sean

Hey, welcome brotagaia. Hey, you mates from down under ever check out The Lucksmiths? I think they are from your way. I used to be really into them. Same with Cannanes .. who else, sodastream, the dearhunters, darren hanlon ... oh boy, it's all coming back to me now. The years of cigarettes and wine and all nighters spent listening to clever, shambling australian indie-pop.

We have such a funny connection, Max. I was sitting in a hot bath after I wrote this thinking, dammit! but there are eg. Zen masters who achieve enlightenment from the sound of a pebble hitting a bamboo shoot, that doesn't mean listening to pebbles hitting bamboo shoots will lead to enlightenment! It's a good point. Still, I go back to my "conditions vs causes" point. Perhaps emptiness practice is the most important condition, but many schools like the six Yogas of Naropa and the eight limbs of classical Yoga have many branches of conditions that support, balance and arguably accelerate emptiness practice. From my research I believe Dream Yoga can be utilized as skillful means and not merely addictive entertainment.

Yes, you can't skip stages. You have to work your way through each. That's why I agree with you that the pacifism you are against is a cop-out. It's an attempt to skip from stage 1 to 3 prematurely. Staying informed of stages is important so we know where we are heading and so we don't misjudge people who may look, talk and behave similarly to stage 1 pacifist cop-outs but who are actually stage 3 masters.

Ah yes, Gilligan made a wonderful contribution in her stages model for women. She identified the growth stages of women, from selfish, to caring to ... *drum roll* ... nonviolence or "universal caring". So maybe a stage 1 woman is fighting/not fighting to protect merely herself, stage 2 is fighting/not fighting to protect those she cares about, stage 3 is fighting/not fighting as an embodied demonstration of universal compassion. (Link is bouncing because Scott's site is down, should be up again soon). Sean

Dream Yoga is one of the six Yogas of Naropa, a complete system of Tibetan cultivation. One of the early Kagyu lineage holders, Dusum Khyenpa, achieved enlightenment through dream yoga. It's a very powerful metaphor for waking up. Of course any practice, including emptiness meditation, can be an addiction in the service of entertainment. Sean PS - KoHsuan, I think registration is over. I've been too busy to follow through on the course so far so maybe next session we should sign up earlier and many of us can do it together.

Jumping in late here and haven't read every post in detail, but I think this article on the important distinction between pacifism and non-violence is interesting and relevant. Also I think a familiarity with Kohlberg's stages of moral development, namely preconventional, conventional and postconventional, is useful in this discussion. Who or what are you fighting to protect and at what cost? At the preconventional level the focus is "what's in it for me here?". So if you fight, it's going to be merely for your own safety and survival. At the conventional level you are focused on your tribe and the "common good". If you're fighting, you are going to consider your family, community, and social contracts as the standard. At the postconventional level the focus is on being an expression of your highest universal principles. You will defer to your highest principles to determine how you behave. If your highest universal principle is something like behaving in a way that allows Love to best shine through every moment, then you may look at a dangerous situation and realize that your own death is the proper way to show your principles. Many wise teachers have done something like this. Jesus, Socrates, they say Buddha died, finally, by accepting tainted food from a family he was visiting instead of refusing the food and possibly offending them. What's important to recognize is that these teachers were not lacking the moral instinct to protect themselves and others from harm. They were not lazy men hiding behind idealogical pacifism as a way of avoiding the courage to fight. These are people that would also have also led armies were that the highest expression of Love they perceived. So, while I would agree that most cases of pacifism are probably preconventional/conventional, it's important to recognize the possiblity of the transcendent third stage IMO, otherwise many powerful figure's courageous, selfless deaths become meaningless. Sean

Physical training recovery notes I've summarized recently. Feel free to add. Daily: Omega-3 Zinc / Magnesium Good nutrition (balance of carbs/proteins) Glucosamine During training: Wait between 30 seconds to 3 minutes between sets. Shortly after training: Cool down for 10-20 minutes. Light jogging. Drink a post-workout shake high in protein and carbs for glycogen replacement. If possible hot/cold therapy. Cold shower, than hot bath, then cold bath. Cold press on tissues that require longer regeneration periods (ie: fast-twitch muscle groups and tendons: Massage (Check for massage schools, students have to do countless hours of massage training) Later after training: Quality sleep / naps Light activity, ie: Intu-Flow / Xtension, Yoga, Light jogging, go for a walk Hot/cold therapy. Cold shower, than hot bath, then cold bath. Hot bath with epsom salts or apple cider vinegar Take days off Relax, put your feet up, watch TV, play video games, de-stress, meditate

Came across this the other day and figured I'd tack it on to our sungazing notes thread: Via Sungazing Yahoo Group Excerpt from The Splendour Of Tiphareth - The Yoga Of The Sun by: Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov Chapter Three Our Higher Self Dwells In The Sun pp. 47 & 48. "Then, in the morning, rested and in peace, you can start your meditation, slowly and gently, without concentrating intently on the sun too abruptly. Start by glancing inwards to see if all you inhabitants are at peace, and if they are making a noise or being rowdy and rebellious, try to calm them down and restore order and balance, for you cannot soar towards the sun until peace and harmony reign within you. Once you are in a state of inner peace, you can send your thoughts out to the sun and imagine it as a glorious world inhabited by the most perfect, absolutely luminous creatures who live in sublime intelligence and order, a culture, a civilization exists that is perfect beyond description. The day before yesterday I told you that there were mountains and palaces and whole towns in the sun, and you were dumbfounded and horrified: 'That's ridiculous! How could anything living exist in such heat?' But what do you know about all the different ways in which life can manifest itself and the conditions it needs in order to develop? Life exists everywhere throughout the whole universe; why should it not also be in the sun?" "And what would be your reaction if I told you that, without realizing it, you were already in the sun? You cannot feel it, but there is a tiny part of yourself, a very, very subtle element, which already dwells permanently in the sun. Science has not really studied man yet; it does not know the tremendous wealth nor the breadth and depth of a human being. As you already know, the visible part, the physical body, is not the sum total of man. He has other bodies which are made of increasingly subtle matter. And I have told you the same thing about the earth: the earth is not only that part of it that we can see. Round the globe is an atmosphere many miles deep, and science divides this atmosphere into several different layers, each with its own name. But what science does not know is that within each of these layers there lives infinite number of elements and entities, and that beyond the atmosphere lies the earth's etheric body which stretches all the way to the sun: in fact, it actually touches the sun. The etheric body of the earth, therefore, mingles and melts into the etheric body of the sun, for the sun, too, has an etheric body which reaches far beyond its own sphere, as far as the earth and beyond, all the way to the other planets. This is why sun and earth touch and are already united. And, as man is built in the image of the universe, he too possesses this subtle dimension of emanations from which he projects rays which reach as far as the sun. In this way we can say that man, in his higher, sublime, divine dimension, actually lives in the sun already. He is not aware of it, of course, because he only uses his brain, and the brain is built to work within the limits of the physical world." Sean

Neimad, here is an interesting quote about blockages on the gross physiological level that I believe methods like spinal breathing help release: Via Primal Contraction and Release by Jana Dixon "I came to the conclusion that primal contraction is held mostly in the small muscles that lie closest to the spinal column. A core of intractable tension surrounding the central nervous system, reducing energy and information to all organs including the heart and brain. To release such fundamental holding, the spine (sympathetic trunks) and plexus need to be purified, energized, opened and united in ascension, so that the vegetative, animal, human and supra-human synergistically uphold each other. The chronic spastic back muscles compress the spine and depolarize the ganglia and nerves of the sympathetic trunks. The nervous, immune and muscular systems become exhausted through lactic acid/hypoxic conditions of muscles that fail to return to a resting state. The wound up body is not as receptive to energy from the earth or environment, nor can it adequately convey energy and information within it. Energy for healing and spiritual development is thus not freely available in the person harboring this fossilized core of tension. Of needs unmet. Kundalini or consciousness itself is thwarted in its natural streaming. There is a dampening of the awareness of impulses into and from the contracted individual, essentially cutting one off from the Life flux." I'll post more about Primal Release soon. Sean

Awesome tip thaddeus!

I don't know about standing meditation's direct relationship to healing or fighting abilities, but what I get out of any held asana, wether it be standing, sitting, bridging, whatever, is a meditation on structure, breathing, selective tension, etc. I never explored standing meditation consistently until my acupuncturist just recently prescribed 20 minutes a day "embrace the tree". I do it after my sitting practices and it's has a unique energetic flavor that I am enjoying. I haven't noticed a yang energy surge yet, Yoda, in fact I find that it's very yin-descending, grounding when you focus on deeply relaxing and surrendering into the minimum structural effort required to support your posture. Maybe the fire comes when you are like wincing and tensing and trying not to shit yourself to muscle through the session. The intention I go into it with is to rest my body on a deliberately efficient, consciously created frame. Like getting on a coat hanger or something. It's very refreshing. Here's a good recent RMAX discussion on the values of standing chi kung. Cool quote by Kwasi in that thread: "Excess tension is really uncomfortable when you hold a posture for an extended period of time plus it wastes energy. The discomfort causes you to be aware of tension in your structure and makes you learn control. Over time awareness and control both improve. Bad alignment is also uncomfortable and so over time you learn to stand in the least uncomfortable manner so that your structure handles gravity naturally." Sean

Plato, did you ever see that Forrest Griffin vs. Stephan Bonnar fight. That shit was incredible.

LOL. This is the funniest post ever.

I asked my acupuncturist about this and she said the same thing about intention. I think part of Winn's point on the tape was that tonglen and many other traditions put nearly all of the weight of transformation on the Lung spirit and at best delegate some to the Heart as well whereas Taoist Alchemy identifies how all of the organs can be brought into the game and given a balanced workload so one organ doesn't feel overburdened. Maybe the respiratory issues amongst Tibetans was highly anecdotal (fish tale), I think he was probably just trying to stress the importance of balance and bringing your full body-mind into the enlightenment game, not just relying on any one part alone. It's Winn's thesis in a way and a valuable contribution IMO.

These are words I cannot be reminded of often enough ... great advice, thank you Karen. Awesome Yoda. I hadn't seen that heart technique of his yet. ... As I mentioned in another thread, today during tonglen practice I spontaneously starting giving away my stored jing. Just letting it come into Big Heart and steam into chi that I sent out to suffering beings everywhere. It was powerful and I felt a physical release of congestion in my LTT and genitals. I am not sure what it's implications are yet, but as Karen has advised I am not going to overanalyze this (yet), instead just letting it happen and see where it goes. Sean

So you gonna add me as your friend or what?

Today, during tonglen practice, I started spontaneously giving away my stored jing. Just letting it steam into chi in my heart and out to to people that need it. It felt amazing. I could feel all this congestion in my LTT and genitals releasing. I have a feeling this may be a very powerful application of tonglen for me. Sean

Agreed Max, and I appreciate your apology very much. Nice distinction between cause and conditions, I'm glad you caught that. A few hours after I wrote this post I was out drinking tea and it suddenly struck me that you were talking about conditions and not causes; great distinction. The key difference between my philosophy and Bodri's is our answers to the question "what is cultivation and what is not cultivation?" and the assumptions our answers rest on. For simplicity's sake let's extend to the Brazilian jiu-jitsu analogy, let's ask what is BJJ training and what is not BJJ training. To be successful at BJJ you obviously have to have at least an intermediate level of fitness (strength, flexibility, stamina, etc.) And then perhaps not so obviously you also need a degree of intelligence, enough focus to pay attention to and make sense of teacher instructions, discipline to show up and push through difficulties, emotional resilience to bounce back from failure, etc, etc. These are all conditions for success at BJJ, some more important than others. To actually learn BJJ itself the most obvious thing that has to be present are the specific techniques of BJJ which are learned, practiced and applied over and over and over and with other people on the same path. Now, in the context of a room full of healthy people that are capable of success in BJJ but don't know anything about it yet, it could appear that what would cause them success at BJJ would be the BJJ training itself. But that is only when you look at the situation in that very specific context of pre-existing skills (fitness, intelligence, readiness, etc.) From a wider, developmental perspective, specific BJJ training is only one condition for this success. It's the most significant condition, yes, but it's dependent upon a host of other conditions that might prevent BJJ success if absent. And many of these other conditions are not specifically addressed or developed by BJJ training alone. I think you see how this applies to my view of emptiness meditation and it's relationship with the Samadhi states. And this isn't even getting in to Samadhi's relationship with Enlightenment which is is even less causal than emptiness meditation's relationship with Samadhi, but that's another topic. So, yes, tasting the formless over and over is probably the most significant condition in the arising of the various depths of Samadhi. But so are birth, a healthy body-mind, nutrition, bhakti, etc., etc. Emptiness meditation is only an independent cause if you limit your context and ignore many other important conditions. Limiting your contexts like this is a good skill. It helps you make important distinctions and is how you develop a specialty. Bodri is a great specialist for this reason. He is not, ie, teaching the specifics of hatha yoga to keep your body healthy so that it can support your mind and penetrate emptiness deeper. He limits his context to "what condition is so significant to the the evolution of an enlightened being that it is always present and if it were removed enlightenment would not occur". It's a cool question and the answer he's found in his studies is "some form of emptiness practice". It's a cool answer too. I think he makes the strongly-masculine-essenced error of assuming that the only form of emptiness practice is "inward stillness to Freedom" and that this practice is somehow fundamentally different from, and superior to "outward merging with Love" (femine-essenced practice). Further, I think his elevation of "significant condition" to not only a "cause" but to "the only cause you need to bother with" is an incredibly broad stroke that leaves out many other important conditions that are of profound help to the awakening process. IMO Bodri promotes his emptiness-condition-as-THE-ONLY-cause manifesto partly in the spirit of simplifying spirtual practice for busy people confused by the details of mystical knowledge, partly in an attempt to find the core unifying element common to all mystical paths and partly in an attempt to position himself as an expert with a unique angle in his niche spiritual marketing campaign. In my case, and others, it's the perceived abundance of the latter motivation that is a turn off and IMO dillutes his work with mixed intentions. This is a great point. I think a disciplined emphasis on the importance of emptiness meditation is a much needed counterblast to the "it's all one so we don't need to meditate at all" stance. Personally I do emptiness meditation every morning and night, first with mantra and then in the empty afterglow post-mantra. Without this base of tasting the Formless every day, my Tantra would not have a leg to stand on. The emptiness vs. visualization aspect of this discussion is a non-issue for me. I've never really cared much about that debate and I think you can see my issues with emptiness-only are much larger and more time consuming to articulate so I've mostly just stayed silent through a lot of these debates. But, briefly, microcosmic orbit, spinal breathing, tonglen, white skeleton, etc. are not merely visualization anymore than emptiness meditation is mere progressive relaxation. A big reason emptiness practice is so effective is that it teaches you to just be with the garbage that normally distracts you from ever-present Stillness without getting lost in the garbage. Through this the garbage loses its power and begins to dissolve. In spinal breathing part of what you are doing is using your awareness to move up and down your spinal channel, stirring up impurities so that they can dissolve in the mantra/emptiness practice that follows. A good analogy would be to imagine you had a device that vaporizes any dust that comes within a few feet of it. Spinal breathing is like going around your house and getting all your carpets and picking them up and shaking them out close to the vaporizer and then turning it on. Otherwise emptiness meditation is just patiently waiting for the dust to slowly seep into the atmosphere on it's own and drift over toward it. The patience and discipline developed in prolonged emptiness sitting are highly valuable to the path, but I believe spinal breathing + emptiness or maybe microcosmic orbit + inner smile are a more efficient purification sequence leading to deeper, more pervasive emptiness than just emptiness alone. I agree 100%. Before creating a foundation of emptiness practice I didn't get anywhere in Tantric cultivation. Nice discussion Max. Sorry if I was rude at first. Sean.

Hey Emelgee, I missed your hello at first. Welcome! Sean

Great distinctions Karen. Really love this post. I also brought up my concerns with Lezlie today and she mentioned another great point. If you go all the way with each practice of tonglen to include the entire manifest world, then that also naturally includes you the practioner; inhaling your own little-self's suffering into Big Heart, exhaling the Light of True Self outward through It's manifestations which little-self is, again, also a part of. What's so cool about bringing tonglen to this level of non-dualistic awareness (emptiness) each session is that you are treating "I" and "manifest world" as One. Seems like a beautiful way to introduce selflessness blissfully and I imagine this would also help bypass the narcissism of "I am saving everyone" and the melancholy of "I am taking on all of the world's suffering and giving away all of my happiness". Good stuff, I'm sold. I'll tack on a few minutes of tonglen after my daily meditation sandwiches each day and see how it goes. Sean

Ooops! I posted the wrong Winn quote. I did a quick copy and paste without reading it carefully. I'll try to dig up the real quote he had on tonglen practice later. Yoda, nice link. Sean

I lost my cell phone and all my numbers. So if you want me to have your number, pm me with it again so I can plug it in to my fancy new replacement phone. Thanks, Sean