goldisheavy

I am not terribly interested in what exactly motivates you to try to get people to move off this open discussion and into a private one with Santiago.

I suppose I could have ignored what you were trying to do, but I decided not to. Let's not try to channel people away from the light into dark private confined corner$.

All kind thoughts are appreciated. I am not going to add you to my ignore list, since I don't find you bad enough to ignore. In fact, my ignore list is empty and will remain empty, since I prefer an unfiltered and honest view of reality.

I was just saying that knowledge is like a hallucination*, and I am especially referring to concrete and specific knowledge. Our knowledge is valid for us right now and we shouldn't ignore it. At the same time, there are two important considerations about what we concretely know right now: it's not permanent and it's not "how it always was, is, and will be", and also it's impossible to gain ultimate certainty in any knowledge that pertains to concrete and/or specific things. As knowledge becomes more abstract, it's possible to be more certain. By the time you can be 100% certain, the knowledge you are certain of is so abstract that it cannot be expressed in terms of any specific concrete thing or statements. People are always caught up in the specifics. For example, computers, keyboard, fingers, street names, up, down, Boston, London, and so on. Even things like breathing, sitting, standing, all these are concrete and specific forms of knowledge that aren't as abstract as say knowledge of space or love. When you know the nature of experience, how all meanings arise in interrelations and yet how nothing specific can be taken as ground out of which everything arises, in other words, no knowledge can be proven to be ultimately first or ultimately primary knowledge, that's a very very abstract kind of knowing. It's almost like not knowing anything. In this knowing you can be very certain. *Hallucinations are real in the sense that they do occur, but they're deceptive in the sense that if you make conclusions based on what you see, you will be either wrong or disappointed. So for example, in the desert mirage you see water. It's real in the sense that the vision is occurring, but if you try to drink that water, you'll be disappointed. So that's the quality of illusion. Illusion is not something that's completely fake. There is some truth to it. Inside an illusion there are its own rules and habit energies playing out, but if you try to take things inside an illusion at face value, there is disappointment. So things in an illusion do not exist in the manner they appear to exist, but the fact that an experience is actually occurring is not a lie. For example, if you pour some water into a pot and set the pot on a hot stove, it will boil. If you snap your fingers together, you'll hear the sound of snapping. There are roughly two kinds of views about the nature of this dependency. One view is that such dependency is hard, established, and always true. This is the view of the physicalists. The physicalists believe that the universe with all its laws is always there and it's always the same and stable. Thus, what you intend has no affect on the water temperature, for one example. Another example, if it takes 10 minutes to get water to boil now, it will also take 10 minutes on the same kind of stove to boil the same amount of water in 100 years from now and in 1 trillion years. So there is the assumption of perpetual immutability of these kinds of dependencies. And phenomenal laws are assumed to be disconnected from our own minds. So physicalists take what they see at face value when it comes to waking experience and they dismiss the dreaming experience as irrelevant and uninformative. Now there is another view about this. This other view explains that what we observe with water is not an immutable law of physics that's inherently established in and of itself, but rather it's a condition in the mind. We can call this condition habit, or habit energy. So why does water behave as it does? It's the habit of mind. With a lot of work it's possible to change the habit of mind and thus make the water behave differently. It's very easy to understand this if you think about what happens in the dream. In your dream there is physics too, right? You walk around in your dream and so you don't float in weightlessness. So there is gravity in dreams. If you learn to lucid dream and pay attention, you'll notice that light in your dream throws off perfectly formed shadows. So how is it that dreams look perfectly physical like that? Do our brains model physics while we dream? Of course not! The answer to this is much simpler. There is no physics. There is no brain. All that exists is mind to begin with, and the experience of stability and reliable predictable patterns is nothing other than habit. Habits come in degrees. Some are more ingrained habits, deeper habits. Some are shallower habits and easier to influence or change. Thus, in your dream even though there is gravity, if you know you're dreaming, you can fly. So all phenomena in dreams and in waking have this kind of psychological quality. What we experience is based on our beliefs, on habits we've accumulated and consented to over long time, on our intent and so on. Psychological factors like confidence and sincerity play a role in how we move and in whether or not we're successful in the illusionary "real world." So the non-established nature of phenomena doesn't just talk about impermanence in the sense of constant perishing, it also talks about intentional malleability and endless renewal. But our intent still has to cope with habit. Or in other words, our intent has depth to it, and what we normally call "intent" is only the surface layer of our true intent. A lot of our intent is committed to maintaining our habits but this is not obvious to the uninitiated. We think our intent is just that which makes us run around and do things. But our intent is far deeper and has far greater scope than that.

This is an open forum and an invite is not necessary. This particular forum is expressly eclectic too. In any case, if you're asking for an invite, make sure too phrase it as such. This isn't how normal people ask for an invite. This idea of mindstream is very distinct from the Buddhist one. It's like talking about two very different things. In your description, the mindstream is something hidden and mystical. In the Buddhist definition, the mindstream is simply a continuity of mind and mind is not just what we normally think of as "mind", but it's every experience. So mindstream in the Buddhist sense is a simple continuity of experience. The Buddhist version is kind of down to Earth and not very mystical. The Buddhist version of the mindstream is relevant with regard to karmic fruition. Because Buddhists believe that the mind is essentially unborn, the mindstream doesn't begin with birth and doesn't stop at death, thus karmic effects cross the death boundary. So this endless continuity is called "mindstream." It's not an actual stream, like a little river, it's just a figure of speech in Buddhism that refers to an unbroken continuity of experience. So what is the value of the Taoist concept of mindstream? I think mindfulness is a good thing, but one can explain the benefit of mindfulness without the Taoist idea of mindstream. How did life change for you after you found your mindstream in the Taoist sense?

So we have a cowardly and an angry man here, right? OK then. When you wise up, I'll be here waiting for you. We'll chat once you develop some tolerance, the fragile and easily insulted one.

What is your goal? Why are you here?

What a joke. So you know exactly what I mean, but you don't have an honest response. It's not black or white. You can care a little while avoiding the folly of trying to change the world in a week. Don't be a coward who takes the easy way out due to fear. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. A brave man dies once, and a coward dies many times. Every man dies, but few live.

Well said!

You're confused about what's shallow and what's deep. It's like you're looking at things in an upside down manner. And then you try to derail this discussion by telling people to privately message Vajrasattva. Why can't Vajrasattva join in and participate like everyone else? Why must people go off into dark corners to talk privately about it with some dude in Florida called "Santiago" who is a Muslim, but who is an expert on Buddhist Tantra. Yea right. There is a lot of bullshit tied up in there on many levels.

Aaron, you're wrong. The reason you're wrong is that you see it as a black or white issue. And it's not. To you, you either have values or you don't. Wrong. Not to mention you're a hypocrite who doesn't follow your own words. Look how consistently and stubbornly you post the same message multiple times in a row without hearing what's being said to you. So obviously you have some values you're willing to defend and fight for. Look at yourself. If you want to lie to me, it's OK, but don't you ever lie to yourself.

I have a simple proposition for you then. If you're married, grab your wife and if you're not, get a girlfriend, and simply try this thing you're talking about. Then come back and tell us what happened. It's possible that your mind is conditioned in a way that will result in exactly what you describe and think should happen. Good. Tell us how it went. It's also possible that deep down you don't believe some of what you're saying and that all this time you've been kidding yourself in at least some ways, if not altogether lying to yourself. This is perfectly OK too. In this case, things will still happen but not how you expect them to happen. Good. Tell us about this too. Do it and let's see how it goes. Also you can describe your consort's experiences if you like and she approves. Tummo doesn't require a consort, and doing tummo with a consort doesn't bring any *special* benefit that I can see. It's more about comfort. Some people are highly sexual and can't sincerely or easily enter into a celibate mindset. This is OK and mystics work with it instead of against it. The key to know is that a celibate can do anything that a non-celibate can do, so it's not a question of supremacy or ability. When I say it's not a question of supremacy, it means neither celibate nor sexually active approach can be said to be supreme. When I say it's not about ability, it means both approaches have access to full range of abilities and neither approach is limited. By combining tummo with sex, practice becomes easier and more pleasant for some people. It's also an incentive to make tummo practice as regular as your sexual encounters, which for many people is a good thing. Call it anchoring. So if you anchor sexual activity to spiritual practice, you'll not "waste" time just mindlessly fucking, but you'll grow spiritually each time you have sex. The word "waste" is in quotation marks because it's not absolutely true, it's just a certain viewpoint. So try things out, and see how it goes for you. But even if it goes a certain way for you and even if it goes well, don't expect that everyone else is exactly like you.

Very good question. This comes down to technique and the depth of view. If your view has depth to it, then you can easily see that some things are relatively wrong, while at the ultimate level, nothing is wrong at all. So you can see that while right and wrong are subjective, some ideas about right and wrong are more wholesome than others. To admit this is to be at peace with your own nature. If you pretend you have no preferences, that's obviously a pretentious preference in and of itself. So if you think there is no difference between good and evil, all that means is that you decided that differences are evil. So in the end it comes down to whether or not you want to be an extremist. Differences will always be there. But how extreme do you want to be about them? There is a range of possible reactions that's available. I believe responding to things I consider wrong with criticism is very healthy and appropriate. Physical violence is not appropriate. Censorship and exclusion is not appropriate. So I may criticize some viewpoints that a person holds, but ultimately I don't wish the person harm or failure in life. I think that's a fairly level-headed approach. And deep down I know there is no substantial difference between any two things or any two viewpoints. But knowing this, I do not fall into nihilism and indifference. But would I wear myself ragged? Well, if I wanted to right all the wrongs in one day, I'd certainly go insane. If I wanted to right all the wrongs in the span of my life, I'd wear myself ragged. But if I am OK to right what wrongs I can over the period of 3 billion years, if that's my mindset, well, obviously I am in no hurry then, right? I can right one wrong one day and then nap for 3 days. I can forget about right and wrong for 3 months and then remember it and clean some things up for a few weeks then take another break. When you have this kind of long-haul mindset, you're don't have your panties twisted into a bunch all the time. You can alternate standing up for what's right with rest and relaxation and play. Thus, you don't wear yourself ragged for one, two, you don't fall into nihilism, and three, your ultimate insight is not disturbed by dualities. Best of all worlds. Exactly! Well said! Who said that it must be a strenuous battle? Imagine it like a big cake that's the size of the solar system and you're taking a few bites of that cake every day or two. You can be eating such cake for billions of years before it's all gone, but we've got time. There is no hurry. Eat what you can, then nap or play. Well said, well said.

I don't think any kind of visualization will happen automatically at first. In Dzogchen manuals when they talk about tigles they discuss this. They say they are supposed to show up automatically but then they say "if they don't show up, press your eyes and let go" and other suggestions on how to kick-start them if they don't start. I would say that when it comes to manifestation, Dzogchen people don't understand the workings of mind 100%. They have a very refined analysis of phenomena and the ultimate truth, but in terms of practical understanding, they are not the greatest. For example, if you know how mind works, you'd not be saying that something should happen automatically because you know that while visions can start automatically, whether or not they do depends on your conditioning for one, and also what kind of visions appear also depends on your conditioning. So right from the start they should be saying, "Depending on your conditioning, visions may or may not start, they may look like this or like that or like nothing that's described here." But they don't say it. So there is a bit of a pretense there, almost taking mind to be like some kind of physical substance that works according to immutable mind laws down to the concrete level. Mind is nothing like that. Their ignorance is also evident in their Tibetan manual of the dead. Again, they describe bardo as if it happens according to immutable laws, "only this can happen when you die." Nothing is further from the truth. People's experiences at death are as individual and as tied to their conditioning as the experiences they get during the onset of dreaming. Death experiences are highly individual and depend on mental conditioning. So some people may see Christian iconography, and some may see the light at the end of a tunnel, others may see nothing at all, still others may see rainbows and unicorns mingling with druids, others see their friends and family, others see strangers, others see completely alien things like spaceships and strange beings and so on. And again, some people reincarnate immediately into another very heavy and very visceral experience. Others float around in a kind of a high-grade astral-realm type of experience. Some hang out for 10 days, some for 40, some for 300 years and some fall into unconsciousness and the next thing they know, they're a 2-3 year old kid in some country somewhere on a planet that's nothing like this planet, but it feels as if it's the same. So I just described a minuscule range of possibilities. The actual range is limitless. Now, in tummo, sticking your penis in or breathing a certain way, none of that is essential. The essential thing is to intend to get warm. Visualizations are not necessary but they help to realize the intent of warmness. But the key is intent, not your penis or breath or any other such thing. All things beside the intent to get warm are ornamental and are there for pure pleasure and enjoyment. Spiritual energy is not physical. It doesn't follow immutable laws. It follows very malleable and very diverse (person to person and even time to time) conditioning of mind. Perhaps the only law there is that manifestation follows intent. That's it. Other than that, there are no other laws. Everything else is just conditioning. So depending on what you strongly believe at the time, depending on your mental propensities, different things will happen.

You're entitled to your opinion. So you're saying that viewing things in terms of good and bad is bad? It's also a wrong answer. Disagreements are not a problem. It's being unable to tolerate disagreement that's the problem. When disagreement is intolerable, what can you do? You have to censor your critics, kill them, or expel them from the country (out of sight, out of mind). So what's the solution? Disagree as much as possible about everything! This will desensitize people to disagreements. Then it won't be a big deal anymore. Flattery, brown nosing and sucking people's cocks is how you prolong the pain. Abrahamic religions have intolerance and bigotry encoded into their doctrinal genes. It can't be denied. Beliefs have consequences. But how many Buddhists have been violent in the name of Buddha? Further, violence is not the biggest problem with religion. Day to day repression is the biggest problem. For example, atheist being fired from jobs by Christians. Non-Muslims being side-lined in Muslim countries (to put it mildly). Women being treated as something less than a man in backwards Abrahamic countries. Fuck everything about this. Everything should be questioned. Religious doctrines must be questioned above all else because of how destructive they are to good life. It's good to question our idea about good and bad. But there is a difference between questioning and investigating and a thoughtless blanket dismissive negation.

Good and bad aren't illusions. There is nothing that's absolutely good or absolutely bad, but that fact doesn't strip good and bad of all value. If people realize that each person has their own ideas about good and bad and that there is no such thing as absolute good or absolute bad that must be unilaterally imposed on all people, we can begin the process of bargaining with each other. There may never be a perfect frictionless world, but I will take honest bargaining over the bullshit unilateral imposition of superstition as "the absolute truth." Suffering is bad and eliminating the deep causes of suffering is good. Living exclusively for the afterlife while tolerating and ignoring the abuses and superstition in this life is bad. Religion is bad in the sense that it divides people into us vs them. Believer vs. the infidel/heretic. If we can eliminate this source of divisiveness, we'll be better off. Just because fire can be started in many ways, it doesn't mean we shouldn't bother putting insulation on electric wires. It's dumb to argue that "who cares about insulating wires, since wires will always start. Even if you insulate all the wires in the world, someone can drop a cigarette on the mattress. Oh, it's hopeless!" If you can eliminate even one cause of fire, do it.

No experience can be termed "actual" just like there is no such thing as non-actual experience. You do understand that anything whatsoever can be negated, right? What does this say about negations? Negations are playful and ornamental. If used skillfully and judiciously, negations can be liberating. If overused, they can become addictive and dogmatic. Medicine becomes poison. Why be a one-trick pony?

Great quote. Wouldn't it be nice if you actually understood what it meant? Had you understood its meaning, you wouldn't need to quote it, you could just say the same thing even better in your own words. It's always Thussness this, Loppon Namdrol that, Dudjom Lingpa this, Padmasambhava that, etc. Get your own head fool. What if all the sutras disappeared tomorrow? Where would you be? And they will disappear. Who roared this?

From http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm Deep, eh? I bet you can't comprehend this, being the extremist that you are.

No I haven't. Why not? Because when I uprooted the source of confidence in the affirmations, it turns out I've also uprooted the source of confidence in the negations. Do negations have an established meaning with regard to affirmations? If not, then hear this, "There is self" and know that when I say it, it is true and doesn't violate what you're saying even one bit. I have gone to the point where I realize that there is no one fixed way to teach Dharma. This is why I am not a Buddhist even though I found Buddhism helpful. Thank you Buddha and fuck Buddha. Not really. You have a clear preference for negations and you fear affirmations in a rather superstitious manner.

That's not the point. First of all, one description I heard says to visualize the body as an empty balloon in the middle of which there is a fire, and the warmth emanates and spread throughout the empty balloon of the body. Another description I've read says to rub hand against hand and foot against foot, then imagine there are burning suns in the hands and feet. In every description I've read visualization and warmth are important. No description I've heard mentions split awareness. In fact, splitting awareness is generally a no-no in Buddhist practice. The idea is to unify and integrate one's vision, not to split the already-fragmented awareness further.

Yes I can become my wife. Why? For the exact same reason. Becoming is a visionary experience to begin with. It's not something more substantial than a vision. I didn't talk about universal oneness. You're just injecting that on your own. It's your axe to grind, not mine. Not exactly. It wasn't so much dissolving as transforming. Danger? What is the threat? That's first. Second, you're making emptiness into an ultimate ground. That's wrong. When you say there is no personal self and there is no impersonal self, that's setting up emptiness as an ultimate ground out of which everything arises and into which everything subsides. Wrong. Everything is empty as is. In other words my sensation of me being myself is already empty. It doesn't need to subside or dissolve for me to taste or realize emptiness. I can play that game too. "There is no Xabir typing replies to goldisheavy." There is no Xabir saying "there is no...." You repeat these things like a moron. Truly. An idiot! There is not an ounce of understanding in your moronic head. You repeat these words but you haven't owned the knowledge they stand for yet. This is evidenced by your extremism. You forget that the truth of the Dharma and all phenomena is beyond the tetralemma of "is", "is not", "neither is nor is not", "both is and is not". Beyond! So every time you say "there isn't" you're getting stuck in an extremism. Moron! Moron, moron, moron, idiot, fool, moron, moron stupid Xabir.

I think this description of tummo is very wrong and it completely contradicts everything I've read or heard about it.

I don't get your obsession Xabir. Of course mindstream have some individuality, but it's not so extreme and impenetrable. Look here: and Now, if the mindstreams were as grossly and categorically individual as you seem to imply, none of these feats would be possible. You aren't 100% you and I am not 100% me. The fact that you seem to be you in a manner that's distinct from me being me is not an established fact. It's temporary and provisional understanding and experience that depends on a certain mindset as its supporting factor. It's possible for people to merge and separate. In fact I have experienced just that myself one time. I've merged with my wife such that instead of the two of us, there was one person who was neither me nor my wife. When this experience was over, I instantly asked my wife about it and she said she felt exactly the same thing. Both of us were afraid to lose our individuality, so we didn't want to be that new person and we let it go. Had we been fearless, we could have enjoyed being a new different person whose personal history included that of two separate beings. You seem obsessed with this topic, Xabir. What are you afraid of?

People like to harp about how we should respect our parents, and I like to remind them that while parents do good things for us as kids, they are also an important source of our delusions, and if not the source, then an aggravating factor. Parents are really a mixed bag. Even the best of parents are a mixed bag. They're not some angels that we need to worship. I feel only the same compassion toward my own parents that I feel toward anyone else. I don't have a special preference for my parents. This is one of the reasons I find Confucianism and similar ideologies to be offensive and demeaning.