Apech

https://eu-browse.startpage.com/av/anon-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ikea.com%2Fpt%2Fen%2Fimages%2Fproducts%2Frengoera-integrated-dishwasher-ikea-300__0846416_pe779071_s5.jpg%3Ff%3Ds&sp=1672828400T6364ea44cf73032519758e30612242ec234fd3eb86d3090c87f768a9ec7f7229

mindfulness is bunk - there I said it.

Are we going to discuss mizners confusion of jhana and mahamudra/dzogchen? Here or in another thread?

The visualisations were a mediation set which he taught in stages over maybe eight weeks - he taught me to the level that I could teach it. I can't list the process on here because I have to teach as he did, in person and so on.

My advice is to look at what is available to you locally. Try to practice with a teacher if you can rather than from books. Adopt the attitude of testing to destruction. That is practice as hard as you can for say three months, then review. Ask yourself what has worked and what has not. Challenge critically any ideas you've been given to see if they stand up to scrutiny. If they do keep them, if they don't throw them away. Don't try to mess around with sexual urges until you are older. Just accept you are going to have them and dedicate yourself to being a decent helpful human being. If your heart is in the right place all will be ok.

I am perhaps influenced by the many years I spent studying Ancient Egyptian texts. For them the spiritual path was like a journey across varying terrain. So sometimes a wet-land, sometimes a river, sometimes a desert, sometimes underground caverns and so on. They used everyday objects like rivers and mountains to describe the hidden inner world. One of the things they produced were maps of the hidden inner world intended for both the living and dead souls to be able to traverse it successfully. So as practitioners it is often possible to see our local position but be unaware of the overall big picture. By means of maps and diagrams you can place certain experiences in the grand scheme of things and make progress more quickly. This is how I see it. So some diagrams, mandalas and so on should be used this way, I think. We spent several weeks just doing standing. Then we did breath counting - and he would test us as to how well we could concentrate and follow breath. Until he was satisfied we could do these things he wouldn't teach us anything else. He would also shout at us and occasionally bash someone (not me mercifully) with a stick and grunt something in Chinese. He was best known for the fact that for certain qi gong he wanted you to contract the muscles round the anus. At this point he would shout 'tight up your arseholes!' very loudly. He was great - but he went back to Hong Kong - so that was that.

I think Adam was right, in that some of the diagrams of channels, drops and chakras etc. are meant as aide memoires and not for visualisation. Like having a road map to help you place things in relation to each other. You might use an image to place concentration say on a Dan Tien or a particular channel I guess, but once sensitivity is developed I can't see why you would continue. Having said that I was taught years ago something called Iron Mountain Lineage meditation which is a long series of visualisations - I used to practice it years ago and it did work - but I was taught by a strict Chinese gentleman from Hong Kong who made us do at least an hour or hour and a half standing posture before he would teach us anything. I'd completely forgotten about it till this conversation!

When I first had a meditation teacher - he gave me a visualisation to do. I struggled with it for months and completely failed to stablize the image or get anything out of it. I even went to another teacher who gave me some unhelpful advice. Eventually I was chatting to a friend, also a meditator, and he said why not forget about the visualisation and just focus on a point in your mind? I did this and quite quickly started having break through experiences. So in this case visualisation acted as a barrier. My teacher wasn't skilled enough to recognise what was happening with me. Years later when I took up Buddhism they told us to do a lot of visualisation - which I didn't take at all seriously. I just went half heartedly through the motions thinking 'when do we get to actually sit and practice?'. But after a while I realised that the trick was not to put great mental effort in constructing the mandala (or whatever it was) but just to put it there in front of you - in the same way as when someone says think of a tree, you see a tree in your mind. (I know there are people who can't do this but most people can). From then on something clicked in that my awareness was expanding, if you like, or that there was a whole other dimension to meditation which I had missed. So whereas a few years ago I would have voted no, I now vote yes (to my own poll).

There are western lineages of a sort - like the apostolic lineage of the Catholic church for instance.

You are an MBA? Literally?

i never managed the wealthy part of that but by god am I hip.

I have been on here so long I can remember all the fads we’ve been through with various cults and teachers - it will last till the next thing comes along

he has a strong online presence and a knack for self marketing

i think I should apologize for this post - I am sure he is a thoroughly decent human being

Dear Wilhelm, I tried to watch the interview but only managed 25 mins or so. My natural English politeness and good manners coupled with my Buddhist vow to sincerely wish for the benefit of all sentient beings prevent me from saying what a dick that man, Asa, is.

@anshino23, Hi, no I haven't watched that vid. I used to be a bit of a Damo fan (I even did a Q&A written interview with him which was on here at one time - do we still have an interview section? - can't remember) but I noticed on his guru viking interview a restlessness to his energy which puzzled me. I'll watch this one later and reflect on it. Adam Mizner has a much stiller energy. There's a host of problems with vajrayana (Tibetan Buddhism mostly) - some of them come from the western practitioners, some from the failure of the lamas to adjust to the west and westerners and some inherent. The idea of the vajrayana being an almost public practice might have worked in Tibet (and Bhutan etc.) which was a closed society - but in the west and on the internet well basically no it doesn't really. I saw a documentary once about four people who did the 3 year retreat thingy and one of them on finishing said he 'felt a little less angry' because of the practice. If that was the case he might as well have taken up a simple hobby like needlework . Many are called but few are chosen. I think that you should only mainstream a system or practice if you have a strong karmic connection. It took years (more than 20) for me to decide to take refuge and embark on buddhadharma. I was a freelance mystic for far too long perhaps. Even then I found after about 7 years that I had to wind it all back to the beginning, study very hard, practice very hard, to build anything worth having. I stay clear of dharma centres and sanghas because they are full of people who like to sit and think about compassion and then behave like bitches . But if you put the work in you get results. The benefit of the dharma is that as you put effort in, it comes from the other side and gives you more - merit and wisdom. In other words it is a living system. The experience I have with visualisations is in the context of sadhana practice or yidam practice. It is part of the sadhana, the development or generation stage and completion stage. The understanding is that the yidam is an expression of actual reality (dharmakaya) so at some point the image that you visualise and the actual wisdom aspect of the yidam are merged. Visualisation of the form of the yidam places it as 'appearance' or the self luminous attribute of consciousness, then taking onto yourself and seeing yourself as not different to the yidam activates the energy system of your body, then dissolving it allows you to settle in sunyata easily, then at the end you bring it out again to link into the 'ordinary world'. So in a sense it is like a birth, death, rebirth cycle which ultimately allows you unite the luminous and empty 'sides' of yourself. I have done a reasonable amount of qi gong and neidan and am reasonably energy aware - not making any great claims here - but I would say that there is an additional dimension to tantra. I would struggle to explain exactly what that is. I don't know if that answers your questions or not. But there you go.

Low carb over several months is enough to lose weight I find. (Christmas /New Year have been something of a setback in this regard for me ). For 2023 I hope for a lifting of the growing oppression we had (Covid then Ukraine) over the last two years. Better quality meditation. More aspirational improvements. Return to 'normal' generally.

He seemed to be equating visualisation with fantasy, which it is not. Also he seemed to think that mahamudra/dzogchen is the same as basic jhana, which it is not. I don't mind that he has formed this view and it didn't detract particularly from the whole interview which was basically very interesting. But I suspect that he was deliberately being edgy which again I don't mind - but being edgy and wrong is not helpful.

I listened to this last night. He says a lot of good things but also some wrong things - not sure if this is just an attempt to be edgy or something. Reminded me a bit of Damo and i find out they are friends.

There is a chapter in this book on the likely Chinese influence on yoga/tantra in India: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Origins-Yoga-Tantra-Religions-Thirteenth-ebook/dp/B009019WG8/ref=sr_1_3?crid=T80MKPNB4BIJ&keywords=origins+of+yoga+and+tantra&qid=1672411309&sprefix=origins+of+yoga+and+tantra%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-3

@awaken I downloaded that paper with great excitement because one of my interests is Ancient Egypt but as it is written in Chinese the argument is lost to me - except the section which seems to attempt to show Chinese characters deriving from hieroglyphs. Can you summarise the theory or link to something in English which explains it? Thanks.

Maybe.

I do mainly mahamudra practices not tummo itself. I also do energy work of various kinds.

Yes of course - but what occurs in cultivation is there in nature. But in some senses the alchemical process may/will reverse normal entropic directions e.g. return to prepubescent sexual energy state (with shrinkage!). If you see what I mean. Actually I should probably not comment too much on Neidan threads because although I studied it in the past it is not my current thing - and my understanding is a kind of amalgam of various systems and influences. Also I wasn't in my previous post talking about cultivation at all but simply pointing out that a three-fold energy picture does reflect nature and is therefore useful.