Creation

I've never practiced TM, and I know people who got a lot of benefit out of it BUT TM activates the default mode network, the same part of the brain that is active in daydreaming. Other styles of meditation say this is counterproductive, a tempting trap which can feel deep and spiritual but is actually a dead end. For instance, Dzogchen has a concept called the alaya - a blankness that is the repository of ignorance/unconsciousness, which must be broken through for actual spiritual awakening to occur. Gary Weber is a neuroscientist who has spoken about the relationship between the default mode network and nondual awakening, if you're curious about the science angle.

The words of Shakyamuni are like a mountain of precious jewels, like an ocean of healing medicines.

Hi @Spaceofawareness, The reversal of ordinary awareness to it's source, the what you could call the space of awareness, is something that is done in paths that focus on sudden awakening to what is variously called the nature of mind, nature of consciousness, or the nature of self. For instance, Dzogchen, Zen, and Mahamudra. It would seem that this is not actually what The Secret of the Golden Flower is talking about, although the connection is very tempting to make if you are familiar with one of these paths and come across SotGF. The light referred to in SotGF is more like the light of the nimitta in Theravada Buddhism, and the light seen in the third eye in Samadhi-oriented Yoga traditions such as Kriya Yoga. There is also some information out there that says SotGF is a way to awaken kundalini. freeform can speak with (much) more authority about this than I can, but the impression I get is that part of the Daoist path that deals with kundalini awakening is not the same as the part that SotGF is describing.

Just to make sure I'm understanding: If people were coming to your teacher based on the ability to sense him, they would not need him to confirm their level of cultivation. So then, word got around about him, hence the parade of pilgrims wanting a confirmation?

What were they going to your teacher for specifically, and why did they feel the need to go to somone outside their own lineage?

That's just it, in the people I know who have dropped their sense of self, desire and other emotions still arises because the body is still functioning. I certainly don't know what actually causes rebirth, nor am I actively trying to not be reborn, but what freeform says about transforming the emotions into virtues being an important part of the Daoist path is very interesting to me, since seeing the self is an illusion doesn't do this automatically. Another point that should be made is that there are degrees of dropping the sense of self. You might see your egoic, human self is an illusion, but be identified with a cosmic self, which is still a self.

Hey, didn't you just come to an epiphany about questioning formerly held beliefs? In all seriousness though, I know this is what many say, but I know quite a few people who have awakened, to varying degrees, some full-on, 24/7 anatta/sunyata realization, and I can put you in touch with them if you would like to talk about what that means. But they are not free from "all delusion" in the sense that they can be wrong about things, and I don't see any reason to think they are free from reincarnation, seeing as they likely had such realization in past lives in order to get it so young in this life, and yet here they are. Think of it like this - suppose you awakened to your nature in a past life and were told "There is nothing more to do, you will not reincarnate", and it seemed sensible enough, because there was no you and no doing anymore, but life carried on, chop wood carry water. Then you reincarnated anyway, no big deal, no you no doing. Maybe you awaken again, maybe you repeat this a few times. Eventually, one of these lives you awaken and even though there is no you and no doing, there arises in experience an investigation, "There is occasional anger, greed or lust arising here, that is, self-interested behavior even though it is seen that there is no self, does that have to be the case?", or "When awakening happened, there was a sense of energy released in my system, or a profound absorption into a state where the body was no longer perceived, is that something that can be deepened?" etc etc. So even though there is no you and no doing, aspects of the spiritual path emerge, because life has carried on. Maybe such a person would find an alchemical path at some point, and there would be a natural attraction to it.

Very good. My question is, does the first of these necessarily entail the second and third? I know some say it does, but for whatever reason I suspect it does not.

@freeform I wanted to return to some of the issues raised in this thread about realization of the illusoriness of self, and shengren vs zhenren attainment. Just to review, you have described the Daoist alchemical path (path to zhenren attaiment? immortal/xian attainment?) as one where the body and mind (jing, qi, shen) are developed to high levels of functioning through rigorous training, and on this basis one enters dhyana/jhana for long periods (days even) and if all goes well the formless energy of the jhana creates a permanent shift in the body, with tangible physical effects. The crucial thing for this physical shift to occur is proper preparation of the energetic substances of the body. This is then done with deeper and deeper levels of jhana. You have also mentioned that there are alchemical Theravada schools that do this also, though the methods for preparing the body are different. You have also mentioned a different path in Daoism, the shengren path, that involves the conversion of emotion into virtue and the dropping of preferences, but which doesn't use alchemy. So my questions are: 1. Could you describe more about what the shengren path entails as opposed to the alchemical path, in general terms? 2. You mentioned that non-alchemical schools that test for the absence of preference by, eg. having someone eat feces rather than a tangible physical change as in alchemical Daoism, but then you said that the shengren (a non-alchemical path, correct?) will display a physical change as a result of dropping preferences. Can you clarify? Why would a physical change manifest in one path vs not manifest in another for the same attainment? 3. In the suttas, the Buddha defines a stream-enterer as one who has relinquished the fetters of self-view, dependence on rights and rituals, and skeptical doubt. Damo has mentioned that in the Chinese tradition, a Ruliu (Chinese term for stream-enterer) is one who has freed themselves of the illusion of self, reliance on preference and any lack of clarity. What is a stream-enterer in alchemical Theravada? How does stream entry related to the process of alchemically transforming the body through successively higher jhanas? 4. You have mentioned that when third (?) jhana is fully integrated with the body, emotions are dropped, but that there is still a form of energy in the body that performs the function that emotions had performed. Is it the same with dropping preferences, that is, I suppose there still something in the body/mind performing the function preferences played, ie. navigating experience? Then, what exactly has dropped away? A lot of questions, I know. I've been sitting on them for a while.

To my untrained eye the first one looks like wai qi emission, can you comment?

Yes, I often see this dismissive attitude when Malcolm or his acolytes engage with others. I would not particularly want to bring this here, once there were many arguments of this type on this forum, such threads and those who frequented them were jokingly called "The Buddha Bums." But hey, this place is in kind of a lull... Anymore, mostly I encounter these debates on Buddhist facebook groups where Malcom and his students post. Apparently the Rinpoche in question said the presentation of the two truths is the same in Advaita as in Shentong, but elsewhere admits they differ on other details, such as momentariness of conventional things. This is my personal, non-scholarly understanding: Theravada took the Buddha's teaching of dependent origination to imply that there is a correct metaphysical picture of things, namely atoms of rupa and moments of vijnana arising dependent on each other, and all compounded categories arising dependent on these. Nagarjuna asserted that this is a misunderstanding of dependent origination, and re-asserted the Buddha's teaching that "right view" is actually "no view", that no conceptual metaphysical picture of the world is ultimately correct, in particular that even the categories used by the Buddha are "fingers pointing at the moon" rather than truly existent things, and nothing that appears can be ultimately said to exist or to not-exist (even the smallest parts of things), much like an illusion or mirage. And that this is implies and is implied by the correct understanding of the dependently originated nature of appearances. Madhyamaka (Nagarjuna and later commentators) took this even further, and said that not only are the categories existence and non-existence ultimately inapplicable, so are all other concepts that are typically said to apply to things, such as part-whole, one-many, cause-effect. So as to your specific question, on the conventional level that you can talk about mind and matter and separation, for a Madhyamaka mind and matter are separate, but on an ultimate level mind, matter, and separation are all seen as illusory conceptual designations. But there is a subtlety that came out over centuries of commentary and debate: the question of just what "conventional truth" means in Madhyamaka. One view (Chandrakirti's) is that conventional means whatever worldly beings believe, there is no one ultimate conventional truth (because then it would be ultimate truth ), the real point is that whatever categories are employed in conventional truth are seen to be illusions from the perspective of ultimate truth. Another perspective is that that there is what I call a "dharmically informed conventional truth", namely explaining conventional things in terms of Buddhist categories like the five skandhas, etc. even though all these categories are seen as illusions from the perspective of ultimate truth. So then you can use any Buddhist conceptual scheme you like (Sautrantika, Yogacara, Pramanavada, etc.) to explain conventional things. Yogacara-Madhyamaka, then, explains conventional things using Yogacara categories (where matter does not actually exist, but is a projection of mind), but adds "all these Yogacara categories are actually illusions from the perspective of the ultimate, in particular, non-dual awareness is also an illusion". Once again, this is my personal understanding. Nevertheless, does it answer your question?

I don't think this is correct. Your view of dependent origination is how Abhidharma views dependent origination. For Nagarjuna, dependent origination, correctly understood, implies non-origination, which is paradoxical, but that's the nature of Nagarjuna's understanding of emptiness. For Nagarjuna, the "things" which are dependently arisen can't actually be said to exist (and can't be said to not exist) and hence can't actually be said to arise - not only are these seemingly contradictory statements actually non-contradictory, but correctly understanding one implies the other. This is the inseparability of the two truths or the inseparability of appearance and emptiness that later commentators speak of. Needless to say, later Indian commentators had quite a challenge on their hands to make this into a respectable darsana that could engage in formal debate with other schools. By the way, if you like this kind of philosophical approach and appreciate Malcolm's writings, I have known Malcolm and his top students to be very available for philosophical debating.

Hi TaraTarini, Welcome to the forum. I'm quite surprised to see such exacting philosophical dharma argumentation here, it's not exactly what I associate with this forum. But I would like to make some attempt to engage with what you have written as you seem sincere. The Madhamaka project is not to establish a final view of reality, it is a project of systematically gives reasons to release all possible views. As the Buddha said, "Letting go of that view, he does not pick up another", and Nagarjuna's "I bow to the Enlightened one who taught dependent origination...to end all conceptual proliferation" and "He who makes emptiness into a view is hopeless." This is in contradistinction to the Abhidharma project of creating a metaphysical view of reality where there is no self, such as you are clearly familiar with - dividing experience into individual moments of citta and individual atoms of rupa. You have given reasons to reject many possible views about the true nature of things which I suppose Nagarjuna would agree with. He would then proceed to give you reasons to reject the remaining views that seem more likely to be correct, such as an absolute which is the origin of all things. As you likely know, there have been Buddhist philosophers who have accepted Nagarjuna's arguments for conditioned, dualistic things only, but hold that an unconditioned non-dual consciousness evades this critique, and like you say in fact it must do so for a sensible worldview. IMO this is not so very different from Advaita Vedanta, just that the Buddhists wouldn't call it anything like God or Source. Other groups insist that Nagarjuna's critique must apply to non-dual consciousness as well. I am not so familiar with how these groups debated each other, I mostly like to read the personal experience of those whose experience is one or the other, since actual awakening is my primary interest. If you like, let me know what comes up for you reading this.

I would love to see the original source of this claim. I have seen it attributed to Mark Singleton, but as steve's link shows, this is not at all Singleton's thesis. The fact that there were Western "spiritual gymnastics" movements is a very interesting fact, as is Singleton's very plausible claim that Hatha Yoga went from frowned upon by the upper castes in the late 19th century to being popular in the early 20th due to the pressures of colonialism: "Christian athleticism" became popular in the Anglosphere and touted as a sign of cultural superiority, and Hatha Yoga provided an Indian alternative to counterbalance this, but to serve this purpose was modified for mass consumption (no khecari mudra, vajroli mudra, kundalini awakening, etc.) Now, Jim Mallinson has done some very fine research into the various streams of dharma that converged into hatha yoga and found three: Many key hatha techniques originally come from Vajrayana and were originally to control bindu, the kundalini paradigm comes from Tantric Shaivism, and also, somewhat surprisingly, many of the more gymnastic asanas are first attested to in Tantric Vaishnavism and were used as a form of tapas - austerities. So from this perspective, Krishnamacarya's style of teaching that taught many challenging gymnastics-like asana but left out the techniques for manipulation of Kundalini and bindu are actually reflected in an ancient Vaishnava tradition (note that Krishnamacarya was a Sri Vaishnava). This is speculative, but makes a lot of sense to me.

I personally think of this more as a ting cultivation practice. Song and ting go together of course, see this fantastic post of freeform's that was particularly formative for my understanding:

A worthwhile line of inquiry! While I don't yet know what song is, I know three things it is not by trying them all for some time: intending energy to go downward, sinking the body downward physically (particularly, doing so without understanding how to use the kua) , and relaxing to the point of being limp. All of these will create imbalances and disharmony if practiced diligently. The slogan that Damo Mitchell uses to explain how to train song that sticks in my mind is "bones up, flesh down." The bones float in the matrix of the connective tissue and don't particularly move downward, while the connective tissue is released off the bone downward under the action of gravity. This creates a feeling of stretch in the body's soft tissues. I think I have felt this a little, but not enough to speak about it with any confidence or authority. I'm always looking for new ways to communicate to my nervous system just what exactly I'm intending. This imagery is helpful, thanks.

Ah, OK, so the people I have talked to that are deep in to the sudden awakening path report a permanent shift in their perception rather than a momentary experience, it's just that this shift is at the consciousness level so they still have regular emotions etc, though often dramatically reduced. Then the work is to refine the insight (for instance if you initially replaced identification with your human personality with identification with a cosmic personality there is still work to be done) and to go into the emotions and find all the patterns that are still based in the momentum of ego structures and release those.

OK, we're on the same page about this then, this sudden insight is what is emphasized as the real start of the path in the Chan/Zen and Dzogchen that I have been exposed to. In Dzogchen in particular there are methods of based around integrating this sudden insight (they call it "rigpa" - knowledge) that lead to Rainbow Body. This sudden insight is very interesting to me personally, being very oriented toward things like truth, knowledge, understanding. Interesting to know it is known but not considered important in the classical alchemical Daoist path (correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth). I asked Damo about it one time, seeing as he trains Chan, but he was really busy at the time and didn't get back to me.

In "textbook" Theravada Buddhism, the path is moral discipline, samadhi, and wisdom - in addition to samadhi attainments (8/9 jhanas) there are 4 path attainments which are something distinct than samadhi attainments, the first of which is primarily characterized by the dropping of the fetter "self". There are records in the suttas of people (large numbers of people actually) simply hearing the Buddha preach a sermon and attaining first path then and there, with no prior meditation or moral discipline, and then just going back to their normal life and not cultivating (monastic) moral discipline or samadhi afterward. How does the Theravada school you train in see first path attainment and its relation to samadhi attainment? No argument from me about the importance of distinguishing clearly what different traditions get up to .

Always good to keep this in mind, thanks. So, to be clear, what this is referring to dropping of the of identifying with a local or limited self, agent, or center, not as a samdhi state but as a recognition that such a thing was always an illusion - one is then walking around in waking consciousness with no sense of self or center, and it is seen that this was actually always so, just unrecognized. Those whose experience is like this still report the arising of preferences, emotions, etc, but say the difference is there is no identification of those as "me". This is considered the most crucial shift in a number of traditional paths (Advaita, Zen, Dzogchen); whatever other elements of the path there are are secondary to this. And yet, there are other elements of these paths - the idea that when you get this shift you are completely finished is not in Zen or Dzogchen, I will defer to dwai's understanding of Advaita on the matter. Some Zen and Dzogchen teachers will emphasize the teaching that it is always already so or any notion of path is an illusion in order to facilitate that shift, but it is understood that this doesn't negate that on a conventional level, there is a path both before and after the shift. This certainly confuses a lot of Westerners ("If my true nature is already enlightened, why are you telling me to a hundred thousand prostrations???") Actually, I would be quite curious what the perspective of your lineages is on such a realization. My impression is that when you talk about awakening, you are referring to a samadhi/jhana attainment, which then may or may not be fully integrated with the body via an alchemical method. What about this other type of awakening?

I'm having some trouble finding a partner for the two person Taiji exercises in Damo's academy, because despite there being a lot of interest in Taiji in my town for its size, no one wants to believe that some white guy whose form doesn't look like what they were taught could possibly know more than their teacher from China in silk pajamas and kung fu slippers who graduated from a prestigious physical education university in Beijing etc etc. Doesn't help that Damo (and Adam Mizner's) demos of fajin, especially an jin, look impossible and therefore fake, especially to someone who has never seen any fa jin at all. All that to say, thanks for the lead on someone Chinese doing demos on high level external arts people, maybe that will have more of an impact on people I show it to. Or maybe not.

Thanks for reminding me about Arya Kurukulla.

There are many tangents in this thread, and this one I find particularly interesting. I suspect thelerner's observation about book stores closing is a part of a larger trend of small local bookstores struggling against online behemoths, rather than a decrease in interest in "New Age" thinking. As far as I can figure it, every culture has their own folk religion, that gives people with no interest in difficult vows or practices geared toward otherworldly "enlightenment" a way to feel a connection to the spiritual world, both as a way to feel one has special knowledge, and to make this connection practical for their daily life. What typically gets lumped together as New Age is a major folk tradition of the Western world. It is the descendent of 19th century New Thought, Theosophy, and Spiritualism, and the use of Eastern motifs outside of their original context and meaning.

As far as I can tell, there are degrees of "simplified for mass consumption." I imagine Peng's version has more power than the standardized PRC stuff, even if it's not the full indoor teaching.

They also just added some lessons with his wife on mobility, stretching, body weight exercises, animal walks - highly recommended.