thelerner

If there's anyone with knowledge of Mo Pai who'd like to engage in a serious, discussion of the practice, not the history or the personalities of Mo Pai. Please come to the Serious Mo Pai thread In my (thelerner) PPD, you can get there hitting the thread above. Note the format is quite tight, a discussion of Mo Pai techniques step by step, beginning with how is sitting done. Just that, then we'll move on. step by step. Extraneous, combative, insulting, humorous, sarcastic, tangential will be erased or deleted. This is not a pro or anti thread, rather its looking at and breaking down what we know about Mo Pai techniques. I know very little about Mo Pai, but want to see if we can get knowledgeable people writing seriously about it. In a narrow tight manner. Let's see what happens.

Yesterday I did a search through the writings of the only person I know to be an authentic Mo Pai student from the source, i.e. Indonesia. I read through the posts of tongkosong . Its the internet so nothing be 100% certain, but from the tone of his writings here and a few other places, he seems to be the real thing. Not because of any bragging he's done, quite the opposite. He's modest, knowledgeable, protective and follows the rules of his tradition. In my opinion you want to cut through the Mo Pai jungle, he's the man. Not that he'll teach you anything, but what information he does give I believe is the most accurate. Not that anyone here means to lie, but they all have bias's and agendas. Tonkosong's agenda is authenticating and protecting authentic Mo Pai and its lineage. He goes back to John Chang's teacher's teacher.. kind of stuff. Its fascinating to read the original threads on Mo Pai from 4 and 5 years ago. Search 'tongkosong' in Members.

Seems like most Buddhist practices have you follow your breath with awareness. So, awareness and control are not that bad. On the other hand some arts are into letting go of the breath, letting it get subtle and putting attention into awareness. I find practicing increasingly long breaths makes my natural breathing longer and more peaceful. In Ki-Aikido they separated out breathing exercises from meditation. For many the first practice (& longer) is counting the breaths to 1 up to 10, repeat. Which can be surprisingly hard. So, beginners will often count 1 for in, 2 for out.. so they only go to 5. Meditation teacher Glenn Morris made such counting much harder by having you go back to 1, if a stray thought came in. I play with count quite a bit. Sometimes counting my breaths to 100, then letting it go. Good training in patience. I have tones from a Silent grounds CD, which time my breath going from 8in-8out, 10-10 up to 36 seconds in, 36 seconds out. They do the same with a 1x4x2, so its a repeated tone of say 10 seconds in, 40 second hold 20 seconds out. Takes quite a while to get that long. (unless you do a body hack like Wim Hof breathing that makes long breath cycles much easier) Not sure exactly what you mean by Dantien meditation. Long deep belly breathing is always good. Breath in til you feel the lower ribs expand, breath out.. naturally or in some methods tightening up a bit. To me, most of these methods are good to start on and develop but they're a launching point, after which you just sit (imo). Timing manually or there are good apps like Insight Timer that can set up tones. With so many traditions and methods see what connects to you and your aim.

There is a painful situation in the mid stages of quieting the mind. When, since it's quieter, remaining thoughts hammer hard. In normal consciousness chatter is so loud singular thoughts are muted. Once we begin to get quiet, thoughts hammer. It feels a little bit like craziness, like possession. Its probably a stage we have to go through.. sometimes repeatedly. Higher level people may be hit by it too. Perhaps harder, which is why you see masters doing some really stupid things at times. Controlling our dreams is very hard for most people. Similarly controlling our thoughts is no piece of cake. So much news and 'entertainment' is violent.. it creeps into our consciousness. Rape, murder, theft.. may well be part of a 200,000 year genetic/survival dark instinct.. maybe. When things get quiet, those thoughts are the real boogie man. Which must be faced. Then there's the whole dark night of the soul where we have to face up to the pointlessness of life; its futility, our losses, pain and inevitable death. That's never fun.

My sister-in-law smokes, and coughs quite a bit.. summer and winter. From my limited understanding I recommended to her to try vaping. Seems like you get the nicotine without the smoke in your lungs and some of the harsher addons in cigarettes. Not great, but better. Most of the time.. better is a good direction. FWIW I'm dropping my drinking from a glass (or two) a day, mostly wine with dinner, to 3 or 4 glasses a week. I can tell myself its got benefits (and it does), but in the long run, it shrinks the brain. And sooner or later I'm gonna need mine.

Allinone:"Second skandha is feeling. Third skandha is perception. i don't aspire to get good at hugging. I mean that when you cultivate then you get aversion, like you are inside a room alone and then afraid to socialize for a while." I probably felt some of that for years. My early training had a strong Japanese centered aspiration to it. Which tended towards formal, stiff.. As I've grown older, I've become more.. myself. Informal, less stiff, open, instead of chasing an ideal, coming back to my natural self. I'm less afraid to socialize, or to be alone, or look ridiculous or have fun. Thus I aspire to open my heart more. Hugs seem like an ideal practice in that regard. an open heart is a vulnerable one. there is risk; it takes either innocence or a daredevil, and I am not innocent.

Course you won't talk about the results your art gets (other then showing 20 year old JC youtubes? But with other arts you can go to classes, talk to the teachers, study the lineage, see how senior students are doing. Real stuff, not like Mo Pai where speaking about it gives others 'ammunition against it'(?). While you guys are proud over the lack of dharma/ethic lessons in your practice, I think in real life such lessons are equal to meditation and esoteric energy development. Matter of fact, developing equanimity and kindness enhance it. As one accumulates internal energy, and despite your disbelief there are many arts that do, without such te a person can gain energy and become increasingly unstable. It can happen in any energy practice, but most have safeguards, both live teachers and dharma lessons to grow ethically and remain morally grounded as you accumulate. Without them paranoia and a cultlike attitudes take over. Bad stuff.

Not rude, but probably impractical, in that when an art requires hours of practice a day and there are no live teachers, its hard to spend a year and 1,000 hours on it. There are arts which do requires hours a day, but you can correspond with live teachers and students who share and give feedback. Apparently there are schools that follow curriculum close to level one and two, plus have live teachers, living traditions that are accessible. It's interesting, it seems like you feel about other Western schools of Mo Pai, the way some feel about your group.

I've seen and practiced such things, but don't have much faith in them in a fight setting where intent is different. My sensei would do touchless throws on us, which in essence were strong 'fakes' backed up by strong qi. When a younger judo player challenged it, he did the same punch throw set up. Sure enough the judoka didn't react to the fake so while we ducked/rolled out of the way, he got smashed pretty hard by the hand that followed through it. My sensei's pretty much had the weight and force of his entire body in his hand, excellent mind/body control, so the unbeliever got hit pretty hard. For me, such 'fakes'/touchless throws are more like a Kiai, in combat meant to shake up the timing of your opponent, and as such, they work but there'd better be something solid behind them. Course thats me at my skill level. apologies for off topic.

Being from the Midwest I am not a hugger, except for my own family. I'm trying to change that a bit though. Not so much to initiate but get more comfortable hugging others, not be reluctant to hug better.. that little melt in the middle. Got lots of practice at Burning Man.

For me that is reminiscent of Hermetic practitioner Rawn Clark's Center of Stillness meditation. A free somewhat challenging guided meditation where you separate out your 5 senses plus emotion and thought into an orbit around you. Thus a Hermetic version of 'sealing the senses'. It has you look down upon your 'web of life'- the tangle of elements and patterns your life has created. And hang there for a bit seeing yourself as the center of the vast universe. Not an exact picture but reminds me of it. Rawn has many great hermetic programs. His website abardoncompanion.com . I enjoy his Archaeous and YHVH practices too. Plus great insights in his writings and audios on Bardon's Initiation into Hermetics.

That is a man who won the lottery in the genetics game. For every such lucky winner there are millions of graves. Putting smoke into fluffy white lungs is not ideal. I'm not even saying nicotine can't be used medicinally or occasionally recreationally, but long term use makes you many times more likely to get lung cancer, emphysema and whole host of other deadly diseases. In the simplest statistics, smokers en masse, die 10 years earlier then non-smokers. Speaking of smokers, my grandfather was a proud smoker til his death, minus one amputated lung and leg. He's a better representative of a smoker imo then the veteran, who's lungs inevitably blackened by the smoking. I'll add that a cigarette or cigar or joint infrequently isn't a killer boogie man. But regularly.. you're playing with a demon.

I won't argue that point. Done infrequently it may have benefits, but if addicted or using multiple times a week, not a good thing. I like to think the wise men of the past weren't heavy users or if they were didn't know the increased risks.

Humans.. I know humans, I like humans, humans are my friends.. but they (& I) are ecological disasters. We tend to shit where we live, crowding out other species and knocking down ecological systems like they were dominoes. If we can eat it, wear it, or live in its habitat, its up shits creek. An animal faced with human moving in, or a nuclear melt down, would do well to pick nuclear meltdown. The future lack of people will be far better then human civilization moving into there neighborhood. Where am I going with this.. Oh, because intentionally and unintentionally we're crap for the environment then ethically when we can do something, especially something simple, like throwing a grounded fish back into the water, then we probably should.

From the article in OP 'Dr Winzer-Serhan said: “I want to make it very clear that we’re not encouraging people to smoke. “Even if there weren’t any preliminary results, smoking results in so many health problems that any possible benefit of nicotine would be more than cancelled out. “However, smoking is only one possible route of administration of the drug and our work shows that we shouldn’t write-off nicotine completely. “We haven’t proved that this addictive drug is safe and it certainly isn’t during childhood or adolescence.” The study was published in the Journal of Toxicology. Me- On one very large hand, Smoking is addictive and a leading cause of many cancers, emphysema and heart disease. I believe it's been scientifically proven to be the leading cause of preventable death in the Western World. On the other hand, in the right amounts poisons can act as medicine.. in certain doses, in certain situations. I do believe nicotine may well help in the prevention of Alzheimer. Hopefully such studies take into account the shortened life span, on average of smokers, ie less Alzheimers cause they're dead. If a person smokes (most things) a few times a month, that seems (mostly) harmless to me. Ie I'm assuming the body can repair the damage smoking does. But if one gets addicted or smoking daily, its a killer demon on your back one that kills 100,000's in the U.S a year (480,000?) https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm Smoking leads to disease and disability and harms nearly every organ of the body.1 More than 16 million Americans are living with a disease caused by smoking. For every person who dies because of smoking, at least 30 people live with a serious smoking-related illness. Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Smoking also increases risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases, and problems of the immune system, including rheumatoid arthritis. Smoking is a known cause of erectile dysfunction in males. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. Worldwide, tobacco use causes nearly 6 million deaths per year, and current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8 million deaths annually by 2030.2 Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day.1 On average, smokers die 10 years earlier than nonsmokers.3 If smoking continues at the current rate among U.S. youth, 5.6 million of today’s Americans younger than 18 years of age are expected to die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. This represents about one in every 13 Americans aged 17 years or younger who are alive today.1

Speaking only for myself, I don't dislike you now and would welcome a nice refreshing discussion on an aspect of practice. The Bums is at its best when there's a subject that people can write about how there art views it. I cannot recommend enough that you join or start a thread on an aspect of practice and share your views, accept others comments, even join in when the comments go sideways into the humorous. Such heretical banter is our electronic equivalent of sharing a beer. We all get on each others nerves at times and its in such playful banter that we reconnect.. hopefully in a lighthearted way.

Can't say it worked for me, but traditionally I believe young people with greying hair were pointed to He Shou Wou, a tonic that translates to 'Old Black Hair'. Google it, see if it strikes a chord. For a Chinese herbal its strangely inexpensive. note** not an herbalist, nor do I play one on TV. Research it, pros and cons. Addon> Speaking of my non-qualifications, for libido I like the Pine Pollen tincture like the kind at The Rural Apothecary. Its the rare herbal where I feel and see a difference the next morning.

What do you find is the best way to.. flex the pineal gland? There are meditations on the crystal cave area of the skull in a few arts, others concentrate long sessions on the third eye area. And is the 'proof' of such tweaking a down flowing bliss/elixir?

One, I like Chunyi Lin and think SFQ is a good system. While not a practitioner I've listened to many of Master Chunyi's talks and liked what he's said. Still, reading the original post (over 2 years old) in the lonemanpai forum, if I didn't know it was Chunyi and it was Master XYZ who told a 22 year old practitioner who'd signed up for a distance healing, was told he had blockages in virtually all systems and would need 6 more healing sessions and needed to practice 3 hours a day. It would raise my suspicions. Same if it was a psychic, saying lots of entities you'll 6 more (expensive) sessions to get rid of them. We don't know the details. It could be perfectly legitimate and life saving. But such a 'prescription' is pretty much Con 101 in the psychic trade. I'll add SotG did use the word IF (that's really what happened) then there is thievery. Wise because in internet land we don't know if the kid is real, what's he's printing is real, there's no details or proof given.. again internet reality. I can understand why yinyangvoid is concerned about slights to his well respected teacher, but if the story hadn't been about Chunyi and had Master fufu, I assume he'd also have suspicions raised. I will say this. If people are getting long distance healing from Chunyi or anybody and consistently told they'll need a -half dozen more.. then something doesn't smell right to me. Flags are raised, 6 or 7 healings probably add up to thousand of dollars. That's alot. I'll add in the same thread people wrote '..If you are satisfied by the system (SFQ) better not mix techniques because no one will know who helped you'. So, not totally against SFQ on the whole. Most of the advice given on the lonemanpai seemed good to me, probably similar to what he'd get here. I'm sorry that SFQ was dragged in but I wonder how many people getting a single session of healing are told they need 6 more? Great if needed, expensive con, if not. As always in the eclectic energy arts are caveat emptor. if your on the internet there will always be critics, some deserved, many not. The best answer is simply having a good reputation that speaks for itself and by and large Chunyi Lin does.

This youtube by Barry Long is a good- why, which in some ways you already have: This one, a guided meditation gives you a good practical tool. Use it for a few days in a row and you should have a noticeable quieter mind- I like making such talks into mp3's. Also for the Guided meditation after listening to the whole thing a time or two, I'll set it to skip the first 10 minutes 26 seconds.

death. I get the feeling we give up our particular mind, one way or another. my wondering is.. does some base awareness go on? some aspect of soul?

Yes, and one thing I'd recommend is splitting it into more paragraphs. Ie putting a line or two between the major thoughts. Especially on the internet where attention spans are short, keeping paragraphs short, 4 to 6 sentences makes things much more readable. Maybe its Western laziness, ironic on a thread mentioning Kung fu, but shorter paragraphs are easier to read.

Gotta start planning out my gardens. They've been piled up with 3 or 4 inches of highly caffeinated (thank you Whole foods) mulch (grass, leaves, coffee grounds), so it should be raring to go. I've been very half assed about trellising the last few years. And I've been over planting for the space. This year I'd like to go simpler; better trellising and fewer plants. I'm thinking of using PVC for the trellis. I read you can use a sulfate solution to keep the plastic from leeching (or very thick bamboo if I can find it) and also use it to water through so water ends up deeper, supposedly its more efficient and keeps away weeds down through less water on top. I'm also thinking of using 3 pieces of very wide (6") PVC for a planting project. Make a wide teepee and have one w/ cucumber growing off the top of one, and a few herbs 'plugged in' around the bottom, a shorter strawberry one; growing through cuts and a mixed variety, a flowery third as an experiment, see if I can get flowers up and down the whole thing. Below the teepee a low lying shrub tomato plant. And a bit of chicken wire mesh around the whole thing for climbing. So what are you guys planning?

When we want to buy time to understand something we go Ummn. In Hebrew the word for Universe is Olam. Often used in chant and song, very Ommie Amen or AHhhmennn (so be it) also follows a very Om-ish path. I certainly enjoyed chanting Om in an ashram with a hundred people joining in. Its not so shabby in the shower where the acoustics are particularly excellent and when you hit the right tone, the reverb is tonifying. Good for most singing or chanting, but I particularly like Rawn Clark's canticle chant YHVH.

You're still in the Welcome section- which is for new members to introduce themselves. If you'd like to start a discussion, you should probably choose a forum, perhaps General and hit New Topic to start it. We won't bite. Maybe the only way to prove to you we have nothing against Mo Pai is for you to start a thread and see for yourself. However I would hope you would avoid insulting other arts and groups here. We are an eclectic board with a wide variety of groups, topics and practices.