Encephalon

I have no idea who you're criticizing, who you're mad at (the Chinese?), or what you're talking about... and that's the way I want to keep it.

I must confess that your English far surpasses my (nonexistent)Chinese,and that I never read "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." But I have this notion, perhaps ill-conceived, that capitalism may have very well evolved outside of a Calvinist culture, and that it could have even become less predatory and more subservient to the needs of people, rather than what we have today, where social relations are imbedded within economic relations. That's a romantic notion, I admit, but I can't imagine a global economic system that is worse than the one we have today.

Congratulations, and welcome! You're human. The Buddha said that if there was another impulse as strong as sexuality he would have failed to reach enlightenment, so we're in good company. If you're under 35 you're going to have to accept this condition. If you don't have a regular sex partner who does SOD (sex on demand) then sexual fantasies will continue to be part of your waking experience, especially when you're trying to meditate. Meditation is about cultivating present time awareness and we do this by non-judgmentally accepting discursive thoughts of our monkey-mind and bringing our attention back to our breath (or whatever meditation tool we may be employing). But acquiringthe skill of impulse control is a big part of mind-training and there really is no way around this work. You can't be a musician without practicing your scales! I have to confess that it's easy for me to say this, since at my age the impulse has calmed down considerably. You can always go on Paxil

Are you saying that there is a correlation between christianity and creativity, capitalism, and progress, while Buddhism would threaten these conditions?

I'm a little perplexed. Your writing and punctuation skills are impeccable, which leads me to believe that you are 1) relatively young but have carefully crafted your writing skills (and by association, your thinking skills) above and beyond what is typically in evidence among your age group here, or 2) Your writing skills are a natural result of being older, educated, and at that point where most of us begin to have our existential crises over our identities and what kind of life we wish to cultivate for ourselves. If you are young and amply talented with music, martial arts, writing, and career ambitions but haven't yet found a means of balancing all these talents, then it could be a simple, although potentially heart-wrenching, task of prioritizing one path until you have achieved a state of mastery in that path, and sidelining your other passions until you can re-introduce them into your life at a later time. It took me almost 50 years to realize that I could only do one major thing at a time. When I tried to go to grad school, write a screenplay, play guitar, work out,attend Buddhist workshops, and have a committed relationship, I quickly discovered that I was mastering the art of smoking reefer but little else. When I finally finished my thesis and got married and quit dicking around, I discovered that I could work 6 hours a day on my screenplays and work on my online business. I now know that bringing in some $$$ will create the freedom to re-start my musical life and move the hell out of LA. I think that most if not all creative people and certainly spiritually motivated people seek balance in their lives above all. If you are young and wrestling with these timeless themes already then you are wise indeed. If you're my age then I cannot presume to offer you anything useful, but if you are amongst the talented and depressed, you might just want to bite the bullet, take the Zoloft, and get on a serious nei kung regimen www.neikungla.com because nei kung will jack up your serotonin levels and build that bodymind foundation. So... how old are you, and what do you do for a living? (Please don't tell me you're a Hollywood script supervisor with a PhD or I'll kill myself

Professors of lower-division philosophy and comparative religion classes have been using The World's Religions by Huston Smith for about 5 decades now to answer those Big Questions. Prices start at $0.01 on Amazon.

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Thanks, man. You've made some good points in here as well. My only experience with San Antonio was Lackland AFB in the summer of '78. Boot camp in that heat almost killed me.

I once read "The 40s are the old age of youth. The 50s are the youth of old age." This line became more than just a cute cliche for me when I turned 50 last Fall. A couple things started to change. For one, my testosterone level came down to the low normal range. Since it took my my wife and I 8 months of diligent baby-making before we got a Yahtzee! she had me check my swim team. It was around 78.5 million tadpoles per shot, and the fact that she's 9 weeks pregnant means that testicular conditions are sound. I did take it upon myself to start a 10mg daily dose of DHEA, because I was definitely experiencing a depreciated sex drive. In less than two weeks I was once again waking up with an erection. But frankly, I've had plenty of sex in my life and if I were still single I would most likely choose to spend the next 40 years in either a Buddhist or Taoist hermitage. It's been a welcome relief to be released from the bondage of chronic sexual arousal, and I find myself resenting the fact that even my email pages are riddled with ads from American Apparel, even though my wife, who's 18 years my junior, still looks better than most of them! Perhaps the most astute observation about aging I have had the benefit of hearing came from Taomeow when she told me that life imbalances (between the five elements)start taking a bigger toll when we move into old age. Financial success has always been my own "final frontier;" give me a place in the woods, a guitar and a few books and I'll be happy. But now, as a newly married man with a kid on the way, there's an obvious incentive to focus on my bu$ine$$ end of things. I'm really lucky because my broader family has a nice cushion to ride out the end of consumer culture, but I really worry for a lot of my friends who have nothing to fall back on. I am deeply indebted to my Nei Kung practice. In spite of my recent shoulder joint replacement surgery, my Nei Kung has reduced my stress to the lowest level I can remember having, even lower than those years when I lived in the Colorado High Country and was running 30-40 miles a week. I haven't been sick in years and generally feel about 35 year old, but without that annoying desire to have sex with every woman I meet (except Mila Kunis). But if memory serves, I think it was Dan Reid who wrote that the initial reason the ancient Chinese pursued longevity practices was not to simply extend life for its own sake but to live long enough to get their spiritual house in order, because by the time people hit middle age, putting their conscience at ease becomes a priority. God knows I've got a few things to atone for before I check out.

Great stuff in here, esp. by Fizix. All I could add is that addiction is a disease of self-hatred. I always thought this was true, at least in my own case, but when I read this line in "One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps" by Kevin Griffin, I knew that this truth was applicable beyond my own experience. I'm definitely with fizix and yamu here; physical fitness, clean diet and nei kung were essential for me. I'm grateful to Dan Reid for explaining why nei kung cuts the stress and in turn dissolves destructive emotions. I still rely on the Buddhist 12-Step literature because of its explanatory power - I'm too ignorant of the finer points of taoist psychology - but I really needed the nei kung to get over my self-loathing. I'm still not up to speed on exactly why it works, but I 'd guess that it's related to a healthier endocrine system and fewer stress hormones coursing through the bloodstream.

www.ic.org is THE website for the worldwide list of intentional communities, at least those who choose to be listed. Creaing a Life Together by Diane Leafe Christian has becomne one of the bibles of the movement. Work as hard as you can to turn your natual gifts into skills that a community would want to have and your chances for a meaningful life in community go up dramatically. Virtually every established community will expect a financial commitment of some kind. Good luck.

I guess it all depends on what we want from life and how long we expect to be here. I am indebted to Deng Ming-Dao (365 Tao) for keeping me focused on what's important because I still have 3 major goals left and only about forty years left to accomplish them. RESOLVE Banish uncertainty. Affirm strength. Hold resolve. Expect death. Make your stand today. On this spot. On this day. Make your actions count; do not falter in your determination to fulfill your destiny. Don't follow the destiny outlined in some mystical book: Create your own. Your resolve to tread the path of life is your best asset. Without it, you die. Death is unavoidable, but let it not be from loss of will but because your time is over. As long as you can keep going, use your imagination to cope with the travails of life. Overcome your obstacles and realize what you envision. You will know unexpected happiness. You will know the sorrow of seeing what is dearest to you cut down before your eyes. Accept that. That is the nature of human existence, and you have no time to buffer this fact with fairy tales and illogical explanations. Each day, your life grows shorter by twenty-four hours. The time to make achievements becomes more precious. You must fulfill everything you want in life and then release your will upon the moment of death. Your life is a creation that dies when you die. Release it, give up your individuality, and in so doing, finally merge completely with Tao. Until that moment, create the poetry of your life with toughness and determination.

Well, all metaphors aside, small-scale, quasi-sustainable, kibbutz-like lifestyle models are infinitely wiser alternatives than covering the face of the earth in a vast suburban slum. After all, they may not be perfect, but we did depend on small social units for thousands of years.

10-4. I found this whole thing a little bewildering given that this guy teaches where i got my undergrad, up at Sonoma State U., which is jokingly referred to as Granola University. but it's also a campus known for the academic critical thinking movement and loosely connected with astronaut Alan Mitchell's life work for decades, some really cool stuff, so I honestly don't think they're gunning for thinking secular humanists but maybe purely materialistic hedonists who are fucking things up for the rest of us?

Songs, Kevin3776 was a convicted sex murderer. He claimed to have read the Spanakopita in its entirety but it was clear from his online demeanor that he had not. Also, he claimed to be of the Blue Realm, and you don't have to know how read if you know The Blues.

I too have a revulsion for generalizations like these. I've never been so completely flummoxed as I was when forced to listen to those who claim to know the mind of god. But I also reject atheism on the grounds of cognitive hygiene; the human mind is simply too primitive to facilitate that kind of knowing, so I'll stick with Stephen Batchelor and agnostic Buddhism for now. "When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion." - CP Snow

I confess to the same silly dream,i.e., winning the lottery, builing a state-of-the-art, off-grid, earth-sheltered permaculture compound and inviting my loved ones to join me. "Music, meditation, martial arts." And the fact is, it's a popular longing for many people. Over the years I've decided that the odds of this kind of luck are not good, but it has forced me to seriously prepare for moving to an already established community that is a mere $4,000 to buy into and uniquely situated for long term survival. Three years and counting. I have to accept that the growing season - April to November - will have longer days, but the winters will offer plenty of extended cultivation time. I've wanted little else for most of my life; now we're actually going for it.

I missed hippiedom by a decade, born in '60, but I did grow up in the SF Bay Area. Not to single out hippies, but successful co-ops frequently boiled down to people not pulling their own weight. I forgot where I read it - one of the historical works on the American communal movement - a joke that went something like "The Revolution will be postponed until we can find someone to do the dishes." I grew up with a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog on the living room coffee table andb haven't been the same since!

The modern bible for aspiring communitarians is "Creating a Life Together" by Diana Leafe Christian. I've met her at ecvovillage/sustainability events and she's a 'take no prisoners' kind of woman; the criteria for selecting members is emotional maturity and skill sets. The intentional communities that are making it today are populated with people of extraordinary competence and resilience, to a vastly greater concentration than is typically represented by the popultion at large. I really wish this weren't the case. I first lived in urban middle-class communes back in the 80s, where we all had outside jobs. These are the relatively easy experiments. Rural ventures with an eye toward sustainability and voluntary simplicity will still likely be 16-18 hour days when the #1 industry - food production - is averaged in. There are endless calculations depending on the available resource base; water, deer, arable land, climate. I'd love to live in the Chinese Highlands too, but I wouldn't be able to secure enough calories for my family. The irony is that these are the only lifestyle ventures that will support human life in the event of an increasingly likey disruption in resource flows. Learn all the 1850s-level technological skills you can and you will always have meaningful life and work... and you and your children will be amongst the 10% who make it through the 21st century. I do think the ancient Yellow River Valley Taoist villages will be the successful model for sustainable communities of the future, but I confess to a little romanticism. You have to admit, Taoism makes for a mighty potent rallying point! "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kunstler should be read by anyone who falls asleep at night thinking about this subject. See you in the northern upper lats.

"I, however, am consistently amazed by the capacity of standing to immediately affect the internal and external aspects of my being, to provide a solid sense of well-being, calm confidence, and a rootedness in-the-body." Just curious about the point above. What criteria, objective or subjective, do you evaluate that claim with? My experience was not so immediate, but it was amazing nevertheless. "As I come to the end of this post, a question reveals itself. For those of you who have stood, who have established that relationship, how longterm has it been for you? Is there a law of diminishing returns at work here, ie does standing pay off big time at the beginning, and not so much later on? At which time, would one be advised to move into a practice like taichi or the like?" I guess I'm repeating myself here, but I have to use an increment of a year for meaningful measure of progress. Chi flow continues to get stronger and more manipulable, but with shoulder surgery, I'll only be able to stand for 4-6 months or so and not have the benefits o the dynamic movements. So I guess I'll have some good data soon! I hear that tai chi is appropriate when your ZZ begins to be felt.

I frequently meditate on my wife's nipples, but that's another story. http://www.amazon.com/Second-Brain-Scientific-Groundbreaking-Understanding/dp/0060182520/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1298230813&sr=1-2 "The Second Brain" has an amazing amount of pertinence to us internal alchemists, although I'm of the opinion that a strong background in anatomy and physio helps with practice, while some have sound reasons for not holding that view (remember our poll?) The book was written for sufferers of digestive disorders, but it's not only for that audience.

I believe the original context of this sentiment concerns the quality of equanimity, the capacity to respond to the vicissitudes of life with reflectivity rather than reflexivity. "Don't Bite the Hook," as Pema Chodron writes. I also concur with Ya Mu; the capacity for "Listening" marks the difference between someone who demonstrates virtue as obedience to an imposed script and virtue as the natural and inevitable expression of consciousness beyond the bounds of egotism and duality.

Here's a pic that represents my youthful indiscretions - making major $$$ while helping to bring an end to the Bering Sea cod fishery. Massive bad karma flow. Next, throw in a set of these, but instead of working up, go ahead and manhandle that mofo 45 pounder because after all, out-impressing each other at the gym is the goal, right? Next, marry your college sweetheart, because she's smart, hot, & works at a hospital; major karma koupons. Next, replace that old shoulder with a new one! The procedure costs about $10,000 on average. My out-of-pocket expense? $100 co-pay at Kaiser Hospital; more evidence that I haven't used up my good karma entirely. Next, kick back with Netflix, Vicodin and a new shoulder! I've been taking a horsetail/schizandra mix for about 8 months or so and my surgeon confirmed that my bone density is very high. It's the silica in the horsetail, evidently. She had to hollow out the top end of the humerus and plug that new stem in, and I guess I qualify for those special TSA inspections now. I'm still running my energy according to Bruce Frantzis' roadmap in "Energy Gates" and the only difference is that the practice hurts when I run through the affected area,which is obviously a good thing. My major concern was what the vicodin would do to my chi flow, but going into my fourth year of nei kung, it's still palpable enough to withstand solvent-like quality of vicodin. GAWD, I love this drug! Thanks to Ya Mu, Stig, Taomeow, Trunk, Eternal Student, and TheSongs for helping me get this far!