sean

Thanks for the heads up. I'm still figuring out the whole Google indexing thing and I appreciate the nudge. I tweaked some settings ... let's give the Google spiders a few days to crawl the site and hopefully the changes I made will fix the problem. Sean.

You should read the whole article I linked to. Hinayana has a definite meaning in Sanskrit. And it's not "lesser vehicle". More like "coarse, vulgar, ignoble and harmful, evil". The Hinayana-Mahayana-Vajrajana distinction isn't actually an original teaching of the Buddha. It's not even based on an interpretation of Buddha's recorded teachings. From what I can tell it's based on later schools of Buddhism, after Buddha's death, claiming to have discovered original teachings of Buddha that were "the second turning" and then eventually "third turning of the wheel of dharma." Which lacks historical credibility. This in itself wouldn't really matter a whole lot except for that in this new mythology's "coarse, vulgar, ignoble and harmful, evil" category, they stuck a good portion of the Buddha's actual historical and genuine teachings. And in the "highest most supreme fastest most selfless path to enlightenment" category, they put their own new scriptures and commentaries. :roll: Sean.

I'm quitting smoking on New Years. It's the third or fourth time I've quit. The last time I quit was for two friggin years without a single drag. Another time was for over a year. But I get to a point where I think I'm "above it now" and can have just one cigarette. Usually it's the alcohol talking. :roll: Anyway, if anyone has any good advice on any aspect of the quitting process, wether it be getting through the first days, detoxing, and especially with figuring out how to stick with it long-term ... I'd love to hear it. Thanks, Sean.

You know, I tend to look at things this exact way. But taking your idea further I think can lead to an infinite regress from which there seems no escape. For example, now that I've read this I feel like a part of me still wants to quit on New Years, while another part wants to try your way. I think this is samsara. And I think it applies to nearly anything consciously decided, at least from my limited viewpoint. The Latin root of the word decision itself means "to cut off from alternatives". So built into the very nature of the way we think about making decisions is a form of aggression against what is, and against possibilities other than what you think you want. Our spiritual seeking itself seems built on the premise that we are somehow unique from the Truth, as if somehow we have become separate from God. When I contemplate nonduality it leads me to wonder whether anything is really fundamentally distinct from the Tao (as well as whether anything is fundamentally united with the Tao but that's another story). Perhaps it's arguable that some behaviors are typically not a common expression of an individual's harmony with the Tao. For example, my struggle with quitting smoking. But perhaps this only appears to be a struggle at odds with the Tao when, ie: the aggregates of my mental phenomena are dancing in such a way so as to occlude the perception of fundamental unity and nonduality, etc. So, short response, here's my logic: I think it will improve my health, well-being and spirituality to quit smoking now. Waiting for complete harmony with the Tao before I begin may take more than this lifetime and will continue to lessen the quality of this one. I hope through tools like hypnosis and spiritual practice I can bring the parts of myself into harmony with this decision after the fact. Thanks for the info on Kan and Li and Fusion practices. I'm working through Winn's suggested sequence linearly and am itching to start Fusion which is next. If no one has it to lend to me soon I will just purchase it. Sean.

Shit I missed it. How'd it go Matthew? Sean.

I created a subdomain for the forum, so it's now technically located at: forum.taobums.com You can still access the forum at www.thetaobums.com/forum but you may run into slight technical issues, so it's probably best to update your bookmarks to the new subdomain. Cheers, Sean. PS: I'm on Christmas vacation with Lezlie in Mississippi and they barely have indoor bathrooms down here let alone Internet so I won't really be around until next Tuesday.

Hey, I'm thinking about selling email addresses at taobums.com. The easiest thing would be to just sell POP accounts that let you have [email protected] which you could send/receive email from through your own email software, ie: Outlook Express, or if your webmail allows you to import mail from other POP accounts. For example Yahoo allows you to do this. The second more complicated option, but that I would consider if the interest is there, would be for me to actually install Webmail software on Taobums. Then you would not only have [email protected], but you could check your mail through a web interface right on taobums.com itself. For example you would go to mail.taobums.com and login to check your mail and send new messages. Let me know if there is any interest in this at all, and which option you would prefer. As for pricing, I would probably sell email addresses under the first option for around $5 a year. Pricing for the second option would vary depending on how much disk space per email address is requested, but would probably range from $10-$15 a year. Sean.

Check your PM Ron. I got your donation, thank you! Sean.

You should check out The Awakening West for an alternative and very refreshing perspective on this. It's a set of interviews with awakened western teachers. It appears that there is a great deal of enlightenment right in our own neighborhoods. At the very least you can read the interviews as case studies to put to the "Bodri test". PM me your address and I'll lend you the book. Sean.

Cool. Just put your address here or PM me with it and I'll send it out. Remember to reply to this thread when you are done with it so you can send it on to the next person who may want to borrow it.

I hear you Ron. I think it's a valid criticism that I pull myself in different directions a lot. I'll meditate on that because I do think it fucks me up. On the other hand, and I mentioned to you this before in an HT post along similar lines, I don't see a real inherent difference between "surrender" and "becoming one with Will". The latter is just a more manly way to word the same process. My spiritual life over the past decade has been an ebb and flow back and forth from more overtly "magickal" practices to the more "mystical" and I think the ideal is to find a balance that is personal. But especially without the direct influence of a teacher, as you mentioned, it's hard to know when of are working a different angle because you are just bored and lazy or wether your Self is naturally striving for a needed equilibrium. Sean.

Well, I wrote Craig several weeks ago and no response yet. I think the statue of limitations is up. If you want to borrow the WSM practice let me know here and PM me your address and I'll send it out. Sean.

Basically the 5MM is The Five Tibetan Rites Yoga routine integrated with Scott Sonnon's Be Breathed. Pretty good stuff. More information can be found here.

Try updating your bookmark to the forum to: forum.taobums.com See if that helps. The forum will still work from www.thetaobums.com/forum but it's actually running on it's own subdomain now. Accessing the forum from the old location may be causing the problem. Sean.

LOL! I had a feeling you'd pounce on that one Ron. Look, I'm not saying I would've been fine if that really happened. Here's how I see it. I think the identification I-am-my-body occludes awareness of Original Self, Enlightenment, whatever you want to call it. Really anything that is appended to I-AM is probably a description of an identity-addiction. But the I-am-my-body identification is very powerful IMO because it's built into our language; the way we typically talk to ourselves in our heads and the way others nearly always speak with us. It's also built into nearly all of the memes of society. It's so strong, often the mere thought that it might not be true is ludicrous and horrifying. So fear is added to the identification cycle. Clinging to anything that strengthens the identification becomes more desperate. Thoughts, feelings and behaviors that feed this I-am-my-body identification build momentum. Some patterns of clinging become so dense and out of control we call them addictions. IMO, one of the most powerful ways to strengthen identification with body-as-what-I-am is to unmindfully engage in sensual acts. This is why I don't believe that it's as simple as just retain your Jing and you're fine. Now, before you start yelling at me and say I'm moralizing, let me clarify. Because by sensual I don't mean pleasurable. I mean anything involving the ordinary senses. Mysticism takes a bad turn IMO when it confuses pleasure and sensation. They are not the same because pain is a sensation just as much as pleasure. It's not as simple as "just avoid the fun stuff". You can just as easily get addicted to pain, dullness, numbness, etc. as to pleasure. So you have masochist Buddhist celibates with giant hemmoroids from too much sitting and marks on their bodies from being beaten awake during 6 hour Zazen sessions. And I don't think I have to go into how nutso Christians can be about their love of pain. Even their best mystics. But I think us Taoist perverts make the opposite mistake just as much. Thinking that sexual-cultivation practices are a license to seek as much pleasure as possible. I don't think is the original enlightened intention of the practices. I think the intention was to teach you how to indiscriminately say "yes" to all sensation and thus come to realize the true nature of sensation as being inherently empty despite the values we temporarily attach. This is perhaps the scariest, most disorienting thing about sensation; that it's just amoral feedback that has no value except for what we attach to it and how we react to it. But can you really overcome an addiction that is blinding you to The Truth if you are still participating in it? For example, can you overcome the addiction to smoking but still smoke every day? Chemical addictions alter the structure of your brain chemistry. If you are still smoking every day, how do you know you have overcome the addiction until you test yourself through a period of abstinence? Otherwise you're probably just rationalizing. Modern addiction theory even goes so far as to say it's nearly impossible to overcome powerful drug addictions without abstinence and the help of others because of the rationalization factor in a chemically altered brain. It's like trying to fix a broken tool with the broken tool itself. Sex is arguably a drug as powerful as any. How do you transcend an addiction to sex if you are still participating in it? This is one of the virtues of the right-hand path; it is practical and direct. Quit your body-identification strengthening addictions, your drugs and your sex, and deal with shit head-on. But I am on a left-hand path. A path that includes sex. And I'm happy with that. But regardless of my present situation, I feel it's important to incorporate practices that "relinquish grasping and aversion". And I find that the practices that actually end up helping me the most are in this vain, ie: Sedona, emptiness meditation and now this WSM + my spontaneous improvisations. Because true there is only Now, but someday that Now may involve an experience of being brittle and elderly and blind and with a shriveled penis barely able to piss in a pot. And it would be nice if that were experienced more or less as just another phase of this strange journey and not the bitter ruin of my entire cultivation routine. Sean.

Here's some more spontaneous variations I've visualized: Here's a fun one ... I watched my scrotum and penis pulled out and snipped at the base with a pair of scissors. This was accompanied by the thought "you can never have sex again" ... and I allowed myself to feel what that would feel like. The disappointment, fear, etc. and I let it resolve Sedona-style until I was relatively ok with it in that moment. Then I did the Washing the Skeleton White like the Kitchen Floor Meditation. First I saw the head of one of those older style rope mops starting at my feet and working it's way up just mopping the flesh off of my body. Then a really wet and soapy scrub brush starting at my toes scrubbed back and forth up my entire skeleton, scrubbing off all the dirt and making my bones glistening, glowing white. Then a hose washed off of the suds and dissolved and melted my skeleton. Sean.

Thanks for the feedback Trunk. Yeah I just figured I'd open up the discussion to see if the interest is there at all. I know most people probably have too many email addresses to begin with, it was more just a novelty thing ... like having TaoBums T-Shirts. I just settled on offering people permanant POP-only [email protected] email addresses for making a PayPal donation of any sum to Taobums. More as just a small token of gratitude. Sean.

That sucks man. I know how it feels though. I work in front of a computer 8 hours a day and then come home many nights and sit in front of my computer again to finish freelance projects, read/surf, now maintain this forum, etc. Using a computer so much really gets to me and I know exactly what Trunk is getting at when he talks about how important it is to get out and into nature and to start a garden, etc. Your presence in the discussions will be missed. I hope you can sort through things and maybe arrive at an "internet moderation" plan so we can still see you pop in at least occassionally. Best of luck, Sean

Thanks for the link. Never seen that before. And located in San Francisco too, I just might check that out. Sean.

Well I don't have many profound thoughts on the WSM, I just enjoy the practice a lot. I've noticed a slight increase in energy from doing it the last few days. And I notice I am getting better and better at visualizing my skeleton, which in turn is increasing my visualization abilities in general --- I'm very happy about this as this is important to me as an artist. Also, and perhaps oddly enough, I find it incredibly enjoyable to tear off my flesh in new and creative ways. Sometimes I do it "Buddhist style" as Bodri describes, imagining my flesh bloating, then oozing and collapsing and falling off. Once I let my flesh blister and then melt off. Often I just peel my flesh off like it's a suit. Today I remembered that I rarely dissolve my brain mass and I found this to be pretty powerful as it had the effect of briefly producing a distinct internal silence and an increased clarity in awareness (ie: crisper colors, etc). What I did was ... I "liquified" my body from the top down with emphasis on liquifying and dissolving my brain. I was surprised by a spontaneous visualization where my brain turned to fluid, drained down my spine and then got shit out right along with all the flesh of my lower torso, ass, etc. :shock: The practice is an interesting disparity between what you would think would be disturbing imagery/visualization and the peaceful feelings of happiness and freedom it produces. Reminds me a bit of the effect that imagery of the "fierce" deities of Tibetan Buddhism have on me. I have yet to focus on feeling like I am offering my flesh to other sentient beings. I have yet to do a really detailed visualization of whitening the bones as I don't have a poster or skeleton, I am just relying on my knowledge of anatomy from art school. All in all, I enjoy the practice a lot and like that I can do it many times throughout the day informally, even at work .. especially the flesh tearing part. And I've also found it helpful in kickstarting my already somewhat established sitting meditation practice. Sean.

I found a pretty good deal on life size human skeletons. It's on e-bay here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...ssPageName=WDVW But the same company sells them for around the same price here: http://www.graveyardgoodies.com/skeletons.htm I think I'm going to buy one after Christmas and sit him on an extra Zafu in front of me when I do the WSM. Sean.

Got it! Thank you! And now I have the book. Finishing chapter two right now. Thanks again to everyone who donated! Looking forward to the group study next week. Sean.

I'm not familiar with the chapter breakdown, but that sounds like a good plan. Only problem is Christmas vacation. How many of us will be busy with family, etc? I know I'm going out of town for about a week around Christmas, and I'll probably have limited Internet access. But I will continue to study and take notes during this time if we decide to adhere strictly to this plan. Sean.