doc benway

Many years ago my karate sensei told me to sign up for a black belt test. I told him I wasn't ready. He got pissed, and he never got angry. He said something like, ‘You think you know better than me whether or not you’re ready? Sign up!' We can’t always see ourselves clearly and we can have a much better picture if we can also see ourselves through the eyes of others. This is one of the values of interacting on this forum for me. It’s taught me a lot about myself.

You who want knowledge, see the Oneness within. There you will find the clear mirror already waiting. Hadewijch II of Antwerp, 13th century

If we have the good fortune to connect with a teacher who has truly “gone before” and demonstrates mastery, walks the walk, I think it’s invaluable to learn as much as we can, to observe as thoroughly as we can, while we have the chance. A good teacher will let us know in no uncertain terms when it is time for us to fly on our own. We may think we know when we’re ready as well, and we may or may not be accurate. Either way, I think it is fine to follow our instinct, even if we prove to be wrong. We will learn something either way. I had the experience with both my neijia/neigong teacher and my Bön teacher. I tended to be a bit dependent on both and took their queues when they came. After teaching for a while and coming to him periodically with challenging questions from students, I remember my taiji/neigong teacher telling me something like, ‘It’s your turn to figure it out now. You can’t depend on me forever.’ It felt very harsh at the time. I didn’t feel quite ready to be the “authority” but him pushing back gave me the confidence I needed to accept that authority, whether it felt warranted or not. When my Bön teacher pushed back, it was similar. I would email him experiences and questions and one day he said something like, ‘As much as I like to help, I’m very busy and you need to learn where to look for your own answers. You know where to look, you need to trust that.’ Now, whenever a question or uncertainty comes up I simply stay with it, not pushing it away or trying to figure it out, just being with the question, with the uncertainty. If I am quiet enough inside and open enough to the subtle, inner winds, the answer is nearly always already there and usually in the voice and aura of my teachers. If the answer isn’t there, I have learned to be OK with that too. With time it comes and if it does not, perhaps it’s not something I need at the moment.

where’d my money go to fund eggs, and oligarchs pray for my country

ps - recognize that suffering also expends energy, a lot of energy, so choose wisely

A few thoughts, FWIW, although I would not call myself “Buddhist." I think there is focus on suffering for two reasons. One is that it is unpleasant but, more importantly, it is optional. That pain is part of life (physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual) is absolutely undeniable. The degree to which we suffer because of that pain is variable and there are concrete steps we can take to reduce it. When we suffer, we do not see as clearly and our decisions and choices come from a distorted view. Liberation of suffering allows us to show up more fully for ourselves and others and our choices can come from clarity and openness, giving more options and more accurate responses, sometimes surprising and unexpected. For some, this is worth the expenditure of energy, for others maybe not.

The yang side of English bulldog ownership is they can’t reach their butt. The yin side is that it needs wiping from time to time...

Knocking on that Bad Gateway Too pearly for the swine? If sean remembers we’re out here waiting Everything’s gonna be fine!

What I think is important is that we have the capacity and willingness to really look at our beliefs, where they come from, what they mean, and who they benefit. Then equally important to be open to new possibilities, even those that seem far fetched or implausible.

I don’t have to imagine it. Looking back at my education, I see very little but indoctrination. Looking at the current state of the world, I see very little information that is not propaganda. None of this is accidental and it exists even in “free” countries. Priming us from early childhood makes us more pliable as adults.

Me too

Seems better this am.

No escaping that! I am is everywhere but where I am not

Slow again for me as well. Slow all day yesterday and this AM.

Shakshuka is delish! If I’m feeling industrious, I’ll occasionally make fresh tortillas with red cornmeal. That kicks it up a notch but like you say, too long for a regular breakfast meal.

Morning slop - 2 scrambled eggs in a pan followed rapidly by a tortilla, pressing down gently to allow egg to cover both sides. Cook, flip, then add sautéed onions, potatoes, and sun-dried tomatoes. Add shredded cheese (I like cheddar and Jack) then gently roll in pan and serve with salsa.

takes no prisoners wisdom of mountains and Earth speaking with candor

LIV Cats climbing a steel fence to a garden. The thoughts of humans aching back to the first unfolding of Mind. by Afaa Michael Weaver

they prepare to dance arabesque, jetté, plié broken toes and dreams

I think the answer depends on what practice you are referring to. In neigong and Daoist practices, my teacher never recommended or taught any type of visualization, not even in qigong practice. On the other hand, we did discuss location and characteristics of points and meridians so to say there was no visualization involved is a bit inaccurate, IMO. I believe one reason to minimize visualization is to prevent the conceptual mind from engaging and misguiding the attention and interfering with the practice. My Daoist teacher’s core instruction was to focus on the practice instructions and the experience of practice rather than conceptualize, analyze, or follow the intellect. It was more about focusing and training the attention than creating any internal imagery. He even discouraged reading and study in favor of investing that time in practice. While those things have a valuable role in our lives, we rarely experience the world in any other way so it is important to learn to use the attention in a different way so that we are not overly dependent on, and consequently limited by, our intellectual and conceptual faculties. In Bön and Buddhist systems, visualization is useful and widely used. It is very useful for concentrating, focusing and training the awareness and attention which are otherwise prone to distraction and preoccupation. I think it could be especially valuable to us in this high-tech age when we always have ready access to every answer, image, or explanation we could desire at the touch of a screen. Our powers of focus and attentiveness aren’t getting enough exercise, not to mention our memory and other cognitive functions. In tantric practices, visualization is a core element and it’s efficacy can be readily seen in the results of practices like trul khor, tsa lung, tummo, chöd, dream yoga, deity yoga, and so forth. In these practices, it generally refers to a sequence of steps rather than a single, simple creation of a mental visual image. For example, we may first create and stabilize the visual imagery, then allow this to deepen into a more comprehensive imagination that goes beyond visual representation and may include other senses, then to a more intuitive felt sense of the thing, even a channeling of characteristics and qualities, and finally to simply being, or full embodiment. My teacher would often instruct in a retreat to first visualize, then imagine, then feel, then BE, eventually skipping the early steps when not needed. It’s important to acknowledge that visualization can mean different things. It can mean creating an internal visual image of something; it can be a wider imaginary representation that can include sound, smell, taste, and feel. It can be more intuitive. It can be to conjure up a memory or a plan. It can be creation of a feeling in the body like heat; it can be to imagine the pain and suffering of others and bringing that into one’s own field of awareness, lots of permutations are possible. I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to entirely exclude visualization in its myriad forms from our practice. For example, even those who emphatically discount the value of visualization in Daoist neigong carry in their minds some representation of the inner architecture, the inner anatomy, the expected and conceptualized characteristics of energetics, the expectations for outcome and so forth. All of this is, to some degree, visualization, IMO, and all of it can be useful. Visualization is a wonderful tool even in largely physical activities like golf, tennis, music, martial arts, weight lifting, etc… The power of mind is not to be underestimated. I heard a marvelous story of Arthur Rubinstein. He accepted a last minute invitation to play a piano concerto in London, one he’d not practiced or played in years. On the transatlantic flight, he spent hours visualizing the score in his mind and playing through it from beginning to end. He arrived in London and performed without error. My music teacher often recommended I use this technique to practice when I didn’t have the opportunity to actually use an instrument.

All Bread by Margaret Atwood All bread is made of wood, cow dung, packed brown moss, the bodies of dead animals, the teeth and backbones, what is left after the ravens. This dirt flows through the stems into the grain, into the arm, nine strokes of the axe, skin from a tree, good water which is the first gift, four hours. Live burial under a moist cloth, a silver dish, a row of white famine bellies swollen and taut in the oven, lungfuls of warm breath stopped in the heat from an old sun. Good bread has the salt taste of your hands after nine strokes of the axe, the salt taste of your mouth, it smells of its own small death, of the deaths before and after. Lift these ashes into your mouth, your blood; to know what you devour is to consecrate it, almost. All bread must be broken so it can be shared. Together we eat this earth.

Yes, raw cacao is grown best in volcanic soil and can have high concentrations of cadmium and other heavy metals. The processing of chocolate reduces those concentrations considerably but you need to be mindful if you consume large quantities of raw cacao.

Perhaps stirling will have some other comments but I’d like to offer mine. I would say your practice is developing nicely. The mind is like a river, thoughts and feelings come and go, constantly changing. In a similar way, we come and go, as does everything around us, even the planets and stars, just on a larger, slower scale. With respect to “there was still this point of view. Of a person watching, here I am." This is an important part of practice. Once the flow of the moving river of thoughts and feelings is less distracting and no longer carries the attention away, it is then valuable to turn your attention back to the “person watching, here I am.” This is the difference between mindfulness and dzogchen. In mindfulness, we remain identified with the watcher and perfect the art of staying present and attentive. In dzogchen, we turn the attention directly on the watcher and see what exactly that is. I don’t mean it should be an analytical process, per se, but that is what is called “turning the light around." When the looker looks back at itself directly, without thinking about it or analyzing it intellectually, both the looker and what is being looked at dissolve, if only for an instant. In that dissolution, there is the meaning of emptiness of self. It is not intellectual or conceptual, it is open and empty and that’s where we abide. Looking back at the observer is just one way to connect to the spaciousness and clarity of the present moment. There are others. I suspect this is why Buddha may have refused to answer the question about self, his non-verbal instruction being that it is more important to do the work than be given an answer.

No, my IT skills suck I can see why I haven’t read much lately Agreed Unfortunate, …it’s a sensitive subject for sure, for so many on both sides now (one of my favorite songs btw) I enjoyed those, pass the pepitas Cheers