liminal_luke

A thought I`m having: zoom out far enough, and the distinction between developing power and developing virtue stops making sense. The things that are most worth doing require virtue; without virtue you won`t have the capacity.

X2471990, I for one am would be interested in a genuine discussion about Mo Pai and Long Men Pai. If you have something to share about the practice, how you came to it, what your experiences have been, how you recommend other Bums learn about it if they`re interested, etc...I think that discussion would be very well received. But if you`re only dropping by to tell people that they`re mistreating you -- before you`ve asked or answered any questions -- well, that`s a conversation with a lot less meat. People react the way they do because of history. Perhaps you`ll be the one to surprise us and start the really productive and inspiring conversation that this topic desserves.

Hospitality is a wonderful virtue; we should all aspire to greeterdom. I personally like to offer food and a beverage with my hellos. Today there`s plenty mo pai -- the blueberry cream is especially nice.

Mo Pai is fake! (Opps sorry, my mistake: I meant tai chi.)

all at the same time off grid and out of my mind Trump-a-doodle-do

For the sake of analysis, I like to divide bullshit into two piles: my own and other people`s. Other people`s I can`t do much about. Oh, I`ve made my complaints: I`ve stomped my feet and raised my voice; I`ve felt disgusted and contemptuous and superior and I`ve let people know just how much. And did said bullshitters clean up their act? No, they did not. (Well, sometimes a little but never in a timely manner nor to my satisfaction.) Errrr! My own bullshit, on the other hand, is my castle. I`m king of my bullshit and what I say goes. If I want to get rid of it, it`s entirely within my power -- though not easy -- to do so.

I`m signed up. Don`t want to wait for till next year though. I`ve had the idea of "collecting" a poem a day in a journal that I like. Maybe I`ll do that and also try to memorize one a week. Will start small.

When a thread is titled "about morons" you can be pretty sure the ensuing discussion will be pretty moronic. We`ve come this far without facts or proof, we might as well go for broke.

A few years back, a psychologist friend of mine tried to teach me something similar about paranoia. I was trying to convince my then- paranoid partner (he`s much better now), that spies were not following him. We`d argue endlessly about these alledged spies and none of my seemingly rational arguments made the slightest dent in his beliefs. My friend just shook her head at me and said "you`re trying to use logic; logic doesn`t work with paranoia." And it was true. None of my logical arguments ever worked, not even a little bit -- and, believe me, I gave it a good try.

Thanks for your detailed reply Sifu Terry. I heard Michael Winn lecture about immortality some years ago, so the gobbledy-gookiness of my view is likely due to my misunderstanding or misremembering. Probably not his.

I wouldn`t be so quick to say what cures cancer and what doesn`t. All sorts of people have cured cancers, including ostensibly incurable cancers, doing all sorts of things. Who here has entirely fathomed all the mysteries of the human body? Is it so hard to believe that somewhere somebody has cured cancer while perfecting their form in the cool morning air of a local park?

For being developmentally disabled? No. For being moronic? I`ve had my moments.

For sure. If developmentally disabled women are encouraged to get pregnant and give birth so some government agency can make money by selling off the resulting infants, well, that´s pretty bad. On the other hand, should we really be in the business of telling people they can´t have sex? And if that sex results in babies that the parents are not able to care for, what then? Perhaps the best case scenario is the one that Brian alludes to: that higher functioning developmentally disabled people are allowed to become not hindered from becoming parents and given extra support. I read a story once where the parent of a developmentally disabled child was asked if she would rather have had a child with normal intellectual capacity. She said that if by some miracle all the people with down´s syndrome were to disappear from the earth, that that would be a loss for humankind. While I wouldn´t wish any medical malady on any person (or family), her words ring true for me.

The word "moron" has a very strong negative connotation that I don`t think you intend. You`d probably get more conversation about this topic if it`s possible to say "developmentally disabled" instead. I think that`s the group you mean?

Hi qicat, Might not be what you`re looking for, but have you considered "intermittent fasting"? It`s the practice of eating within a particular "eating window" and fasting the rest of the time. There`s a number of ways to do it. I eat my last meal by 8pm and don`t take any calories again until noon the next day. If you google "intermittent fasting" you should find several guides with advice about the various eating/fasting schedules that people use. There are a number of researched benefits to this style of eating, and it does help people lose weight. It`s not for everyone though. (Anecdotally, men tend to find this easier than women and receive more benefit.) I like it, and believe it`s worth considering.

Hi Limahong, I don`t know if Cohen was a taoist, although I assume "hexagram" is a reference to the I Ching.

Just thinking here... I don`t improvise exactly but I do surrender -- I surrender to the form. Surrender can feel improvisational as there`s a quality of moving beyond habitual movement patterns, doing something outside the norm: in surrender we move into unknown kinesthetic or energetic territory. Take standing, for instance. If we stand long enough in any position we`ll experience resistance. The normal thing to do when we feel resistance is to stop standing. (Whew, that feels better.) But what if -- as an improvisational experiment -- we allow ourselves to sink even deeper into the pose instead. This is what an old teacher of mine used to tell me, " if you get tired, bend your knees more." What if we surrender to the place the form is trying to take us? We can approach practice playfully, with an improvisational open spirit -- and be entirely traditional at the same time.

This reminds me of the last lines of a Leonard Cohen poem, Stories of the Street The stories of the street are mine, the Spanish voices laugh. The Cadillacs go creeping now through the night and the poison gas, And I lean from my window sill in this old hotel I chose, Yes one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose. I know you've heard it's over now and war must surely come, The cities they are broke in half and the middle men are gone. But let me ask you one more time, O children of the dusk, All these hunters who are shrieking now oh do they speak for us? And where do all these highways go, now that we are free? Why are the armies marching still that were coming home to me? O lady with your legs so fine O stranger at your wheel, You are locked into your suffering and your pleasures are the seal. The age of lust is giving birth, and both the parents ask The nurse to tell them fairy tales on both sides of the glass. And now the infant with his cord is hauled in like a kite, And one eye filled with blueprints, one eye filled with night. O come with me my little one, we will find that farm And grow us grass and apples there and keep all the animals warm. And if by chance I wake at night and I ask you who I am, O take me to the slaughterhouse, I will wait there with the lamb. With one hand on the hexagram and one hand on the girl I balance on a wishing well that all men call the world. We are so small between the stars, so large against the sky, And lost among the subway crowds I try to catch your eye. Leonard Cohen

Steve, Agreed. I`m reminded of a time years ago when I`d set myself a goal to meditate for ten minutes a day. One day, for some reason I couldn`t fathom, I had tremendous resistance to the practice. I couldn`t figure it out: it was only ten minutes, why didn`t I just do it already? Finally, I sat down on my cushion to breathe and immediately burst into tears. Meditation does indeed bypass "defense mechanisms that both limit our confrontation with repressed/suppressed stimuli and maintain dysfunctional patterns of thought and behavior." I think that`s why it`s so effective for reducing stress and, in some instances, improving health. Journal writing, especially about traumatic events, can do much the same thing. In one study, patients with rheumatoid arthritis who regularly journaled about bad things that happened in their lives experienced subjective symptom improvement. Getting honest with ourselves about difficult feelings and experiences is generally good for our physical well-being. All this said, doesn`t mean it`s easy. Most people will be able to ride through the emotional discomfort that comes up from listening on a daily basis to a guided 20 minute meditation CD and be the better for it; a smaller subset of people will experience greater difficulty. In the interest of "informed consent," I think it`s reasonable that meditation instruction should come with a "warning" (too strong a word in my opinion, but something to that effect) that difficult emotions can emerge. For some few people, the practice is contraindicated. Still, there`s a huge difference between the kinds of difficulties that can be expected when casually undertaking a mindfulness for health practice and, say, hardcore meditation in a long-term retreat setting. Changes to "sense of self," for instance, that are an expected stage in vipassana practice, are very unlikely to occur to someone undertaking a mindfulness for health practice. Perhaps there`s a middle path here: a way to inform people that mindfulness for health training may cause emotional discomfort without overstating the "dangers" and scaring people away.

Hi Qicat, I looked quickly at that study (where this graph comes from?) and got the impression that the data collected about the issues mentioned comes from Buddhist practitioners, not people who are more casually taking up mindfulness meditation for health. Am I mistaken? To my mind, the distinction is a crucial one. Hardcore meditators, such as those who choose a monastic lifestyle, are very likely to experience issues. Indeed, changes to "sense of self" are part of the path. Buddhism and mindfulness-for-health are related activities but not identical. The casual mindfulness practitioner will not become enlightened or experience liberation, though their blood pressure might go down. Neither will such a person, in most instances, suffer from the kinds of impairment mentioned in the study.

Mindfulness meditation, such as that promoted by Jon Kabat-Zinn (https://www.mindfulnesscds.com/pages/about-the-author), is offered in the hopes that it will improve people`s physical and mental health. Generally speaking, it does just that. Most people who begin a modest practice of following along with a guided meditation CD for 20 to 45 minutes daily experience benefits. Such meditation may occasionally be difficult, as when increased mindfulness brings an upsetting physical or emotional circumstance into awareness, but people who persevere receive benefit. They learn to relax, and regular deep relaxation initiates a cascade of positive physiological changes. Of course what works for most people doesn`t work for everybody. It`s just like anything else. Valerian is a good herb to use if you have trouble sleeping, unless of course you happen to be one of the few people who find it stimulating. In that case, it`s wise to discontinue use of the herb. A little common sense goes a long ways A person who starts a program of mindfulness meditation and starts having negative experiences should consider stopping, or perhaps get in-person guidance for their particular situation Dosage is important. It`s one thing to follow along with a CD once daily, another to start an intense program of sitting for hours on end. The average person trying out mindfulness for health purposes is unlikely to experience kundalini, dark-night-of-the-soul phenomenon, or troublesome siddhis. Performed as directed, a mindfulness practice is a whole lot safer than taking most pharmaceutical drugs. And the side effects are generally happy ones.

It is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are they the result of previous study? Jane Austen

Mexicans love cream cheese in their sushi rolls. There`s nothing particularly Japanese about such a lunch, but it`s tasty enough. Philadelphia rolls are to Japanese food as mindfulness training is to Buddhism -- inauthentic but nice. Many people can benefit from such watered-down teachings. Mindfulness is often presented as a scientifically validated way to deal with stress; in such presentations, eastern cultural trappings are stripped away. People who would otherwise consider meditation a tad freaky are persuaded to close their eyes and breathe. In my opinion, this is all to the good.

Belief in karma generates bad karma. If bad things happen to others it`s their karma -- so why feel compassion? If good things happen to us it`s our karma (we`re entitled) -- so why feel humble?

I don`t have any answer about your specific question, just an idea. What about online programs? Depending on what you`re drawn toward, there are reputable teachers online who offer various trainings. It`s arguably not as good as in-person instruction, but perhaps a step up from trying to piece together a practice from what you hear here. Not that people here aren`t pretty wonderful -- there are a lot of expert practitioners of various systems here. But I tend to use to Daobums as a resource to find out about things, and then explore further on my own. For instance, I heard about Zapchen here and ended up working over Skype with a Zapchen practitioner for several months. I heard about Bon teachings, from Steve actually, and took several online workshops through Glidewing with a recognized teacher. If money is a factor, some teachings are available free.