Creation

I'll give you my personal executive summary, inaccuracy guaranteed because I wasn't interested in reading them for the most part. I invite dwai to give his own summary if he wants. Vajrahridaya and xabir2005: We experienced the True Self per Hinduism, then we let it go and it was way better when we did. We know other people who have done the same thing [produces quotes of first hand accounts of this] dwai and other Hindus: That's impossible, you/they must not have actually experienced the True Self. Vajrahridaya and xabir2005: Yes we did [produces a bunch of quotes in support of their view] dwai and other Hindus: No you didn't [argues against contents of quotes]. Anyway, Buddhists have a True Self, they just call it something else. Vajrahridaya and xabir2005: No they don't that's a misunderstanding. And yes, we did. [xabir2005 copies and pastes more extremely long quotes, and Vajrahridaya makes long, deeply impassioned posts about his own journey] dwai and other Hindus: You don't really understand Hinduism OR Buddhism etc You'll notice that my summary focuses on the contributions of two Buddhists, because they actually claimed to first experience the thing Hindu's call the true self, and then the negation of the absoluteness of it. This is an extremely interesting claim to me, as it is based in first hand experience of both traditions, whereas "My guru said/my traditions scriptures say" was not interesting enough to me to read more than a little. As I mentioned, one of the more open minded posters arguing for the Hindu view gave real consideration to what the Buddhists were claiming and had a breakthrough, and then tried to be Buddhist for a while, but eventually went back to Hinduism because "Theism called more to his heart" or something like that. I was able to find that thread, if anyone's curious,

Search through the posts of the users Vajrahridaya (RIP) and xabir2005, almost all of them will link to such threads. ...if you dare

Seth Ananda had a major breakthrough contemplating some of the things the Buddha Bums were saying, and became a Tibetan Buddhist for a few years, but eventually went back to Hinduism. You must have forgotten about that once he came back over to your side Reflecting on the main participants in the battles, I wonder how your comrade-in-arms Harsha is doing? I remember liking his posts quite a bit. Lucky7strikes was doing Kunlun and Sadhguru's kriyas back in the day - I heard he got some energy imbalances with that combination. He also had a major falling out with some of his Buddha Bum comrades, but is still involved in Dzogchen last I heard (which, strangely enough, was quite recently, I randomly stumbled upon some people who know him).

Agreed. Your ideas about the practice influence the result, that's one place I might look for the cause of your troubles.

The Buddha Bum Wars, when the majority of posts on this forum were from a small number of extremely prolific Buddhist posters debating a small number of Hindus about which tradition is more enlightened in thread after thread which spanned dozens of pages each. 2008-2011ish. There was at least one dramatic conversion, and a subsequent de-conversion. The participating Buddhists have all moved on (and one has passed on), some of the Hindus are still here, some aren't.

Surely you realize how contradictory this sounds.

That's why I brought up the differing definitions of Buddhahood. When Vajrayana says you can attain Buddhahood in this lifetime, they don't mean you will turn the wheel in a different world system in your next life! Differentiating those two really clarified things for me. Stable realization of emptiness is available, you know I believe to know people personally at that stage. Letting go of self in service to others is part of that path, and traditionally that is phrased that in terms of the Vow. That's not quite an accurate representation of my thoughts on the matter. The Vow serves a purpose (see above), it just seems somewhat figurative to me, which is to say, I wonder how many who took a ceremonial Bodhisattva vow actually end up stick it out for however many kalpas it takes to become a Wheel Turning Buddha. I have a personal preference for literal expressions of intention rather than figurative ones.

You may have noticed that the definition of Buddhahood in early Mahayana (a being who turns the wheel) doesn't match the definition used in the well known Mahayana practice lineages today, whether sudden awakening or Tantric. So such a question is by nature impractical in the sense that it will be divorced from practice. For a concept which straddles both camps, you familiar with the idea of "non-abiding Nirvana"? The people I've talked to with stable emptiness realization have a very different experience of what is suffering and what is salvation. In Dzogchen they say "May I arise beyond hope and fear." The Heart Sutra is also relevant here. Buddha fields, emanations, and higher bhumis come long after realization of emptiness, so there is a certain natural order of priority in what to seek to understand and realize.

I've heard of 8, and a further subdivision into 64. You always mention how your teacher explains these things in terms of the Yijing, are the 8/64 bodies put in correspondence with the trigrams/hexagrams? And do heaven and human get subdivided into three each and earth only into two, or some other permutation of that arrangement?

Thanks, that was really helpful. What I still wonder about is there are contexts where people just talk about the hun and po, as you did earlier in the thread, and as Damo did in his podcast about the soul, as if the (heart) shen, yi, and zhi are irrelevant in such contexts, and I'm wondering exactly what those contexts are. Reincarnation? Surely the shen and yi play into that. Drives/impetus to take action? Surely the shen and yi play into that too. Let me give my best guess as a starting point. Drive/impetus to action and reincarnation are two sides of the same coin. Shen is where information from that which is beyond reincarnation comes from, so it is not considered relevant to that process, yi is fundamentally neutral unless interacting with other spirits and so is not considered relevant, and zhi is the fundamental drive behind it all but is itself also neutral, and so is not considered relevant. Also, the term yi-nian comes up in WLP's material a lot, is yi as you are using it (as both awareness and intent) synonymous with yi-nian?

@freeform how does the model Yuan shen -> Hun (yang soul) + Po (yin soul) relate to the model Yuan shen -> Shen, Hun, Yi, Po, Zhi (five phases of shen)? Do Hun and Po have the same meaning in both contexts or not? Also, how would you describe the difference between Yi-intent and Zhi-will?

The movement toward spiritual illumination and the movement toward emotional and psychological health are not the same movement and yet they intertwine. Some combinations of ways of approaching the spiritual and ways of approaching the psychological support each other, others clash with each other, others simply coexist. I'm not at all surprised a Theravada monk told you to get psychotherapy - Theravada really isn't designed to heal psychological issues, no matter what the modern mindfulness crowd says. There are paths, teachers, and groups that are more congruent with what you seem to be looking for.

I see. I'm deeply underqualified to discuss this, all I'll say is I can see how methods could be incompatible in this way, but I've never heard Damo mention that the methods he teaches can have this kind of incompatibility. One detail I'll mention is that that in addition to the process of training the tissues for IMA and the process of alchemically working with dantian with jing as fuel, Damo teaches a process of building the dantian and the tissues based on yin and yang qi which is neither martial nor does it use jing as it's basis/fuel - this is what neigong means in his system.

This is definitely not the case with Damo Mitchell's methods, his (non-marial) neigong/dantian building and IMA body transformation/fajin methods are perfectly compatible. His school is not geared toward training fighters though, I'm sure optimizing for fighting ability has its own subtleties of training order and emphasis.

I just want to say that i see in reddit in forums about hypnosis and similar stuff, one couple that they hypnotized each other, the guy hypnotized the girl to be super horny etc, and the girl hypnotized the guy to not to cum until she wanted after saying some word o sound, they lasted like hours... and because hypnosis is in the subconscious or unconscious mind there is not effort or struggling just relaxation. Also another guy have an ejaculatory orgasm without even touch his 🍆, just with an hypnotic audio. So this confirms that the subconscious mind can control all the functions of the body without requiring external stimulus. It's so powerful and at the same time so dangerous, like technology, depends on who use it. But isn't fantasy just seems like until you know it. Also you can reach unlimited orgasms with prostate stimulation without losing semen, you can go and go and are all body orgasm far more intense than regular ejaculatory orgams and and they last as long as you want them to last. Im just a beginner in this im sure there's much more things you can do Question is not is it possible, question is what effect does it have on your well being and spiritual development. Can't answer that for you, just providing some caution derived from experience.

I honestly can't say. Maybe there is some lineage that does this. What I can say is that, whether you ejaculate or not, if you want to sublimate jing for spiritual purposes, you need correct practices and a correct framework. If you are interested, there is info about authentic Daoist alchemy out there, the two teachers I am aware of both teach to lessen sexual activity but don't say to be celibate or practice "retention", and in fact warn against such practices. Of course, having unlimited multiorgasmic sex and deriving nothing but benefit for your spiritual path sounds nice, but it seems that it is a fantasy.

The point I wanted to make is that the main thing that makes sex more or less spiritual is the the psychology of it. Same with how draining it is to ejaculate. That's not to say that there isn't a place for learning techniques, for instance working with jing in it's unaroused form is important in Daoist practice, and learning to minimize jing loss from ejaculation and share more pleasure and connection with your partner are, IMO, sensible things to do. However, I must emphasize that the idea of retaining your seed being required to live a healthy lifestyle is itself a psychological complex around sex that effects the energetics of it (negatively), an idea that you seem to have adopted. Ejaculation drains jing, but also thought drains jing, emotion drains jing, intense physical activity drains jing. Yet all these things have benefits too and are part of a balanced life.

Hi Romeo, Let me take a stab at this. There is the fairly well known possibility of having to much energy shooting up into your head, but there is a lesser known, more insidious possibility. If you engage in these practices from a place of insecurity, lack, wish for control or power, or base indulgence, whatever energy they to cultivate and circulate will feed these psychological patterns. Long term this can steer a person toward sexual perversity of various types - this is called "poison fire taints the heart". And since you asked about transmutation, as soon as your jing mobilizes to pursue a base desire, it can't be transmuted, leaving it in your system is like leaving muddy, putrid water pooling up in your home. As far as I can tell, learning to relax and breathe during sex to have a more full and satisfying experience is fine (as long as you pay attention to your psychology around it - loving connection vs base indulgence), but sexual activity plus "retention" is really misguided.

Hi Anand, Lots of good questions here, reasonable questions for a thoughtful beginner trying to get his bearings to ask. Intellectual knowledge is no substitute for practice, but a questioning and research can help you discern what is a good use of your time vs what isn't. There are similarities between neidan and Kriya, but they are somewhat broad, the actual orientation of the practices is rather different. For instance, they both want to fully open all the energy centers of the body and in particular all the centers in the spine and brain, but how they go about doing this and in what order is quite different. Yes there are sets geared toward "feeling the qi", but to some extent one should distinguish between feeling effects of qi (feelings of warmth and tingles, etc) from feeling qi directly, which is fairly advanced. Medically oriented sets will tend to create more sensations of qi on the surface of the skin, but neidan isn't working with this surface level qi so it doesn't actually consider such surface sensations important to cultivate. So, your idea of "step 1" isn't quite right. And as you say, work with jing is only a prerequisite for neidan, not for medical qigong sets. Opening the channels also has different meanings in neidan vs medical qigong, again, it's the difference between working at the surface or deep inside. Qi can be stored many places in the body, including the ren and du, but there is a sense in which the lower dantian can store the most and is the safest, and forms a foundation for storing it elsewhere. I second forestofemptiness' list, those teachers are knowledgeable, authentic, and available to answer questions of online students. If you are really interested in neidan, really do look into Damo Mitchell's stuff, even if you don't do his program, the material in his books is incredibly high quality, useful to have been exposed to. If you want to start on standing, you might find that it becomes much more efficient if done according to Damo's rather detailed instructions.

Perhaps the difference can be accounted for by the different practices being taught. Having children do things that will powerfully effect their jing (neigong and neidan) vs more medically oriented systems.

Interesting, thanks.

My impression is more like anti - heavy weight, anti - weight that would compromise song. For instance semi cooperative partner partner drills apply weight to the structure, in a controlled way. Taiji balls are 5-7 lbs iirc.

Just a guess, perhaps to match the palm shape you would already be using and not introduce unnecessary tension in the hands and forearms? "Easy to hold" in practice means "relies on hand and forearm tension to hold". But weapons training in Taiji is probably doing something similar. Right, that's what I was referring to when I said "The feeling of tingling sensations outside the body is specifically de-emphasized [in the system I'm describing]." It really does seem to be quite a different method. As you note, Rasmus also utilizes the sensations outside the body, despite training in the Huang lineage. Clearly it works, I wonder where it comes from though.

The way Damo Mitchell teaches teach Taiji (see his podcast on the the matter), the first thing to do to develop jin is learn to separate the movement of the soft tissues from the movement of the skeleton, and feel the soft tissues sink toward the floor, pressurizing the feet and creating an elastic tension throughout the body. Adding taiji ball (the physical kind) adds more weight to this structure, creating more pressurization and elastic tension through the body, which strengthens the expression of jin. The feeling of tingling sensations outside the body is specifically de-emphasized. YJM is teaching something different in his books and DVDs, more of a spinal rolling/whipping action.

I hope it's OK for me to say this here, since I don't know if it's in any of his books or public lectures, but it's a pretty general thing to say, and you keep asking about it: In my limited understanding, the foundational process of forming and filling the dantian is working with post-heaven qi, while access to pre-heaven qi requires pre-heaven mind, as such comes later. The idea that you can work with yuan qi straight away seems quite suspect to me.