goldisheavy

That's not exactly true, but there is some truth to that. Quantifying things hurts. So when you put a price on something, you quantify it. You express it as a number. That's a certain level of pretense. That pretense hurts. Egos make the pain of quantification worse than it has to be, but even without egos, expressing things and events as number-equivalents in terms of worth, has a deleterious effect. So you only speak a half-truth to begin with. Second, what is more practical? To avoid transactions done with the claims of spirituality involved? Or to avoid egos? Avoiding a business transaction is easy. Avoiding ego is not. Avoiding business transactions done to purchase and sell instructions for enlightenment is easy and practical. Avoiding ego is neither easy nor practical. Vajrasattva, do you think you have dissolved your ego?

These are not my own issues. Just look around. Wake up. Furthermore, I don't have any chakras, so I can't affect them, even if I wanted to. And I don't suggest anyone to rely on the conception of a "chakra" for anything.

Steve, you were making it sound like you could laugh your way to nirvana, and you know the reality is nowhere close. People laugh all the time and yet none of them have wisdom. Greedy and cruel people laugh too, you know? Everyone laughs. I explained this already. Are you ignoring what I am saying? I said, as long as you think there is a lot to mundane concerns, you must also think there is a lot to spiritual concerns. Mundane concerns have inertia and laughing can't touch that. How can laughter cure the belief in physicalism, for example? Laughter is good and valuable, and I will even agree with you that it's sacred. But it's not enough on its own. Sleep is an alternative to waking. That's a good one. Different kind of sleep. It's like saying that heroine only controls you if you let it. That's true in a sense. There are individuals who can take heroine any number of times and not get addicted to it. But is this good general purpose advice in our world? "Heroine makes everything feel better, so take it!" Is that good? Most people don't have the maturity for this. First, I was talking about instruction and not about providing health care. Second, there are a number of areas we consider mundane where profit motive does harm. It would be good to clean those areas up too, but I figured you guys are wimps and can't take it. So the only thing I selected for protection is the sacred. I figured I should at least protect the sacred from profit motive. Ideally education, health care, infrastructure, science, political campaigning, and probably a host of other things should be protected as well. I think the sacred is the easiest to protect because we are almost there as it is. Very few people are breaking the guidelines I am speaking of. Most people are not breaking them. And the reason I am saying all this, is to raise awareness and responsibility. So if I say heroin is addictive, and you still decide to take it, at least I hope you did so not without ample forewarning. The final decision is up to every individual, as I said in the very beginning. I just want to discuss the implications of business relationships on human relations. Business is cold and impersonal, and it's often abusive (business partners often try to trick each other). Please don't say "but business doesn't have to be like that". I am only discussing what it is like, not what it could be like. Business is fucked up. Right now. And that fucked-up-ness has tremendous inertia. And its been fucked up since before money was invented. There is a reason why most people think this is funny:

You are confused. Money or barter have a deleterious effect on relationships. Money more so than barter. Just look around.

What is pseudo-void?

You accept it on faith. I understand.

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/12/23 This is an interesting quote on the interplay of money and morals. http://www.ted.com/talks/shaffi_mather_a_n...corruption.html Here's another interesting video. I was thinking. Why wouldn't the grandma want to pay the bribe for those 3 stair$? Wouldn't she appreciate and treasure those stairs even more if she had to bribe her way to a license to build the stairs? If I listen to some of the New Age fool$ in this thread, surely that's the ca$e. Another link: This one makes it obvious how money makes everything more sacred (not).

Hi People. I like Taoist philosophy, especially Chuang Tzu. I don't have many questions.

All these insights are wonderful (at least in my opinion). Parrots are intelligent birds though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KvPN_Wt8I So the whole idea of "parroting" is kind of a misnomer.

I think some amount of "parroting" is unavoidable. But it's sad if you contemplate for 5 years and don't have even one insight of your own that doesn't sound like it was cut-n-pasted from some Sutra. I'm picking the 5 year mark purely arbitrarily. The point is that some parroting is natural but it would be sad if we were only capable of parroting and nothing more. Oh, and by the way, parrots are actually intelligent. Parrots can use what they learn in creative and intelligent ways. So even parrots are not "just parroting."

I loved the movie. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

I think this is an excellent point Stigweard. You're just scratching the surface there. You begin by allowing yourself to drift into a sacred relationship.

Who says we do? Just because I do, doesn't mean we do or you do or anyone here does. That's one. Two, if you ask me why I do, then my answer is simple: it's because I take the mundane seriously too. If I thought that mundane concerns were a joke, I may have no use for spiritual concerns either. Taking spiritual concerns seriously is an antidote only for that time when you take mundane concerns seriously. And here it is important not to lie to ourselves. I know many people deceive themselves when they think they don't take day to day life seriously. I strongly disagree. This is a trite and disingenuous thing to say in my opinion, and I have nothing against laughter or orgasms. There is no spiritual arena. There are simply different ways of thinking about life. As long as you hold a deluded view about life seriously, you must hold the antidote view also equally seriously. If you have already transcended all mundane concerns, then go ahead and don't take spiritual views seriously either, you've earned it. The greedy person feels that extra pound of cake enhances the taste of the meal. Greedy people rely on their feelings. So why do they go astray? Because their feelings are not tempered by wisdom. It's not enough to just feel something to be true. One has to study it deeply and critically. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink...motivation.html http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/454142 This just scratches the surface. The thread that runs through such studies and discoveries is that the monetary incentive perverts everything, and it especially perverts morality. And we see this all around us. Why is it that companies are running with only the short-term goals in place? Why is it that the difference between the low earners and the high earners in an average corp has increased from 30x to upwards of 400x? Why? The more we monetize our relationships, the more perverted we become. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ For most people this is what life is all about. That's exactly the problem. You think of it as service. You cannot even conceive of a sacred relationship anymore. Your ability to do that has been atrophied by money, or more specifically, by our money-oriented culture. If we don't turn around soon, sons will think of their fathers as a service. Fathers will think of their sons as an inve$$$tment, looking forward to juicy dividends, and not much more, because, after all, children are business arrangements. Business arrangements take the human warmth, the precious ambiguity, the openness, the spontaneity and the sacredness out of our relationships. Once you put a price on something, that's it. You create an equivalence. This is worth $500. It's now a number. I pay $500, it's mine, I do what I want with it, I've earned it, I paid, I am off the hook, I owe nothing. Steve f, you need to wake up. Who says it's OK? Haven't you been paying attention to what the profit motive does to health care in USA? The profit motive has utterly decimated the quality of our health care here in USA.

I do not. If I wanted to teach some mundane skill, I might "hold a course" as you say. However, if I wanted to teach something sacred, it would not occur to me to hold a course.

Here are some tips for would be teachers of the sacred who come to the West: Reject Western greed and say no to collecting money or bartering. But do accept these features of the Western culture: ------- 1. Say "hi" to the student who walks into your abode. If you are too important to say "hi", then one of your senior students should do that, if they are present in the room. 2. Offer some tea or coffee and make the person comfortable. Introduce yourself and chat for a while. 3. Do not sit on a throne. In the West we don't do thrones and for a good reason. A sacred relationship doesn't require a throne, so leave the throne back home. 4. If you are too sick to talk, but your senior student is in the room, there is no excuse for the senior student not talking in your stead. 5. Work to create a cordial, warm, open, informal, family atmosphere. It's not like it's hard work! Sometimes just getting of your fat ass is already 50% there. -------- This is my advice based on real experience I had.

That's just it. If it requires mental effort to keep mental concepts and "physical reality" separate, then you know both concepts and the so-called "physical reality", are of the mind. If physical reality was real in and of itself, it would maintain itself effortlessly and constantly and no two people would ever be in disagreement about physical qualities of anything. What we have instead is a consensual reality. Within the framework of the consensual reality we have an approximation of what looks like at first blush as "physical reality." However if you try to seriously find what exactly is "physical" in the so-called "physical reality," you can't find it. So-called "physical reality" appears physical only if you don't examine it closely. So if you don't want your illusion of physicality to break, you are better off not thinking about it too much Marblehead.

It's unfortunate, but rather than adopting to the voracious and insane greed of the Western culture, the teachers should keep their teachings to themselves instead. It's important to keep your integrity intact. If the Western people don't know how to donate and don't know what it means to be in a sacred relationship, then fuck them, or more precisely, the Western people have fucked themselves over. But at no point should a teacher, who theoretically knows better, start charging money for something that can't have a price affixed to it. I myself have visited one Dzogchen Lama. I thought he was a moron and that his teaching was deficient. I had no connection with the guy and I didn't like his students either (their eyes were dull, and their spirits were quashed, and they were mostly Asians and old white people... they attended with the sense of boredom and non-participation, and the Lama had the same attitude too, "let's just get this over with," like someone forced him to teach or something... maybe it was the only way he thought he could exist in USA? He should have just learned a trade instead, like every other immigrant) I was probably the youngest guy there and the only person whose spirit was not dead. I said fuck this and never showed up there again. But I still left an envelope with a hundred bucks in it for the teacher, even though I had no intention to return and hated the guy. Oh, and no one demanded money from me either. The teaching was offered for free, which is the proper way to offer such teaching, and that's something I did/do respect. If even one person in the West has integrity, then true teachers should refuse to accept money or barter and to proceed forming sacred relationships like it has always been done. I know I exist and I know I have integrity. Normally I don't talk about my donations, but I figured this was one appropriate time to break that rule of mine.

Little1, I only meant not paying in the sense of there being a business transaction, such a money or barter. But the student still pays in other ways: - in time - in effort - in dedication - in constancy of application - at a heart level (secret payment) - sometimes the payment is in health (loss of health to the student, or risk to life) - sometimes the payment is in the loss of worldly friends - sometimes the payment is in the loss of worldly livelihood - and sometimes the payment is in losing the ability to live the old way What I am describing here is a payment with potentially no upper limit. Some students have given up their lives during training within the context of a sacred relationship. Just because you don't exchange money or barter with eggs and apples or gold for training doesn't mean you're not paying. Not only that, but I would say if you're learning anything worthwhile at all when it comes to transcendence, expect to pay the price, but not in money or barter.

I strongly disagree. While everyone should make up one's own mind, we should also discuss this as well.

It is indeed arrogant of you.

Why would you say something stupid like that right after I said, "we all judge all the time" and "perception is judgment". Seriously. Don't be stupid brother. Why? Looks like you already did that for me. At least you think you did. I know. This is why I feel free to criticize Mohammed and long term remove him from the game. I know what I am doing. We need to move forward. 13th century was over long time ago. I have to thank our Arab brothers for giving us many good things like our numbers, and some interesting Sufis and thinkers, but Islam -- thanks but no thanks. Fuck Islam. Islam needs a serious reform at the least, but best case scenario it needs to die. After Islam is gone, I'll focus on Christianity next. Then we'll take it from there. Let's start removing this plague. It all depends. Ultimately you're not trapped, but the way you behave now, you're creating difficulties for yourself. If you don't change, you may find more problems later on than you bargain for. That's a dumb waste of words. There is no Creator the way you think. No source either. You've been deceived. God is a mind-training concept at best. It's not actually truth. At worst, as loaded as that word is, it's a lie and a deception of human spirit. Writing is what I do best. Writing is my service. It is more important and more real than the make-belief energy transmissions. I share wisdom that is priceless, for free, all the time. I always offer myself to everyone every time I write. They are one in only one sense: they are all illusions. I feel that I know them. I am Mohammed, remember? Or are you going back on your words now? They are of my blood and I will demote them and their stories, because they are hurting us. It's the most believable placebo you could find, that's all it is.

If you have been awake in class, you will know that quote about women is not Shakyamuni's words, because it's not from Pali Canon. It's the invention of Chinese. Just because something is an invention, doesn't mean it's bad. However, you must keep your mind clear about what goes where and what belongs with what. If you want to mix things for your own benefit, I think that's fine as long as you maintain high awareness of what it is you are doing. Don't delude yourself. Drew, don't call those workers Daoists, please. That's not helping you any. I think you're doing plenty good and it's good that you bring this documentary to our awareness. You don't need to add exaggerations and lies on top of it to make it better. A person doesn't have to be Daoist before I begin feeling compassion toward them. They can be atheists. It doesn't matter. And one more time: Thank you for the documentary.

As far as Gautama Buddha is concerned, yes. Since I was making statements about Gautama Buddha, I had to limit myself to Pali Canon. There is another Canon (I forget its name, but I believe it's in Sanskrit) that some consider equally authoritative when describing Gautama Buddha. As best I know, little or nothing of it is available in translation and it is more or less identical to the Pali Canon in content. I like all kinds of writings. For example, I like Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra. I wouldn't say that Gautama Buddha is associated with Vimalakirti Nirdesa though, except maybe in a very indirect and nebulous fashion.

Excellent! Knowing is a function of mind.