Apech

I would start with external martial arts or maybe tai chi - classes are usually relatively cheap - if you can afford books then you probably can afford a basic class. Don’t try to learn from books from the beginning better to get into a class.

Yes. And I think it's all quite confusing because even that behaviour of doubtful intent isn't a million miles from the karmamudra idea of 'joy of no joy' as the fourth form of joy coming from union with a consort in Tantra. It's kind of like in tantra - you can have sex provided you don't want to. Which to quote Alanis Morrissette, is ironic.

For what it's worth I've been on here long enough to talk with Drew in his various incarnations a number of times. My conclusion was that there was a level of inbalance in him and what he was doing which would not be good to copy. He's obviously an intelligent guy (I read one of his books once) but his own rationalisations about what was happening to him energetically were over rationalised and abstract. He was, I agree, just sharing what he believed was his experience but the problem was that this involved others, young girls in fact - and if what he thought was happening, actually was happening then he should have paused and considered the ethical consequences of it. I think this is a real effect. But you should be aware that as much as they are noticing you, you are noticing them. Energy, if you like, bounces around and it's not always clear where it starts. Anyone, I think, who does any kind of energy cultivation will quite easily heighten their awareness of the energy field around them and the interactions in it. Cultivators become more energetically 'interesting' but of course you need to have clear ideas about what you are doing and why, as well as a level of purity in your subtle body to negotiate this space. Even some so called 'masters' fall foul of sexual energy. The word 'seduce' means something like to draw out. In a dualised energy field beings with a certain energy configuration unconsciously seek to draw out from the field (which usually means other beings in the field) the energy mode that they lack. Yin and yang if you like, continually try to achieve union and/or balance. It's nature. There are though, some beings who are conditioned into an addiction for this, in a variety of ways. Such that they might feel so driven that they cease to see the other being(s) as valid individuals and just 'prey'. You could say its a form of psychopathy. It's not always explicitly about sex either, it might be dominance and power. The subconscious acknowledgement of this is what makes vampire books and films so popular. It's not a trivial thing either and makes playing around with energy quite dangerous sometimes.

I see the red text and I want it printed black, No colours anymore, I want them to turn black.

I note the parentheses but there can be no experiencing of the absolute - as the 'ex' means 'out' and there is no out of it.

I completely understand you.

The great existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre walked into a Paris street cafe and sat down at an empty table near the window. It was a typical spring day in France's capital and so the air was filled with smell of burning trash and tear gas. Out in the street he observed groups of youths dressed in black throwing stones and bottles at huddles of police crouching behind their shields. At that moment the waiter appeared and bowed solemnly to his famous client. "What would you like today, M. Sartre?" he asked. "I would like a coffee but no cream," replied the sagacious guest. The waiter bowed again and sped away. Outside a water cannon was dispersing the demonstrators but with only partial success. And in a short moment the breathless waiter reappeared. Bowed low, and said. "I'm so sorry, Sir, but we are completely out of cream." "In that case, " replied the great man " I shall have coffee without milk."

Both the absolute and the relative (or conventional) views are true.

What is it that causes people to search for the certainty of the real? What is it that makes them dissatisfied with not knowing the real? Why do people resist and get angry when their assumptions are challenged? What is pleasing about thinking that one is right? What is displeasing about thinking one may not be right? Why does anyone want to cut through conceptualisation? What is displeasing about concepts? Why is all this difficult? Why isn't it easy? What is resisting and why?

Coffee machine.

the staff and the snake? a human resources nightmare, one strike and you're dead.

Hi Tom, Tonglen as a practice is part of what is known as Lo Jong (usually translated as Mind Training) and comprises a once secret (but now widely known) Mahayana technique or practical approach to applying the way of the Bodhisattva. A key text in Lo Jong is Geshe Chekhawa's 'Seven Points of Mind Training' which is in the tradition of the great Atisha (who introduced monastic Buddhism to Tibet in the 9?th century). You can understand Tonglen correctly by studying this text and there are several excellent books on the subject - although it is preferable to get personal instructions from a qualified Lama - even though as a Mahayana sutra based approach the need for tantric empowerment does not apply. If you can't get personal instructions I can recommend the following books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dispelling-Darkness-Suffering-Rinpoche-Thinley/dp/2360170538/ref=sr_1_1?crid=OAMDEK1ZP2RS&keywords=dispelling+the+darkness+of+suffering&qid=1680619244&sprefix=ispelling+the+%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-1 and https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00HZ9Q91S/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 or https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0813VLG6S/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 Hope this is of some help and good luck with your practice.

let him without a pedo rapist brother cast the first stone

They know a secret. By sitting and forgetting I might get it too.

I knew you were going to say that

we knows what we knows that’s for sure

I wanted to unpick in detail some of what Shinzen Young was saying in that interview - but it didn't copy when I hit the quote button - so I'll stick to general points. To suggest, I think, that siddhis are not verifiable by science in the physical world, makes a lot of assumptions about the nature of reality. It is a modern approach to follow the path that Mr. Young has done - from Buddhist monk to mindfullness/neuroscience which of course suggests that he is upholding the basic tenet of science that the fundamental is an objective physical universe, with mind and so on as epiphenomena superimposed upon it. The traditional Buddhist view is the opposite, that the outer vessel (what we would call the objective world) is a projection by mind formed from collections of karmic imprints which are stored since beginningless time in the alaya. So the physical is not basic, in this view, but the alaya is. I guess you have decide for yourself which you are going to support as a view. But I would say in terms of 'non-dualism', taking the scientific view seems to give certainty at first but leaves you with unresolvable problems later on. If enlightenment consists of a paradigm shift in how one views oneself ... just that and nothing else ... the implication is that this happens somehow in splendid isolation from the world 'outside'. As such this is highly dualist. It is quite easy to gain minor siddhis and if you understand them as being nothing other than equivalent to the 'gongs' of martial arts etc. as the sensitivity and manipulation of qi is a qi gong and so on. Then you could say that through fairly basic meditation, such as shamatha, siddhis like clairvoyance and precognition arise once you have been able to settle the mind in its own nature to a certain degree. It doesn't take much if you allow it. There are of course another class of siddhis which like say, levitation and so on, are another kettle of fish and few of us will walk on water in this life. But there is an important point here, as to whether you accept, or are at least open minded to such possibility, because in the scientific view it never will be possible to do these things, but in the traditional views of Buddhism etc. it is ultimately possible.

pay taxes. Progress. so you can pay more taxes. Grow old and die broke.

I think what becomes unbalanced is the protected self. The emotions are like the weather.

i am not suggesting that we should indulge in emotions but just to admit they are there and functioning. Even states like cold unemotionality ... being strictly rational and so on, actually I see these as emotional states. Why else are they 'cold'.? I think the resistance to this idea comes from the modern therapeutic way - which tries to make our feelings the most important and central thing. Whereas actually it's all part of a play. In fact, oddly, seeing everything as a kind of emotional display is very freeing.

What percentage of your life is void of emotion?

If we picture our lives or our minds as a landscape, then it will have hills and valleys and so on. It is much easier to follow the valleys because the erosion of water has moulded a channel and removed any steep inclines and obstructions to flow. But if we never struggle to get out of the valley, we would never climb to the high places to see the whole land spread out and actually be able to tell where we are in relation to where we have been or where we are going. On earth the force that makes the water flow and creates the valley is gravity. In our minds it is something like habitual patterns and habitual patterns are determined by emotional charge. For instance we like the freer feeling of going down hill compared to the struggle of ascending. That is unless we train ourselves to prefer effort, like a sportsman or mountain climber. Going with and going against are both things we do. But one takes much more energy than the other. And energy is what moves things, and movement in energy is e-motion. Do what is easy to enjoy the free flow of being alive, do what is difficult to learn. The path, for us cultivators, towards self-knowing, is to negotiate the landscape of 'being' - a landscape shaped and formed by emotional charge, the stored imprints of previous actions, karmic charge. Habit and the 'out of the frying pan and into the fire' situations it generates for us is one of our main adversaries. The ancients sometimes pictured this force as serpents and like a game of snakes and ladders, we are either climbers or slitherers, and from time to time, one or the other. Work, play or rest emotion is the path. That's how I see it.