Apech

Babi!

Full of frozen peace?

"For the person who attains to the Dao, there are altogether seven stages: 1. Obtaining concentration and ease of mind: one becomes aware of all impurities. 2. Eliminating illnesses derived from former lives: body and mind are light and lively. 3. Preventing untimely death and other harms: one reverts to youth and returns to one's destiny. 4. Reaching a longevity of ten thousand years: this is called being an Immortal (xianren). 5. Refining form into pneuma: this is called being a Real Man (zhenren). 6. Refining pneuma and achieving spirit: this is called being a Divine Man (shenren). 7. Refining spirit and joining with the Dao: this is called being an Accomplished Man (zhiren).4"

Sometimes it is the act of making a call which is significant and not the conversation. People should be advised to rest in the pure non-dual experience of the call-waiting rather than grasp after an 'answer'. Let the universal ONE communication flow rather than the restrictive ego based local and limited dialogue. Do they not say 'your call is valuable to us' and a 'customer services advisor will be available shortly please hold.'' We can see divine purpose in these messages.

Is it not said: 'The phone without a number cannot be spoken into' ? or as jesus said 'ring and the phone shall be answered'.

It rings, you pick up the receiver and you can talk to people miles away. It's new - a bit like the telegraph system. You do need to stoke it up with coal once a day though to keep the steam pressure high.

Bulb

I foresaw you saying that.

If only Liverpool had a decent goalkeeper.

~~~ SPLIT BY STAFF FROM ANOTHER THREAD ~~~ Livia Kohn is quite a catch.

'nuance' wafted over my poor simple head like a cool breeze, I'm afraid. are you going to answer your own questions? or am I to take it as a test?

"take responsibility for my own responses" claro, exatamente.

I blame Apple and Samsung ... anyway who uses their phone to actually call someone these days?

So? Carry on blaming till you get to a high spiritual level? I think I'd rather chuck blame out of the window now.

I think I'm quite out there too . The idea that we manifest situations - probably because we need to learn something is sympatico to me. Also although I do occasionally sit around getting angry at the jerks - I know that it is counter productive - especially as it characterises me as 'victim' - my usual conclusion is that if I go back over some situation where I got shit on by someone - then there is some element where I was complicit in what happened. And while I might chew the carpet a little I don't want to be dominated by the blaming thing.

for me, forget blame, either for yourself or for the jerks - blaming others or blaming yourself is just weakening. I like the idea of being able to respond to situations adequately (response-able)... in that sense being more able to deal with whatever shit life throws at you. I don't like the idea of making yourself the culprit. But I don't know anything about the Bon teaching Steve quoted. And although I read this thread I got a bit lost in the back and forth.

I've been following this thread with interest and I'd like to ask what the various contributors mean by 'responsibility'. If I take 100% responsibility for what happens what does that actually mean. Is it just an attitude? or some kind of commitment to action?

Steve, Thanks for opening this thread, I was reading yours and Bindi's conversation on the Mantak Chia thread and finding it interesting. Just saying that for now

Can we have the following: 'I found that post overly exciting' and ... 'that post made me want to spit

It's a cup! I thought it was a square headed person with big sticky out ears.

Someone butchered a rhinoceros in the Philippines hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans arrived—but who? Marblehead? was it you?

That map doesn't show Atlantis!

I suggest an experiment - each of you send large amounts of money to my paypal a/c and then complain when I don't return it - and we'll see what happens.

For what its worth and because I can't help putting my two-pennies worth into this interesting discussion. Wang Bi had the idea of being emerging from (and dependent on ) non-being. Non being could be said to be beyond definition and infinite - while 'a being' is defined and finite. This is like saying that all sounds appear because of the soundless sound, are modalities of it. If you superimpose all vibrational possibilities you get total destructive interference - that is the peaks and troughs cancel each other - and is this silence = the soundless sound. The slightest disturbance of this equilibrium produces suddenly all variety of vibrations - or you could say for a single note to be produced all other notes have to be suppressed. So it is not creation from nothing - but creation from the soundless sound which is the void. The full void or plenum. The Dao is not the non-being or void - or at least is not just the void. It is both the void , the ten thousand emergent things and the process by which they emerge and are sustained. The drum beat of Heaven and Earth to which all things dance. As far as Buddhist emptiness goes - it is used in two ways. When applied to phenomena it is their lack of independent self-being which is why they are ephemeral and so on. They emerge through dependent origination that is waves of 'dharmas' which as samskaras are both the action of karmic cause and effect and also the actuality. So with regard to 'things' they are empty of self. However if you apply emptiness to Mind itself - when all the apparent stains of emotions, habits and karmas have been quietened then the mind in equipoise is at base empty - whether you attribute to this an eternality and so on depends on which camp of Buddhist philosophy you belong in - which to non-Buddhists is probably not ver interesting (tbh). However you could say that the equipoisal nature of the mind is empty or void and this would be slightly different to saying that phenomena are empty. Of course the dharmakaya is the union of emptiness (in the former sense) and luminosity - and not just emptiness - where luminosity is the wisdom or knowing aspect of mind. Excuse my clumsy attempt to explain this.

Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu, Mein Irisch Kind Wo weilest du?