truth at best, or a serious delusion at worst. To further understand this, try to find a difference between any two things. For example, what is the difference between attachment and non-attachment?

I heard one Tai Chi instructor say that it's not about perfect movement. If it was, he'd be inviting dancers into his studio. Or so he said. This also reminds me of one anecdote about a Buddhist hermit who kept saying the mantra while living on an island. He became famous and finally a great and respected teacher decided to visit this hermit to see what all the hoopla was about. So he comes there only to discover that this hermit is not pronouncing the mantra correctly. The teacher tells him "I'm very sorry, but you get no benefit if you pronounce the mantra wrong." So the hermit learns the right way to say it and the teacher leaves, paddling away in his boat. Suddenly this teacher feels a knock on his shoulder. He turns around finding the hermit standing there, on water, asking him, "Sorry, how does that mantra go again?". I think that story is trying to tell us something.

Good thing the great teachers were not as strict as you, or we'd all still be waiting to hear any wisdom at all, since none of them would ever say anything or write anything like Tao Te Ching or Chuang Tzu, etc., if they imposed the same restriction on themselves as you now appear to impose on yourself.

I don't understand this question. What do you mean by "sustainable"? I would say you should investigate what is your sincere goal for your practice. Then investigate if that goal is not misguided. For example, the goal might be based on false assumptions. So check it out. Then if it's a worthy goal, the practice will become obvious and self-revealing to you. Those are the questions that can only be answered between you and you alone. And all this is just my opinion.

I like that guy. It's a little misleading though. You cannot give up your "egoic self" since there is no such thing in the first place. He starts that talk on a good note, but then he talks about giving up your "egoic self" as if it were a real giving up. "Egoic self" is simply a notion. It's an empty notion because there is nothing of substance backing it up. And that notion becomes irrelevant with time. But it will never relax into irrelevance if the person is focused on giving up their "egoic self". That merely reinforces the notion that there is indeed something like "egoic self" that needs to be given up.

Certainly not any real Taoist masters like Laozi or Zhuangzi. There have been various cults seeking concrete immortality (meaning immortality in a particular form that lasts forever), but arguably, those guys are quite deluded. Just because it is possible to display amazing feats of mental power that is akin to magic (and in a way it is magic, because ultimately it has no explanation), doesn't mean one can find a form that doesn't change. Change is necessary for cognition to operate. Form includes its own demise in its own nature. It's not a disease. It is natural and proper and all good Taoists follow it. In fact, in Wen Tzu and such, when Taoism is applied to proper government, it is said that the proper thing to do is to retreat after accomplishing your task. That's the embrace of death. After living your life you retreat, if you know what's good for you. A person who knows what's good for them goes to sleep after a day awake. Ok, the word "death" is extremist and is not really correct. Nothing truly dies, just like nothing is truly born. But that doesn't mean that aging is a disease. Aging, as change, is natural. Take an old person. What is old about them? All the things you see are new developments. When a wrinkle appears, it's not an old wrinkle. It's a new wrinkle. When a gray hair appears, it's not an old hair, it's a new hair. All signs of aging are new developments. So what is old about an old guy? I tell you what! It's only his name that's gotten old. Everything else is not old at all. So the disease is to confuse the name with a person. A person is always new. Never old. The name gets old. Or does it? Maybe every time we hear the "same" name it's not exactly the same? Then maybe even the name doesn't get old.

Everyone has this power. The the "problem". The reason "outsiders" are hard to influence is that they didn't buy into a convention of internal power. Their buying into a materialistic world view is just as potent and magical as internal power world view. Only the person at the very highest level of development (basically not a person at all at this stage, as there is no attachment to any personality) has total influence over anything, because such person is completely beyond convention. BUT.... here is a big but. Who can meet such a person? Not someone who cannot see something beyond convention. It doesn't mean that person beyond convention can be defeated by someone who is stuck in some convention. It just means that whoever is stuck in convention will witness results appropriate to their world view. The other being -- same thing. So you can have a situation where everyone wins from their own point of view and everyone loses from some external point of view. And hypnosis is much the same power. That does not make it less valid or more valid. If you see the latest dynamic hypnotic inductions, they are wild, just like those tai chi demos. A hypnotist takes an arm of a person and just drops it straight down in a certain way and the other person is hypnotized. It's very fast and doesn't rely on many words. It's all the same power. A scientist is using the power of mind to validate a substantialist appearance. Someone else can use the power of mind to invalidate it. From the absolute point of view (if we can even say such a thing), none of those are inherently right or wrong or closer or further to reality. If you can understand this, there is really no contradiction and no need to compete and test yourself so much, unless you really want to establish yourself within convention. If you can accept that all points of view are provisional, then you can just relax and dream whatever you want, even if it's "wrong" or "insane" from some point of view.

Whatever shape the body is in, beyond pride, there is no other purpose to note it. Of course convention places great value on various features, and these conventional values constantly change. But people like Chuang Tzu did their damnedest to get people away from convention. "The vast universe is not vast, and the small particles that make up the universe are not small", etc. The ancient so and so immortal had short life, and so and so who died as a baby had long life. These quotes are all over the places in Chuang Tzu. They're there for a reason. They are hinting at something. Or how about when some dude was chasing an unknown taoist called "human no name" and asked how to govern the universe? Human no name told him to stick his question where the sun doesn't shine. But this guy was stubborn, so finally human no name relented and told him that everything is already perfectly governed and that you don't need to govern it yourself on top of that. Does anyone bother reading this? All the exercise, be it gross or subtle... if it strays from these points, is worthless from a Taoist perspective. Tao is not what we think and nor is it beyond mind. "Beyond mind" is just an idea of mind. There is nothing actually beyond mind. Whatever you imagine is beyond your mind is just that -- your imagination. It's speculative in nature. Yes, you may have found your Tao and are supple in your old age. That doesn't mean anything though. Someone else could be much more in tune with Tao and yet not be supple at all. Mountains are as much tao as air. Air is supple. Mountains are rigid and brittle. All this is expression of Tao. If you don't see all expressions as equally valid expressions of Tao then you are blind in one eye and only see a half of the truth. By the way, I don't mean to knock pride. Pride is only dangerous if the person doesn't understand what pride is and bases his/her intentions on misconceptions of pride. If you see pride for what it is, you can burst with pride and it won't do any harm. You can also see that pride and humility are no different. Only overly proud people think pride is substantially different from humility.

"Physical body" is a notion of the mind. Just like "the mind" is also a notion of the mind. If you investigate the root of mind, you will unravel everything and unlock all secrets deep within the empty and radiant core of your being. But here is the thing. If you practice jogging and some calisthenics or some weight-lifting, you will be healthy in a relative sense, even if you have no wisdom at all. That's a big boon. That means even without any wisdom you can have some immediate benefit. On the other hand, if you have wisdom, you can manifest any body you want without ever bothering to exercise it. And in fact, if you are that unattached to a particular form of body that you can change it so readily, do you think you'd still care about a healthy body that much? What would the notion of "health" even mean to someone like that? Certainly not anything people commonly talk about when they discuss "health". But that kind of wisdom is rare and hard to come by (or so it seems...... it's all speculation anyway). How can I explain it? If you have a piece of fire and you have no idea about matches, you have to preserve it and keep it from burning out. You have to hang onto that fire like dear life. On the other hand, once you learn about matches and know where you can always get more matches, you can light the fire only when you need it, and you'd not be alarmed or scared if it burned out. Wisdom is actually very easy to come by. But people refuse. People want to have systems of thought. People want to follow something or someone. As long as that's the case, a person cannot relax in their natural sphere of experience. As long as that's the case a person really over-assigns meaning to sense-fields. But if you see meaninglessness as just another kind of meaning, and thereby have a relaxed attitude toward meaning, then you are loose in how meaning gets imputed onto sense-fields. And in that case, you don't have anything on your TODO list and you have nothing that you have to specifically avoid. You cannot understand why discipline is good, since you abandon straightforward cause-effect thinking, seeing its flaws. Understanding pure randomness as just another face of cause-effect cognition, how can you possibility fall for nihilism? In that case, even if you try to work very hard, you will relax. If you try to fall asleep, you cannot. If you try to relax -- same thing -- you cannot. Don't try to relax. Just reflect on the root of mind without too much discipline. Meanwhile, you can do a little exercise. It doesn't hurt anything. Or not. Another way you can think about it is in terms of jewelry. Does it matter what rings you wear? It's a matter of taste, but it's not essential. Healthy body is the shiny jewelry of mind. It's shiny and glitzy, like a polished faceted ruby! Nothing wrong with shine... shine is cute, but it's not more than shine though... It's not key. Llalalal... ok enough fun.

Intent is very mysterious. I have pondered it for a long time and had many ideas about it. But after I asked myself "where does intent begin and where does it end?" I realized I cannot understand intent in terms of a description or framing it with some concepts. Conventionally I say "I intend to move my hand" as I move my hand. But when did I begin? And when I am done moving? What happened to my intent? Clearly it's not gone! If intent is ever-present, how can it have a beginning? Does it merely change? But if it changes, how do I know what it used to be before? It's not obvious at all. Poetically speaking I can say that intent is like a mysterious river. Or it's like a mysterious ocean. Where does my intent end and the intent of another person begins? It's not obvious. Moving your hand changes the totality of all sense-fields and not just a tiny part of some sense-field. That is very profound. In essence you don't move your hand at all. You alter the totality of the sense-fields. Amazing! To say that I don't move my hand is a fancy exaggeration. But to say I do move my hand is a deceptive attribution. If you really set your mind to it, you can do anything. You can eat fire and fly and breathe water. You may not be able to live in the same realm as those beings who fundamentally are closed to experiencing such things due to their mental habit energy (this is also mysterious... it's not some mechanic habit). To do this you may need to forget everything you ever knew about what is real or what is possible and what is impossible. This can be very hard emotionally, if you are still in love with the way things appear to you right now, even if you can already understand the possibility of limitless expression of life through reason and intuition. Attaining something too perfect can at times derail the mindset. It might come into conflict with what you believe is possible to validly experience. I know this first hand when I learned to see very clearly and then immediately gave up that ability because it came into conflict with what I believe about the world and about myself. All magic is fun and it can provoke wisdom -- so I won't denigrate it. But let's not forget that the most important wisdom is that which transcends all notions. Without that wisdom a person will really be miserable no matter what skills and relative advantages they temporarily experience. That's why Chuang Tzu said -- "if you have no use, you have no grief" Think about it. If you think subtle energy of Chi and Jing is profound...that's nothing. Try moving your hand. Do you understand how it moves? Do you understand how it doesn't move? Because I don't. I'm just having fun.

I don't know about qigong, but with regard to mind, the idea is to allow the mind to move beyond ordinary concepts. People hate disease and yearn for health. This is how the mind has no peace, since it has something that must definitely be avoided and something that must definitely be sought. If you can see that in disease there is nothing that's actually sick and that in health there is nothing that's actually healthy, that disease and health are just arbitrary designations, this will loosen up your mind. That means you can enjoy being sick. Even if you have a fatal disease it can be fun and blissful. Even if your eyeball is falling out of its socket, that is OK. But only if you can let go of your image -- what you think you should look like and what you think you should feel like. This has nothing to do with chasing health. This transcends the idea of health altogether. Now, if you chase health, you are essentially trying to keep a certain fairly concrete mental image of what you should look and feel like, manifested. This will never meet with 100% success. Why not? Simply because all things change and nothing is stable in terms of concrete detail. So if you understand something, you can see right from the start seeking perfect health is doomed to fail. That's also why immortality cannot be found in any concrete way, like in some specific body. And Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu said as much. Someone who has no idea what health is or what disease is might appear healthy, but it's not that this person is protecting something. It's the opposite. They are relaxed because they have nothing to protect and no state of health to chase or guard. This relaxed mind allows them to be healthy sometimes, but that's not a goal. As soon as health becomes a goal, then disease sets in. It's similar to when you lock up your treasure, thieves appear. Same idea. Real health cannot be called "health". It's not possible to understand what it is in terms of explanations or definitions. Try it.

To understand what is enlightenment one has to go back to square one. Square one is, why did you get interested in enlightenment in the first place? Something must have been not quite right or missing. When that is no longer the case, you are enlightened. Of course this can happen many times a day. But is there a final enlightenment? Of course not! Why not? Because if something could dawn on us, like enlightenment, it would need to have a beginning. If it has a beginning, it has a condition and cause for its manifestation. Having a condition and a cause, it would be impermanent. But is everything conditional then? Of course not! If everything was conditional, then there would be a condition responsible for the fact that everything is conditional. And if there was, it would then be possible for that condition to change and suddenly "everything is conditional" would no longer be a fact. Also, how can conditions be recognized? If we've never had any knowledge and example of unconditional, then how would we know what conditional was? You know what light is because you know what dark is. If you recognize conditional situations, you can recognize something unconditional too. That recognition can be said to be enlightenment. How is knowing different from not knowing? If you see that there is no substantial difference between knowing and not knowing, how can we say you know? How can we say you don't know? To understand this, no meditation or exercise can help. It's a waste of time, because all exercises are based on false premise. Aha... non-attainment is what real Taoists talk about. You can't reach that state if you don't already see yourself there. If you see it, you have nothing to do, nothing to attain, no exercise to perform, nothing to transform or channel. No orbits, no movements, no commitments. Of course you can exercise -- you just don't need it. It becomes pure leisure, pointless fun. Look on the bright side -- it cannot be miscommunicated either. All words hit the bulls eye.

As long as you see something as "here" and something else as "there", your mind will have the condition necessary for, what you call, "drifting". And since the mind is naturally alive (unstable), it will necessarily do what you call "drifting" for as long as you think something is "here" and something else is "there". And as long as you think intent is characterized by a start, abiding and end, and is distinctly different from individual to individual, then you will try to correct your intent in order to set it up as a cause for a desirable effect. If, on the other hand, you do not delineate intent in any way, you will understand that you cannot correct it. If you understand you cannot correct it, then without falling into any sense of victimhood or determinism, you can relax and just be natural (but I can't say what is natural -- you have to know this for yourself). Also, if you do not have a clear boundary between "here" and "there", you won't have a mind that could be said to be "drifting" either.

Attention is incorrectly conceived in terms of definite ideas and intents. For example -- in what you say above, you notice that your "mind is drifting". That's not inattention. That's actually attention. But because it's not on the topic you prefer (in other words, it's not what you intend, or it's not what you think you intend), you call it "drifting". If you can somehow see that all conceptual designations are without basis, and that intent is not something bracketed by time or individuality (i.e., has no beginning middle or end, is not possible to disambiguate between individuals, like whose intent is it that such and such is happening? -- cannot say for sure), then you will be able to relax knowing that you are always in the present moment no matter what. In fact, if someone told you to get out of the present moment, you wouldn't even know where to begin to accomplish such a feat.