Apech

Smile, You have to understand that's from the Daily Mail. This means a) its probably made up b ) if its not completely made up its exaggerated c) people who read the Daily Mail have had their brains removed at birth. I don't want my country disparaged by this nonsense. Remember Magna Carta and a brave stand against fascist oppression. We also gave the world the Spice Girls and David Beckham and have the worlds gloomiest Prime Minister - there is much to be proud of. A.

Welcome back Mak! Perhaps you could do something about all the bickering threads on here

Cheers. Your welcome.

After reading this thread I have starting using pure olive oil soap. Bit too early to say if its working but teeth feel very clean and taste is ok. No additives.

sunshine and your smile two things that make me go red UV and shyness.

non-retracting poles did you guys take too many blue illicit pills?

interweave us all looming light strands round the moon gloves or hats for stars.

We grant Stig a special poetic license.

superorganism, said the amoeba, gently, you too said the sea.

Ngakpa means lay yogin ... tantra practitioner who is not ordained and usually lives a normal life in society. and Dorje is Tibetan for vajra - i.e. diamond or thunderbolt sceptre - it literally means 'stone of the lord' = diamond.

Totally agree with this - and it is the organization which is the key - what makes things organic. I think that Teilhard de Chardin was good on this and its link to evolution. That which organizes matter is spirit/logos to put it simply. I understand what you mean by the flesh+blood body but I would give this reservation that even matter is not dead (alchemicaly speaking ) and the physical body is part of the animation. On death the spirit gradually withdraws leaving the components which it gathered about it to slowly fall apart. Death is separation IMO. Or perhaps the withdrawal from the field of action. But the components of the body themselves - like Calcium and Carbon still operate in their own 'living' way. The Logos has to be grounded in the Dynamis = word made flesh. We are all Jesus in our own little ways . Nice to read a bit of Blake! and so apropos. A.

...any mention of Egypt wakes me from my slumber. The Egyptians knew about circulation of course and treated the heart as the center of will, character/personality and consciousness. The liver, lungs and intestines were treated with reverence and seen as vessels for various spirits. I think it is interesting to think about what we mean by 'body' anyway. Its a very different thing to see a cadaver on a slab - to actually experiencing 'being' in a body. If you feel into it, instead of looking at it as an external it can reveal its energy nature to you. I feel that the organs grow themselves around our spirit in utero.

Caste is from a Portuguese word - they were the first Europeans to get to India (Vasco da Gama) in the late 15th Century.

I have always instinctively accepted rebirth and karma because they make sense to me. Intuitively I feel they are true although of course I cannot offer any kind of proof. Karma of course has a certain logic because it can be compared to cause and effect in physics - except that it is applied to a different 'level' (if that is the right word). When I was a practicing Buddhist I understood that although rebirth and karma were taught as for instance, thoughts that turn the mind to dharma, and you were expected to accept them, it was more important to practice compassion and so on and it was not a big issue to have some questions about these ideas - it was just that you were expected not to go round rubbishing them - because this might obstruct others coming to dharma. Having said this - I too have problems with religion of any kind and in the end prefer the way of the 'freelance' mystic. I found that Buddhism provided too many 'answers' - which really just served to close down part of my mind - I like to work things out for myself. Trees don't have a religion ... but they arn't as lost as us - and there's plenty of humans who benefit from some kind of benign orthodoxy. For myself I am not one of them.

comfortable, ya think? Hmmm this spouts a bit awkward! Sperm whale? I hope not!

I'll repeat mine cos they got lost above: 1) Gross materiality is not an adequate description of reality. 2) It is best to avoid harming others if possible.

To answer my own point. Things we all agree on: I suggest - 1) Gross materiality is not an adequate description of reality. 2) It is best to avoid harming others if possible. Obviously if Satanism is a faith they might not sign up to No. 2 when it comes to virgins.

The title of this thread is: "What practical things can we do to facilitate interfaith harmony?" and not "How long can we continue squabbling when everyone has repeated their point of view with mind numbing frequency." I assume that Stig meant 'faith' in the broadest possible terms which would include what we do. In which case the question could be - 'how can we facilitate harmony even when we disagree'. As Taoists (or whatever we each choose to call ourselves) we have an opportunity to work to on harmony and the balance and reconciliation of 'opposites', like yin and yang perhaps. We could facilitate interfaith harmony by defining those things/ideas which we hold in common. I realize this seems very liberal and wishy-washy but I am simply trying to answer the question.

Just a couple of points. Tibet was a feudal society right up tot he Chinese invasion. This was because they isolated themselves from the social evolution which was occurring across the rest of the planet. They resisted change and eventually paid the price. This despite the prediction by Padmasambhava that it would happen. Why? Because there was too much vested interest amongst those that held the power in not allowing change. By keeping the peasants ignorant they were able to perpetuate the old system - and this despite that Buddhism advises 'everything is impermanent' - so it is the result of a certain arrogance. Now both the Dalai Lama and the King of Bhutan have promoted democratic government. I have discussed this with a Tibetan Lama who volunteered this analysis himself. However non of this justifies the harsh and oppressive measures used by the Chinese to try to 'reform' Tibet. I think there is a need to understand that bowing and prostrating do not hold the cultural weight which they might hold for Westerners. Even when I practiced Aikido we started the class by bowing to a picture of the founder. This was explained to me as just showing respect in the way the Japanese do. It had no more significance than that and I quite enjoyed it as a way to start the class and set up the right mental attitude. Similarly when I was a practicing Buddhist we would prostrate to the shrine and I found this set my mind up for whatever teachings happened. It never stopped me thinking about what I was doing, made me feel any less free or stopped me challenging what was going on. In fact I regularly discussed with the Lama how I disliked all the trappings and Tibetan cultural stuff and he basically agreed with me. With regard to the guru relationship - this is a key part of this kind of Buddhist practice and if entered into freely it can be a genuine relationship of respect and love. It is widely abused by charlatans who are out to gain power or other unhealthy influence. And given the general state of unenlightenment around then I would say there are more bad things than good going on. All organized religions have been used for social control and are in this respect an arm of the state. It prefers people who bend the knee to authority and opposes any kind of free thinking. As someone else has said mystics generally in all cultures tend to be persecuted and the 'church' opposes individual realization - unless it has no choice in which case it tries to capitalize it by drawing it into its net. For this reason dogma and doctrine should, IMO be treated with suspicion. However it can be said that the key ideas and insights which religion holds can be said to have been preserved through history by organized religion and it might not be a great idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Nice! Thanks.

savings up in smoke a bonfire of vanities pure speculation.

It has been shown that there is a convention for orientation based on what is known as the "Opening of the mouth". This was a ceremony performed with statues and mummies to 'activate' them. After this had been done it was thought that the statue or mummy could use its mouth, either to speak or to take in food. For the funerary ceremony, the mummy was placed in a semi-upright position on a mound of sand facing South with its head leaning backwards towards the North. Because of this, its right side was towards the West and its left side towards the East. This association was so clear that the word for right was 'West' and for left was 'East'. The compass points all had symbolic significance. The West is associated with the sun-set and the land of the dead, the Egyptian word for this 'Amenti' literally means 'hidden land'. The East is associated with the sun rise and creation (kheper), evolving or 'coming into being'. The South is the associated with the origin of the Nile and therefore fertility and with the brightest constellations in the night sky, Sothis and Orion (or Isis and Osiris) and also the zenith point of the midday sun. The North is associated with the eternal and imperishible stars which do not set and the 'Great Mooring Post' the North point in the sky around which the whole sky appears to rotate. In Egyptian times there was no North star and so this point was dark space. This fixed point is protected by the hippo goddess who represents the birth of the world from the Nun. Because the mummy was inclined backwards during the Opening the Mouth, the top of its head would point North and its gaze would be at the Southern sky, which would include the zenith of the 'plane of ecliptic' or the height of the midday sun. The plane of ecliptic is the plane of the solar system through which the sun and planets appear to move, the Egyptians called it 'the winding waterway' because during the year the sun moves from one extreme of a band(about 12 degrees) to another. So from the point of the mummy the sun rises on his left to be directly in front at midday. So in this sense the Southern sky is associated with the luminous, either the sun in the day or the bright stars and planets during the night. To oppose this 'bright sky' we have the West and the North. On the mummy's right hand side the sun sets in the West. It enters the land of death, the Dwat or Amenti. Here the sun is thought to slough all the detritus picked up during the day, it is purified and 'dissolved' in the waters of Nun back to its essential nature. These dark waters are associated with the North, the fixed point, the void around which the stars, the gods and all beings rotate and into which the universe will be extinguished at the end of the world. The Egyptians saw everything in terms of dualities. Here the East and South form one, to do with luminosity and the West and North form another to do with voidity. The way in which they expressed these two pairs was using the symbolism of the Sons of Horus. These four deities are usually connected with the canopic jars which held the organs which were removed during mummification. But it has become clear that this was a secondary association and that the 'Sons' were originally either stars or the 'pillars of the sky'. The pillars of the sky assisted Shu (the air god) in his task of holding the sky up. The sky, or the goddess Nut, is seen as a woman (or sometimes a cow) with her body stretched over the earth. Her head is in the West and her feet in the East. Each morning she gives birth to the sun and then in the evening swallows it. During the night the sun passed through her body which comprises the water of Nun. Her arms and legs support her arched body as does the god Shu. Also supporting her are the pillars of heaven. If we look on Middle Egyptian coffins we an see these four Sons of Horus shown usually on the two long sides, two on the right side and two on the left. We already know that 'right' means West and left means East, so we know that Two are in the West and Two in the East. These four gods were also associated with the compass points and through the series of associations we end up with North and West on the right-hand side of the coffin and South and East on the left-hand side. While this is quite complicated the associations are quite clear. ( Care to be taken when looking at New Kingdom sarcophagi as the orientation changed at the beginning of this period.) These four pillars of heaven are the four principles which keep the sky from the earth and thus the world in existence. Two are to do with upward movement and growth, the Eastern and Southern and two are to do with downward movement and death and dissolution, the Western and Northern. Each are ascribed an animal form as follows: South - Imsety - man North - Hapi - ape East - Duamutef - jackal West - Quebehsenuef - hawk The number four here denotes 'establishment', that is the idea that through these four the world is made stable, established and the symbol for this is the 'djed' pillar of Osiris, an object which has not been precisely identified but which is topped by four vertebrae and is certainly associated with the spine. Vertical uprightness is important in Egypt as the resurrection of Osiris is said to be his 'raising up', also the cobra goddess 'Iaret', or Greek Uraeus means 'she who rears up' and also the obvious connection with the sun rising. One Egyptian word for 'to exist' was 'st' - written with a throne glyph which is also the symbol of Isis. Here Isis and her sister Nephthys stand for the two phases of the sun's cycle, that of the 'morning boat' from midnight until midday and that of the 'evening boat' from midday until midnight. The first 'growing phase' is Isis, the throne who embraces and supports Osiris bringing into being his son Horus and the second being Nephthys the pathway down into voidity (and death). Because of this Isis is placed in protection over Imsety (the South) the basis for luminosity and Nephthys is placed in protection over Hapi the Northern point of voidity. In a similar way the other two 'sons' have their protecting goddesses. These Sons of Horus are the historical origin of the four fixed points of the zodiac, the four beast and the four elements of Western Hermetic thought. The Opening of the Mouth was actually a way of encapsulating and using this understanding of the cosmos to create the the right conditions for a functioning being. That is through the alignment of an individual to the correct cosmic correspondences it is possible to 'tune in' and gain benefit from the natural forces that exist. In meditational terms one could say that the whole thing is like a kind of 'mind map', which allows understanding of the luminous, the void and that which lies beyond them by experiencing the pattern of energies which they bring into being.

For me emptiness is the underlying nature of everything, although even this is a way of speaking only. It is not dependent on the cessation of thoughts or perception as both the nature of the mind and the nature of phenomena is empty. Dependent origination and other Buddhist philosophy are intellectual ways of approaching this key realization. Analyzing phenomena as temporary, made of parts and dependent on causes is a way of thinking which can help lead to true insight or realization. But this understanding is not the same as the realization. A good metaphor for emptiness is space. If we look at the atom as the basic building block of matter we see that it consists of two minute vibrational entities (the nucleus and the electrons) and a vast expanse of space. So matter consists mostly of 'empty' space, whilst appearing to us to be solid and 'real'. In the same way, phenomena which appear to be distinct and real are actually empty.

Is it not written "and they shall dwell in a yellow submarine?" *nods wisely while others look puzzled*