dwai

Yes. True That is not my understanding. That is needed when we enter what is called "kevala nirvikalpa samadhi" -- total cessation of the mind for extended periods of time. It is erroneously considered a "higher" state. It is not so -- it only results in what is called "mano laya" (or submersion of the mind). The beyond of that stage is the beginning of enlightenment -- the non-grasping mind -- it is called "sahaja samādhi" in the Indian traditions (both Vedanta as well as Tantra). If you so feel inclined, you should do a reading of the book "Tripura Rahasya" -- it clearly outlines the different phases, stages, etc etc. Admittedly not a Daoist book per se, but I think you'll see the similarities therein.

There is no experience apart from True Nature (or consciousness). Joy is not experienced due to an external object. Love is not experienced due to an external object. They are part of True Nature. That was a logical inference at that point. Also later, it became apparent that the "no mind" state is not one of a dead mind. There is a technical term in sanskrit for it -- "mano nāsha" (Destruction of the mind). This is a source of great confusion for seekers on this path (as it was for me as well), as they think that the mind will cease to function . That is not the case. The "destruction" of the mind occurs when it becomes apparent that it is merely a tool -- an instrument via which experiencing occurs. 'No mind' is a condition in which the mind doesn't grasp at/for things any more. Whatever comes, comes; whatever goes, goes. So of course, there is experience..but there is no grasping for it anymore. There is no craving...there is no repulsion.

one day while listening to John McLaughlin’s Shakti I was moved to tears at the beauty and wonder of the music. Along with that I felt a deep outpouring of love for my teacher and the divine. Being that I was spending almost all my waking moments in contemplation back then, a thought ran through my mind immediately — “so then I have to give up this and other experiences of beauty, as individual experience will disappear after ‘waking up’!” “All joy will cease to be experienced, because in awakening all perturbations of the mind disappear — after all the mind dies!”, the voice in my head said. So that put me in a bit of a quandary. Would I have to give up experiencing love and joy and the exquisite anguish of music that moves me to tears with its beauty?

Who said anything about bypassing? Witness and let go. The Non-clinging/non-avoiding mind is the free mind. Whatever comes will come, whatever goes will go.

Pretty much that way. “Getting it” is not an intellectual thing — which many do, it doesn’t take much effort. The “getting it” is a permanent shift in perspective. When it happens it is very profound initially — literally everything changes wrt our relationship with our “personalities/body/mind” and also the world. The Advaita Vedantic traditional method is essentially work on the consciousness level. Preliminary/preparatory work needs to have already been done, the mind (the tool used for the practice) needs to be clear and settled. The seeker first discovers the emptiness of phenomena (though they don’t term it as such — they call it mithya or unreal). When it is realized that all phenomena (objects and the changes they go through) are inherently empty, the seeker then realizes that there is “something” that is unchanging, always present through all the experiences - it is that which witnesses all phenomena. After remaining in that “witness” mode (how long depends on the karma of the seeker), all emotional and mental patterns are recognized and negated as ephemeral, therefore unreal as well. They become like clouds in the sky, or waves in an ocean. Then that “click” happens, when it becomes directly known that all phenomena only rise and fall in that unchanging knower, nothing is apart from it. Like a necklace, bracelet and ring are all made up of gold in different names, forms and functions, the phenomena too are nothing but names, forms and functions of that nondual consciousness/awareness. Phenomena will continue to appear and disappear, the nondual awareness is unaffected. Clouds come and go but the sky is unaffected. When “everything” is never apart from that “true nature”, who and what needs to transform? The ‘seeker’ was none other than True nature, seeking itself from behind the veil of “separateness” of body, mind and experiences. That which identified itself as “I am the seeker” turns out to be simply a story based on memories and impressions, inside and made up of true nature through and through. What remains is not that personality anymore — but simply true nature. All action in the ‘world’ then is simply action, without any sense of doership This true nature might appear to be a separate mind-body unit to those other mind-body units who have not yet realized their true nature. That’s why when awakening happens, true nature sees only true nature in everything and everyone. wrt the blissful stages — bliss can rise at the point when one has full access to their causal sheath (Normally it is only accessible via deep sleep). There is a reason why that causal sheath is called the “anandamaya kosha” - blissful layer/sheath. There is definitely a sense of release that arises from the permanent shift, but I won’t call it “bliss” per se. It is more a release from the “burden of the personality/body/mind story”. There are those though who fully awakened still are intermittently disturbed by the activities of in the world. That is because they did have the permanent shift, but not enough preparatory work has been done. More karma has to be released/burnt. For them, more work needs to happen (hence transformation). But that too dissipates much like bubbles fizz out in a bottle of soda with enough time.

Why not story dharma for the glorious moksha? Not by fearing karma but seeking the aparoksha...

I’ve not looked at others. I’m considering ingramspark but it costs ~ 500$ for initial work — they have option of hard bound as well as paperback. Advantage is they can distribute in bookstores etc. which btw amazon can too. I’ll share some other strategies with you that I’m looking at in a pm.

Bookbaby.com is another option.

From a realization perspective (it takes a bit of sussing out) Same with Vedanta, Tantra etc etc. Nothing new here. Okay. But prove to whom?

That is all the change that is necessary All the ‘trouble’ occurs as a result of the veiling. Once the veil fully disappears, all trouble disappears as well. It seems most start with Ming. Though I too have said earlier that they overlap and help each other. I think we’re on the same page here . All I’m suggesting is that the transformation occurs as part of the process that unfolds after proper realization. Conditioning will fall away, as a result of simply abiding from that Nondual awareness. We call it ‘vāsana kshyaya‘ in the Vedantic tradition. Nothing more needs to be done except remain as your True Nature, though one could do more if they wanted to. It won’t make one iota of difference to our True Nature. Being able to disappear in a flash of light is no better or worse than leaving your body the regular way. You never were the body, you were not even the mind — they are just ephemeral appearances in you, True Nature (Consciousness). That said — it won’t make sense until it does.

You have misunderstood the question asked by @KuroShiro, who responded to my answer to another person on this discussion on whether and how we can use the ‘surface energy’ without physical touch.

My bro and I met after many days to play taijiquan drills. We worked with many things but recorded a small part of our session. Our videos are unedited and so be warned of some ‘sacre bleu’ moments. Feel free to comment or ask questions.

I didn’t show it in the video

No, i didn’t mean to say it is a different terminology. I meant to say it is not the same thing. What was being referred to is Ling Kong Jin.

No it is not the same thing. It is literally working with the energy pervading space all around us and within us. We have to understand and be able to use Hua Jin and Na Jin first, before we can start to understand this. Even many who can use hua/hwa and na Jin are unable to get to this stage. PS: I thought I’d share my understanding of this so my response is more helpful.

How does qigong work? The mind and Qi are interrelated. I would say they are two aspects of consciousness. Mind is the aspect of knowing, Qi is the aspect of creation. The third aspect associated with this is the breath. The mind (and Qi) wax and wane with the breath. We can even say that all three - mind, Qi and breath affect each other. At a high level, qigong is the integration of mind and breath (can be with or without movement). When Breath is effortless and relaxed, The mind becomes “tame” and loses its natural turbulence. This leads to becoming sensitive of Qi. With regular practice, little by little, we become more aware of Qi. As we become more aware of Qi, our ability to focus it, along with the mind grows. As the ability to focus increases, we improve the quality of this Qi. Like sunlight can be focused by passing it through a lens, as an example. This makes our Qi stronger. It also makes our mind intent more still and powerful. This is the part about why qigong works. More later if interested.

This was shared by my friend who is a disciple of Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. The similarity to Advaita Vedanta is so clear.

But are they, really? Is the false guru bereft of the true guru?

The notion of “there’s more” is a bit of a misnomer imho. The way I look at it as follows — Realizing our true nature as nondual awareness is like a light turned on in a dark room. Sure you can see more stuff, but those too are not apart from us either. What feels like it’s deepening is that old patterns dissolve and disappear (some slow, some fast).

Appreciate your honesty. Hwa or hua Jin is the ability to transform incoming force by a skilled internal player. Initially we learn to do that by Moving and stepping, and then bh turning our waist, folding our joints etc. Progressively we go from that to being able to transform incoming force by directing it to the ground. Eventually we can transform it by releasing it into emptiness. But just as we can transform, we can also redirect. It is not a biomechanical thing — it involves being able to sense and access energetics at a very subtle level.

Neutralizing doesn’t require physical moving — there is a skill called hwa, where the incoming force is transformed into emptiness or returned back, redirected etc. It all happens internally and energetically.

I’ve been practicing for about 20 years now. Yes there are many different types and levels of taijiquan. Some stop at the physical level. Very good — leverage, timing, etc etc. Some go way beyond physicality into ‘mind boxing’. Some go even beyond. Taiji operates at multiple levels at the same time. The ‘quan’ is what evolves and refines.

Yes , unless of course it is someone who’s more skilled than us, like our Master (and others I’m sure).

Mainly becoming more proficient with harmonizing with and being able to use what my master calls “surface energy”. He’s given some meditations that help improve our ability to work with this energy.

I often find that assumptions are made about paths different than ours. A good way to have a meaningful discourse is to first articulate the “other’s” perspective and have them agree that our understanding is correct. for example, what you wrote is not a proper understanding of that perspective. Nothing gets discarded. Nothing needs to be transformed Okay, Let try another example this time. Let’s take Gold and ornaments you make with gold. Caveat emptor — this is an example, so take it as it’s meant to be, and don’t extrapolate the roles of the gold miner, jeweller etc. we have ornaments made of gold. Necklace, bracelet and. Finger ring. Each of these are modifications of gold. Can we ever find any of these to exist apart from the gold that they’re made of? The different types of ornaments made of gold - necklace, bracelet and ring, they are what we can call name-forms with different uses. Let's now assume that the ornaments have been covered by a layer of dirt. So we clean them up until the dirt is gone and the gold that they’re made up of, shines forth. Then it is simply a case of recognizing the ‘goldness’ of the ornaments. So long as these name-forms exist, and we know that they are nothing but gold, there’s no need to melt them back to becoming gold. They never were not gold. Similarly with True Nature. All the manifestation in the universe, with all the sentient beings — so long as there is no realization that it is all True Nature, there is a problem. We search for that elusive true nature outside (God, spirits, etc etc). Then someone tells us that you have to look ‘within’. Maybe gives us a meditation or alchemical practice — so we refine, clean, etc etc. (Ming) until one day we realize that we’ve always been that which we look for. There is nothing about us that has ever been apart from this True Nature. Then what was the “dirt” that was covering the gold in those ornaments one might ask. The answer in our case (is True Nature) is that there seemed to be a veiling, an Obscuration that hides True nature from our minds. But once the direct recognition of our True Nature occurs, there is no longer the veiling. Then it becomes apparent that we were always aware of this True Nature. In Hindu tradition, this veiling is called ‘maya’. It is considered to be like a mirage, which both seems to exist and not exist, neither exist, nor not exist, exists, does not exist at the same time. Just like a mirage is only an optical illusion, that disappears when investigated closely, similarly this obscuration disappears when we observe closely with clarity and focus of the mind, unclouded by objects (xing). Full Awakening/Recognition cannot occur without Xing (consciousness) work. Ming work might give us glimpses — While we clean the gold ornaments, the glints of gold peek through the dirt as it falls away. That is a lot of work most people seem to need to do. But working with consciousness is not simple at all (until it becomes). It is a different kind of work, apparent to no one other than the practitioner themselves.