goldisheavy

Weak. This is the dumbest thing I've heard. Let's take the study of mathematics as a perfect example. First graders have complete access to calculus books. Sure, the teacher will not introduce calculus in class, but it is emphatically not a secret. Right away, if a certain student asks, an answer can be given pointing to the calculus material. It's not a secret at all! It's there for the taking. How many first graders want to learn calculus though? Aha! There is your answer. None! Pretty much none. It's not that it's a secret. The teacher would be happy to teach calculus to anyone who asks, but the students have to be forced to learn basic arithmetic, and never mind higher maths! The students have no interest in the material. However, those gifted students that can study calculus in the first grade have complete, full and enthusiastic access to it. Not in the closet. Not in some secret hidden cave. But right in the open where everyone in society can see. No secret at all. Right now I can pick up a topology book. I don't know topology and I am probably not ready to learn it. It's NOT a secret though! I can get it and try to understand it. If I succeed, more power to me. There is no bullshit artificial barrier between me and a complete mastery of topology. This is our way. And this way handling knowledge in an open manner is worth protecting. The Eastern way of secrecy is utter piece of crap. I am happy to borrow wisdom from the East, but I don't have to borrow crap along with the gold. I will let the Chinese and Indians keep the crap parts of their culture, while I benefit from the good parts. Thank you very much.

I think that's true to some extent. Many neighborhoods in Europe that didn't know these kinds of problems in the past, know them now. Sometimes shit floats to your shores, even if you didn't invite it.

This is actually false. Why don't you look up some statistics.

We are all involved whether we like it or not. I agree. Would you take one of the more damaged women to be your wife? Yes, it takes a lot of guts to consent to such a candid photograph. If everyone's a victim, who will take responsibility?

Unfortunately this is not the real reason for secrets. In reality, all you have to do is to give people a warning. For example, did you know that taking a bottle or two of tylenol is guaranteed to kill you? And yet you can buy it over the counter, no problem. Why? That's because we have this concept called "responsibility". We tell you how the medicine works, and what the dangers are, and we leave it up to you. Do some depressed people commit suicide via tylenol? Absolutely, they do, and it's a horrendous way to die (due to liver failure). Is this an argument for keeping tylenol a secret? No, absolutely it is not. How about simple things like kitchen knifes or matches? A single match can burn down the building. If you smoke your cigarette in bed and it falls out of your mouth as you fall asleep, you can burn down the house, kill yourself and others in it. Is it dangerous? Yes. Are matches dangerous? Yes. Are they lethal? Yes. Can suicidal people use the matches to commit suicide? YES, and they have. Can matches be used to kill others? Yes, and it's called "arson". Is that an argument to keep matches a secret? NO, it is not. We sell matches in every store. Kitchen knives. Pencils. Screw drivers. Hammers. Chain saws. Circular saws. Cars. Electricity in our homes. Our world is full of things that can kill you in the blink of an eye. And yet none of them are secret. So how do we protect people then? We do it by explaining the proper usage and dangers. And we have pictures and videos of the victims. We tell you all about it and let you decide. We let YOU take responsibility. This is our way and has been forever. So the nanny-ism is not a true reason why secrets are kept. Never. I gave the real, honest, true reasons. Read them and understand.

There is nothing special about it. However it has some benefits if you can sit in it comfortably: 1. You can sit in it for a long time. It is very stable and comfortable, if you are trained in the pose. If you need to meditate for many days at a time, it might be the 2nd best pose (lying down is the best, imo, if you need to go that deep). 2. It's tool-less. Unlike some other poses, it doesn't need tools or furniture to be comfortable. This is only true for those who have mastered the pose though. It's obviously false if your legs hurt in full lotus. 3. It's relatively safe. Meaning, if you get into a strange state of mind, and your body falls over, it doesn't have far to go before it hits the ground (not as safe as lying down though). The drawback to lying down is that for some people it triggers the sleep reflex. Full lotus is a nice balance between alertness and safety. Lying down is safer, but is more likely to get you sleepy. Sleepiness can be overcome though. Any pose requires training. If you lay down, you need to train to overcome drowsiness. If you sit in full lotus, you need to train to overcome the pain in the legs. Other than that, there is no magical or special benefit to it at all. You can sit in a chair, or sit in any which way. It's all fine. What really matters in meditation is your point of view, your beliefs, your intention, and your attention. The body follows naturally, like a shadow. If you attend your mind, the body follows. But if you attend your body, then both the body and the mind will be disturbed. The body is important only because it's a manifestation of the mind. Other than that it has no importance whatsoever. The mind is the Lord in meditation. All your attention and diligence have to be focused in the mind.

Right on the first paragraph me and you part ways. In my opinion, your commentary is of limited value (and for me, it is useless altogether). Quoting: "How is it possible to define the vital essence of the universe? It is too broad and vast to be confined in a word or concept. It is too limitless to be understood by our limited intellectual capabilities. It is eternal, while the self is ephemeral. It is anything and everything, while the self is finite." First, of all, how do you know your intellect is limited? To know this, you must know something beyond the limits of the intellect, and no such thing exists at all. Intellect is not what you think it is. Discard your assumptions about the intellect and have another, fresh look -- that's my advice to you. How do you know the self is finite? Have you bumped into a wall within yourself? I surely haven't found a limit of myself. So right away we disagree on very basic points. You make too many old and tired assumptions. Boring. Useless. Canned. Been done a million times before. Why not say something fresh? Don't you get tired of chewing the same fucking cod for centuries? Ok, 'nuff said. P.S.: I do commend you on releasing your book in the way that you did. That's very good and praiseworthy in my opinion. I wish more people did that.

There are many reasons. None of the reasons include protecting the general population. They are all selfish reasons. 1. Self-preservation #1: In many countries, if you did not toe the predominant religious line, you could easily be killed. And not just you, but your family as well. So for the sake of self-preservation, many practices and knowledge were kept secret. A lot of the secret knowledge is considered "heretical" in its homeland. 2. To maintain an aura of exclusivity and scarcity, thus boosting value and demand. Untrained worldly people always want to know secrets. 3. To avoid criticism: People cannot criticize that which they cannot hear or see. Avoiding criticism helps to maintain your brand. 4. Self-preservation #2: Fear of your own knowledge being used against you. Some knowledge and techniques are truly effective, which is to say, they can be used for homicide. I might sometimes not want to give you a loaded gun if I think there is a chance you might use that same gun to shoot me. This is self-preservation and fear again. Lack of trust in people's intentions. That's pretty much it.

You seem like a sane person, and your desires appear reasonable and achievable. Therefore you should have no problem reaching your goal. The real problem I guess is that you don't know what you want to do as a profession. Profession is about exchanging value. If you do something of value for others, you get some value back from society/others. That's all it is. We tend to be good at things we enjoy doing. And if you enjoy doing something that you're not currently good at, you almost always become good at it sooner rather than later. Therefore, the most valuable thing you can do for others is also, very likely, the thing you enjoy doing. This makes it sound like there is one thing, but that's not true. You most likely enjoy many activities. Ultimately being good at something is what matters to others when they want to get value from you, but if you are good at something that you do not enjoy, this puts a constant strain on your life -- this is like going against the grain. It's doable, but most people prefer better options (like being good at something you also enjoy doing). Another reason people will trade is to avoid a boring activity. It is especially fortuitous if what's boring to one is exciting to another. However if some activity is boring to everyone, even though there is value in doing it for others, it is always going to be hard. So you said you like writing. Maybe you should seek employment in that area? Try writing a blog, or a newsletter? Become an English tutor? Cooperate with a budding game designer to write some role playing game copy? Write custom copy for cards (a lot of Hallmark cards are boring... can you do better? Someone might want to pay you for it)? Dream a bit. What other skillful activities do you enjoy doing? Here I was just chasing the writing aspect a bit, but I am sure you have other potentials too. You can chase those to get a lot more variety. Like I said, dream a bit. It seems like your question has 90% of the answer already in it. Why don't you reread your question and see if your answer is not already in it.

durkhrod chogori, How long do you want to live? Don't give a fear-based answer, but try to look at your life from the point of view of pure enjoyment. In other words, imagine that upon death you will be transported into a very good and happy place (this is in order to take fear out of equation, and not because it's necessarily true). Now with this in mind, I ask you, how long do you want to be here on this planet? Don't try to intellectualize. Just hit the first answer that jumps out from your core. Your life will be within that order of magnitude. It may be plus or minus 30% or even 50%, and plus or minus various accidents and strange events, but mostly it is however long you really want to be here. That's my view. In my view, birth and death are intentional. Now how would energy practice change this? In my opinion, it wouldn't change this unless you had an unpleasant body that made living miserable that you later healed with some energy practice. However, if your body is already pleasant to be in, you are not likely to extend your life much with such practice, in my opinion. Living on Earth has more to do with purpose than with the body. If you examine all the long-living people, by the end of their lives, most of them had meaningless and useless lives. They were passive and mentally near-dead, not learning anything new, pretty much just existing. One has to wonder if they were not simply stubbornly clinging to life. Consider a different realm. There is a realm where it takes 90 years to become an adult. It takes that long to absorb all that you need to know to survive on your own. How long do you think you will live then? You will live much longer. You will live about 300-400 years in that case. In the past, you would become an adult at 13. Now we consider people to be kids even at 25 sometimes. This indicates increased longevity. Energy practice cannot even begin to touch this fact. There are energies far deeper and more profound than those you can tinker with in energy practice. For example, can you become a child? And I don't mean reducing wrinkles of feeling better, I mean, can you shrink your body to that of a child with energy practice? No? Then you don't have the kind of control you need to live arbitrarily long, or to even live 500 years. If you get your practice to the point where you cast no shadow and you can go through walls, maybe then you can live 1000 years, if you don't get bored first (highly debatable). So, I wouldn't say it's impossible to live very long, but there is time and season for all things. There are realms where 10000 year lives are normal. Now why try to jump over your own knees? Why not enjoy your natural life span? Death is not a curse. Make every day count.

You are more likely to kick the bucket in a car accident, or from a flu, than by being hit with a Planet X. Ok, being hit with Planet X is possible, but so what? All kinds of weird stuff is possible. Are you going to worry about it? At some point you should recognize that worrying doesn't improve life. Prepare for obvious things, like winters and droughts, prepare yourself for an earthquake or a tornado if you live in the affected area, take some basic precautions, and leave it at that. I got news for you: nothing will happen on 2012. I looked into my crystal ball. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. If we are lucky people will be slightly more mature and more compassionate in 2012. That's about it. Sorry to disappoint with such a boring and anticlimactic post.

Whoever was trying to point out your weight haven't reach Zhuangzi. Right there it has an example of a person whose organs are bulging out, and yet they are given as examples of mastery: "There's Crippled Shu - chin stuck down in his navel, shoulders up above his head, pigtail pointing at the sky, his five organs on the top, his two thighs pressing his ribs. By sewing and washing, he gets enough to fill his mouth; by handling a winnow and sifting out the good grain, he makes enough to feed ten people. When the authorities call out the troops, he stands in the crowd waving good-by; when they get up a big work party, they pass him over because he's a chronic invalid. And when they are doling out grain to the ailing, he gets three big measures and ten bundles of firewood. With a crippled body, he's still able to look after himself and finish out the years Heaven gave him. How much better, then, if he had crippled virtue!" This is one (sucky, but available for free) translation from http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html There are other similar examples where regular and seemingly imperfect people are shown as examples. Still, having a healthy weight is not a bad thing either.

It happens sometimes when I am too tense. As soon as I relax, it goes away. I do not recommend you dwell on it, because that doesn't help it go away. You shouldn't try too hard to ignore it either, but don't spend extra time on the sensation. If your attention drifts to it, that's OK. Just move your attention to something else, preferably something you enjoy or need. Sometimes you need to relax for a while, before twitching goes away. If you have trouble relaxing on your own, I recommend a hypnotic relaxation tape/MP3. I purchased some for myself and they worked a miracle when I was in severe pain. Better than percoset/vicadin. If you want to go the whole hog, you can learn self-hypnosis, that's even better. Good news is that this kind of problem should be easy to overcome. Ringing in your year could be from thinking too much or thinking too hard. It could also be from listening to loud music or being in a noisy environment. Try to focus on sounds you care about instead of the ringing noise -- this should help. If you focus on the noise, it gets louder and more pronounced. Also be careful associating ideas with these kinds of phenomena. If you truly enjoy this twitching, go ahead and associate it with something positive. But if you want to get rid of it, don't associate it with anything good, or it will make it hard for you to get rid of it, because we don't want to get rid of things we consider good.

yes we do

This means your method is utterly useless and is not applicable under any circumstances. In fact, if you applied your method, you couldn't be certain it was yours, or even a method, since you would have needed to practice it to know that, but before you could practice it, you would have had to learn it, which is impossible without practice. So it is obvious that your method is inscrutable, not subject to analysis, impossible to follow, and is therefore perfectly useless to most people. So your target market with this method is 1-5 people on the entire planet. Good luck.

For me, this video was neither here nor there, but then I followed links on youtube to your other videos where you describe some of your experiences and those were more interesting to watch. I disagree with your statement that this place is not real while some other place is real. This place is a result of certain conditions in the mind, and what you refer to as, possibly paraphrased, "other eternal place" is no different from this place -- it is also a result of conditions in the mind, and it is no more real. Just recall your practice. In your practice you have managed to change your state of mind. This resulted in a change of perception. So for a while you had an unusual (from our POV) experience, the transparent earth, the light inside the trees and yourself, and so forth. You could see all that because the conditions have allowed you to see it. As soon as those conditions changed, you couldn't see it anymore. So why would you then call that vision eternal and this vision illusion? It doesn't seem right. The only thing that I can think of is bias. You like the vision that arose during your practice so much more than what you see in "normal" day to day waking, that you like to think it is eternal, and this vision here, the one that you dislike, is hopefully temporary, eh? Other than this line of thinking, I can't imagine what would prompt you to describe your spiritual visions as evidence of eternity, when in fact, those visions were not static and were changing as much as anything ever is changing. From my point of view, you have a very flexible (in a good way) mind, but not enough wisdom. In other words, you don't examine your experience critically, you just like to play with it. This leads you to making unwarranted statements (like calling some vision or some realm "eternal").

This approach is called "reductionist thinking" and a physicalist or a philosophical materialist doctrine is one of the children of such approach. Rather than enlightening us, this approach is what prevents us from seeing clearly. For example, materialists believe that matter is the common denominator in all existence. Therefore materialists approach every problem as a material problem. For example, you have a headache? You take a pill. Headache is a material problem with the matter of the brain and the matter in the pill solves it. You are a crazy person? You take a pill. You can't do your homework? You take a pill. That's an example of the effect that materialism has, when taken seriously, upon one's life. Materialism is also the guiding "light" behind much of science, at least in years past. Why do you think that your newfound understanding doesn't have the same flaws as all other reductionist approaches of the past? Perhaps you believe that reductionism is not a bad approach. Please give one concrete example from your day to day life where your newfound understanding improves your life in a significant way. Please do not be vague. Ah, don't you see, that's the whole problem right there. If I could take two steps forward, I already would. If I don't, it means, at the very least, I am having difficulty taking those steps. Imagine that the entire humanity is two steps behind you. What does this mean? It means you are useless to humanity. It means you cannot connect to anyone. You cannot be understood by anyone. You cannot have an intelligent discussion with anyone. You cannot help anyone. All the converses are true as well. No one can help you. You are on you own. Being two steps ahead of everyone makes you into an island. Do you want to be an island? Why would having greater understanding cut you off from lesser understanding? Greater understanding includes lesser understanding. If your supposedly "greater" understanding cannot include lesser understanding into it, then it's not really greater, it is just different. Since you invited questions from normal people, you need to be ready to answer them. I gave you a mix of questions. I gave you some arcane and some down to earth questions. I found that you were utterly unable to answer a down to earth question about societal engagement for example, and that's very poor form for someone who invites questions from all comers. I would forgive you if you had nothing to say about the arcane questions but if you at least could talk about the social issues intelligently. But since you can't even understand that little, and never mind the arcane questions, I doubt the value of your insight.

Exactly. I think Ohm-Nei is better off sharing his truth here, however crazy it sounds, than keeping it strictly to himself. Furthermore, if you believe anything I say is wrong or less than ideal, you are welcome to comment. I welcome criticism. You can call me a moron if it pleases you, and that's fine too, but I do prefer if you could at least sometimes point out gaps in my reasoning. My response to Ohm-Nei is not the strongest or best response possible, but I was leaving it to Ohm-Nei to notice the flaws.

No joke. At the same time, if you intend to help people, you have to know how they think and what problem they experience. And most people rely on convention, namely, they rely on the need for "independent" verification.

What do you think this understanding looks and feels like? Obviously it's not like memorizing a library worth of facts, right? So what is it? This doesn't mean anything, right? What is the point of saying this kind of stuff? When you talk, you have to connect to what the person knows, and you're not doing that here. Here you went off the cliff talking about stuff that has no meaning to a normal person. The world is not physical, but people commonly think it is. Questions arise due to our conventional mentality and the discrepancies we feel either within our own understanding or between what we currently understand and what's being told to us. This stuff doesn't mean anything. You're not making any attempt to understand concerns as they arise within conventional mindset. And if you ever want to be skillful, you must understand how regular people think about the world. What I see here is that you don't give a rat's ass about how anyone thinks and you only think thoughts that seem pleasant to you. You have to be able to intelligently critique science. For example, you can try examining some assumptions that science makes. However, if you just wave your hands in the air talking how "science is not the answer" you are wasting your and other people's time. Your speech needs to firmly connect to the current understanding, even if the current understanding is wrong. You need to know exactly what is wrong with it and be able to express it convincingly. There is no problem with not knowing everything, but I hope you try to improve your approach. Namely, if you want to be perceived as relevant in this realm, you must understand this realm right here, understand the common ways of thinking and be able to talk in a way that is perceived to be relevant. Even if you know things beyond the common way of thinking, the people you talk to have to hear you address their way of thinking. So for example, let's say there is a pool of water and I am trying to move it. Let's say I try to use a cup to move it, but I am holding the cup upside down, so that I always fail to fill the cup with water. Now, maybe you know that actually I shouldn't try to move the water at all, because right at the place I want to move the water to, there is water there. However, the reason I want to move the pool is because it's not obvious to me that the water exists at the destination. So if you just make a claim that the water already exists at my destination, you're ignoring my current state of mind. I don't believe it exists, that's why I am moving the pool of water. My perceived problem is that I can't seem to be able to fill the cup, and you're not helping me with my problem when you talk about other water elsewhere, see? So whatever you say, you have to make sure it appears sane and relevant to me. This means you must have some idea of what I am thinking before you begin speaking. If being helpful is not important to you, forget what I am saying and just enjoy yourself. But if you want to appear helpful, you cannot ignore what other people are thinking before you start talking to them.

Oh my.... You take yourself so seriously. First of all, I don't recall seeing this guy appointing himself a master. He simply declared that he felt he could answer any question and invited questions. There is nothing wrong with that. You have to attempt to make a stand. And that's what this guy did, and for this he deserves some respect. You on the other hand have never attempted to stand on your own. Fiveelementtao, maybe you can answer my questions? Feel free, "master".

http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_end...d_cultures.html I loved this talk. Hope you might enjoy it too.

I agree. We have a lot of prejudices. Like we believe ourselves to be smarter and better than animals. We think our culture is the best. As part of the me-centric outlook we include our culture into the bigger me. So the small me is the body, the person, and the big me is the culture I come from, my country, etc. All that stuff is the center of the universe and is the best there is. What else is interesting is how homogeneous most of our culture is too. All the Judeo-Christian cultures are very similar compared to some of the cultures mentioned in the video. What's ironic is how people get into sectarian behaviors and fight to the death even within a supposedly single religion and culture, while in reality there exist cultures so vastly different, that these people couldn't even conceive of them. So two people with minute differences fight as if it's an enormous difference while the real enormous differences are ignored and for all intents and purposes appear non-existent to the sectarians. I think some things in our culture are pretty good, but not everything. I think we can learn a lot from all the diverse cultures mentioned in that video. I liked the story of the guy using his shit to make a blade. That's just awesome. To us it would probably be thinking outside the box, but to those people it's probably normal. Our box seems very small to my mind.

What I don't like in monologues like this is that they confuse the ultimate groundlessness for falsity. In other words, there is no grounds to believe anything, but that does not mean that those beliefs are false. In order to believe something is false, you must have grounds for that, but the ground is missing at the ultimate level of investigation. I suppose this is a subtle error and can be forgiven, but it's an important error to overcome. Truth exists where falsity exists. If there is nothing that can be considered true, there is nothing that can be considered false. It's important to distinguish groundlessness from falsity because groundlessness is very spacious and accommodating. It's not a rejection like falsity is. When you say something is false, you reject it. When you say something is groundless you do not reject, you simply state a certain mysterious quality, namely, the quality that if you investigate something for its basis, you cannot find those basis. Groundlessness is creative and peaceful. It's not a rejection like claiming stuff to be false. It's not a non-rejection either. It is beyond positions and open to all positions. It's like a clean white piece of paper upon which you can draw, write a poem, write prose, write nonsense, or tear it in half -- it is accommodating to all of that and more. White piece of paper does not reject poems simply because it offers them no specific support. White piece of paper is just as happy being white piece of paper as it is being one with a poem or one with a splotch on it, or being torn in half. It doesn't have its own opinion and welcomes our creativity. But since it includes us on its pages, it kind of has its own opinion too... or more like, it's own opinions, but those opinions rise and fall and shift and turn and swirl in a creative dance and never do they stay still and never are they completely coherent. And lucky7 makes the same error as Jed by going with a rejectionism of claiming everything to be false.