forestofclarity

Actually, the world already ended in 1999.

Granted. You win due to your magical singing voice. You become a minor celebrity, people paste youTube videos of you, saying "Can you believe this?" You get a minor record deal. You never make it big, and are doomed to appear in Old Navy commercials, Dancing with the Stars, and various reality shows where you compete with other "stars." You agree to constantly do these things, because, well, "You're going to make it big." I wish I could clap my hands and everything would be well.

I think GIH has come to the very heart of the spiritual debate. Is awareness generated from the body, as the physicalist may say, or in some way independent of it? If I were a physicalist, I would say no. I would say that alive means oxygen/nutrients are flowing into the brain and the brain is creating a sense of being. Once that supply is cut off, the awareness shuts off like a light switch. Now, I might not be able to draw a boundary between a lighted room and a dark room, but it is clear when the light is on and when the light is off. The same goes for Zeno's paradox where you cannot travel across the room because first you would have to travel 1/2, but before that, 1/2 of that, etc. Just because you can draw an infinite number of points doesn't mean you can't walk across the room. How would you respond to such an argument, GIH?

Zhuo, Good story. Sounds like you really have gotten a lot out of NEW and Reiki.

Zhuo, Just out of curiousity: what method did you find the most effective (if any?)?

Granted. I lock all of you away in a padded asylum because I care so much for you all I don't want any of you to get hurt. You spend the rest of your lives safe, but board, comforted only by a video screen on me making kissy sounds at all of you. I wish I had the power to change the atomic structure of things with my mind.

Granted. The thread restarts and proves so addicting that you spend all your times coming up with clever ways to corrupt people's wishes. It comes as no surprise when you are unable to eat, sleep, or otherwise maintain your home. I wish every weekend was a three day weekend.

Religion in my mind usually had two key components: ritualized practice and accepting certain things on faith. By faith, I mean on a basis on other than direct experience. By this definition, both Buddhism and Taoism may have a religious component. But I would expect that most so-called mystic practitioners shy away from the faith side of things. Even pure Theravada Buddhism would have some religious tones: there are rituals, chantings suttas, etc. and also a faith in the Buddhist path. Without some degree of faith, then one is unlikely to even begin practice. I'm not sure what spiritual means, either. I suppose I would consider myself a spiritual person, but all of my cultivation is more of a psychological or even a physical characteristic. I don't see spirits, hear the voice of god, etc. although I have had altered states of consciousness. Maybe a better term for some of us would be psycho-philosophers.

Well, I hope you don't use anything related the Edison's light bulb, Henry Ford's mass production, anything related to the wheel, fire, or agriculture, and all the technology based on the findings of dead men and women. No need to reinvent the wheel.

If I remember back to my course on existential philosophy, Nietzsche's line wasn't fuzzy at all--- he came down hard against religion as applied to the Overman. According to the Overman theory, the Overman would be physically, emotionally, and mentally supreme. Religion would weaken him/her with its arbitrary limitations. I think there is a kernal of truth to that. Religion, like everything else, grows from one thing (a realization) to another (a rigid, set structure.)

From Greg Goode: [/url]

One more time, just in case.

What makes Buddhism different? It doesn't get bogged down in the sort of metaphysical nonsense this thread contains. See the unanswerable questions. What really makes Buddhism different is the emphasis on the four seals: 1. Impermanence. 2. Unsatisfactoriness. 3. Non-self. 4. Nirvana. I see a lot on this forum where people declare themselves to the spokespeople of Buddhism, and others assume that they are. It is not so. Back to the nonsense...

I think GIH raised some good points here. However, the slight on Zen and silence is a more of a good example of a degraded teaching rather than a valid critique. Silencing the mind is like wiping a window: it may not change the nature of anything, but it makes it easier to see. If you go back in the Buddha's teaching, you see him say "All right, do these things to get the mind calmed down, THEN look at these things." Over time, the "THEN look at these things" gets dropped and silence is valued as an end in itself. Also, the comment on experiential range. I wonder about that. Most of the "sages" talk about getting out of the prison, getting off the wheel. Improving your range--- how would this be any less ephemeral than anything else? Adding a wide variety of furniture to a cell doesn't change the nature of the cell. Which brings me to a main point: What is the point of our practice? Is it to attain something: superpowers, bliss, a range of experience, or something else? What does it really mean to get out of the prison?

I always like to hear from those who pin their lives on the teaching. Not many do.

Here is one view: Craving is a movement toward what we like or away from what we don't like. Why is this a problem? Because pleasure doesn't last and pain is inevitable. Now by pleasure and pain, I mean the whole spectrum: from a slight itch to full blown torture; or from a pleasant sigh to extreme bliss. So when something we like arises, we move toward it and try to hold onto it. But nothing lasts, and eventually it goes away. We want the pleasure again. Or when something we don't like arises, we move away from it and try to get away from it. But this is not always possible, and eventually we have to deal with pain. We may even fear pain when it is not around. We end up passing our lives bouncing around like a pinball, going from pleasure to pleasure, away from pain. How to overcome it? Investigation. Removing our ignorance. Once we realize what is going on, all this loses its power. But not just intellectually. Deep into the fibers of what we are. So the problem isn't overcoming desire, but truly understanding it. This is just one way of many.

From time to time, I enjoy learning about meditation methods of other cultures. Recently, I've been reading through "Jewish Meditation" by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan. He writes: "The thought process itself is also controlled to a large degree by the unconscious, but it can be controlled by the conscious mind. This is most obvious in the case of the reverie*. When one is relaxing and not paying particular attention to it, the reverie flows from one thought to another without conscious effort. Indeed, there are a number of psychological techniques that try to imitate this "free association." However, no matter how free the association may be when one is expressing it to a second party, it is never as free as in the case of pure reverie. The reverie thus can also be seen as a point of interface between the conscious and unconsious. By learning to control the reverie, one can also learn how to control the unconscious." I was wondering if anyone here has had experience with learning to control the reverie, and what, if any results were obtained. It sounds like an interesting possibility. *--- images, words, thoughts, etc. that flow uncontrolled in the mind

Karma is also very real. Step out in front of a car, you'll get hit. I've been researching madhyamaka philosophy lately, and find the two truth model to be helpful. Ultimately, there may be no golden chain that links cause with effect, yet conventionally, the universe behaves as though there is.

That itself is a good insight.

And why were you reluctant to share? Even if no one agrees openly, you never know where your arrows are going to strike. I think this bears repeating, both for myself and for others.

Different things work for different people. Some need to do, some need to not do.

Mikaelz, I don't agree. Vajra talks about states all through his posts. Experiencing this, experiencing that--- but in the end, as you point out, it's not what you experience. It is how it you experience it. What I see in Vajra's posts are a tendency to objectify--- to take transient verbs and turn them into nouns. If I'm wrong and he's seen through his own nature, it doesn't matter. There is an Advaita saying: use a thorn to remove a thorn, and throw both thorns away. Advaita, like Buddhism, starts with dualities. But if you look further in, the dualities in both systems dissolve. Nevertheless, it sounds like you are well on the right track. For Xabir: Xabir wrote: I would recheck your Greg Goode article on emptiness. It sounds like you're positing inherent existence, i.e. DO and emptiness as the way things are. (emphasis added) So you see, even your teacher recognizes that DO gets dissolved in the end.

Lucky, You may find the following reading helpful: Emptiness Teachings of Greg Goode A Verb for Nirvana Also, in my experience, existential crises are often a sign of progress. Keep up the good work!

Indeed. This is why it is good to find out what one is practicing first.