goldisheavy

It doesn't mean everyone with a humble occupation is enlightened, but I believe you are absolutely right in that anyone anywhere can be enlightened in many important ways, even if not completely, and it's a good idea to put aside prejudices when seeking wisdom. So if you think all wise people have beards, or if you think all wise people shave their heads just like monks do, this can severely and unnecessarily limit your vision. So I agree with you and your stated philosophy is also my own as well.

Healing with bare hands is something I do myself, but not instantly and not arbitrarily either. In other words, what I can do depends on many conditions. I provide an influence and it can sometimes be a powerful enough influence to help things get better, but sometimes it's not enough. As for meditating in a pot of boiling oil, no, I haven't seen such things. That's not to say I believe such things are impossible. I just haven't seen it for one, and two, I've never really went out of my way to look for such things either. I've meditated with the pain of heat briefly, but not anything extreme like sitting in boiling oil. I've put my hand on a surface that's very hot from the summer California sun for say 10-20 seconds and contemplated the nature of pain. I've done similar things with very hot water coming out of the shower. Since I don't focus on the power aspect, I don't do these things in a persistent manner that's required to develop an impressive power. I focus on the wisdom aspect. I want to understand more than I want to control, at least at this point in time. I'm much more interested in what I can do than in what others can or cannot do. Not at all. Just keep your eyes open is what I am saying. It's very easy to get fooled especially when you have strong cravings without equally strong wisdom to protect yourself from silliness. He did no such thing. Trust me. If he intends to disappear, he will disappear. He has plenty of influence over his own situation to be able to do that. As a matter of fact, one good way to do so, is to expose oneself as a scam artist (even if one isn't!) just to get other people to lose interest. Then go back to the city and live like everyone else on the superficially observable level. That's just one of the options. Money is OK when it's earned honestly, without scamming people. Lying about one's lifestyle is what's wrong. He's no Buddha for one. Two, the problem with money is not always so much money, but what kind of environment it facilitates. He's facilitating a tourist trap where many people are scammed without any benefit. If he earned his money honestly, he can have all the hookers his peepee can handle. In this scam, you should check out what his handlers/helpers are doing. I'm not actually against you moving to Himalayas. I just don't want you to experience disappointment and to be ripped off. It's like I am not against you being drunk, but if you drink and drive in my presence, I will do what I can to prevent that. That's kind of the meaning of my name. You're one of the few people who really gets it. Gold weighs us down. My name is a reminder of that. But it's not only the physical gold that weighs us down. The spiritual gold weighs us down as well. Abilities, powers, secrets, lineages, societal position (like a form or informal ranking and association of Gurus/teachers/masters), all these things are blinding. And I am not against abilities or power, so don't get what I am saying in the wrong way please. To be very powerful you have to be very stable within yourself. It's impossible to be stable when the slightest spiritual display gets you to change your place of residence in a very passionate manner, with huge outbursts on the forum justifying your move, while simultaneously verbally spanking everyone who isn't moving together with you.

I didn't say that. That's true. But does dad get upset when his kid asks to sit on the lap in the car and pretend to drive the car? Or does the dad go "awwww"? It's better for you to call me Lord. But you're a free being. You can do whatever you like.

That's not true. You can exercise greater or lesser degrees of influence, but you'll never have outright control over anything. Not even Buddha had outright control over anything. Good thing here is that we have more than enough influence available to us to make ourselves content if we wish to be content. So in practical terms it means that maybe you can redirect the blows of an opponent, but you won't do so without getting tired and eventually you'll either meet an opponent who is better than you are, or you'll lose your concentration for a split second and fail to redirect the blow properly. So it's not an outright control, it's just influence. Influence is important, but don't confuse influence with control. I agree, but in truth all such things are influenced by outside forces. Even our bodies are influenced by outside forces. Even the bodies of spiritual titans are also influenced. They can withstand more abuse, but they aren't infinite. They too fall down sometimes/eventually. Daoism has a lot of interesting stories about power. Like how one guy drank poison but although he could withstand it, he needed 12 tubs of cold water to cool off his body from all the heat that he generated while combatting the poison internally. That's kind of the nature of power. Power is influence, it is not outright control. This is at least true if you're a sentient being among other sentient beings. That's not true. You're trading one type of pain and suffering for another type. You don't want to experience the pain and suffering of losing your wife/girlfriend, friends and your wealth, but you don't mind the pain and suffering of harsh day to day life. So you fear one kind of loss more so than the other kind. You're optimizing your life to minimize suffering. Thing is, in Himalayas you'll learn how to deal with the Himalayan kind of pain and suffering. To learn how to deal with the worldly suffering of the kind you're running away from, you will need to return from Himalayas and dive in once again, so you can transcend that which you swim in. So your training in Himalayas is going to be productive, but at the same time, if you think everyone who is away from Himalayas is wasting time, that's a huge mistake on your part. Extremism is mental clinging to one end of the spectrum, often as an antidote to another end. Of course extremism is a poor antidote because it doesn't lead to balance and harmony, but instead it leads to crazy pendulum-like swings of the mind. Simply going to Himalayas is not in and of itself an extremist intention. What makes it extremist is how you frame it in your own mind, or at least, how you explained it to us here in no uncertain terms. What action is that? If I am prepared to punch people, should I start punching every passer by to prove I am serious? Who am I going to convince? Them, or myself? Who is the important person to convince here? Who are you trying to convince with your important actions? First of all, that action will not necessarily prove anything to you. If you like, you can continue to have doubts as long as you want. And at the same time, why should I be seeking to prove something to you? Are you going to Himalayas to prove something to someone else? And I am telling you, it's not a big deal. People who die of cancer experience more suffering than anyone on this planet at the end of the civilization. So you have a vicious streak, don't you? You enjoy the suffering of others?

Whenever sentient beings differentiate one from the other, they give rise to both at once in the space of their own mind.

I agree that you have that potential, just as you say. You should know that every old thing serves as the context for every new thing. Thus old things are not useless. Consider how the earth, which is mostly manure and refuse is the ground from which flowers spring. The earth is not wasted or discarded. The earth is not something that's left behind once the flower shows up. Don't you understand? Everything depends on everything else. This humanity is your transformational cocoon. Make good use of it and don't be in a hurry.

It's not a good way to put things. Even if the majority of people here want a good ordinary life, it doesn't mean there isn't a significant minority that puts a high premium on renunciation. At the same time, you should understand that renunciation has nothing to do with moving to India or getting caught up in personality cults. Renunciation is an inner change. It's not an outer change. The outer change is there for the absolutely stubborn and desperate people who can't really grasp the essential point. Those silly people need structures and rules. Thus they become monks and nuns. And then there are also hermits. Nonsense. We are always responsible for our share of influence on both the world and on one's own destiny. No one has outright control over anything, but to deny influence is an extremist way of thinking. Who cares? What's important is that all these things are temporary even if no one takes them away. But the flip side, which you neglect to mention, is that our troubles are also temporary. Or let me use your extremist language to put it to you this way: your pain and suffering can be taken away from you anytime. See? It's not just the good things in life that can be taken from you anytime. It's the bad things too. In this way you should cultivate an evenness of mind. Avoid extremism. Only then will your renunciation be eventually worth a dime. I am prepared at all times. Are you? Are you prepared to lose your dogmatism? What will you do without it? Who cares about the numbers. I have trained in this way. So at least one person. Do you think the dogs would never take away any of your bad life? Every concrete thing has a beginning and an end. That's all you can honestly say. It won't. But if it will, it's not a big deal. Every time a person dies, civilization ends in a big way for that person. So all in all humanity has been living with civilization ending for a very very long time and we do OK. Unfortunately our dogmatism and ignorance doesn't seem to end though.

I've observed many times how even the most wonderful path that encourages critical thinking becomes dogma. And what to say of paths that are intended to be dogmatic from the start. I've also seen vultures taking advantage of the naive, taking advantage of those who are looking for a fatherly figure to guide them. I've seen scam artists praying on people's naive and misguided attraction to the secret and the hidden by selling bogus materials. In each of these cases it takes two to tango. The student is a fool and in a way deserves what they get for hankering after other people's secrets, powers and wisdom instead of developing one's own. Of course the scammer is guilty of taking advantage of the weak state of the fool as well. In particular, I currently believe this kid in the jungle is a scam. Why so? Because anyone who truly intends to meditate in private can do so without fail, and this especially applies to someone who is nearly enlightened. So the whole story of "I just wanted to meditate for 6 years" doesn't ring true to me. If this is what the kid wanted, we wouldn't have heard of him. The fact that there is a veritable circus and profiteering going on around him demonstrates what his intentions are from the very beginning, because if he doesn't consent, he can certainly just vanish. He's no Buddha and all his meditations, if I am even going to assume they are sincere, are focused on spiritual powers and not wisdom. Not to mention every time I read statements from this kid, they sound like something an idiot with communication problems would say. Watch out people. There are no shortcuts. All the best information is publicly available. You don't have to look in dark corners for secrets. Nor do you have to get caught up in any kind of personality cult to get some help. It's better to rely on friends who have the same aspirations as you then to rely on people you are not in position to honestly evaluate.

I don't know how you were able to peek into God's mind and see my significance therein. You're going off dogma, and God hates dogma. On the contrary. The Creator loves it when his kids pretend to be all grown up. It's only natural. The ones that get upset are other kids whose egos get bruised in the process. I am Lord, as far as you're concerned. To some others on this forum I am a friend. :lol:

Seriously? Few years? You mean 3-4 years, right? That's really not a very long time at all.

Exactly. Nope. The power is there, yes. But why bother? After all, you're asking, aren't you? Or are you commanding? Good luck waiting. I've been praying to get out of this world for as long as I've lived. If your prayers get answered, so will mine and we'll both be happy, spunky. I don't need good luck, but I will gratefully accept any luck that comes my way. It's always humbling to know the benevolence of God's devotees. Truly, a light unto the world!

I heard your prayer the first time. You do realize that greed and all the other vices come from (possibly excessive) preferences? And here you are, ironically, not only displaying a bunch of preferences, but also troubling me with them. If that's not arrogance, I don't know what is. It's like looking for darkness with a lit flashlight in your hand. You'll never find it like that. Cheers, --Creator of the Universe

Buddha was not necessarily the good guy some people imagine: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.4.05.irel.html

I agree. Every tradition has something worth learning. Some traditions have more and some less. But at the same time, I don't know any tradition that's completely bereft of emotional cultural baggage, delusion and outright exploitation. I think it's the task of any responsible person to separate the wheat from the chaff. As far as the idea of karma goes, I believe that intentions have results, but... and this is a huge, huge but, it's nothing like what people commonly imagine. Above all, it's not really a justice system, or at least, not by itself (we can strive to implement justice). Also, there is nothing fair about it. The law of intentionality and results supports exploiters with equal dispassion as it supports all the righteous saints. It doesn't discriminate. It's like a match. That matches don't care who strike them. They burn for everyone. The generous people can strike a match and so can the exploiters. Water slakes everyone's thirst equally. There is no discrimination whatsoever. At the same time, the way we think and behave creates a kind of taste in our mind, and this taste has a tendency to carry forward and to color everything. But it's not necessarily something punishing. For example, a violent person can have a violent inner taste but that doesn't necessarily mean "punishment." It could mean a realm that's unstable, full of power struggles and so on. It could actually be rewarding if the person enjoys that sort of thing, rather than be experienced as something punishing. At the same time a peaceful person will have a peaceful taste, but if you don't enjoy peace, it can be felt as a crushing punishment. Birds find water to be hell, but not so fish. Fish find air to be hell, but they love water. Is water hell? Is air? Intentionality and its results is a lot like this. It's relative. It's not necessarily fair. And it's not necessarily just. But it does exist in some form and it does operate to some extent. That's how I see it.

Unfortunately those two views have been erroneously intertwined for a very long time. The theory of "karma" is used as a justification for the caste system.

Is this true? If yes, can you prove it? Wouldn't you first have to have a notion of "I" that you later try to dismiss? Please don't screw with the language here, but answer my question in a straightforward manner. In other words, don't ask me "who is asking the question" and don't deny the usage of "you" and other such parts of speech, but instead try to delve into the heart of the matter in an honest way. Personally, I think your "realization" is both extremist and dishonest, not to mention incomplete. I'm going to challenge you. You do exist. You just have no idea who you are. When you negate yourself you are negating an illusion you made up, a straw man, rather than yourself. Now, it's true that people often confuse themselves with their own illusions of themselves. At the same time, saying you simply don't exist is an extremist and nihilist way of thinking and it's wrong.

This is called "spiritual materialism". It's a deadly disease. You are chasing the external lights. In any case, go to India, it's OK. Report back what you find. I hear many of the people there are snobs, exclusivists, and sometimes downright racists. Many Indians still believe in the caste system. Maybe I am wrong and you'll get lucky. Go. More is always better. Yes, that kind of thinking sounds familiar. You don't have to imitate anyone.

How do you know there is no you? When you're looking for yourself, what are you looking for? Maybe you're not looking for the right thing? So for example, if I think the stars are donuts and I search for the stars and don't find any, whose fault is that? So when you search for yourself, what are you looking for?

Your beliefs about the after-life have an effect on morality. For example, if you believe that your future experience is completely independent of your current actions, then there is no incentive to accumulate either wisdom or merit and engaging in hedonism makes the most sense. If you believe that life is eternal then there is no particular hurry to chase after worldly pleasures. You know you'll have plenty of time for everything and that the only thing that time is short for is wisdom... because it's easy to forget and hard to remember. Pleasure is easy to find. Wisdom is harder to find. So priorities change if you believe in the after-life, even if we ignore the karma side of the equation completely. So beliefs about the after-life are important insofar they affect your well-being, beliefs and actions. Beliefs do not exist in isolation. If you have a certain belief, it always co-exists together with other beliefs that depend on it and that it depends on. Because of this, all beliefs are at least somewhat important. The deeper the belief, the more central the belief is, the more important it is. Beliefs affect literally everything in your life. They affect what actions you will take. They affect what actions you will refuse to take. They determine when you will hesitate. When you will act without hesitation. They determine what you will ask for yourself. What you will be able to part with. What you'll earn and the kind of job you'll have. Your health. Your ability to procure teachings. The kinds of dreams you'll have. And so on up to infinity. So while I won't tell you in this particular post what to believe, I can safely tell you that whatever it is you choose to either believe or disbelieve, it will have an effect on you. So just pay attention. If you like the effect, proceed. If you don't like it, challenge your beliefs and work on changing them.

Since you're paying attention, everything you're describing here is a stunning success. The whole point of meditation is to cultivate awareness, a state of mind opposite of mindlessness. So you're noticing how when your intention is splintered, the result is splintered. When your intention is unified, so is the result. So what does it mean to say "splintered?" It means you intend to keep count, but you also intend to keep attention on the breath. So you have a number of competing goals in mind. These goals compete for your attention. Because you really can only attend to one thing at a time, the attention has to jump between these two goals. That's the source of instability. I'm pretty sure you've noticed all this, but don't take my word for it. It's actually a very interesting question: what is passive? What is active? If you hold your hand relaxed and laying still on the table, are you passive? We would say that your hand is passive and that perhaps you yourself are passive. But is your intent passive? I mean, the hand is not relaxed against your will, right? So your intent is engaged, right? In fact, is your intent ever disengaged? Is your mind ever disengaged? If any part of you is idle, is it ever the case that all of you is idle? If so, what is passive? What is active? If you investigate this issue seriously, you'll see that terms such as "passive" and "active" are actually ultimately non-applicable to any phenomena, including you and your intent.

It all depends on what you mean by "use." Let's see what happens if you only ever blame yourself. In that case, if you keep failing, you may become embittered toward yourself or even completely lose faith in yourself. If you realize that your own input is an important part of the whole, but is not the whole, then you may have a reason to be kinder to yourself and to not lose faith as quickly. If some of your failures are due to bad luck or incompatible people around you, you may have a reason to try again while maintaining a cheerful disposition. On the other hand, if your failure is purely attributable to you, then God forbid you fail a few times in a row, you may start to believe you are hopeless or an idiot and that nothing can be done about it. You may fall into despair. If you only blame yourself, then you may not ask others for help. You may have difficulty trusting others, relying on others and delegating tasks to others. You may have a desire to micromanage other people if you happen to manage them while holding such extreme belief in self-reliance. Now let's suppose you only ever blame yourself, but also, you just happen to succeed a lot. What will happen in this case? In this case you can become heartless and callous toward others. You may refuse to help them when asked. You may be angry and bitter toward others who fail and ask for help. You will be likely expecting everyone around you to be self-reliant in the same way you are, and thus you can easily become a dick to other people. Dwelling on the past too much is not helpful. In that sense blaming others doesn't help, because it's just dwelling on the past. Judiciously looking back on things, when not done too much, is helpful. It helps one learn to avoid the past mistakes. If we understand the word "blame" to mean "hold one accountable" then I think things make more sense. Who should you hold accountable? Yourself? Of course. That's the starting point for you and the point of your personal power. But at the same time, if that's all you can see, if you can't understand how accountability spreads to many many people for many many things, you can become crazy, embittered, hopeless, brutal, jackass, or experience any number of other psychological problems. So if you hold yourself accountable first and foremost, that's a good thing, in my opinion. But if you take it to an extreme, then it can easily become a very bad thing.

Stop this insanity. Cut-n-paste it. Make a link to it. If all else fails, take a screenshot. Alternatively get it from the library and type up the relevant bits, or run the book through an OCR program, etc. It's on you to make sure you can produce your citations when you're arguing on the internet. I have no clue who that guy is. Any moron can write a book, so just mentioning a name and a page is absolutely worthless in and of itself. I've given you links to Suttas, which are infinitely better and infinitely more authoritative and learning-inducing than anything you can come up with right now anyway. Buddha has argued with his contemporaries. The views of the contemporaries are recorded in the Suttas! That's all you need to know.

I don't buy it. Buddha has not introduced any dramatically big changes to the karma concept. He simply challenged various conceptual extremisms surrounding that concept. That is literally what he has done. So he has challenged the extreme of determinism (eternalism) and he challenged the extreme of nihilism. But the gist of karma, that your actions produce results, that good actions produce good results and bad ones produce bad ones, that effects are not disconnected from causes, that idea is not whatsoever newly introduced by Buddha. The sutta I linked in one of my previous posts is a perfect source material for what I am saying here. Don't quote things you don't own or otherwise have access to, or otherwise can reasonably be able to produce within a reasonable time when demanded. Thank you in advance. If you expect to be quoting some book you don't own, make a damn Xerox copy of the thing and save it. Take a screenshot. There are ways. You can't be going around saying page 35. That just isn't good enough and it isn't respectful to the discussion. You can curse and say "fuck" all you like, but when you refer to something, you damn better be able to produce it. If you can't produce it, don't refer to it. It's just common sense and it cuts down on bullshit. Now, back to the sutta. If you read the sutta I linked, it's obvious what the competing views on karma were. It's also obvious that they weren't radically different (except of course in the cases of nihilism and creationism). But basically the determinist view of karma is only subtly different from the Buddha's version. The determinist view was that the past 100% dictated the future. Buddha's view was that while the past strongly influences the future, your intention and disposition in the here and now has a competing influence on both the now and the future. So in the Hindu version of karma, if you killed someone, you were absolutely guaranteed to experience the level of badness equivalent to one killing, no if and or but. In Buddha's version, if you killed someone and didn't change your heart and mind, then yes, you'll experience the same thing. However, if you change your heart and mind and apply yourself to compassion and Dharma, then you will experience only a diluted result. This is discussed in the Lonaphala Sutta. So this idea of dilution is Buddha's stamp. Hindus had the same idea of karma minus this idea of dilution. This is evident from the Suttas themselves which record debates between the Buddhists and Hindus. You don't need to quote some scholars. Just read the Suttas. That's authoritative material and it doesn't need scholarly input unless you are looking for bullshit and distortions.

That guy has a nice, public OBE tutorial. Whatever the guy thinks about himself, you don't have to take it seriously. You are God too anyway, so what is the big deal? I think Drew linked more things than just Bruce. When I was practicing my OBE, I've also used Bruce's material to help myself learn. While I didn't end up doing it exactly how he described it, I still benefited from it, so it wouldn't be right for me to say bad things about it.

I assume you have the book. In that case, can you please type up a few relevant paragraphs from that page? That would be so much more helpful than just saying "page 35". Thank you in advance.