doc benway

My experience is one of many voices, many identities that are present in relation to whatever circumstances are present. Some are bold and clumsy, obviously rooted in patterns of conditioning and a slave to mundane desires and aversions. Others are far more subtle and sophisticated. They are more difficult to discern and thus can give the false impression of wisdom. For me, there is no single "true inner voice" that I have identified. In my experience, any voice is related to concept and language and is necessarily a product of conditioning. The true inner voice, or nature as I prefer to label it, is non-verbal. Connecting with this nature is not a matter of choosing between voices but more one of allowing all voices that arise to come and go without engagement, connecting instead to the openness and silence. Action is based on trust in the openness rather than trust in an inner voice. This distinction is subtle and possibly semantic but it's interesting for me to observe and explore this inner landscape and the ambiguous labels we attach to it for purposes of understanding and communication.

I appreciate the words of support. I’m doing fine and so as not to raise any alarm, this doesn’t involve any of my teachers. Some friends have been hurt and my role was mostly consultative. I appreciate the kintsukoroi metaphor, a truly beautiful art. And the process of healing is also beautiful if we are open to it. As silent thunder has stated so well, it is our wounds that open us to what is, the cracks that let the light in (Leonard Cohen). My own spiritual path started as a result of deep trauma and don’t expect to remain unscathed on this Earth, as comfortable and appealing as that might be. PS - the painting is magnificent!

I have experienced this personally and agree with both your statement and the merit of the method. In reflecting on these posts, I suggest faith is what is there before knowing, be that through seeing positive changes through practice or self-realization. Once we experience or realize, it is knowing that drives us, not faith. Knowing which engenders trust. Faith is no longer necessary. It seems to me that all faith is necessarily blind. If one is not blind one would see, and know or not know, faith is unnecessary when knowing is there. I do not disregard or demonize faith. It is good to have faith in your cancer treatment or your buddy who’s got your back in the shit. Good to have faith in parents, partners, teachers, coaches, etc… Faith is only a problem when we are too identified so as to fail or refuse to see truth when it shows itself and act accordingly. The biggest danger of faith is that it can make us vulnerable, susceptible to influence and abuse. It’s OK to feel faith if it is truly there, it is simply already there, a feeling, an idea, a hope, or a dream. There is nothing wrong with any of that and it does not present a threat if we are aware and responsive. Disappointment is Ok too, if it is there. It is important, however, that it doesn’t become a fixed part of our identity. All of this comes and goes if we don’t hold on. I think this is the key or me. These three words - belief, faith, and trust are interesting for me to sit with and to investigate. What counts more than these words are the concepts with which we associate them and our relationship to that, I think. In practice, all three have a similar function in directing and motivating action, whether religious, spiritual, political, martial, material, and so on. Some words and concepts make us more or less comfortable as individuals, eg regular faith is Ok, blind faith not so much, or belief is bad but trust is good. At the end of the day, for me there is knowing and not knowing. In between the two are these shades of conceptual grey where I feel we often dance and it’s interesting to me to observe and explore. And as powerful as “knowing” is it is also always the experience of a fallible human not as different from faith as we might like to believe.

So great to see you here @Otis. I remember you fondly and am glad to hear you’re continuing your studies of consciousness and neuroscience.

Cudos to you. I’ve been in a position recently of having to help deal with a “bad” one. Not only is it distracting me from whatever “good” qualities they may possess, it has shaken my trust in an entire system. When these things touch us personally they can cut deep.

Amen! This is real practice. I think it was the Dalai Lama who said, “Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else.”

Thanks for clarifying. I loved his books in my youth. Much like Osho, he helped open me up to new ideas and possibilities. Much like Osho, he was probably a fraud and possibly far worse than that if the stories about his later years are true.

Sorry, who is CC?

I think this is an interesting distinction - faith vs blind faith. What do you, or others, see as the difference? Is it safe to say that all faith is blind to some degree?

I've never tried the processed versions. I've used the leaves on occasion after first being exposed in a tea shop in Seattle, near the famous Pike Place fish market. The proprietress gave me a bag of dried leaves to bring home. I could tell there was some stimulation of receptors on the tongue that were trying to send messages of 'sweet' to the brain. Nevertheless, it was an unusual sensation, a bit like trying to taste 'sweet' in a stereoscopic 3D image. I suspect some of that is my unfamiliar, perhaps better to say traumatized, taste buds at the time as it was before I made a conscious effort to avoid added sugar and other sweeteners.

What do you think about stevia?

I'm currently reading these two and thoroughly enjoying both. Big thanks to @liminal_luke for mentioning the slow read of War and Peace. \

Another thing I'd like to mention is that nearly everyone who has ever written about or practiced what is being described in this thread began with other practices, and often concurrently engage in other practices, that do involve effort in a variety of ways. It does irk me a bit when people speak of releasing all effort as if it is something that is easy to do as that tends to push people away who have tried and struggled with this or makes them feel bad about themselves or the practice. This is very simple but not at all easy until one has had appropriate training and lots of practice. Simply stated, we need to exert as much effort as is necessary for us to come to the point where we can genuinely let it go and rest into what is already always present without distraction. I also like this quote from Peter Fenner, "If we didn't do what we didn't need to do, we would never know that we didn't need to do it!" One of the more important aspects of teaching this stuff is to acknowledge and respect the fact that different people need different things to support their practice. This is constantly changing for each of us over time. For some, it is essential that varying degrees of effort be engaged to stabilize the attention. Otherwise they will simply day dream or doze throughout a meditation session and make no progress at all. For others, a simple pith instruction or the sound of a bird call may be enough to put them right into that open, clear place of spontaneous presence. It is critically important to be aware of what we genuinely need in our practice and to be honest with ourselves about that. Otherwise we are far more likely to waste our time than cultivate skill and experience in meditation (especially so with non-meditation, which is a very precise practice). In my own training, and when I guide or teach, I begin by giving people something to focus on. The first step is to be able to get some control of the attention to keep it from running wild. This takes some effort and time. It is called zhiné in Tibetan (or shamatha in Sanskrit). My teacher once described the effort when we begin this practice as being like an old person with poor eyesight trying to focus on something they are having trouble seeing. Very focused, very intense, lots of effort and often frustration. Gradually, as the mind begins to settle and wander less, we can incrementally release the effort until we are able to release entirely into the unfabricated present moment and simply abide without distraction. For example, one practice I engage in is resting the attention on silence. In the beginning it takes a lot of effortful concentration to first recognize and then keep the attention focused on silence, partly because we are so used to engaging with what is filling the silence and so unfamiliar with silence itself. Little by little we are able to release that effort of listening and simply hear and feel the silence. As our practice continues to deepen over months and years we can even release the very subtle effort associated with hearing and simply be silence itself. This is tough to describe in words and may sound far-fetched but is very clear to one who practices and has this experience. Once we gain some skill and familiarity with this it becomes easy to rest and open the attention under a variety of circumstances utilizing little or no effort and being free from distraction. It's little more than a shift of attention combined with stability cultivated through practice. At this stage, the practice is no longer limited to sitting on a meditation cushion in a quiet room. We can bring it into our lives and engage this practice under the most challenging circumstances imaginable. This is what it means when dzogchenpas talk about 'bringing all experience onto the path.' Ultimately this is intended to be a continuous practice that is beautifully described in Namkhai Norbu's book, The Cycle of Day and Night.

When I began to explore Daoist teachings, I found them somewhat impenetrable. Knowing nothing about Osho, I stumbled across his book, When the Shoe Fits: Stories of the Taoist Mystic Chuang-Tzu, and found it to be enormously helpful in beginning to decipher Zhuangzi’s teachings. Osho’s teachings were insightful and had their own unique flavor which I enjoyed and appreciated. Unfortunately, I think he failed miserably as a spiritual guide for his community. I recommend watching Wild Country for anyone interested in what happened to his community in Oregon.

It does seem paradoxical but that is largely a matter of unfamiliarity. At the end of a long, exhausting day of work how much effort is needed to drop into a comfortable chair and simply rest? We are so familiar with being focused on our actions, our inner voice, our thoughts and feelings that we pay no attention whatsoever to what it is that gives rise to all of that. What this practice invites us to do is to release our infatuation with the movement and activity of the body and connect deeply with the stillness that is always, already there. Release the obsession with the inner narration and judgement and connect deeply with the silence that hosts all sound, both inner and outer. Notice the mind's endless ruminations and release into the spaciousness that has no argument with anything that arises. As we become more familiar with this ground of experience, we begin to trust in it and in doing so can discover something very special. Describing it and debating it have some value but experiencing it through patient and committed practice is the only way to truly get a taste of what these teachings are telling us.

@idiot_stimpy Thanks for this wonderful thread! Is this most recent post quoted from Longchenpa?

No judgement old3bob, just responding to your comment on wu wei. If my comments are not helpful or not wanted please ignore.

Recognizing an old friend she hasn't seen in ages, MaryAnn approaches her, "Ginger! So great to see you! You look amazing!. You used to be so heavy now you're so thin! You used to be a redhead, now you're a brunette! You used to be so tall, now you're short! Amazing what happens over time." "My name's not Ginger..." "Oh and you've changed your name too!"

This question belies a pervasive misunderstanding of wu wei. As madmen run amok, heroes vault into action! If she is able to prevent the carnage, of course the hero can and will do so. If she can't prevent it, of course she can and will respond appropriately, assuming she is capable and aware. This is the natural flow of humanity. Shit happens and from our perspective they are judged as good or bad. We react in a manner that accords with our biology, environment, psychology, and conditioning. We must acknowledge that there are people who do horrible things for complex reasons. It is not really a matter of whether it 'shall be allowed,' the unfortunate fact is that it happens all the time and has been happening since the earliest times in recorded history. Wu wei does not mean to ignore, allow, or permit things you judge to be harmful or wrong through some sort of spiritually misguided inaction. Rather, it is to allow the natural and appropriate reaction to express itself without allowing all of our conditioned baggage, second guessing, ulterior motives, emotional dysfunction, and so forth to get in the way of the appropriate response. If a child is drowning in a pool the natural response from a healthy adult will be to help. This is the natural flow that is to be allowed. It would be an unnatural act to interfere with that natural response and do nothing, IMO. For this reason, my functional translation (right or wrong) of wu wei is more along the lines of "non-interference" than "non-action." The flow of nature includes human nature, IMO, it is pervasive and applies to all beings. This is how I interpret and implement Daoist praxis in my life. Even animals do things that we could easily judge as horrible to each other, and to us. Understandably, the closer we are to the living creature, the more easily it is to judge their behavior as good or bad. Consequently we judge ourselves, and each other, the harshest.

I think these journeys can tell us about both the conscious and unconscious. Anything occupying a substantial part of our conscious activity will spill over into the dream world and imagination. Sometimes it is obvious, other times disguised, but very much a part of, or influenced by, our daily conscious activity, whatever is alive in us in positive and negative ways. Unconscious content - suppressed, repressed, or latent - will also be expressed and I find the two are often inter-mixed thus giving rise to complex and unexpected images and stories.

I feel like these two are often a matter of perspective and inseparable.

Not if you come prepared...

Studies show that sexual activity for many continues well into the 70s and 80s. I would agree it becomes less of a "big issue" (eg obsession or source of stress) with advancing age.

The system settings are such that videos and image url's that are copied and pasted from a variety of sites, including youtube, are automatically embedded by default. There should also be a notification below the embedded content giving the option to post a link instead. If you are copying and pasting a youtube url and it's not embedded automatically, I suspect it's related to your device or network settings.

My experience here, and elsewhere, is that while I sometimes feel like people are referring to me with posts or comments, it's far more likely that they are referring to something going on in their own lives. That tendency to assume we are the object of someone's comments or expression is normal and natural but usually inaccurate and leads to unnecessary conflict. On retreat, someone once told my teacher they were blown away by how he seemed to talk to them so directly about their specific conditions and problems despite speaking to such a large and diverse group, and multiple other retreatants agreed. His response was that he is never speaking to anyone in particular, and doesn't really know anything about our individual lives, but that if we feel someone is talking to (or about) us then they are! Meaning it is something that is reactive and needs attention in us and something we should pay some close attention to. But it really has nothing to do with the other person. Zhuangzi's empty boat parable touches on this for me.