goldisheavy

This will be a brief argument aimed at my materialist friends who are very committed to the idea that objective domain is truly real and is very important for yogic practice, while at the same time thinking of developing psychic powers. There are a number of people like that here on this forum and this argument is for them. Objective domain is a domain neutral to all observers and distinct from all the observers such that the objective domain exists regardless of the presence or absence of any number of observers, and it exists eternally. As such, the rules and constraints of an objective domain are not under a personal control of any being. Furthermore, if an objective domain had no constraints at all, it would be indistinguishable from a perfectly subjective domain, so for objective domain to remain objective it simply must have a constraining influence that is beyond the capability of beings to control. What is under your direct control is your subjective domain. You can change your subjective domain as quickly as your courage will allow, and it has no inherent limitation to change. Whatever limitations to change exist in the subjective domain, they must all be self-imposed temporary limitations. So if a change in the rules and constraints of the objective domain was required before you could produce psychic powers, you'd be left to simply wait and hope, since you'd not have direct control over the objective domain. This means developing any kind of psychic power in one lifetime would simply be out of question. So this leaves only one option. There is only one place where you have real leverage. And that's the subjective domain. Even here change can be hard, but at least in the subjective domain the only obstacle is yourself, which while difficult is surmountable. Whereas objective domain by definition presents an insurmountable obstacle as far as its constraints go. Ergo, even if objective domain exists and even if it's real, as long as you want to develop some kind of special power in this single lifetime, you have no choice but to act as if objective domain is irrelevant, because the only real leverage you have is your subjective domain. A radical change to objective constraints cannot happen in an objective domain due to your personal influence. Put another way, if as a result of your personal effort you achieved a radical removal of some experiential constraint, then that constraint has never been a part of an objective domain, and it must have only and ever been a part of the subjective domain. Therefore, whether objective domain exists or not, even if you believed in an objective domain and took it seriously, for the sake of yoga you'd still have to focus on your subjective domain, because that's where your personal leverage would be.

Ah, that's a wonderful Sutta, thank you! The beginning of this Sutta matches very closely with this guided meditation (mp3). It's also available here under a second bullet point: http://www.dhammatalks.org/mp3_guidedMed_index.html I highly recommend listening and going along with it at least once, to get an idea of what is possible in breathing meditation.

So all this time you refuse to acknowledge the essence of my complaint. Instead you take a lawyerly approach of a politician, where you respond to a select few words, but not to what those words were intended to mean in context. Shame. If you think my view is one of the refuted views in the Bahmajala Sutta, the honorable, honest, and forthright approach is to cite the Sutta, quote the line number of the view, and explain in your own words why you think my view is identical to the view that you quote.

OK, so if you realize that the mind is the charioteer, then you should also realize that the location and the number and quality of the eyes is ultimately wide open. You can have any number and configuration of eyes. I've experienced my body dissolving on a few occasions and nothing happens like you describe. The form of the human body is an illusion comparable to the form of a mickey mouse in a mickey mouse cartoon. Once the cartoon is over, there is no lingering light-body mickey mouse hanging around, except as an idea in the mind. Now, with practice you can train your mind to be in a commitment that will in fact maintain a mickey mouse light body every time the mickey mouse cartoon finishes up. But if you understand that this is a result of training, and it is by nature a mental fabrication, then why would you limit yourself to just this kind of mental fabrication? Why would you not realize that the sky is the limit? This technique is just fine for personal use. But you should realize that what makes it so is your own predilection and nothing objective. Nothing forces you to look 1 inch behind the brow. You could train yourself to look where the back of your skull is with the same result, if you wanted to.

Even though we almost always disagree, I respect how you carry yourself Marblehead. I only wish other posters here spoke from themselves using their own words as much and as well as you do.

Feel free to explain why you think it's not wonderful. Aren't you tired of just making naked assertions inside one-liners?

Only in your own mind.

I liked this part: If objectivity is so important, why would one seclude oneself and give up all affairs of worldly life? Seclusion brings one closer to subjective intimacy of personal experience. What do people think "without fabrication" means in this context? (I'm not asking for myself, you don't have to reply to me) If one is to be devoid of the cocoon of clinging to experiences, what do you think will happen to the attitude one has toward objectivity? Is objectivity a personal experience? If you are in doubt, look at the passage about spending a long time in seclusion up above. "Indwelling wisdom that is not discovered elsewhere." Is this talking about objective reality? Or the reality that's even more personal than one's personal experience, the apex of subjectivity? If you think words like "indwelling" and "elsewhere" are confusing, then refer back to the passage up above where seclusion and complete renunciation of worldliness were advised. Is this practice subjective? Whose desire? Whose joy? Whose sorrow? Why would something that results in objectively demonstrable psychic powers have such a strangely subjective practice for it? Food for thought.

These are some very good instructions for a specific type of meditation practice. If you internalize these instructions, you can be in a meditative frame of mind at all times, since there is no requirement of any formality such as sitting down, or a specific time frame, etc.

Some people on this forum are interested in both Buddhism and psychic powers. Moreover, they think that Buddhism offers a vehicle to psychic power development and in fact it does. So then it comes down to a personal choice. As a person, what do I want to do? I can ignore. I can run interference the same way asunthatneversets does. Or I can try to assist. I choose the last option.

Tibetan Ice, why would location be significant? Do you really think those psychic eyes are in some way connected to your human body's fleshly plumbing? You think those five eyes are biological outgrowths following ordinary laws of nature?

This is what I thought. This isn't an example of deficiency in the English language. You can convey whatever you want to convey about the tiger in your example. What I was looking for is an example where you can convey your feelings or thoughts in Sanskrit but cannot in English. I don't speak 4 languages but I speak 2, although my first language has gotten a bit rusty. I've come across many mismatches between the two languages I know, but they were always idiomatic in nature. What I mean is that some idioms do not lend themselves to a direct translation, but that doesn't mean the thought or the feeling behind them cannot be translated. Now that I speak English I don't feel like I've lost something from Russian, for example.

What I do is effortless. However, the human body is not meant to be eternal, so it will burn itself out no matter what I do. Besides, this human body is a ticket to the human show, a show which I ultimately do not like and renounce. So there is no problem whatsoever.

I'm not talking about labeling, but mere labeling or arbitrary labeling. For example, let's say I call you a Nazi right now. Is that cool? This is like when someone says that profit should not be the highest value and gets called a communist. It's the same tactic, don't you see? Instead of labeling there is a better approach. Engage and refute the spirit of what I am saying. So instead of saying Longchenpa refuted something, you engage and repeat Longchenpa's argument to me in your own words, with a reference link down below. That way we can see that you can speak for yourself in your own words, and that you provide a relevant citation as well, so everything is square. Making a one-liner post with a label in it is not informative. You can and do put any label that pleases you in there. It's arbitrary, ad-hoc labeling. I demonstrated this fact when I suggested that asunthatneversets can switch his label from Vedanta to Kashmir Shaivism and he instantly obliged. This means he doesn't care what the label is. He switched without resistance. That's because the only function of his label is to express a derogatory sentiment with zero effort. That was a perfect example of how labeling often has nothing to do with clarity or accuracy, but is just a psychological tactic. This is just great. So because you think no one knows any better you can just say whatever you like and get away with it?

This is a shame, I think. I hope he's not too committed to such a sectarian position. Maybe so. At least he got over his fear of fortune tellers, right? Something tells me this must have been a big breaking point for him because I imagine he comes from a pretty conservative mindset that would seriously frown on such activity (like going to a fortune teller). Anyway, if we go by flaws, then certainly I have plenty of flaws, so I should be nobody and nothing. I don't think so. I'm going to guess Namdrol practices deity yoga, and with that there is a fake it till you make it stage. You have to display confidence and conviction of a deity and in the beginning that mostly reflects in how you speak and behave, while eventually it changes inner qualities of one's experience as well, because as you lose respect for convention, you also regain inner freedom to the same proportion. This is because all fetters are self-inflicted, so the inner policeman which spanks us if we don't follow convention is our own doing. However, getting rid of this inner policeman is a very messy business, as you can imagine. Anyway, I don't idolize Namdrol. However, I do think Namdrol has shared so much thought-provoking stuff with the public that on the balance, he probably helped a lot more than hurt. Or speaking for myself, although I have no desire to talk to Namdrol now, I am grateful that I've talked to him in the past. He's certainly influenced my thinking by strengthening my conviction (regardless of what he intended to do, that was the effect it had on me). So I am grateful.

Here's a little contemplative exercise which I think may be helpful for those of you who are currently materialistic in your outlook (meaning, you believe in some objective reality, unbending rules of physics, a universe that exist outside your mind, the whole shebang), but who are either leaning toward or are curious about a less materialistic outlook. This is a personal, intimate exercise, so purely intellectual analysis is not interesting or useful here. First produce what you consider a physical effect. For example, maybe move your arm around for a bit. And pay attention to how everything feels. An arm is something that follows laws of physics according to convention. So for example, you cannot accelerate your arm faster than the speed of light, and you must overcome inertia of the arm to move it, and you have to resist the pull of gravity, and so on. This is why we might say an arm is a physical object. Paying huge amount of careful attention, in a calm, cool and collected contemplative frame of mind, move your arm about feeling everything as carefully as possible. Or perform something else that you consider to be a physical effect, like maybe tense up your tongue or something, the idea is the same. Second, produce what you might consider a non-physical effect. Most of the committed materialists rail against fantasy and magical thinking. So that means materialists would consider something like daydreaming or fantasizing to be a non-physical effect. It's private and cannot be observed by others, where if a third party were to tap the brain, even brain waves are not the same thing as the qualities of your fantasies... so if you imagine a juicy apple, there are no juicy brainwaves, they're just numerical frequencies, and juiciness of an imaginary apple is a private quality that's not possible to experience for an outsider first hand. Also imaginary apples do not abide by rules of physics. They don't need to resist gravity. They can move around faster than light, and so on. Because objects of imagination do not have to follow rules of physics, we can consider them non-physical effects. As well we can consider them purely subjective effects vs moving an arm which has a subjective and a supposedly objective side to it. So engage for a little while in producing non-physical effects and like before, pay very very careful attention to what's happening and how it is happening. Now ask yourself some questions about the causal context which gives rise to these effects! So possible considerations might be: Am I using my brain to move my arm? (physical cause to physical effect) Am I using my immaterial mind to move my imaginary apple around? (non-physical cause to non-physical effect) Am I using my brain to both move my arm and move my imaginary apple? (physical cause to both physical and non-physical effects) Am I using my immaterial mind to produce both physical and non-physical effects? (non-physical cause to both physical and non-physical effects) When you ask these questions, please experiment and feel, don't just intellectualize. Also, the point of these questions is to investigate causal context, so there is no need to limit yourself to just these. Instead any question that is relevant to investigating causal context should be investigated. Now ask yourself some follow ups: If you think that the cause is physical, ask yourself what physical parameters it has, and then how something that's bound by physical parameters can produce effects that are not bound by physical parameters. Don't just intellectualize. Move that imaginary apple around as you contemplate. Feel it, don't just think it. And ask yourself other questions in similar manner. Ask yourself if there is one causal context or two or some other arrangement. On what grounds would you think so? Again, don't just analyze intellectually. Move your arm around and move your imaginary apple around to feel everything first hand. If you think there are multiple separate contexts, is there something that unifies them? Can you move from one context to another deliberately if you think there are numerous contexts? Again, feel this out, don't just intellectualize. The point of this exercise is exploration and familiarization.

Thing is, like it or hate it, but Namrolla has put a lot of energy into his path, and he's been vocal and present for what feels like an eternity since before Internet began or something. I happen to agree with 95% or even 98% of everything Namdrolla says, but he does tend to get boneheaded for what seems like no good reason and he's been sectarian in the past. But I hear these days he's less sectarian than he used to be. In any case, I doubt we can shield ourselves from his influence... That's what happens when the person has a strong commitment to something and he's publicly involved at the same time. Short of a pretty serious magic trick I doubt Namdrolla is going away, lol.

It appears that physicalism and the ideas of objective reality sadly hugely have penetrated the Buddhist culture thanks to Buddhism being introduced to the West while being subsequently mixed with the Western culture. There is no escaping of the Western culture too. Now the Western culture is not limited to the West. Just look at China, for example. Personally I like many things about our Western culture, so don't think I am summarily bashing it. I like how we at least try to treat men and women equally (equal pay for equal work, allowing women to travel on their own and to decide their own dress code, allowing women to vote and hold government positions, etc.). The culture of critical thinking is also uniquely Western because in the East people tend to be drones and followers a lot more often, without the strong ability to think independently. This is connected to individualism. In the East fitting in is much more important than it is in the West. This restricts freedom of thought. Of course there are free-thinking individuals everywhere, but generally our culture in the West is more amenable to freedom of thought. So I am not smashing the entirety of our Western culture. I think in many ways we need to preserve our culture and regard it as superior to anything from the East. That said, there is one extremely nasty feature of our culture. And that's substantialism. We practice substantialism by adhering to physicalism and materialism. Physicalism is the bankrupt idea that the mind is nothing other than the brain. And materialism is the idea that everything real is composed of matter-energy which exists independently of mind and mental factors. Buddhism and many other Indian philosophies radically reject physicalism and materialism. Pretty much all yogic practice presupposes that the practitioner has rejected and put to rest all ideas of physicalism and materialism. So what is the opposite of substance? The opposite of substance is illusion or dreaming. This must be understood by anyone who wants to dabble in yoga of any kind, Buddhist or otherwise. Suppose I am looking at a chair. What does it mean to consider the chair substantial? What are the implications? They are: the chair exists whether I look at it or not, the chair has nothing to do with my own mental state, my perception of a chair is only a representation of the chair and is not the chair itself because the chair itself is beyond my experience as an object that exists in its own right independently of my own mind. Now, if you were to reject the substantiality of a chair and consider the chair to be insubstantial, what then would be the implications? They would be: the chair is wholly dependent on the state of mind, outside the mental state no independent chair can be found as an object, there would no longer be a sense of objectivity because each point of view would bring its own creativity to the chair, and none of those experiential chairs would be more or less authentic than the other, and there'd be no God or substance to mediate and synchronize perceptions among beings. Thus from the POV of insubstantialism, individual experiences can become very fluid to the point of diverging entirely from convention. Thus if you have a group of 20 people looking at a chair, one or 5 of those people can see the chair turn into a dog, and this experience would have no explanation within a substantialist framework of experiencing. What's another way of saying that all experiences are illusory? What's another way of saying that all suggestions inherent in the endless array of suggestive appearances are void of ultimate meanings? Simple: subjectivity! It means that our experience is profoundly subjective and rather than fighting this, it should be embraced and exploited by those who are committed to yoga of any kind. So if I see an appearance suggestive of a chair, and I refuse to follow along with the suggestion, what am I doing? I am exercising the power of my own subjectivity. Nothing more. Nothing less. Why do the Buddhist texts, including many Dzogchen tantras, say "illusion, illusion"? Do you think they are just kidding around? Do you think it's just a metaphor and that it's perfectly OK for us to keep clinging to substantialist views on experience while claiming to follow Buddhism or Dzogchen?

Which text is this from? I'd appreciate a translation, chapter, page if you have those, or a web link. What about the story in Liezi, of a man who decided to move two mountains away because he thought they were inconvenient for him?

Ah, Lin Ai Wei, long time no hear. I remember you. Last I remember I enjoyed hearing your views quite a bit. I hope all is going well with you.

Dear Admin, Please consider changing your policy. Currently someone gets suspended for a petty decorum violation like saying "Twat" once. At the same time, a poster wastes everyone's time with entirely content-free one-liners which merely drop names and labels, but because he don't say the word "twat", it's OK for him to stay? This is absolute nonsense. Basically a genuine detraction is allowed, but a superficial impropriety is severely punished. I hope this situation is rectified, or I am going to stop posting here very soon. This insane preference toward decorum over quality content is intolerable to me. Let people curse, just so long as they post something sensible in addition to an occasional curse. And get rid of trolls who do nothing but posture behind other people's views using oneliner content-free name droppings.

I think you know all the usual suspects. I'm talking about all the yogas that don't deal with the transformation explicitly, ati being one example, but there could be and likely are more (whatever mahamudra teachings call themselves, I don't think they rely on an explicitly guided transformation either).

The Buddha invalidated a lot of important assumptions that science today makes. We have the early sutras and suttas. Some Sanskrit texts are claimed to be as old as Pali, and we also have the Pali Canon of course. This is as authentic as a Buddha can be in the world of convention. Beyond the world of convention you have the world of tantra and other mystical yogas, but those yogas are even further from science than even the sutras and the suttas. Those yogas are highly private in part because they're highly subjective.

I'm pretty sure fatalism is rejected by at least some Daoists. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe there is an anti-fatalism story in "Seven Taoist Masters: A Folk Novel from China." It's been a while, so I am going by memory. I distinctly remember fatalism being ridiculed by some Daoist sages somewhere for sure. I also do not remember reading anything fatalistic in any of the main three Daoist texts. In fact Zhuangzi constantly talks to his reader in the manner of presenting choices and asking you to choose. Like "Why not plant the gnarly tree in the land of nowhere and be no one who lazily drifts beside it." So this "Why not" is asking for a choice or a commitment. And there are lots of stories which show the reader a crappy way to be, and a better way to be, asking for a willing commitment. This would make no sense if the authors believed fatalism was true. If Zhuangzi was a fatalist, he'd be arguing against choosing as a deluded process, instead of presenting some specific choices and asking the reader to contemplate them.

dwai, can you please try harder with the example? Why don't you make up a sentence in Sanskrit or any other superior language, and then give me some English translations and explain to me why those English translations leave you frustrated. Surely you should be able to express this frustration.