doc benway

I am starting this as a new thread simply because tacking these comments to any of the threads that stimulated them would simply generate conflict and confrontation. It's fascinating to watch how we cling so desperately to our beliefs. What would it be like to let that attachment go? Is it possible that none of us are correct? What would it be like to find out that everything we believed and relied on was illusion? Could we go on without the security of our beliefs? Answers are dead, only questions are alive.

I've always found rain to be a lovely person through her posts. I don't know her personally but I'd suggest that there has been some unfortunate miscommunication. Hopefully you can work it out. You also seem like a decent person, SG

Thank you for explaining that Li Jiong [Edited in honor of .broken., thank you James]

I enjoy the fact that you post here as well and I appreciate your words. In response, I would like to offer a small prayer: May we both have the time and inclination to continue to question our beliefs. Only questions can cut through the illusion that belief creates. _/\_

I believe that Westerners, like myself, have been purposely conditioned by our society since birth to be slaves to the society and economic prosperity (mostly for the benefit of the elite). It sounds like paranoia and conspiracy crap but it is absolutely obvious from a particular perspective. A very small and beautiful book that showed me this perspective very clearly is The Happy Child by Steven Harrison. So we are profoundly conditioned to feel that not getting certain things done and not being busy is bad and we beat ourselves up about it and feel bad when we are not always busy. We call it lazy instead of leisure time or holiday time or just time. Look at animals when they have a full belly, that is what living is all about. Meditation is the first time I understood that not only is it ok to stop, take a break, and not be productive for a change; it is important for human health and well being to regularly take that break. So I say, be lazy! Take some time for yourself whenever you feel that way. Enjoy that time. It is a healing and breathing time. It is your life, every precious and limited moment. Take at least a few to enjoy without any obligation or responsibility, even meditation! It's like my diet. I used to stress over what and how much I was eating and when. Now I try to eat what I crave when I want it and stop when I begin to feel full. Our body (intuition) tends to be more reliable than our intellect in such affairs, IMO. That's my view. I think it can be looked at as consistent with Daoism in so far as it comes from a perspective of Wu Wei.

And how many hundreds of years will it take for all pollution to disappear (thousands really, for certain toxins and radioactive waste), forests to regrow everywhere, and a worldwide return to Eden? Do you expect to see it in your lifetime and those you save? If so, you are engaging in magical thinking. If not, what will the effect of your efforts really be? All those you save will be long dead before the return to Eden.

Highly recommend you check one out before buying. There are lots of different designs and materials which will be dictated by your style of practice. Ask your teacher what he/she recommends. I once bought a heavy waxwood staff online. It came seriously warped. They told me to feel free to return it for a replacement or refund but the shipping costs were twice as much as the staff so I basically ate the cost... That was Cold Steel Company - don't order a staff from them.

Definitely. On the other hand it's instructive to look at the name that was chosen. I think it was chosen with great care. The top portion is the radical for head and the bottom is a pictograph of a foot or footstep and it implies stopping at a crossroads. The name means "the way" or "the path" or "to walk a path" and so forth. But the selection of radicals implies having or making a choice about which direction to take. It can be interpreted in many ways, one being as our choice regarding our way in our world - our life - our existence. That is experiential and is not a straw dog. The word is never the thing. It is simply a verbal and conceptual (and in Chinese, a pictorial) convenience to facilitate communication. You can look at it like the symbol that was used by the artist formerly known as Prince - he tried to drop the name as well. Or we could drop it and just refer to it as

Who is it that wants to survive? That which is not born does not die. _/\_ It's very nice that you are on this forum James.

What is it that beats our heart when there is an "I"? Does the "I" do the breathing when breathing occurs with intent? Or does it just take credit for that? How about when breathing occurs without intent? Who or what does it then? Are they different? The relationship between voluntary and involuntary action is a fascinating one.

Glad I checked this thread, I'm going to check out this version as well. Thanks Scotty.

Very well put James. Your active compassion and civility are admirable and I try to follow your example most times but I'm going to briefly take a step on the wild side. I would like to make a comment that I recognize is critical and yet I feel that it should be put out there nonetheless. I am not asking for a reply, just stating an independent observation. I find it incongruous and perhaps disingenuous that someone of such a reportedly high level of cultivation, ie having immortalized the yang shen, would be so concerned about surviving predictions of future disasters. Similarly, I question someone of that level selling internal martial arts training by .pdf files. Perhaps the motivation is altruistic, perhaps opportunistic, perhaps a bit of both but it seems more of the latter to me. I made similar comments about Max when he first came on the scene and I stand behind those comments to this day. The method of presentation is a bit different but both set off alarms for me.

I heard an intriguing discussion several months ago on NPR about an experiment in causality. It had to do with measuring when a person performed an action and when they become aware of the intent to perform that action and when they initiated that action. It was an elegantly designed experiment which seemed to show that in all cases the body prepared itself physiologically for the activity before the person even was aware of the intent to carry out the activity. I'm sorry that I can't recall any meaningful detail but I found it a fascinating discussion.

Let's look at this further. Sleep - even in dreaming, there is the "I", so only in dreamless sleep to be more specific. Unconsciousness is a good answer, like dreamless sleep but those are two areas where the sensory apparatus and awareness are not operational. Even in the most profound experiences, meditative or otherwise, there has always been a frame of reference from which the "I" is there for me. That does not mean it cannot go away. I still question if, as long as there is the sensory apparatus and conscious awareness, can the "I" perspective ever not be a part of that awareness? "I" have had a very profound experience of loss of separation, oneness, whatever you want to call it, that changed me forever, and yet "I" was still a part of that experience. It was still experienced by that which is aware that "I" associate with me, despite the fact that "I" came to understand that "I" is not the same as me. I'm getting into linguistically challening territory but I get a sense that others here can relate to what I'm trying to get at. I guess what I'm trying to imply is that "I" is there to some degree as long as the me is alive, regardless of perspective or level of awakening or insight. Does that hold water? On the other hand, perhaps there is a state in which the "I" is gone but then what is it that is there to communicate and function? If there is no "I", how would the organism provide for itself? Would this be a desirable or advantageous state? An interesting person who speaks of this conundrum is UG Krishnamurti (no relation to J Krishnamurti). http://www.well.com/user/jct/

It's funny to watch people fret about comets and floods and locusts and fires in heaven. What about a mundane bullet or cancer? It's only death. Everyone alive today will die very soon. There is no need for natural disaster to insure this but if it is the result of a natural disaster, what is the difference? Stig and others - I will gladly share some tea and practice Taiji with you as the fire and brimstone rain down.

Can the "I" thought ever leave? If so, who would be aware that it is not there? Even in deep meditation, when the I is not there, who is there to know it is gone? I believe it is a natural consequence of the fact that we are aware and have a sensory apparatus.

I guess all I can think of in response is that - if the believing is part of it, so is the letting go of belief. The letting go for me has been somewhat liberating and it feels like the more I let go, the more foolish all of the 'belief systems' appear. I recognize that letting go is simply another category of belief and so it goes. And yet it seems to me that there is more pain and suffering caused by answers than by questions.

My take on the forces of darkness: I'm going to start from the perspective that the initial question was framing "darkness" as in the realm of evil or bad. That is what the majority of people would think of when asked to define "forces of darkness" I believe. The forces of darkness are born in our natural tendency to compae and judge. Our biology and conditioning results in a value system of good and bad which consequently varies with our background. Darkness has always been associated with death and death associated with bad or evil - this is clearly cultural conditioning. When faced with the bad we crave an explanation because then we think we can avoid the bad in the future. This desire for security is a biological drive that is healthy in the physical realm and more often dysfunctional in the psychological realm. So our compulsion to find an explanation for our pain and suffering leads to the creation of the "forces of darkness" which can then be incorporated into our cultural paradigm. In my view, the forces of darkness are nothing more than a normal component of the 10,000 things if you want to use a Daoist expression. They arise mutually and interdependently with the forces of light. To know good, one must experience evil. Darkness defines light and so forth. Everything else is created by our thoughts, memories, and conditioning.

I used to love fly-fishing - catch and release only. I never killed or kept a fish. I did it every chance I got. Not too long after I started practicing meditation I had to stop. I could no longer reconcile my entertainment with a living, beautiful creature struggling for life hanging from a hook. Similarly, I have a very hard time eating meat anymore...

I sometimes do translation of Chinese characters for my teacher. Translating Chinese into English exposes the profound difference in the languages that I think speaks directly to this issue, and possibly the reason why you were asked to discuss this topic, Stig, I think it's a trick question! The English language (and other Western languages) are predicated on the concept of cause and effect. Subject/action/object and so forth. This is so deeply ingrained in our psyche and thought process that we cannot step out of it lightly. The Chinese, on the other hand, have a language that does not rely on such a temporal construct. Each character evokes a mood, concept, idea, action, or object but the language is constructed without the same rigid cause and effect pattern. The pictographs are simply placed side by side and one interprets them with a much less rigid format. I believe the Western cause and effect premise to be fallacious. I think it's a consequence of the thought process. This can get into a very lengthy discussion but here's something to think about. What is time? If you look into it deeply you may find that time is the movement of thought. This results in an ordering of ideas or events which is experienced as cause and effect. One of the fundamental concepts of Daoism is an awareness of mutual arising and the complementary nature of things (non-temporal) which I think underlies the Chinese mindset, much as the concept of cause and effect (temporal) underlies the Western mindset. Alan Watts does a nice discussion of the nature of time you can find on youtube in 3 parts. Also, there's a very interesting book on the topic by Huw Price called Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point, or something like that. Good luck Stig!

I would suggest that you search this forum - there are hundreds of posts and dozens of threads on the topic.

Excellent points everyone. Very well put Todd! Your explanation makes perfect sense. It was his use of the word "even" that was bothering me. Thank you all for contributing to the thread, please continue!

I hope it's not premature to move on but this next verse really mystifies me... 23. The body does not say 'I'. No one will argue that even in deep sleep the 'I' ceases to exist. Once the 'I' emerges, all else emerges. With a keen mind enquire whence this 'I' emerges. The body does not say 'I' - I think this is his way of saying the awareness or feeling of 'I' exists apart from the physical body. I can see that point. I also understand the progression of "Once the 'I' emerges, all else emerges." Finally, I've done a lot of enquiring after "whence this 'I' emerges." I'm not sure I get the part about deep sleep. Can anyone shed some light on this? The way he phrases it is confusing to me.

I'll buy that approach only if you are using the word light in a figurative sense. If we take it literally we are stuck searching for a visual light or an experience of light in our heads and I don't think that's the direction we want to go in. Exactly! I think light here is pointing to the light of awareness. That which allows us to feel that we are an "I". That comes from somewhere untouchable and inexplicable. Searching for that source was Ramana's favorite exercise and the only thing that he felt would lead to awakening. Proof of life! There is the perspective of how to "know Him" that I like to investigate. Most of us would agree that at some level the universe is fundamentally one great whole - Dao, Wu Ji, God, whatever. And yet, we do not routinely feel that we ourselves are a part of that. It's almost as if we feel that the universe is one great whole and then there's "I", which is separate. What Ramana is saying to me is that whatever it is that is Divine within the universe is also that which is Divine inside of us. Where better to approach and commune with this than inside our own mind where we can find that Divine light or spark that is our awareness, the sense of "I". That is where we find the connection and the oneness. Using the mind, one can't know this. Looking for the source of the mind, it can become apparent.

I think Sean does a great job of approaching this forum with the attitude of Wu Wei. I've been a part of another forum where entire threads routinely disappear because the moderate thought they were inappropriate. When necessary Sean intervenes but keeps it to a minimum. There are and have been a number of posters here who are less mature and less civil when crafting their posts. I always read and reread my posts several times to make sure it says what I want without being offensive or hurtful. On the other hand, we can get a bit emotional at times. I would second Stig's plea for a mature, civil, and considered discussion on this forum. When things escalate, ask yourself if your post will really enhance the discussion. Or does it simply represent some emotional or other conditioned response.