goldisheavy

All powers are supernatural. For example breathing is a supernatural power and yet you don't mind breathing and do not feel ashamed. Having dreams is a supernatural power too. But you don't mind that. On one hand, it's natural to want proof. And I don't think it's wrong. On the other hand, if you chase results without paying attention to the big picture, you will be disappointed. For a crude example, say you like some ice cream and you quickly go and grab it. Then you realize wait a second, I am still unhappy. I need to get me some DVDs to watch. You grab those and watch them and then realize that wasn't quite it. This is what happens if you pay attention to details but not the big picture. Why? Because you don't pay any mind to the true nature of your unsatisfaction, and jump at the first impulse that you believe will alleviate unsatisfaction. And you know what? Sometimes going with your first impulse works! That's the real problem. Since the pattern of failure is not consistent, there is no clear signal to stop chasing little concrete temporary forms of satisfaction. I am not saying this to put anything down. DVDs are fine and ice cream is great, there is no problem. But it helps to be in tune with the big picture. Have a big mind. Have a vast mind. Have a vast heart. Not the size of a peanut, but vast. I think if you even just pay a little attention to the big picture, to vastness, your worry about this or that power will vanish, because you'll be able to place such happenings within a big picture, know how and when they fit, what they do and don't do, etc... and not be either enthralled nor scared nor ashamed of the powers and have a natural and healthy relationship with all types of manifestations. I hope this makes some sense.

It seems you equate physicality with existence. Bad mistake. What is physicality to you? I have a feeling that you rely on a non-standard definition of physicality. When I appear as a dream body inside a dream, do I exist, even though the dream contents are not physical? You can think of me what you want, but I still think you're greatly deluded.

And the flip side: who or what is choiceless? Never forget the flip side! Yes. If you follow the straight road you eventually come to a fork in the road. Once you make your choice, you can be on a straight road again, for a very long time. In other words, calamity is not the end. I like how you put this. However, is liberation a deconstruction of ritual or is it becoming responsible for the ritual, where dismantling is one option, change is another, and conscious status quo is yet another option? For liberation to be real, deconstruction must be "on the table" as they say, but is deconstruction of convention alone what liberation is? I love what you're saying here. I would say that, as crazy as it sounds, you can "go back" so to speak. But going back will be a similar kind of path, with similar commitment as going forward has been. Backward and forward... funny words. No one is stuck. I disagree with whoever says that withered flowers cannot bloom again.

I think the alchemical methods are not necessarily Taoist. I wouldn't say they are un-Taoist or against Tao either. But Taoism as defined by the 3 sages is a contemplative tradition and not an energy cultivation tradition. There is not a word about energy cultivation or qi/jing/shen in Daodejing, Zhuangzi or Liezi, and there is a good reason for it. And it's not because it's "secret." Even if you go with Hua Hu Ching, which I personally do not think was authored by Laozi, you get this picture: From http://www.abuddhistlibrary.com/Buddhism/H...0Hu%20Ching.htm Observe how much broader this is than just qi/jing/shen cultivation. When was the last time you heard a Bi Gu discussion? When was the last time you heard something about Sau Yi on this forum? When was the last time you heard of Tai Syi or Chwun Shi? That's right. Never heard of them around these parts. All you hear is qi/jing/shen in the context of qi gong and tai chi chuan. And then this becomes thought of as "*the* taoist practice". That's very very wrong. Ok, but those things that are clear are not helping you to become a Taoist immortal though. You might be working hard to becoming a sophisticated ghost with lots of bells and whistles at your disposal. And please don't take this as a put down. I think ghosts are cool and I have nothing against them. Just that when you go to buy a chocolate, make sure you don't walk away with ice cream. Know what you're after. This sounds like total bullshit. For example the phrase "condensed and clearer Mind" has no meaning whatsoever. It's obvious you haven't contemplated the implications. Taoism is better than Buddhism because it has a sense of humor and is less formal. But being clear is not it. Read Zhuang Zi or Laozi. Neither of them praise clarity. Please examine these: http://ariyavansa.org/dc-home/dc-020/ http://darist.tripod.com/Temple-of-the-Eas...TAO-TTC-20.html Notice something? Laozi is trying to reach into your thick and ignorant skull there, but apparently he can't.

I don't want to distract the conversation, but I wanted to mention that I believe you all got trolled in the classical sense of the word. The person (can't even be sure it's a real woman) who posted this thread at the beginning has only made a total of 3 posts on this forum. So this person comes in, throws in a proposition to get you guys all excited and talkative and leaves. Obvious troll tactic in the classical sense. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29 "In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." What makes it a troll is that if the proposition is sincere, the person who started the topic would stick around to discuss it. But as it stands, it looks like this was done for laughs.

And I am not attacking you Steve, OK? I just want to ask some counter questions. Why do we care what happens tomorrow? Or in the future, in general? This is the same question as above. Does it have to be this black or white?

People need to relax. How is this different from calling yourself "Batman"? It's not. Your life is not disturbed in any way.

It's not any more possible than to know what will happen tomorrow. Can you know what will happen tomorrow to you? If yes, you can also know what will happen after death. It's the same kind of activity -- prognostication, projection, guesstimate, educated guess, intuition, whatever you want to call it. Funny thing is, people feel free to talk about tomorrow as if they have already been in the tomorrow, which is obviously false.

I must say you are thoroughly deluded. First of all, people do not go to caves after achieving "awareness". They go to the cave because they want to achieve it in the cave, during practicing and living in the cave. Second, the perception of physicality is not ultimately real. Physicality has a temporary reality given certain conditions in the mind. These conditions can stay for a long time, but they aren't permanent. Of course it is common knowledge that if you don't question something, anything, that something appears to be true. This something can be anything: it can be physicalism, religion, scientific beliefs of the time, whatever. Dogma comes in all shapes. Not all dogma is spelled out explicitly. Some dogma is implicit, silent. Dogma is that which we do not question; there is no requirement that dogma be written down somewhere. It's a doctrine. But a doctrine doesn't have to be written down. Actions represent beliefs. So your actions talk about your dogmas to anyone who would hear (hopefully yourself). Third, there is no such thing as "the manifest" that you can immerse yourself into. That's utter and total bullshit. When we say something is manifest we mean it currently appears. It's not THE MANIFEST, like some golden God on a pedestal. It's not like that. Manifestations are clear appearances. They are not golden or wonderful or to be immersed into. The entire reason why people are caught in samsara is because they immerse themselves uncritically in appearances. Appearances are not inherently bad, but if you uncritically immerse yourself in them, you get bad and disappointing results in short order. Why? Because appearances are not self-consistent and they are not stable. It's like building a house on a swamp. If you are 1 in a million human who enjoys instability, what I am saying here doesn't apply to you -- enjoy your house on a swamp. Cognizance works with both manifest and unmanifest at the same time. For example, when you feel light, you know what it means to feel light because you also know what it means to feel heavy. So even though heaviness doesn't manifest, you can perceive lightness manifest because you KNOW what heaviness is. In other words, unmanifest contextualizes the manifest. The manifest has no meaning solely on its own. Unmanifest constantly informs the manifest. And unmanifest is not some blank void, it is potential for what could be manifest, but is currently not. It's not blank nothingness. A wise person understand and gives proper importance to both manifest and unmanifest. To both what currently appears and to what else can appear. You need this to be creative and to enjoy life.

I agree. I disagree. Can you elaborate? What is your complaint, more specifically? Can you explain a situation where there could be harm caused by the last paragraph? In any case, what I say is not dogma. It's just my opinion.

This one is great to remember too.

Too bad. Mike is wrong. The reason he is wrong is that nothing ever enters into an extreme of any kind. For example, a fool is not extremely foolish -- had this been the case, there'd be no hope for wisdom. A sick person is not in the extreme of sickness -- had this been the case, there'd be no hope for healing. A wise person is not in the extreme of wisdom -- had this been the case, vigilance would no longer be necessary. A Buddha is not in the extreme of Buddhahood -- had this been the case, there would be no people like Vimalakirti. You see, when we appear to be out of control, we are never totally out of control. Conversely when we appear in control, we are never totally in control. Why not? Because to claim that some or other condition has gained totality is to denounce hidden unmanifest potential. It also amounts to claiming that identity (which you would need to rely on to identify the condition) is stable and substantial.

Buddha has specifically denounced this line of thinking.

Not even close. It's precisely because people believe everything is clear-cut that they cannot perceive the spirit in the first place. "Clear-cut" is a feeling that a non-contemplative and non-inquisitive person has. Anyone who has bothered to think more than 5 minutes about any topic can see how there is nothing clear-cut. If chair is just a chair, and this is clear-cut, and if the body is just a body, and this too is clear-cut, and if you are just you, and that's clear-cut, the spirit is a little something extra, a little something unnecessary.

Oh yea... good catch there with "father".

This is largely a misunderstanding of those traditions. If you read the primary sources carefully, I am pretty sure you'll come away with a different opinion. But people in our culture like reductionism. We like to summarize and reduce everything into a soundbite. Unfortunately, the soundbite is both wrong and easy to memorize for the same reason: it lacks subtlety and nuance that a longer and more correct exposition would have. Longer expositions are more correct, but pretty much impossible to memorize. So what gets a lot of cultural circulation is the castrated version. Someone remembers, "Buddhism = dropping of the I" and just goes around saying that, and soon the popular impression of Buddhism is formed. I'm using "Buddhism" as just one example, I don't mean to imply that you're a Buddhist. The "I" has good and bad points. The "I" is our preferences and beliefs. Because of our preferences and beliefs we can feel things like joy and even bliss, but at the same time, those same forces are responsible for feelings of anguish and despair. For example, if I like ice cream, and you give it to me, I feel elated. If I am eating the ice cream I like and you come along and take it away, I hate it. So preferences have this quality. Unfortunately it's impossible to live without preferences. For example, not having any preferences is itself a preference. Meditating in the cave is a preference. Light body is a preference. Enlightenment is a preference. Preferences are everywhere and if you think you don't have them, you are deluded, even if others call you "Buddha". Even Buddha had preferences -- millions of them. So if you understand that preferences can be transformed but not gotten rid of, and if you understand the "I" to be made up of preferences, then you understand that the "I" cannot be gotten rid of. You can transform it though. It's the source of stability and instability at the same time. When things are calm it's the source of stability. When things are turbulent, it's the source of worry and instability. It's not only this or only that. The impact of identity depends on situation. You are good. Take care of yourself.

OK, so you have heard. This is fine. Just be aware of what is hearsay and what is not. We necessarily take all kinds of things without demanding proof, and normally it doesn't matter. But if you're a student of life, it begins to matter.

Depends on what you mean by "effortless", but my answer is 99.9% "no" because of the word "universally". Meditation is a blanket term that encompasses many approaches, and some of them involve effort and others do not. This depends on your culture. If you didn't grow up taking it for granted that "chi" exists, then you have to will it to exist (or more like align your mind with an idea that perceiving chi is natural, but you take chi to "have always existed" and it's just now you're starting to pay attention, even though in some sense you're willing certain experiences into existence as confirmation of it). It's like the culture of science. Imagine coming from a tribe that exclusively relies on insubstantial understanding of life. When you first encounter a scientist and the products of scientific culture, it might look like a bizarre and hard to believe magic trick. When you "do" science for the first time, it may seem to you like a real mental effort, like willing science into existence, because it's not yet a natural way of life for you. I hope you can imagine this scenario, because if not, then it's very hard to give an example that shows how your current culture can be seen as preposterous from another culture, because we take our culture to be the only possible one, "things as they truly are", and all that.

Do you know or have you merely heard? There is a difference. If you realize what rainbow body is, the practices should be obvious. Rainbow body is a body of reality that's been made flexible. Without this flexibility, you could say that all sentient beings have a rainbow body. What inhibits flexibility in your body of reality? Isn't it obvious? What has force to structure your perceived reality? Mind. What has force to structure mind? Beliefs.

It's not that simple. One's way of life has a certain habit to it. Inertia. This inertia is lodged within each one of the many of interlocking and mutually supportive beliefs about reality. Therefore simply questioning "who am I" is not enough to address this tendency, because while you can have a taste of something interesting that way, the weight of the implication will not be heavy enough to move or transform the beliefs significantly. The end result will be the same way of life as before, but only with an overarching feeling of "awareness" tacked on. In other words, this one's a dud batman. Alone? What is alone? Your thought here seems to be deluded. Alone from what? It's not like awareness is understood to be separate from phenomena. It's impossible to realize awareness but at the same time to fail to realize its quality of living shimeringness. Awareness is never like some vacuous, dead and clinically sterile subject that is observing living and filthy dirty objects. It's not like that at all. Anyone who realizes awareness realizes this too. If you overcome seeing awareness as one of the objects, it is impossible then to see it as something with qualities of its own. Awareness is the fact that any qualities (including sometimes the quality of the absence of qualities) are experienced, but it's more than that too. It's the living field of meaning. Or you can say it's the field of living meaning. Not static meaning. Not dead meaning. Living meaning. Think of the implications. And this field's life is your life and is all life. And calling it a "field" is just a way to get started. Awareness is definitely not like a field, because that would be too limiting to say such a thing. This should be one single step. As a wise man said, "You cannot cross the chasm in two steps." It's a single step. However this step is not real unless the implications of it are real in one's life. If your life before and after realization is the same, the realization is worthless. If you chop wood carry water before and after, the realization has been wasted on you. If you realize something about wood and as a result you can build a better violin than before your realization, that's what I call a worthwhile realization. If your realization has no practical application, it's a waste.

The point of chi gong practice is to eventually learn about the power of the mind. Are you learning something? Or are you still being as dogmatic as ever, as unquestioning as ever? Do you have an "aha" moment there or do you go "Ok, I am following the steps here, I have no idea what I am doing or why... I hope this is OK???!?!?!?!?!" If it's the second one, that's very bad. In the second case you're not the owner of the process. You're just a fool who follows blindly. What are you following? Why are you following? What benefit do you expect? These would be my questions to such a fool. On the other hand, if you know what you want, how can you possibly NOT be the right man to assess the dangers? All worthwhile activities have associated dangers. Even taking a crap is dangerous. However, you know you need to take a crap because you know what will happen if you don't. It's that simple. So if you're doing it for a good reason, with correct motivation, you will be in the best position to assess the danger. If you're just following blindly, then all your life will be full of great danger and this is no different from anything else you get stuck doing. Yi (intent) guides chi (life force). Intent is conditioned by one's state of mind. One's state of mind can be said to be a network of deeply held beliefs about the core of reality. Look for danger there.

It's because we see first-hand how important the contents of the mind are. You're using a computer to say this. The computer is product of mind. That's just one example. Ah, but the very same flimsy evidence supports the thesis that what you call "physical reality" is real. It's not fair to look critically at one side of the equation but then look favorably on another. Look equally critically at both, or look equally favorably at both, and see what happens. It's not easy to break the stereotypes. Expectations of cultures, the cultural norms, those are not trivial to ignore or to manipulate. Most people want to preserve their dream personality while in the dream too. If you're dreaming that you're being chased by a monster, don't you run away in the dream? People fear the dissolution of what it is they believe they are, and this "what it is they believe they are" does not have to be physical, and I will say, it's not physical. So this preservation instinct has nothing to do with physicality. It's like a painter who wouldn't enjoy another painter walking up to her favorite painting and splashing some paint on it. The fear isn't physical. It's a fear of losing identity.

It will depend on your belief system. If you don't believe in chi, obviously accumulating chi is nonsense and then it all comes down to physical strength, youth and all that. This master spent so much time in meditation. Clearly he believed in something different than say your average materialist. His actions are consistent with his beliefs, which means his beliefs are sincere. So for a man like that, his statement is totally correct. For him it is all about chi. It's hard to talk about this because people like to generalize everything into one common reality and that's too constraining, in my opinion. So that's why I think that statements like this can be true or false depending on conditions and not "only true" or "only false". The real question is this: Do you want martial prowess to only depend on chi? Do you want it? That's the real question. Not "how it is" but "what do you want to be true". Now, some people think that what you want to be true is irrelevant and that there is only one objective truth. I beg to differ. I think what you want to be true is more important than any idea of any objective truth.

Stig, the model you present assumes that subject truly is separate from the object.