doc benway

Hi Mikey, I feel your pain through your post. Life is difficult but also very beautiful and blissful if you have the proper perspective. I can't possibly say anything in a few words to change your life but here are some brief thoughts. Suffering comes from our conditioning. We have been taught since childhood and are inundated daily with certain expectations, likes, dislikes, and desires. We suffer when we want something other than what we have. The pain is in you not in your situation. Other people could be put into your situation and feel as if they are in heaven (Sudanese refugees come to mind). I'm not trying to say - "you don't know how good you have it" but rather "your suffering is in your desire to have something you do not have" and that is completely within your ability to change whether you make any changes to your job or not. One of the popular lies is that you need free time to cultivate. NOT TRUE! It's easy to cultivate when you have no responsibilities but of what value is that when you choose to come back to the world? It is every bit as effective to cultivate while living your life as it is. You just have to be a bit more disciplined and creative. One way to approach this is through mindfulness practice. My first exposure to this practice was through a book by Thich Nhat Hanh called The Miracle of Mindfullness. There are many other approaches to your problem and probably excellent and free websites containing similar information but I found that book very useful. I subsequently found many other ways to move my cultivation forward despite having a demanding full time job, wife, children, and other social responsibilities. It is still my greatest challenge to juggle and balance all of these responsibilities. First - you are important. Don't cut yourself short and don't feel that being selfish about your free time and happiness is a bad thing. It's essential! If you want to make cultivation a priority you can. Don't go out late. Get up an hour earlier and practice meditation before work. Learn a Taiji form and practice every morning and so on. Second - if you are able to leave the miserable dream we call society for a utopian existence, COOL! I've dreamed of doing that but don't have the courage to leave my responsibilities behind. Third - if you choose to stay in the world, make that life your cultivation. Difficult but far from impossible. Good luck!

I would say that over the course of 15 weeks or so, your work has paid off handsomely. Your own questions are infinitely more important than our answers. The only thing I would add to your excellent observations above is that the final illusion to drop is the distinction between "I" and "you". True, there are different perspectives during life, like water molecules in the sea or a better analogy may be the whirlpool in a river, but the sea is not divided and the whirlpool is not separate from the river. Therein lies the true happiness and compassion that the mystics tell us are 'always already there'. The paradox of good vs evil and Boddhisatva vs murderer only exists when the illusion of separation exists.

Marijuana can sensitize you and assist in your ability to "feel" the qi circulating. It's important to recognize that this is an artificial "advantage" and will not be valuable in true development. At the same time, it is a powerful distraction, alters your "natural" experience, and makes you think that things you are experiencing are more significant than they really are. When you are first getting started, the increased sensitivity can be useful in visualizing/feeling the Qi flow but it must be let go or you will make no meaningful progress. The more serious you are about cultivating Qi and following this path, the more important it is to do so without any distractions or artificial agents. To meditate when intoxicated with marijuana or any other drug may be entertaining but it is not an effective method to make progress in cultivation.

In terms of reading materials - I learned a lot from reading Osho: When the Shoe Fits, Commentary on the Taoist Sage Chuang Tsu Then I actually read some Chuang Tsu (Zhuangzi) I learned even more from reading J Krishnamurti: To Be Human and other books of his. Finally, I learned a great deal from reading Anthony Demello: Awareness Krishnamurti and Demello would not call themselves Daoist nor would many on this forum refer to them as such but their works, IMO, if taken seriously will take you directly to the core. If you really are interested in Daoist cultivation practices, a legitimate teacher is essential. None of the popular readings about alchemy and theory are an adequate substitute.

By genuinely practicing Wu Wei - Once the Daoist comes to know that they are simply the universe become aware of itself, there is no separation therefore no attachment and no fear or sufferring. There can no longer be clinging to life or fear of death because life and death are two side of a coin, inseparable, mutually arising. This is the nature of love. Equanimity is a natural consequence of Daoist living. Meditation practices can help one achieve this but meditative living is equally effective.

If you can find a legitimate teacher of Daoist cultivation, make yourself his/her disciple and practice diligently. If that is not an option, here are 5 recommendations that may help you along your way for a while... 1. Practice awareness - Observe everything around you and inside you, including your behavior, feelings, motivation, reactions to others, perceptions, assumptions, sensations and so on.... as if it were all occurring to someone else. 2. See if you can figure out what the "I" is that you take yourself to be. What is it that is watching what you are doing? What is it that's asking that question? And so on... 3. Eat natural foods in moderation whenever possible and practice some form of regular physical exercise - taijiquan is fantastic, qigong is very good as well, but anything will do 4. Try to reflect the concept of Wu Wei in your daily life - go with rather than against. Be secure in the knowledge that the universe provides exactly what you need at any given moment. 5. Live with passion and intensity but do not become attached to desire or goals. Relish experience but don't try to capture or recreate pleasurable moments. Live life directly, not through books and theories. If you practice the first two things above patiently and diligently, the rest will come naturally with no need for any effort. Good luck!

We should both go far and yet, if you should stumble... A kitten purrs offscreen

I don't have as much to say as I thought I did. I think you're on the right track Old Man Contradiction, it's not about belief or disbelief. It's about doing the work and finding your own answers. I do like Hummingbird, Rain, and Taomeow's posts quite a bit.

I loved Capra's Tao of Physics and a similar work called the Dancing Wu Li Master by Gary Zukav. This is a little different but if you like Capra, you may really like Goswami as well.

Thank you dearly, Seth, for sharing such a personal and important experience with us. I hope to be able to show the same love and compassion to my loved ones in their last moments as you have. I believe that many of our behaviors that surround death and dying are pathological and counterproductive. Approaching death with honesty, respect, love, and compassion is the only thing that makes sense. I am humbled by your honesty and strength. Steve I'm sorry to see how you are suffering Fizix. I don't have any words that will make it better. Given your history of addiction and your need to face such horrors at such a young age, I would suggest you try and find a therapist that resonates well with you to help you through some of these tough experiences. There are therapeutic methods that are founded in Eastern concepts and practices like mindfullness that can be extremely beneficial (ACT - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is one example). Good luck - please feel free to share with us publicly or privately if it helps. Steve

Very well thought out argument. I will simply add that I don't see a difference between therapy and meditation. They are just artificial categorizations. There are methods of therapy that are nearly completely based in mindfullness practice without the analytical component - no tearing down and rebuilding, just observing with a loving attitude and accepting. This is what I practice. We get stuck in thought patterns and images like this. I say therapy and someone imagines Freud. I say meditation and someone imagines lotus position and a mudra. Meditation is not limited to sitting quietly with a quiet mind, that is simply an exercise. Therapy is not necessarily analysis and behavioral modification - hopefully it is healing and becoming whole. It's very nice to converse with you -O-, and everyone else on this thread. Thanks for very stimulating reading! Steve

Yes. They have impeccable literary credentials. Meditative and martial arts credentials are of a very different sort and much more difficult to verify. I maintain a healthy skepticism when it comes to 'masters' - I mean no disrespect. I've met respected 'masters' and been sorely disappointed more than once... Agreed! This is not limited to energy work. In fact, energy work, by virtue of it's empiric nature, is not a good example for speaking of evidence and proof. Nevertheless, I agree with you on this point based on my own empiric experience. I appreciate your intention and hope you will not delete anything on my account. I've introduced authors to the forum many times, some better received than others. I don't intend to flame or troll here. My post was not at all intended to be negative, only cautionary. I do not want to criticize you or the writer you quoted and I apologize if that was the tone of my post. I'm simply calling attention to what I feel to be an extremely important distinction. A great writer is just that, a great writer. Many people read what they write and take it as truth and then base their own opinions and practice on that. Unfortunately, when it comes to fields like Daoist meditation and cultivation, and internal martial arts, most of what is written is theoretical and has very little to do with the experiential aspect of these disciplines. Putting these things into words does not equate or even correlate with direct personal experience and achievement. Anyone can read and write and interpret classic texts and sound as if they are masters. My concern here regards the intersection between theory and practice in meditation, cultivation, and internal arts. Furthermore, even the valid work that is rooted in experience (The Secret of the Golden Flower, The Tai Chi Classics, and The Tai Chi Boxing Chronicle come to mind) is not terribly helpful to the student. These are works that serve to validate something that has already been experienced in practice. They do not help achieve experience in general. In fact, as mentioned in my earlier post, I find these sorts of works to sometimes interfere with progress by 1. taking up the students time that would be better spent practicing and 2. putting expectations in the mind of the student which can distract from real experience - for example, I expect to see a warm golden light and ignore the subtle blossoming of awareness arising from my meditation. If you (not you personally, anyone) want to be an expert in Daoism and Daoist methods from a theoretical and research perspective, I respect that but it doesn't interest me very much and does little or nothing to help my progress in my cultivation. If you want to practice Daoist methods, it is critical to do so under the (preferably) direct guidance of one who has gone before, not one who has researched, read, and written. Perhaps Reid has achieved a very high level of cultivation and I will someday eat my words. I have no problem with that. I know I'm an ass. It is my nature. I still stand by my caution - don't believe everything you read. And if you want to cultivate Qi, cultivate Qi - that cannot be done by reading and writing. I have several of Yang Jwing-Ming's books, not to mention Deng Ming Dao, and Waysun Liao. They are nicely researched theoretical works and, with due respect, have contributed nothing to my cultivation of Qi or development of meditative and martial skills. Let me take that back - Waysun Liao's book The Essence of Tai Chi describes a method of visualizing and imagining Qi when first beginning to practice. When I first started to practice Taiququan, the idea of imagining Qi flow gave me the freedom necessary to begin to experience it. There are examples of this cautionary point throughout Eastern spiritual tradition: Daoism reveres the simple fool, not the educated scholar Buddha achieved enlightenment by sitting, not studying Advaita Vedanta teaches nothing but one question - "Who Am I?" Zen advocates sitting and the koan (among other, equally non-intellectual methods) There is a beautiful tradition in Buddhism - I am ignorant of the details but in essence, there is an annual "reading of the sutras" in which the monks spin the scrolls which are mounted on vertical posts. They just twirl the scrolls round and round until every scroll has been spun a certain number of times or something like that. This process of spinning the sutras is felt to be equivalent and a satisfactory substitute for actually reading a single word! Brilliant! Blasto - please accept my apologies if I offended you and I also apologize to the group for my strongly biased and arrogant rant! Once in a while I have to let it out or it builds up and gives me heartburn _/\_

I think this is a great question and worthy of considerable contemplation. Just like the great koans imply, our original face before our parents were born - what is that? Pulling Edo out of my sleeve, the head of a dead cat, if you see the Buddha in the road kill him! and all that stuff. It's not beyond our ability to observe that. It just implies a shift in perspective. It's staring us right in the face all the time. On the other hand, it's nothing that can be expressed in words or transmitted. It's a subtle shift that is intended to be stimulated by a variety of techniques (koans, prayer, meditation, and so on...). A few respectful differences of perspective - I think you can observe it (prenatal existence) directly. It is not memory, it is not knowledge. It's simply experience. It transcends, predates, and outlives the ego. This is why it is presented in the form of a koan. Regarding psychology - I don't think it is a dead end. I'm not speaking of engaging personal daemons per se. Nor am I speaking of analysis or behavioral modification. I'm speaking of knowing yourself very deeply and fundamentally. Patiently observing yourself without analysis, without judgement, just becoming aware. There is nowhere that we are more closely connected to the possibility of knowing truth than through ourselves - our conditioning, our behavior, our sensations and perception, our biases, and the whole structure of images we have created through which we think we understand the world, everything that makes us what we are. That is a subject worthy of considerable attention, IMO.

Praying for an ace Unsatisfied with a deuce Source of suffering

The entire quotation seems to do just the opposite. I always question for myself what level the author of such a work may have achieved. Is he speaking from experience or research? It's very easy to write about advanced levels of martial arts and meditation - it's another thing altogether to actually achieve those levels. As my teacher has said - anyone who has the time to research and write books of this nature can't have enough time to put in the hours necessary to really achieve what they're writing about. I've been taught to avoid giving meditation students information about what type of experiences and benchmarks they can expect. This does not help the progress. To the contrary, it slows progress considerably by intellectualizing what should be an experiential process.

Really nice posts everyone. I'm not sure I have much to add but fingers are typing nonetheless... Would it be useful to define Ego? I'm not sure everyone is referring to the same concept. Are we speak of Freud's Ego? Are we discussing the experience of being separate or individual? Are we speaking of what Ramana would refer to as the "I" thought or the first thought. The thought that separates itself and creates the awareness of an experiencer that is separate from the experience? Are we referring simply to the nature of awareness? -O-'s post was really interesting. I fully agree that we seem to be focusing on the nature of the experience of feeling separate from the "outside" world. I really like idea of a "horizon of conscious awareness" as defining self and other. I also like bringing physical sensation and perception into the discussion. It is relatively straightforward to see how the illusion of a separate self stems from sensory perception. The tactile envelope of skin combined with the limitation of perspective to that which is 'behind my eyes' and 'between my ears' is a powerful experience. Nevertheless, establishing the origin of conscious awareness or non-conscious awareness is another matter altogether. My experience seems to be along the lines that there is awareness and each living organism experiences existence through its unique set of sensory organs along with all of the behavioral and cultural conditioning that comes along with it. The nature of perception is such that it implies an separate and discreet focus of awareness. On the other hand, a committed attempt at discovering the nature and 'center' of this 'separate' awareness in all mystical traditions leads to the same conclusion - non-duality. It has different names and subtle differences that allow each of our tribes to claim superiority but it's all the same glimpse of the same truth. This is what the newborn experiences - a lack of separation from those rudimentary sensory impulses. There is no baby that is hungry, there is just hunger and so forth. This is different than Ego or self in which there is an experiencer yearning for or avoiding an experience. Anyway - just a few random thoughts to hopefully add to the interesting thread. This type of thread is why I like Tao Bums, Buddha Bums, Jew Bums, Jesus Bums, Jaina Bums or whatever we want to call it.

Mointu ben! If I can listen to samba funk and hang out with Brazilian folks while watching these guys do their thing, I'm in! Great clip - I haven't seen the movie yet but it might be worth watching.

We are still primitive and tribal in so many ways. Where is human evolution? Technological and intellectual advancement are obvious. Emotional and psychological advancement? I don't see much. What would it take for us to really make meaningful change in those areas? It hasn't happened in human history so far...

Hi That Guy - I think this is a great post! I took your post to be offered in the spirit of real interest in the topic and real concern for members of the forum. (my second rant this week!) Of course we are delusional! I agree with you and I still participate. It's kind of like Castaneda said - it's all controlled folly. Absolutely none of this stuff makes a bit of difference. We will all age, get sick, and die. Having cultivated, prayed, or not, will have little or no effect. Not everyone will agree with that statement , but that's ok it's only my assertion. Nevertheless, we have several years to live and get to choose what we wish to do while we are able. I've practiced Daoist cultivation consistently for ~ 6 years now and there is no question that we create a very complex system of experience through visualization, imagination, and intention. At the same time, once you begin to get deeper into the experience of these things, there is a quality that suggests a process of discovery as much as creation. I honestly will not claim to have any way to know which is occurring - discovery or creation, but then again, who cares? What is the difference? Are we not creating the world every instant? Isn't is miraculous that we are capable of both? How do we experience the world? Through sensory organs that take raw, meaningless energy and convert it into electrical signals that are interpreted in our brains in very specific ways. That is not by any means a complete and accurate reflection of "reality" but rather a very limited slice of experience that is somewhat consistent from person to person due to our physiologic similarities. We are like antennae that pick up and interpret certain specific wavelengths of energy while totally ignoring an infinite number of others! We are only tuned, based on our physiology and anatomy, to a very narrow spectrum. Other organisms "create" a very different experience of reality due to how they are "tuned." Who is to say what is real? You know, like the blind people feeling different parts of an elephant and describing it in so many different ways. To take it to another level, the whole of society is a delusion. We are a product of millennia of conditioning. The things you suggest would be better to do than cultivating are nothing more than a reflection of your conditioning. It starts way before you are even born - it's a product of the conditioning of your entire culture. Do you think everyone from every culture would find TV of value or even interesting? You talk about sitting and doing nothing then talk about fairy tales - what is TV? Sitting, doing absolutely nothing, looking at fairy tales. We are all delusional. We have been taught that we are separate from each other, from nature, and we have bought in to a complex fantasy of what is important, what is good, what is bad and we are completely oblivious to reality most of the time. We live in our heads most of the time, believing that we understand everything around us when all we really know are the images we've created that help us muddle through our robot lives. You mention math and science. Is life with math and science better than life without? Think about that carefully before answering. Certainly life is longer with math and science. It's easier to satisfy the needs of survival so there's more free time. Does that make it better? Is my life better than an indigenous person living in the Amazon basin? That's simply a matter of perspective. Many of us yearn for a simpler, more natural existence. All of the math and science are exactly what has taken us so far from our true nature. On this forum you will find a lot of people who use spirituality, magic and all that sort of stuff as entertainment (not much different from your recommendation that they would better spend their time watching TV or painting). You'll find others just trolling or looking for companionship. You'll even find a handful of people who see through the delusions of society and are genuinely looking for more satisfying answers and a more fulfilling life. Are they trading one set of delusions for another? Often the answer is yes. However, which of us can honestly say that we have a clear enough answer to all of creation to know for certain that this is always the case? I have derived considerable benefit in my own life from my spiritual investigation in many different ways - in how I relate to my family, in how I relate to my profession, and so forth. I would suggest that, if you have any degree of interest or curiosity, a careful and skeptical approach to the investigation of spiritual matters is a worthwhile endeavor. If you feel the drive, there is no benefit in resisting. On the other hand, if you are not driven then it is a waste of your time to bother. Follow your heart in the matter but beware of distraction - much (and yes, possibly all) of what is out there is simply entertainment and self indulgence. Kind of like painting and television. In summary - it's critically important (at least for me) to put all of this stuff in perspective. I have a low threshold for BS but I still try to have an open mind and enjoy investigating things beyond their superficial appearance. Perspectives like yours are a breath of fresh air on this forum (IMO) - and it reminds me how much I miss Buddy!!! I hope he is well wherever he may be.

I agree completely with Marblehead. We are nature (we've just been fooled into believing otherwise by conditioning) and Wu Wei is simply acknowledging this fact and living accordingly. If we were not nature, what could we possibly be? It is a trick of awareness that makes us feel separate due to the nature of our physical and psychological makeup.

What he said! _/\_

The concept of movement in stillness and stillness in movement is much easier experienced than understood intellectually. It's an integral part of Taiji practice. It has to do with movement occurring in the waist and torso moreso than the extremities. It has to do with the body remaining relaxed and 'song' during movement. It has to do with the mind remaining quiet during movement. Movement in stillness includes the movement of the circulation of Qi awareness in the absence of any physical motion. It has to do with guiding the Qi with the intention. It has to do with cultivating sensitivity in pushing hands. It's a really fascinating experience but doesn't mean much on paper, I don't think. What are you waiting for? Find a Taiji program and jump in! YOu'll love it!

Looking forward to it!

Do you practice Taiji?

What feels right? This may sound corny but it's something meaningful (to me at least) that I got out of reading Carlos Castaneda many years ago - What would you decide if it were the last thing you could do before your life ended?