doc benway

A few books I've found valuable - A History of God by Karen Armstrong, mostly about the Abrahamic religions with a little Buddhism and Hinduism thrown in. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby, deals with the origins of the separation of church and state in the US. Awareness by Anthony Demello, not so much about the world but rather our connection to it. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, discusses the collaboration of mass media, corporate, and political entities to manipulate and control society.

I had a powerful moment when I first met my current spiritual teacher, one of several [moments] actually. I'll share a bit of our first meeting below for anyone interested.

@Ghostexorcist You have no warnings and have not broken any rules to my knowledge. I suspect your VPN is creating the problem. I've tagged @Trunk to see if he knows more than I about use of VPN's and problems accessing the site.

My experience is cannabis makes thoughts stickier and brings up some repressed emotions. It also delays recognizing when I’ve disconnected and followed thoughts. It colors the clarity I can access. It has a major effect on my sleep and dream cycle - not at all good for dream and sleep yogas. Generally speaking it does nothing for me to enhance meditation, quite the opposite, but it can be taken onto the path like anything else.

@oglights Sorry to hear of your struggles with meditation. One thing I will point out is that the inner voice of depression is particularly powerful. If you have severe anxiety and depression, it may be very difficult to find that place of inner peace and refuge that we look for in meditation, at least in my tradition. Combining meditation with some form of treatment of the depression may be necessary. One problem with "observing the thoughts" is that "the observer" who tries to disengage and observe the thoughts as if they were separate is simply a thought form itself. So we have a mental construct of a "me" trying to observe the other mental constructs, which are highly contagious and have enormous inertia. The tendency towards anxiety and depression makes these constructs far more magnetic and real, like the tracks on a roller coaster that lock to the car. As we put more and more energy into this "observer" we fuel the fire of mental activity rather than release it. In the tradition I follow, the objective is to find that place of inner peace and silence and recognize it is the fundamental source of everything, our basic nature. The practice then becomes learning how to reconnect to that inner source When we are able to connect with inner stillness of the body, silence of the speech, and spaciousness of the mind, the thoughts and feelings have no where to hold and if we are in the right place, they can only self-liberate. Finding that correct place and posture of the body, speech, and mind is very tricky due primarily to its subtlety. This is a very powerful and effective practice but we all need different things depending on our karma so I certainly can't promise it will work for you. If you're interested in giving it a try check out the video. My teacher, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, shares a practice from traditional dzogchen teachings, repackaged in a simple and non-sectarian form which is accessible for both formal and informal meditation practice. Below is a video teaching this practice in the context of daily, informal practice where we take each and every opportunity in our day to day life to continuously reconnect to the inner refuge of stillness, silence, and spaciousness. The same practice is used in our formal daily practices on the cushion. This can be the only practice one needs, a lifetime practice. There are also many other practices that can support it.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

make love in the snow beware the icicles lest tender flesh ye’ crave

until “phat!” - release attachment and connect to this very moment

He does have a way with words...

In our tradition, that is all a part of what is referred to as meditation. First we train the mind to focus, then to rest in that focus, then to rest without any particular focus. As the mind becomes more settled and clear, it looks back at itself directly and the inquiry occurs spontaneously and naturally. For most it is difficult to really look at it while it is busy. In dzogchen it is said that the view, meditation, behavior, and result are all the same, not different things.

@rocala In the context of the books I mentioned, certainty refers specifically to understanding (through direct personal experience) the Nature of Mind. It is not so much a matter of what it is intellectually or theoretically as how to experience it. On the vajrayana paths ( oth tantra and dzogchen), this Nature of Mind is the key to making progress. As Mipham’s teachings state, meditation is the most direct approach but the conceptual, theoretical piece is important in guiding us until we have that certainty and even beyond, as it takes time to stabilize our connection and make it habitual. Is that at all helpful?

No comment

In both Buddhism and Bön there are many paths. In Bön, with which I am far more familiar, there are nine unique paths. The majority of these paths do not emphasize meditation. The path to enlightenment is said to require the union of method and wisdom. Method is also referred to as skillful means and encompasses a wide variety of activities and practices through which we can generate bodhicitta, some meditative, some behavioral modification, some study. Wisdom is the realization of emptiness which is primarily reached through meditation but can also be supported by study and debate. There is a marvelous book called the Beacon of Certainty by Ju Mipham Rinpoche which thoroughly discusses the roles of study and meditation and where and how they intersect. The original text is challenging to read but Anyen Rinpoche presents the information in a more accessible manner in his book, Journey to Certainty. In my opinion, what each of us needs to grow spiritually is determined by our unique karma and may change over time. This is precisely why there are so many different methods available to practitioners. I recall a teaching on the 21 Nails, one of the most esoteric and secretive teachings of Bön dzogchen. Each nail points to a different aspect, practice, or characteristic related to the Nature of Mind. Someone asked why there were 21 and my teacher answered that each teaching came about in response to a way in which we can be deluded or blocked on the path. At some point those who compiled the teachings decided 21 was enough but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to add to the teachings if that could help people overcome other obstacles they may encounter. Similarly, when people have deep spiritual realizations they often describe the experience in different ways. According to my teacher this is not because they are experiencing a different fundamental essence. It is because they are for the first time experiencing the opposite, the absence, of what was previously blocking them. Rather than look at what works or doesn’t work in general terms, it is critical to focus on what works for us as individuals (or for our students, if applicable).

I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to sean and trunk, to my fellow moderators, and to all the members who have stuck with the forum through the turbulence of recent months and years. I have learned a lot about myself through my participation here and have developed meaningful friendships with folks I’ve never met or actually spoken with - what a wonderful tool technology can be! I wish everyone lasting peace, good health, and lots of love and light in your lives in the coming season.

I periodically eat things that fall on the floor (food mainly) in order to keep the immune system strong! 💪🏼

You have a valid point but I think it only goes so far. A few additional rhetorical questions come up for me... 1. Conditioning occurs in nature, does undomesticated equate with unconditioned? 2. The vast majority of humans have not lived “wild” in millennia so is it reasonable to use wild animals, or wildness, as a template for human nature? I suggest that to separate human nature and human civilization may be artificial, nothing more than a thought exercise. Along these lines, I’ve read examples of minimally civilized populations who are quite open, naive, and trusting (and consequently easily taken advantage of), as well as examples of those who are reclusive and defensive. 3. We are discussing conceptual and verbal capacity - feeling threatened by an opinion, not a physical threat. It seems like there is a learning or conditioning process at work here. Along those lines is animal behavior a valid comparison when discussing conceptual disagreement? Anyway, not saying I disagree with your point but it brings up interesting questions for me.

I wonder if that tendency is truly an aspect of human nature? I feel it is more a consequence of conditioning. It certainly seems as if it is our nature because the depth and breadth of conditioning is so pervasive. Unconditioned human nature can be totally open, embracing disagreement and alternative perspective. This is the idea of returning to childlike purity, to the source - deconditioning, that is prevalent in wisdom traditions. Resting in the view I alluded to earlier encompasses all perspectives without adhering to any. It is considered by its practitioners to be fundamental human nature.

In dzogchen, the view is very precise. If you get it right you do not accumulate karma. But if you miss by a mm you may as well miss by a km... It does not say that there are no other valid perspectives. What it does say is that all other paths, all perspectives, involve generating karma. There are as many perspectives as there are individuals. Alternate perspectives are not "basically the same thing" as the dzogchen view. It may not be, and does not claim to be, unique but it is very precise and transcends all perspective. It posits no perspective of its own. Only simple instructions. edit - dzogchen actually does claim its view to be unique, not in a possessive or exclusive way, but in the sense that it is very precise

@thelerner @Spaceofawareness Done - let me know if any problems or questions

Gods and bodhisattvas, or what have you, are simply representations of enlightened qualities that can arise when the distortions of our day to day mind get out of the way and allow us to connect to a deeper and more pure level of awareness in and of ourselves. They are not something outside or foreign, well they certainly may feel foreign, but when we connect with them it is very much a feeling of coming home, of something we've known and understood all along. Mantra is intended to help us cut through the distortions and access those deeper qualities.

The problem is not in the method, it is in the intention and expectations. The purpose of mantra and meditation is not relaxation, stress relief, intuition, prediction, and so forth. Those are side-effects and while they are very positive side-effects, there are negative side-effects also, which have been written about extensively here and elsewhere. Those negative side-effects are probably, in the long run, more beneficial than the superficial early benefits. They are evidence of the practices bumping up against the dysfunctional and delusory aspects of ourself that meditation is designed to disrupt and break down. In the West, there is a tendency to appropriate meditation methods for a variety of purposes, mostly psychological support and selfish powers. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it does not often lead to deriving the deeper effects of mantra and meditation. Rather it short-cuts the very purpose of the practice which is why you feel like you've hit a dead end. The deeper changes and more powerful effects are associated with fundamental changes in our relationship to ourself and our connection to our external and internal experience. If you're truly interested in the deeper benefits and broader changes, I suggest you dig into the spiritual source of these practices and connect with credible teachers who can guide you through the ups and downs. The techniques are very precise. Taking these practices out of context and playing with them without guidance can yield some superficial benefits as you describe but it's unlikely to go beyond that. Just my $.02 FWIW.

How do you know that to be true? One can argue that it’s the other way ‘round.

Interesting direction for this thread to take. Evidence that derailment can be a good thing. In my view, to say things are simple or complex is limiting. They are neither... and both. We see things as we are, not as they are. Simple and complex are descriptions of how we are experiencing, and interpreting that experience, not so much an accurate description of how things actually are. Both perspectives are equally valid and useful, depending on our needs and place on our individual path at any given moment.

Have you given similar consideration to thoughts? Why do they come up? Why a particular thought or memory at a given time? Sometimes one can trace patterns and connections, often there is no explanation. They just pop up, hang around, and vanish. Emotions are like that for me as well and I treat them similarly. In the Tibetan paradigm it is a matter of the various winds (movements of subtle energy) interacting with our external circumstances or our internal milieu (the chakras). This is also the explanation for dreams. When the wind of our awareness encounters the energetic content of a particular chakra, a particular thought, emotion, or dream will be stirred and come into our awareness. That’s one explanation.