liminal_luke

OK, I`ll take a stab at desire vs yearning. To me, yearning has a purity that is missing from garden-variety desire. Right now I`m desiring asada tacos from the taqueria next door but my wanting doesn`t rise to the level of yearning. When we yearn, we put all of ourselves into the wanting and that total commitment gives the yearning a burning, poetic quality that is missing from mere desire. Buddhists talk about desire leading to suffering because desire is of the ego. But when desire reaches a fever pitch, as in yearning, I believe that it can actually burn away the ego. Our yearning is so great that the ego is obliterated in the intensity of the emotion. Yearn for more. ...don't linger in any spiritual benefit you have gained, but yearn for more, like one suffering from illness whose thirst for water is never quenched... Rumi

I used to desire a lot until I read about Buddhism and learned that desire leads to suffering. Now I only yearn. Occasionally, I`ll covet.

You`re alright, Everything. You`re alright.

I suspect you read Everything. Personally, I don`t have time or the inclination to read Everything and prefer to read bits and pieces. Some Nungali here, some Thelerner there. I tried to read Everything once and my mind exploded. Won`t make that mistake again.

One of my best friends says he`s so undesirable that even "an escapee from the Braille Institute" wouldn`t want him. I don`t have much experience with actual sungazing, but the closed eye practice from Chi Nei Tsang is great. Very mellowing. https://www.chineitsangnow.com/sunning.html

I appreciate your pointing out the mistake in my initial post. It`s impossible to "err on the side of respect" because respect is never an error. Thanks, honey.

Thanks for the form, Jonesboy. As someone who suffers from chronic and severe Trump-Talk butthurt, it`ll come in handy when I need to kvetch about that dastardly Windwalker (too insulting?) to your wife.

I suppose we could list out a bunch of potentially offensive slang term and parse out exactly where the line is that would result in moderation action. Seems pretty pointless to me though. Why not just err on the side of respect?

What are your demands? How much is the ransom? Whatever it is we`ll gladly pay because we want Marblehead back and we want him back now. Please stop this obvious impersonation and bring back the Bum we know and love.

I`m guessing it`s a lot more fun to discuss moderation decisions from the outside than to make them. My respect to the brave men and women who put themselves in the line of (critical) fire so that this forum can run as well as it does. While I don`t always agree with every decision made, I believe that staff and moderators act in good faith and with the best possible intentions. Seems to me it`s the rare individual who can comfortably moderate over the long haul. In my own estimation, I`d make a poor moderator: I have the brains for the job but not the stomach. Kudos to those who have both.

Thanks Dawei. Aren`t intelligent misanthropes just the worst? I`d much rather deal with an emotionally impulsive person who makes blatantly insulting comments than a shrewd -- but no less insulting -- Bum who manages to get digs in while hewing scrupulously to the letter of the law. I don`t pretend to have the answers but I`d be inclined to give those who are metaphorically shooting at bottles in the backyard second chances while kicking out the cold-blooded sharpshooting assassins.

Chi Nei Tsang instructor Gilles Marin has an entire CD dedicated to the practice of sunning. All of his sunning practices are done with the eyes closed, absorbing the healing warmth and the light without risking one`s eyesight. I find that they relax me in a particular and difficult to describe way that nothing else does.

If I were a more spiritually evolved person all the jalpa (is that the right term?) might not bother me, but I kinda hate the whole business of debate between people who are trying to prove each other wrong. As far as I`m concerned, off-grid could slide into the ocean and we`d be all the better for it. Ideological arguments about golden flowers and all kinds of origination (dependent, independent, codependent) and the fine points of whether the universe is a bunch of things or just one thing -- sorry, I`ve no use for any of it. But that`s just me. In my saner moments, I`m glad we don`t have rules of discourse here. People post according to their natures, and requiring rules won`t substantially change anything. Combative folks will post argumentative diatribes maintaining that their views are right and everyone else is an idiot; they literally can`t help themselves. We can`t mandate maturity. If we want to welcome people of all different levels of spiritual and emotional development -- and I think we do -- we`ll just have to accept the variety of posts that correspond to those levels of spiritual and emotional development. It`s true that there are certain minimum standards that will be enforced: I can`t physically threaten another member, for instance. But mostly we`re a come as you are kind of forum. People don`t have to arrive here all practiced and full of acceptance and love; they can stagger through the door full of hateful baggage and spewing darkness and we mostly take them in anyway. Their posts will contain ad hominem attacks and questionable facts -- how could they not? And still we give them shelter. We tell them their contributions and views are as worthy of consideration as any other. We let them write and gnash their teeth and all the while the more enlightened among us provide spiritual soil in which their better natures might some fine day find succor. I think that`s all for the best.

Is anybody calling any shots? Very little as far as I can see. Some people, including myself, think there should be more shots pulled and occasionally make a fuss about it, but fat lot of good we get for our trouble. This place stumbles on much the same as it always has; the post that outraged me today will be forgotten tomorrow, buried under a pile of words, never to be read again by any but the most dogged of forum researchers. And so it goes. People here don`t discourse about Hinduism or nutrition or politics the way I`d like them to, and, sadly, I can`t seem to convince them to do it right. Much as in my off-line life. Sigh...

Hi Sol, If you don`t mind saying, what was your old screenname? I don`t know if I`d recognize it or not but some other old-timers might appreciate having a sense of continuity, connecting who you were then with who you are now. Thanks, LL

Where`s Rene and her both/and when we need her? Seems to me that some tensions can`t be resolved by the mind and the polarity between multiplicity and radical oneness might be one of them. What we may be able to do is embody the resolution by gently holding both poles in a spirit of inclusivity. Then perhaps a third space can open up that is beyond both dualism and non-dualism and lovingly cradles both.

Whether it makes cosmological, mystical or theological sense I don`t know, but I love the idea of an ancient map with the known parts densely notated surrounded by a large wasteland designating the unknown. A potent image.

We can speculate about the ratio of what we know to what is knowable but as yet unknown. If you forced me to speculate I`d type a decimal point and then start hitting zeros and I wouldn`t let up on the zero key, well, ever. I mean, really -- we know so very, very little. Don`t even get me started about the relative percentage of the known (or the unknown but knowable) versus the unknowable: that question doesn`t even make sense. The part of our brains that uses a calculator has no business even getting close to the unknowable. We can`t figure out the unknowable but we can embody it. To be more accurate, we can come to be aware that we are an embodiment of the unknowable. We can carry this awareness of the unknowable around with us as we go to work and do the dishes and parent our children. We can leak ineffibility into the world like a busted canister of invisible gas, until everyone around us is suffused with an infinitely subtle fluorescence.

Hi Silent Thunder, Do you recommend the alkanizing diet suggested in the link? For awhile now I`ve been a back-and-forth paleo person. In many ways this diet is not so different, with the notable exception of no-meat. I don`t see me myself going strictly veg anytime soon, but I`ve been leaning in the meat-as-a-condiment direction. Wondering if perhaps tilting the scales towards more veggies and less meat might be healthier for my pH balance.

My sense is that we all have particular gifts and strengths in life, and much of what constitutes a meaningful, purposeful life is putting them to good use. It`s interesting to me how even in a forum like this one, where we`ve mostly never met in person, our particular gifts are often revealed to each other. Of course just having an inborn strength is usually not enough; they usually need to be recognized and developed. Some of my strengths I`m aware of, but I think there are others lying in wait for my further development. One beautiful aspect of the cultivation practices that so many of us do here is that they tend to unearth our gifts, which we can then put to good use in the world.

Hmmm...not sure. I fibbed earlier when I said I wasn`t going to say anything about why I do that because I don`t actually mind. I enjoy making connections with people, and using words to do so. My hope is that others feel seen and that this feels good to them. I don`t often talk about my strengths here, but I think being able to do this is one of them. Not that it happens all the time or infallibly, mind you. It`s possible that I focused in on this capacity as a result of childhood circumstances. In that sense it might be cause and effect? I dunno. But it`s something I like about myself and when I see an opportunity to reach out to another person in a deeper way, and it feels right to do so, I do. It may not be the entirety of my purpose but it`s part of how I see myself.

Ah, Marblehead. It`s not so much that I wanted to get you to say something you`re not interested in saying. More that I wanted to drop an intuition of mine your way in case it connected with you. But perhaps I was mistaken. There are reasons why I do this and I`m not going to tell anyone these reasons. Other than perhaps to note that it has something to do with my purpose.

I assume those reasons are related to some kind of secret, unexpected benevolence?

The more we learn about the neural mechanisms of mirroring, the more we realize that the distinction between self and other may be almost fictitious in many cases. We have created the self-other distinction in our explicit discourse, along with many other constructs that divide us. Our neurobiology, in contrast, puts us "within each other." Marco Iacoboni

Unlike Apech, Marblehead does not hesitate to go off topic. (Oh wait! I just noticed that the topic of this thread was something about purposelessness so perhaps this is a return to the topic? Not sure how I could of missed it.)