rex

Might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick so comments withdrawn Here's a link to some links http://www.google.co...#q=buddhism+faq

See if you can get advice from the retreat organisers on whether it is appropriate to do self-tonglen and maybe even full tonglen while you find yourself in the inspired state. If it is you can use uncomfortable mental states as fuel for your path by using the inspired state to absorb difficult states on the in-breath while sending out all the positive qualities of the inspired state to where tension is experienced on the out-breath. I think it is important to have at least a sense of the presence of the inspired state to do this - even more so if you ever feel inspired to do full tonglen. All the best.

I get you about people riding roughshod over others Aaron. I move that harassment be added to the moderation guidelines (btw thank you for being gracious and not making an issue of my use of the report button, the mod squad cleared your post). Looking at this thread's context and recalling the many excruciating similar ones that have gone before, it does get to the point when there is no longer a level playing field and posters and traditions of good will suffer from the excesses of others. Sadly and rather perilously it looks as if the excesses of a tiny minority are being extrapolated to apply to the many.

Absolutely! Twinners reproach was vexatious, insulting and bullying. In fact they were the exact words I used when hitting the report button. Outraged of Tunbridge Wells

I'm scratching my head trying to work out which Western element, or combination of elements, is equivalent to the Chinese metal element. Air? Air and earth? Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

Thanks everyone Sorry haven't been able to get to a computer recently and I'll be offline for a few days so I'll respond more fully when back online.

Cheers! Very warm, very human, talking inclusively beyond isms. His attendant standing behind is well switched on too.

If the day is just too full there's always some sort of dream/night practice.

Robert Bly? or Sam Keen?

Alan de Botton has a chapter on having a broken heart in The Consolations of Philosophy. He cites Schopenhauer who mentions a universal process, the will to life, whose sole aim is to get us to propergate the species. This overides all other concerns, like emotions, happiness, and reason, so no matter how well lovers or prospective lovers get on, ultimately if the will to life decides that the match won't produce good kids then an unconscious veto occurs. The woman looses interest in sex, or needs some space and then the relationship ends. It's nothing personal, the rejected one is not instrinsiclly unloveable it's just that the will to life doesn't like the match with that particular woman. The will to life can fill us (or perhaps we fill ourselves) with all sorts of deluded hopes and vain expectations to get us out there - ' deluded images of the happiness of our dreams hover before us in capriciously selected shapes and we search in vain for the original.' Schopenhauer says for all the pain conduct yourself as a knower rather than a sufferer as this is a universal experience that thousands, if not millions have suffered from, are suffering from or will suffer from. Alan de Botton adds that if you want to find out about this will to life and how it works itself out in the intricacies of human relationships then read Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther (should be free on the Project Gutenberg site). Oh and to add to ralis' comment - men who put women on pedestals rarely knock them off. edit: author mpesilled

I enjoy reading your posts so if I'm lucky enough to be viewing the forum next time you're posting I'll do a quick screenshot . All the best

Yes and no. No in the sense that it's grace that sets us on the path to meet a teacher and yes in the sense that the value of what is taught has to be recognised, applied and appreciated through experience. Hope that wasn't too pedantic ...

These might be a bit too specialised for some but they are a great resource nonetheless: http://www.unfetteredmind.org/audio/index.php http://www.unfetteredmind.org/audio/podquest.php (Questions) http://www.unfetteredmind.org/audio/podretreat.php (Retreats) http://www.unfetteredmind.org/audio/podclass.php (Classes)

Just an observation based on my limited understanding (no pun intended) of Kabbalistic emanation theory - the matrix of the Mother receives and restricts energies that issue from the unmanifest to the manifest so the energy is locked up into a pattern of its own making. As Gareth Knight says: Kether is the center crystallized in the midst of Non-Being, containing within it the potentialities of all things to come. All subsequent creation from the pure force of kether is a gradual concretion into form of the one divine force. Form is force locked up into patterns of its own making. Force is that which is released when forms are broken. Edit: Tpyos

"Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." Ford Madox Ford http://page99test.blogspot.com/

My teacher says that prostrations are the best form of yoga (ok so he's not neutral). I still drag my feet in doing them though so that must mean something. Chagdud Tulku has quite a detailed exposition of the spiritual benefits of prostrations and how they are a training in bodhichitta, the six perfections and natural awareness in his Ngondro Commentary compiled by Jane Tromge. I notice a subtle but distinct shift in energy after having done any of the practices of the ngondro especially noticeable when doing sitting practice as the mind is calmer and more peaceful. The form of the prostration varies slightly with different traditions, here's the version I was taught: They're good aerobics as well so if you can bang out about one prostration every ten seconds and maintain this rate for about seventeen minutes then you would have clocked up one hundred. Good form helps prevent injury and using techniques from deadlifting (sticking the butt out as if you're going to sit down on a chair or squat for a dump!) and hindu squats (weight on heels) helps too. It's look like a cross between the video above and Trunk's animation. There's no objections to wearing elbow and knee pads either.

If the pressure builds up enough something like the French Revolution would have happened regardless of the dominant religious ideology used to justify the status quo. The Divine Right of Kings or reincarnation would all be the same to revolutionary iconoclasts and just dismissed as an oppressive ploy. The connection between a belief in reincarnation/rebirth and a fatalistic resignation to present circumstances doesn't necessarily follow. The Sikhs, believers in reincarnation, equality and justice etc. deposed the Mughal Governor of Punjab.

Hi Marblehaed, The details are well documented it's just that there's no scientific instrumentation for measuring and quantifying this stuff. As Dwai said it's all empirical. The problem is establishing a methodological framework and coming up with an explanation to account for the findings. What's particularly suggestive of something beyond the established mechanistic paradigm, powerful and valuable as is it, is that hidden information is revealed that subjects would not ordinarily know about. The lingusitics professor and libray archivists were unware of the experiments and contacted after the event to confirm the details, so they act as some sort of validation. I think a lot of findings and empirical evidence is simply ignored if it does not fit with established paradigms. This is not a deliberate conspiracy but just the way operators in a paradigm can function. No here's a cheeky and dangerous suggestion, if parapsychologists and the like would like to test the repeatablity of phenonmena and empirical findings and measure things with their equipment (as an aside, aren't scientific instruments just devices designed to extend the human senses to detect things that they are already aware of?) perhaps they should experiment with goetic grimoires! Research ethics and safety guidelines would probably quite rightly preclude this line of enquiry. Edit: spelling

Not 100% of course but she is known as a maker of trolling videos. Her channel has been removed from YouTube. Here's a link about the storm the video caused and her sheepish retraction: http://www.tntmagazi...nd-tsunami.aspx

Just been talking to guy behind a checkout desk about this video - apparently it's a piece of satire. Had me fooled!

Now!

This is a big subject so I can only offer a skeleton outline. 'Scuse the brevity this is the third attempt, previous goes kept disappearing. The meditations are intimately bound up with specific philosophical and spiritual worldviews. There's the ngondro foundational practices, the lojong mind training and instructions on transforming suffering and happiness. These set the foundations for practice of the Three Roots which are sources of blessing, attainment and activity. Higher tantric practice (in the sense that deities are not seen as separte form oneself) is used to self generate as a deity and train in pure perception to see the environment and beings as the mandala of the deity (following the view of the inseparability of samsara and nirvana). In the completion stages of tantric practice tsa lung exercise is combined with pure perception. While the tsa lung exercises have various psycho-somatic technicalities their performance in the context of tantric practice is anything but pure technique with relationship to a lineage playing an essential part. Hope this addresses some of what you asked.

Now there's a coincidence, I've just been reading about the neoplatonic philosophy of Plotinus where the four cardinal virtues of prudence, courage, temperance and justice have distinct applications in four classes of virtue - civil, purificatory, contemplative and exemplary. The civil virtues centre on social cohesion while the purificatory virtues centre on purging the soul; the contemplative virtues centre on allowing the intrinsic qualties of the purified soul to function while the exemplary virtues centre on abiding in the One. Here's what is said about the the four cardinal virtues when operating on the contemplative level: "Here prudence and wisdom consists in contemplating the beings or essences contained by intelligence; justice consists in the soul's fulfilling of her characteristic function - that is, in attaching herself to intelligence and in directing her activity there. Temperance is the intimate conversion of the soul towards Intelligence, while courage is the impassibility by which the soul becomes assimilated to what she contemplates, since the soul's nature is to be impassible." [Taken from Porphyry's Launching-Points to the Realm of Mind p.30] In this scheme I see many parallels with other traditions, both Eastern and Western.