dwai

I'm hoping there are a few bums here who have worked on it from the Daoist cultivation angle and are willing to share.

Its good to know that you have deep meditative experiences. Love, as I'm referring to it, is not an emotion per se. It is a result of realizing the inherent unity of the universe. Being IS Love. Awareness IS Love and so on .... What is divine? Is it separate from us? Not so in my experience. The divine is the awareness that shines through our body-mind apparatuses. I'm already a big belly indian middle-aged man. Might even pass off as a lama if I wore the garbs What love can enable us to do. Transcend time and space, and join in a shared awareness/presence. That's a result of working with the heart field.

Do you want to try it out? I'll be happy to work with you one on one to show how it works

There is love and then there is *love* Love is the creative force of this entire cosmos. It is not limited to inter-personal love, which is powerful of course. I've not met even one such practitioner in person. I've read some kooks write about it on TDB though Guru Yoga has nothing to do with evoking emotions as I know and practice it. It is that way in Bhakti yoga though. But that has to do with self-surrender. Thanks for illuminating the conversation

He doesn't discuss this (he as in Damo Mitchell). But it is the one that's tied to Heaven-man-Earth and Micro/macrocosmic orbits. Heart field is the field generated by the Heart center (not physical heart). According to the book (and in my experience as well), it does. However, the focus is different. The Central channel deals with Yuan Shen. The Heart field deals with Self-cultivation (the spiritual heart is the seat of the self). Can you elaborate on that? Interesting....

I'm a Hindu with Daoist training and Buddhistic understanding...so maybe variances are not that much

I'd just like to rephrase things this way -- Emptiness is full of potential but empty of "things". Nothingness is not a nihilistic void but "no-thing-ness". Emptiness and No-thingness are not different. What Sunya means in buddhism is "Svabhava shunya" or "empty of self-nature". That mean that any "thing" is inherently empty of self-existence. In other words "things" exist only so long as there is a subject to experience them. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Sunyata

wherever you go, there you are

I'd recommend practicing some qigong and becoming comfortable with the flow of qi (and open up your channels) first. Cultivation should be effortless (after initial effort of learning the movements and breathing).

Agreed Also agreed. Also could be a result of a strong desire to “spread the joy” of the “best way”

Thought I'd post this as an example of how grownups share and exchange thoughts and ideas This is special because of the venue -- The Vedanta Society NY, which is a bastion of Advaita Vedanta. I've had the occasion to attend Swami Sarvapriyananda's lectures in person (besides the many youtube videos that are there for people to view) - never once have I heard or seen behavior remotely close to the neurotic and parochial approach that is often on display in public fora.

There is no target at all...it is your own Self

The mind is not contained within our brains. So negative thoughts are not specific things within our brains. There are impressions that exist in the mental plane that we may or may not collapse into thoughts depending on various factors. How are impressions created? By exposing ourselves to specific types of stimuli.

there is no difference between joy and equanimity. What you are calling "joy" is actually pleasure. Joy comes as a result of dropping of positions (which is in essence equanimity). Joy is your true nature. Pleasures are on the other hand reflection of the joy you have within you. Only you don't know that and so seek it in objects (this and that).

what is complete can never be cleaved it can’t be mixed it can’t be sieved what our true nature is is a big surprise to know it only is to recognize that which tries to grow from parts to a whole is nothing but two points on an infinite pole know that infinite beam of lightless light and all struggles will disappear without any fight There is nothing to learn there is nothing to know just be here now and become the glow The ‘I’, ‘You’, ‘Us’, ‘them’ exist but not as you might gather they are like waves in an ocean But are nothing apart from water

The pleasure one experiences with "things" is not generated in the things themselves. Things don't have any inherent pleasure quality in them. The pleasure experienced is one's own nature. So enlightenment will free us from craving pleasure and shunning pain (in other words, free us from suffering), as we will be established in the bliss of our natural state. If you feel suffering is not bad then either you haven't really suffered, or you already are enlightened (which you are, incidentally ) Who gets bored? The one who gets bored or gets excited, is the one who suffers. But that one is just an idea, an identity. It changes every day, every minute, with the circumstances one finds oneself in. Find out who assumes the said identity and then see if you feel the same way.

https://www.medhajournal.com/the-art-of-listening/

This is a topic of great interest of mine. The Rishis are the Seers of yore, to whom we owe the debt of presenting the Shruti (Transmission) of the Vedas. These mystics, in deep meditation, heard the transmission of the eternal wisdom, which were subsequently formatted into the Vedas. In Hindu tradition, there are three broad categories of knowledge that have been transmitted down from the ages (some modern researchers find astronomical data in the texts pointing to as early as the 15th Millennium BCE). The three being -- Shruti - Heard transmission - these are the Vedas including the Upanishads Smriti - Remembered transmission - these the various Puranas (such as Vishnu Purana, etc) Itihaasa - History (these include the epics Ramayana, Mahabharata). One could argue that the Shruti (heard transmission or the wisdom of the universal Self) is also transmitted via memory. But the status of Shruti is given to the specific texts because the premise is that any seer, who is of a certain level of attainment can access these transmissions (which are always present). These Rishis were very interesting and not much is written about them these days. People know about the Varna system of Hindu India. Interestingly enough, the Rishis came from all varnas (brahmin - scholar kshatriyas - warrior, vaishya - traders and shudra - workers). Not all Rishis were renunciants, neither were all celibates. The Rishis mainly lived in the forests, in hermitages (ashrams), many were married and had children. Some meditated in solitude, while others taught students in their residential schools (gurukulas). The texts like Tripura Rahasya, Yoga Vasishtha have wonderful descriptions of these sages and their capabilities. One category of Rishis were called Brahmarishis and these Rishis were able to create their own Universes via the power of their consciousness. In other words, their will was so strong, and aligned with their awareness, that whatever they willed, came into existence. Quoted below is one such story from The Tripura Rahasya Chapter 12 & 13 --

Surrender is a natural evolution of inquiry. At one point the intellect gives up. It can only take us to the edge of the abyss. Then we have to leap into it in wanton surrender...

It is really tragic to see so much over-generalization and suppositions about how a jivanamukta should or should not behave. It is okay to speculate, but until you become one yourself, you have to rely on testimony of reliable sources. Of course, you could just deny that all those who are known as jivanamuktas aren't actually that and were charlatans or celebrated as such by stupid people. At this point, to me, it is laughable at best to see folks casting aspersions on recognized masters...especially when the naysayers very clearly have a long way to go.

Not every vāsanā is a binding one. Some bind and some don't bind. After jivanamukti, the future karma phala are not accrued. The karma phala that is already set in motion (prārabdha) will continue until they exhaust. So even if a jivanamukta seems like he/she has desires/addictions, they are non-binding for them.

That's okay. You are welcome to express your opinions as am I.

When action is done in accordance with Dharma, positive results (Punya) are accrued. When action is done in discordance with Dharma, negative results (pāpa) are accrued. One is still bound in causality. Nishkāma karma means to do action without desire of the outcome. To do the action for the joy of the action, to do the action in benefit of others (service). WRT war -- When Mahabharata War was waged, The Pandavas were aligned with Dharma and Kauravas against it. Yet, the entire Bhagavad Gita was an exposition on having Arjuna fight the war without guilt and with a clear conscience because he was performing his duty as a kshatriya and in accordance with dharma. A discussion of Karma without Dharma is incomplete and pointless.

Karma means to do action. Creating karma is a misnomer imho. What you do is accrue the fruits of your actions (or Karma phala). What it means is when you do action, you are generating a ripple effect in the universe. That effect in turns affects you. It could be in this lifetime or in another lifetime. We as awareness have three bodies. The physical body, the subtle body and the causal body. Karma/actions in the physical and subtle body (body and mind) results in affecting the causal body (and causal realm). So long as there is identification with the three bodies, we are susceptible to karmic results. Once the identification is gone (aka enlightenment), we no longer accrue karma phala.