doc benway
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Posts posted by doc benway
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5 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:to spirit and wit
that keep us sane in this world
our deep gratitude
our deep gratitude
to the grebes out on the lake
putting on a show
(photo by Ed Oswalt)
(photo by Ed Oswalt)
capturing the there and then
in the here and now
putting on a show
interactive, collective
my dog wants to play
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I will be a voice of both dissent and agreement.
20 hours ago, Apech said:There is far too much on this forum about the ‘non-conceptual’ ,
There is so little discussion of the non-conceptual anywhere else on the web, for me at least, the amount that is present here is just fine, thank you. Frankly the non-conceptual doesn't require or even support much discussion. I find myself participating relatively little simply because the whole point of the non-conceptual is to avoid all of the imputation and misguided ideation often thrown at "it."
20 hours ago, Apech said:as if that were a thing anyway.
It is most certainly not a "thing," but nothing could exist, including ideas and concepts, without "it."
20 hours ago, Apech said:I am here to sing the praises of concepts and ideas.
In heaven there are stars and in our minds there are ideas. Shining with their own particular light. Every word we speak - every sentence is a string of interlocking stars. If the light is coherent we may find truth in them. If the light is discordant we might find lies.
I am reading your song of the conceptual to the tune of "This Must Be the Place" by Talking Heads.
Beautiful lyrics and melody and, despite my close connection with and appreciation for the realm of the non-conceptual, I appreciate and agree with your praise of the conceptual. In many ways it defines our "humanity," that which distinguishes us from other forms of life.
20 hours ago, Apech said:Ideas are eternal,
I disagree here, ideas come and go and have no substance until implemented.
They are as unenduring and insubstantial as fashion and movie critiques.
20 hours ago, Apech said:they are the substance of our thoughts and understanding. They feed our dreams, our aspirations and inform our endeavors. Without ideas we have no life worthy of the name.
I'll disagree here as well. That is simply the perspective of the one creating the ideas.
That one(s) can only appreciate the realm of concept.
One needs no ideas to fully appreciate a sip of wine, a Dali, or an orgasm.
Certainly one can explore the conceptual aspect of fine wine, art, and human relationship but, for me at least, the conceptual aspect is no substitute for the sheer, unfabricated experience.
Do organisms without conceptual, verbal ideation have no life worthy of the name?
In my opinion, fwiw, all life is worthy of living whether capable of speech and ideation or not.
20 hours ago, Apech said:Like angels they bring messages from beyond the mundane.
Let us be blessed with ideas, may we have dreams and let the coherent light of truth be our pathway.
Amen
Full disclosure, I have been fully indulging in in the world of the conceptual of late.
Partly it is unavoidable, living in a fast paced society with a fast paced and demanding job, and having dependents.
After an extended period of being very focused and committed to non-conceptual practice I've let go of much of that scheduled and restrictive regimen. The practice is still there but far less structured and forced. Practice and living have coalesced, certainly not continuous by a long shot but relatively effortless. While the non-conceptual practice aspect reduces stress and reactivity associated with the conceptual aspects of life; there is more engagement with and appreciation for the full gamut - thought, desire, aversion, pleasure, ideas, and concepts alike. All of it precious.
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Most likely an answer to an AI query or request...
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I don't do too much quoting but here is one that I think is apropos from the very dear departed Anthony Demello:
Waking up is unpleasant, you know. You are nice and comfortable in bed. It is irritating to be woken up. That’s the reason the wise guru will not attempt to wake people up.
I hope I’m going to be wise here and make no attempt whatsoever to wake you up if you are asleep. It is really none of my business, even though I say to you at times, “Wake up!” My business is to do my thing, to dance my dance.
If you profit from it, fine; if you don’t, too bad!
As the Arabs say, “The nature of rain is the same, but it makes thorns grow in the marshes and flowers in the gardens.
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I haven’t dated nor am I related to a trans-person. I have a friend who I’ve only known post transition. She is one of the most intrepid and courageous persons I know. Her transition seemed to free her to allow deeper parts to emerge. She travels continuously. She discovered she is a shaman and was initiated in Siberia. I can’t say I’m close enough to really know her intimately but I certainly feel the warmth of her connection to the source and feel grateful to know her.
On a tangent, I just watched a film called Frybread Face & Me - beautiful and deeply moving film about a young “city Indian” sent to live with grandma on the Navajo rez. One theme is the boy’s gender ambivalence and experimentation. Highly recommended!
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7 minutes ago, Mark Foote said:"Makes someone a Christ"--"that makes you a Christ".
Makes it sound like you want to become a Christ, or that to become "a Christ" is a Christian goal.
I thought there was only one Christ expected in the Old Testament, and that most Christians aver that Jesus was that one (or is that one).
In the Philippines, there are men who have themselves nailed to a cross, some have been nailed to a cross every year for many years. I'm sure that's not what you meant, but it's unclear to me what you mean.My understanding is that the objective of the mystical arm of Catholicism, the Jesuits, at least is to go beyond belief or obedience and to become as Christ was. To embody his teachings as fully as possible in this life. I base this on teachings from an enlightened Jesuit master, Anthony Demello, one of my favorite spiritual voices.
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On 5/28/2024 at 2:26 PM, Apech said:
‘Hey I saw you from across the room and couldn’t help notice the copper wire sticking out your backside. Your place or mine?’On 5/28/2024 at 2:58 PM, silent thunder said:Video proof or it didn't happen.
Video is foolproof!
Hey, now that we're back at my place I hope you don't mind but I've got a doctor here and a videographer to make sure this is the real deal!
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4 hours ago, stirling said:The idea of there being a single causal relative reality just isn't real, in my opinion.
It’s not just your opinion or even that of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Bönpos. It is also completely consistent with the theories and experimental results of the most powerful and predictive paradigm in the history of physics. The act of observation by an observer (duality) collapses the wave function of probability (unbounded potential) into an object, having an unavoidable effect on the observation (reality).
My samsaric existence is that of unbounded awareness being bounded by a set of perceptive faculties and interpretation in a living entity/community. When “I” am actively engaged I am creating reality. Buddha is the unbounded, undefined potential embodied when we are not limited by the role of observer. The observation is occurring but the perspective is not restricted by a particular frame of reference, no subject-object duality. This can become the primary abiding state of “mind.” The extreme is to dissolve in a rainbow of light.
This is elegantly captured in the Four Goodnesses teaching of Tapihritsa in the Bön tradition. I love the intersection between spirituality and scientific endeavor - physics, biology, systems, etc…
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3 hours ago, liminal_luke said:Unpopular opinion: These kind of discussions about the nature of reality are best quickly skimmed through while slurping up one´s morning fruit loops. (Just my uneducated, unspiritual opinion. Please don´t throw unreal tomatoes.)
I strongly disagree, far better to quickly skim over a healthier breakfast than fruit loops!
edit - sorry but I skimmed over Apech’s response regarding fruit loops…
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18 hours ago, Apech said:This I don’t accept.
That’s the thing about reality, acceptance doesn’t matter.
PS - I’m not a Buddhist
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9 hours ago, Apech said:But my question is - where does that reality come from? Why is the tree real?
My view is that you make it real.
Yes, you Apech
🥴
Our finely tuned perceptive faculties evoke reality from unbounded potential. Void relates to unbounded and undefined, the base, wu ji. We provide the boundary and definitions in relationship with our environment and give birth to each moment of reality. It is yours alone, we only agree on so many fronts because our faculties are similarly tuned.
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2 hours ago, Nintendao said:
yet rust never sleepsabsolutely mythical
haiku by shenlung
haiku by shenlung
inspire’ing to the senses
to spirit and wit
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4 hours ago, Nungali said:The disco at the end of the Universe .
The disco at the end of the Rainbow
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I wish I had good answers to this question.
There are a few very dear people in my life who struggle mightily with these feelings.
The first thing I would suggest is to look at the inner judge, the inner voices, thoughts, and feelings that tell the story of your inadequacy, your weakness, any story really. It may need to be taken on faith in the beginning but those inner voices are not who you are. They are flotsam and jetsum you've picked up from parents, ancestors, teachers, bosses, society, media and anyone else with a tendency to belch and fart opinion. More importantly, they have no particular authority or special insight, just passing thoughts and feelings. Who you really are at your core is so much more than that!
One practical approach is to thank that inner judge for his concern for your welfare, to give him a warm, luminous hug and reassure him that you are OK just as you are. While his criticisms probably have some merit they are only a very small part of your story and your potential. Every weakness, every inadequacy can be seen as a failure and an obstacle or as an opportunity to grow and to refine yourself. In taiji we often say "invest in loss" because only loss shows us where we are in need of practice. The areas where we are strong don't need work. Anthony Demello says 'pleasant experiences make life delightful but painful experiences are opportunities for growth.'
So my advice is to not take that self-judgement and self-deprecation too seriously, they are passing thoughts and feelings that show you a very limited picture. They are largely a slime trail of social and cultural conditioning that can be useful but often becomes dysfunctional. While they do not need to be suppressed or ignored, they also need to be put in context and taken with a grain of salt and a generous helping of humor. You will die and everyone and everything you love and care about will be gone. If that were to happen next week, what would you want this week to look like?
Warm wishes to you
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28 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:Good points, both. My opinion about good spiritual practices being boring was more of an intuitive hunch than something I had a well thought out basis for, so when apech asked me why I was a bit stymied. Didn´t stop me from reverse engineering an answer though! Clearly there are lots of non-boring moments on the spiritual path. I do think that boredom is an underappreciated state of mind that can be productively embraced rather than turned away from.
I resonate with your response as well. All states of mind can teach us something about ourselves. Boredom is no exception.
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2 hours ago, liminal_luke said:Why are the best spiritual practices boring?
Sorry to intrude but spiritual practices are boring because you’re not doing anything else. If meditation is boring do it with Netflix or a nice meal. Do it with your partner and when you floss. One caveat. When you bring it off the mat, boredom is replaced by frustration, so like they says, no one said it was easy to break the cycle of rebirth.
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4 hours ago, Apech said:I have no idea ...can they???
I think it’s a great question.
I don’t have an answer nor enough education to feel good about an opinion.
Bön teachings touch something in my heart, from my first contact. Buddhist masters often speak more to my mind. The Bön teachings I’ve received have been heavy on metaphor, parable, and pith and there’s a close human connection. In Buddhism I’ve mostly read Longchenpa, and a handful of others, with no personal connection, so it’s likely just selection bias on my part. I think individual teachers are an equally significant factor. The old and new are syncretic as are the individual traditions at this point.
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Kyoji has been suspended from the site for 1 week for offensive and disrespectful posting. Future infractions will result in a longer and possibly permanent ban.
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4 hours ago, Apech said:Bodhi-cheating
The art work of early Buddhism shows what early Buddhism and the Buddha was like. He is not depicted but represented by a pair and sandals, or an empty cushion and so on. He is surrounded by dancing and singing, by nature spirits including voluptuous female nature spirits, and naga serpents. This is a shamanistic scene. Buddha was a shaman who imparted knowledge. A few centuries after his death the great king/emperor Ashoka appropriated Buddhism because it gave a chance of a way out of the otherwise inevitable consequences of the wide-scale slaughter he had perpetrated as part of his empire building. He felt sorry for this - sorry for himself in fact and wanted to save himself from the hell realms. The state subsidised Buddhism he introduced was, unlike the original Buddhism both scholastic and monastic. Early Buddhism had no written texts but under the new Buddhism the collections of texts became everything - where liberation came from listening to the text being read, thinking about them, meditating on them and so on. State funding institutionalised Buddhism into monasteries and universities - much as Constantine did to Christianity - and created a new form of Buddhism which emphasised intellectual learning and religious hierarchies. Early Buddhist monks wandered in groups no larger than three, lived and worshipped in close connection with the local communities on whom they depended for food and supplied services such as healing and spells for good harvests and so on. But for the monastics the text became everything in a kind of 'sola scriptora' approach. Attempts by modern Buddhists to re-find 'early Buddhism' fall into the trap of trying to abstract ideas from the texts and end up with a kind of desiccated secular mental exercise. Oddly to us moderns the closest thing to early Buddhism would be vajrayana even though it has much later historical roots. And it is the main criticism of vajrayana that it introduces magical, yogic and deity practices which places it much closer to what the Buddha was actually like.
Very interesting perspective. I wonder if Bön teachings and practice give us a sense of early Buddhism?
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3 hours ago, old3bob said:I don't agree with that idea unless in the context of saying that any Tom, Dick, Harry, Sally, Sue or yogi can just use methods, but if so then the problem would be that diabolical corruption could also use such methods and thus corrupt what then would not be true Buddha nature.
Well the point of dzogchen is that it is the method of no-method. You already are the essential nature of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Many people have disagreed with the idea historically but fortunately awakening doesn’t depend on anyone’s agreement.
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2 hours ago, Apech said:
by all accounts Jesus did get himself nailed down.… or nailed up, in his case.
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2 hours ago, old3bob said:lets see, we can't nail down the Great Tao, we can't nail down Buddha nature, we can't nail down the Self, we can't nail down mysticism, the we can't nail down the absolute, and btw the way neither we can nail down Jesus. (and I'm not saying they are all the same which would be a new age nail and hammer)
Actually, it is possible to nail down Buddha Nature. There is a teaching on precisely this point in Bön called The Twenty One Nails. Each “nail” is a teaching on one aspect of Buddha Nature intended to support realization. When we “get it” we gain a degree of irreversible certainty in our view and practice that is the basis for using the “nail” metaphor. On the dzogchen path, the most important step is to develop certainty in the view and practice, to nail it down. This is the meaning of direct introduction.
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17 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:I think of Jewish observance -- praying, studying Torah, keeping Shabbat, etc -- as practices meant to cultivate a person spiritually in a way that´s analogous to meditation in Buddhism. Whether or not they actually work to that effect in the average case is an open question. Certainly you are not the first Jewish person to find a spiritual home in an Asian tradition. They don´t call us "wandering Jews" for nothin´.
I agree one can cultivate spirit through prayer, ritual, and study, whether in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Daoism, etc... That said, for me at least, the meditative practices I've learned in Bön and Daoism were far more direct and effective than ritual, prayer, or study. I think this is a very personal thing. I once read a wonderful book about the subject called The Jew in the Lotus by Rodger Kamenetz. It explored the phenomenon of Jewish predominance among Western practitioners of Eastern religion, Buddhism in particular. One of the points it made was that between the desire of Jews in diaspora to fit in and avoid drawing attention to themselves and the widespread slaughter of masters of esoteric practice in the Holocaust, relatively little of the mystical aspects of Judaism have survived intact and what has is difficult to access. This was suggested as one reason why so many Jews gravitate to Asian spiritual traditions.
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On 5/17/2024 at 9:40 AM, Sanity Check said:Is it fair to say personality traits & emotional conditions like curiosity, envy, optimism, depression, compassion & hatred would naturally be boosted by qi cultivation?
I can't say whether or not "qi cultivation" boosts existing or latent traits and emotional conditions. In my own personal experience I would say it did not. As I advanced in my practices of taiji, bagua, xingyi, qigong, and Dao meditation, I found my life was heading in a direction of fewer extremes, less reactivity and stress. My ability to focus improved but with that came a sense of balance and seeing through the things that previously led to emotional reactivity and psychological distress. I can say that I often see here evidence that people engaging in practices they consider to be qi cultivation (whatever they actually may be), particularly those practicing without expert guidance, manifest what appear to be exaggerated traits and emotional conditions that frequently lead to conflict and negative interaction with other members. So I think the answer to your question is yes but with the caveat that I have no idea what many people who claim to cultivate qi are actually cultivating or whether their methods are sound. I suspect their methods and ideas are largely misguided or lacking in balance and experienced guidance so what they are cultivating often seems to be lust for power.
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In praise of ideas
in General Discussion
Posted
Speaking as one who has been awed and literally and figuratively shaken to the core by the non-conceptual, this place gives me a very rare opportunity to share with others who can relate. The irony is that one reason I know my self is alive and well is through the camaraderie and validation I enjoy here. 😜😂
You can’t explain what I am referring to with ideas either.
Yes, I do mix those up. For me the boundaries are often flexible or ambiguous. Ideas come and go with us. With individuals, with civilizations and cultures, with species. Your illustration is a good one. Ideas and illustrations are powerful, stories are powerful. They are much like deities and archetypes. And they are empty unless they give birth to manifestation. Even the manifestation is empty but that’s a dirty word so….
I’m leading a bit of an indulgent life, my dear. Lounging in the tub at the moment. Ideas can certainly heighten or spoil experience. are you thinking of me now? There is an appreciation for the skill, theory, and interpretation in art and nature, but there is the taste of a mango and then there are the chemical analysis and descriptions.
And I will join you.
But jejune without them… ?
I beg to differ.
Nothing is deeper and richer for me than silence.
Talk often goes over my head too.
I once signed up for a master class in guitar with a famous, now deceased composer/player, Roland Dyens. I prepared a complex and atonal piece but didn’t know his nemesis was the composer. When I finished playing he looked at me in disgust, paused for what seemed like an hour, during which time my inner critic was screaming - I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN, WHY DID I DO THIS, THIS IS MY FUCKING NIGHTMARE COME TO LIFE. And he said, “Too many notes! did you prepare anything else?”
When I play and listen to music there is the experience and then there are the ideas and concepts and theories. This is especially pronounced when trying to compose. There is the shiver in my belly, and there are labels and analysis of that. Both are marvelous! For me, that relationship is the territory of practice.