Vajrahridaya

That's wonderful. I was born in SF and lived there off and on throughout my life. I was also in SF at the age of 25 in 1999!. LOL! Yes, the winds are moved by the mind and the state of mind, the subtle winds are moved by one's subtle belief system, or graspings and attachments. I used to only sit in lotus I think for a 30 minute stretch at a time, so I use half lotus most of my life of meditation. I can sit in that position for hours without motion. There were times when yes, my legs would loose circulation and go pins and needles asleep because of a lack of openess in my muscles, but yoga helped that immensely. Yes, I've already opened that but haven't read it yet. Yes, one pointed focus does that. I love when I can feel my brain as percolating particles of light and bliss. My entire body feels like a walking rapturous spacious aquarium that's also porous. Not all the time... I'm no ordinary Buddha yet.

I actually said both and even gave exact examples of both. Go research history. Your like a wall... honestly. I keep trying here and there though. Oh well. The Buddha is from 650 B.C. or thereabouts. He used the Vedas as a starting point to dismantle from. Where you get your projections... I have no idea? In this regard you are actually quite talented and funny. You should get some deep meditative experience though to back everything up with. I did misunderstand the wording of your description before.

LOL! Semantics... but what you say. Your free to translate tenets as you wish. Yes, but the form in which things arise is spontaneous due to the endlessness of infinite connections of any single arising. Like for instance, each effect has infinite causes and each of these infinite causes is an effect of infinite causes. So, when looking at the moment as it appears, it seems like instant chaos and spontaneous, but if one looks deeper a pattern emerges of infinite complexity. A Buddha is all knowing, a Buddhist is a wanna-be Buddha. How are Buddhists suffering? I know plenty of Buddhists who suffer very little day to day psychological suffering and some very few who suffer none at all and are constantly creatively inspired by the constant experiencing of life and beyond. Some people don't have the capacity to understand the logic. Some people will learn nothing from me and learn different things or the same things from other people, and others will learn something from my writings. That's the way of the infinite variates of life. Ok...

Not connected as one substance, just as an endless process of inter-relating-process of causation and each individual part and person has no self on it's own and neither does the entire universe as there are also infinite universes, as even science is seeming to find. Each individual aspect in each individual universe is reflective of all other aspects. As in, you can look at a chair and following it's break down, would lead to a tree in a particular forest and a particular person who builds chairs at a particular company. Following that tree would lead to various other elements, foods, add infinitum in infinite regress. 1) The universe is not created or arising at some point. It goes in cycles from formless potentiality left from the previous universe into expression as a form filled time bound expanding mass back into a formless collection of potentiality. Due to causes and conditions it cycles from big bang to big crunch to big bang, over and over again not due to a primal cause. 2) I'll let a Taoist answer that. No, it cannot, only one's mis-interpretation of the process is severed. That's why in Buddhism we say, Samsara is Nirvana rightly understood and experienced.

Also the metabolism slows down drastically. But peoples eating habits don't. I've seen my Rinpoche eat and he eats very little.

Yes, but some people stay skinny even in their 50's. I think it had something specifically to do with his run in with cancer and his prolonged lessening of physical activity.

Thank you Mark. Very interesting article about the crown effecting the fluid in the spine and everywhere else in the body, and about the breath giving away certain defects in co-ordination of body and mind. I've never read it put like that before. I Loooove to dance!! I also came to spirituality at first out of a disgust of the life spoon fed me through popular culture. I renounced looking at women below the eyes and renounced all sorts of things actually for a number of years to fully engage in daily disciplined practice where my entire day from very early in the morning 3 to 4 am to 9 or 10 p.m. was filled with cultivation only, even during eating food. I almost completely disengaged from social activities except for some very little talking with other practitioners. I even repeated mantras while busing tables in various restaurants if I wasn't living in a spiritual retreat center. But, yes... Buddhahood should be ordinary. p.s. Even though I have experienced the ending of thought and come into the various formless jhana states beyond the cognition of time and any form. I do feel that Gotama is talking about something deeper when what he say's is translated into English as the cessation of the activity of consciousness and feeling. From your article... I feel that Gotama is talking about dependent origination and the emptiness of inherent existence of consciousness and it's content. So that in Vipassana, one is aware of the non-inherent existence of experiencing and the experiencer, so is thus free and open "like" space while experiencing and one is relaxed because there is no clinging. Then all the things that your article is talking about concerning the cranial sacral fluid happens naturally. For instance, if I'm experiencing some sort of tension... because of years of applied effort towards mingling my breath with mantra. All I have to do is engage my mind with my mantra and my breath and nervous system loose their tension immediately.

I agree. I'm a block of stone compared to the Dalai Lamas capacity and wisdom.

Only when mirroring you. Other than that... you really have no idea.

I wonder if you have any meditative experience, or any intuitive understanding? Do you? Have you given yourself to intense meditative practice? Your mind seems to work on the surface of things. Why? How? I don't care to, to you... for the above stated reasons. I don't really like you as a person much. I have compassion for you in the general sense, but I don't think your a very good person. I think your no-limit poker playing ego can take that... if someone doesn't find your way of expression attractive? Wonderful! I really love the holographic universe explanation in quantum mechanics. It's very akin to Buddhist realization.

I've explained before that everything is inter-relating without primary essence, including the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So I ask you, what have you been reading of my posts? If you wish for Buddhahood, than that originates dependent upon what philosophical tenets and practice methods you take refuge in, so it is relative to this form of relativity. Please go pay attention to your own life and work on your capacity. If Sereneblue really revealed exactly what I was saying, because she didn't, she wouldn't have made other assumptions about dependent origination. She made a clear attempt to understand the real meaning of my words. Alcohol, just like food works on the body chemicals and makes for a different experience of the body. So it's part of the play and the fun. Why should I be restricted by your faulty vision of things? They are not mythological tales. Also, I don't drink copious amounts. You people jump to conclusions faster than Olympic hurdle runners. What ever happened to self-criticizing? Actually no, we don't meditate on no mind as a refuge. To us, that is just another state of mind, like thinking. It arises dependent upon focus. No mind is not a place to take refuge in, according to the Pali Sutta teachings, that just leads to falling into a formless realm at the end of life, or the end of the cosmic eon.

Dependent Origination explains it thoroughly through the different forms of Abhidhamma, to Abhidharma to Abhidharmakosha. One can pick up the Treasury of Knowledge... Starting with Myriad Worlds, or Book One. Even though if you get Abhidharmakosha it will be a more thorough explanation. This is considered THE MOST important of Buddhist explanations of how the Universe works... Abhidharmakoshabhasyam

Yes you have tenets. What are you talking about? You post Taoist philosophical tenets all the time. No, Buddha's do know. There is no mystery about the nature of the dance, just fun in how it spontaneously occurs. A Buddha has omniscience into how things happen. Well, that's where you don't see the meaning of interdependent origination. It posits absolutely no first cause at all. That is what infinite regress means, that there is no primal cause. Just the flow cycling since beginningless time. It's an entirely different way of thinking from all other spiritual traditions that posit a first cause. Buddhism is the only path that does not, which makes it unique. Because that wouldn't be Buddhism. Buddhism explains thoroughly how the universe cycles. I have explained it a few times in previous posts, but most people just go ??? and I try to explain in different ways, and some people get it, but most of them are Buddhist to begin with. Because they have already made the paradigm shift into beginningless regress and have transcended this attachment to a primal cause or universal essence that is "mysterious" and "beyond the human capacity to understand."

Oh, I was also saying at times that Buddhist realization is superior. Most of the backlash that I am getting is due to when I first got here. I was specifically invited by a member here to argue for Buddhist superiority and how it is fundamentally different and have since found many things interesting here and for a week talked here and there without argument, and you keep bringing up the argument and I keep showing where you are mistaken and you keep disagreeing with me. The argument really started again when I posted "Why Buddhism is different." You took, "Transcends Monism" as a personal attack. I'm basically saying that it transcends monist interpretations of the Tao. Later I clarified that it transcends specifically Lau Tzu's interpretation of "The Tao" in his assertion of it as the single source of all things. For instance, Marbleheads new post on "Taoist Philosophy: The Tao is greater and smaller than all things" is Monist Eternalism, any which way you cut it. So is incompatible with Dependent Origination. I did not say that they as in Buddhism and Taoism are not superficially incompatible in a certain sense, but on the fundamental tenet of Tao as an ontological essence of all things, Buddhism is fundamentally at odds with that and always has been because that's Eternalism, an extreme view. So one would have to ignore this tenet in order to practice both and focus on one or the other way of viewing. One view is in alignment with the first of the 8 fold noble path which is, "Right View" (dependent origination). The other view posited by many Taoists that Tao is the oneness of all phenomena and is ever existent (Eternalism), is not compatible with the 8 fold noble path. For you to say "without question" diminishes my respect for you as a good questioner. Oh well, you don't live by my opinion anyway... so my opinion shouldn't matter to you. Take care. p.s. This has been edited for clarity a few times since posting it originally. Only to a few of you, especially you and a couple of others, naming ralis as one regular mis-reader as well. That doesn't make you right though. There are others here that can understand the things I've written with clarity. Good thing your subjective view isn't God... good for me at least. Beer is not forbidden in the version of Buddhism I practice, but getting drunk is. So, I try to stay away from that. It only takes one beer to start loosing some of ones personal information security options. Which is why many times alcohol is used as a truth serum. Your inability to understand me says more about you, in my opinion, than it does about me. Especially that mostly... all you ever post are sarcastic statements... ever. Or attack me or at times Michaelz personally. That seems to be the extent of your ability. Quite sad.

Yes of course, but that means restructuring my tenacious personality which takes time. Good, that's all I was trying to say. Is that Buddhism and Taoism do truly have different conclusions about the universe and what it means to be enlightened or liberated. Thank you for coming to an agreement of fundamental difference, that difference which makes Buddhism different from Taoism not only in clothing but at it's core and philosophically incompatible with each other unless a core element of either/or were to be somehow changed or ignored, which happens plenty. Take care. I accept the people, but I don't have to accept Lau Tzu's interpretation of, "The Way" as "The Great". Rather I see Tao as just applying to mutual co-origination and not as an ontological essence. This is how I interpret the term as just the way of mutual dependency without fundamental essence. Which means that I ignore many key texts of Taoism and accept some of it's mundane wisdom and physical application tools but not it's core philosophical tenets per say. Like I say, I love the I-Ching. But, I am a Buddhist.

Ugh, sometimes I wince at how much I've revealed of my personal meditative experiences. I sometimes come on after having a few beers. Maybe not a good idea and I get too candid. I appreciate your sincere longing to know the nature of existence Sereneblue. I know sometimes I can just be really blatant and to the point which may seem insensitive... sorry.

Genes I guess. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu only got plump after spending a long time in the hospital dealing with his cancer and also he did dark retreat on the elongating of life terma which he received from ancient Buddhas. It worked, because he defeated the cancer and overcame his fate that was said to occur by a divination expert when he was young. The divination expert said he would become very ill at this age by an affliction and he did and that he would die by this age, and he overcame the affliction and lived passed the allotted karmic time. So, through effort he overcame his karma. Chogyal Namkhai Norbu used to look fit as a fiddle until I think the 90's. He used to do lots of Yoga postures regularly... I don't know the full story, but I was told a reason some time ago?? I can't tell you about Sogyal Rinpoche.

It is considered the origin of the 10,000 things. So, I mean mysterious starter of all things as will here. Not as a person, but as a mysterious source of all things that cannot be explained. Yes, I do... do you? It is not all things and it is not a mysterious essence. The Buddha is merely our human potential and this is what we take refuge in, our highest potential as Buddhists is Buddhahood. The Dharma is the teachings of the Buddha and all Buddhas. The Sangha are just practitioners of Buddhadharma. You see odd things in my posts that don't even exist outside of your projection ralis. It's as if you really don't want to understand the things I've said and really try your hardest not to.

Read Myriad Worlds, or Abhidharma which is exhaustive. But, the book series that Myriad Worlds is from is complete. It's a huge series though. Link on Wiki about Abhidharma... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhidharma Link on Wiki about the author of the Treasury of Knowledge from which Myriad Worlds is just one book... this is highly exhaustive and covers the entire history of Buddhism and all it's different turnings of the wheel from Hinayana to Dzogchen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamgon_Kongtr...ry_of_Knowledge Check out the links above and maybe buy the book.

The teaching that there is a mother to all 10,000 things that is beyond concept that is before heaven and earth and is ineffable is not compatible with Buddhist insight into dependent origination. This is the kind of paradoxical statement akin to monist views. Regardless of if you call it that or not, this is the type of realization that arises from the subtle clinging to Eternalism. I used to say things like this all the time. Ambiguous and paradoxical statements like... Brahman is all and nothing, is both manifest and non-manifest, both all concepts and beyond concepts. Such things like this arise from not seeing the clarity of dependent origination.

You didn't say this?

Not to rain on your parade, but all your conclusions are wrong even though you felt like it was a high up view of things. It's not at all in alignment with Buddhist insight into dependent origination, just the high bliss realms that are latent in your system since beginningless time that assume a mystic essence of all things that is "one" with all things. This leads to the assumption that all paths lead to the same place because they come from the same place and are all one with the Tao, or God. We as Buddhists take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and not a mysterious, unexplainable essence of all things. The Buddha said, "If there was an essence to the universe to take refuge in, I would have taught this, but since there is not, I do not teach this." The idea of "We are all one" does not equate with crystal consciousness to a Buddhist. Also, about my debate with Vsaluki was about the fact that he couldn't except what dependent origination is stating, that there is no source to the universe and that dependent origination indeed does explain exactly how things come into being without a mysterious source or will. It seems to me that your still clinging to some divine will of all Sereneblue.

I am not Shen-tong. Emptiness is a weapon against erroneous views and the Buddha used dependent origination as a way to guide people away from incomplete paths as is recorded in the Pali Suttas.

What are you talking about Stig? These words have meanings so if these words that you quoted that I have examined mean something other than what they are saying as they are defined in the dictionary. Then what's the point of the words? These teachings are pointing to one beyond concept source of existence that is one with all things. It is not illuminating infinite regress of infinite finites and is not illuminating mutual co-arising as is revealed in Buddhism. Taoism according to the Tao De Ching is a monist path. I am not stating that it's superior. You are. Of course I think it's superior and that will subtley come out in my posts with words like transcend, because dependent origination transcends monist eternalism and mystical ambiguity to me, not to you though, but as your post quoting the Tao De Ching also insinuated that Taoism is superior. I'm stating how it's different and why Buddhism does not accept Taoist philosophical tenets.