Zhuo Ming-Dao

The type of spirits that they are talking about are mostly ghosts. Specifically, the dead person's po spirit, which is exclusively yin energy and therefore cold. It causes shivers if you walk through it or if it enters and attempts to possess you. Ghosts can be empowered by siphoning energy from the living and can also cause the living all manner of trouble thereby through this vampirism (this is not necessarily intentional on their part, they are just attracted to what they need). They can also cause nightmares and the like because they through off the yin yang balance needed for proper sleep (in addition to creeping out your subconscious mind, which can detect them around). Whatever spirit you encountered, Mokona, was not the ghost of a dead human. Maybe a nature spirit? And I too recommend Robert Bruce, but specifically because he has more hands on experience with ghosts and demons than anyone else I have read. Also, he has a number of great protection techniques for you to add to your practice, MorePiGuy. Pick up a copy of Practical Psychic Self Defense, or go to his website for a few of his countermeasures. http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/ps...ense/index.html

The Tibetan Bon masters who practice the rainbow body technique typically say that you will leave hair and fingernails behind if you have not fully mastered the ability upon death. If you have mastered it completely you will be able to convert all of your body into radiant light. Apparently the hair and fingernails are just harder to transform.

The powdered tea is the tea that I was talking about, which is called matcha. In order to brew it you need a bamboo whisk, which creates a distinctive green froth. When this tea came to Japan during the Tang Dynasty, it was the most popular style of tea in China. Japan retained matcha to present day through the tea ceremony, while China switched to roasted teas such as Oolong after the Manchu took over, because they could be stored for much longer periods of time without going bad.

My favorite is defiantly matcha. When I lived in Kyoto I spent a lot of time learning tea ceremony (compared to normal people, not the 20 year veterans), and I quickly grew to love the frothy flavor more than any other type of tea. And I love the idea of making my tea drinking into a powerful spiritual ritual. Now, if only it was easier to come by good quality matcha in the U.S... Boy, I miss living a train stop away from Uji.

For a movie that topped the charts in most of the countries that showed it, it really should not be so difficult to see legitimately. Thanks for the advice everyone!

Is there yet any word of this coming out in the U.S.? I have been wanting to see this film in the theaters since I first heard that it was in production (Zhuge Liang has always been one of my heroes). IMDB lists its release in the UK but does not even give an estimated date for the States and it does not look as if a distributor has even touched it...

I was just reading the sayings of Taoist master Danyang last night ("Taoist Meditation" translated by Thomas Cleary) and I thought I could add one of them: "The subtlety of preserving nonvolatile energy is in keeping vitality complete. It is most important to be guarded while sleeping. When you are going to sleep, keep accurate mindfulness present, so myriad thoughts disappear. Lie on your side, breathing softly through the nose, the soul not stirring within, the spirit not roaming outside. Do this, and your energy and vitality will naturally stabilize."

I find that a cold shower and a heavy (meat) meal works best for me. Be careful of books that tell you that you need to spin energy in a different direction or put it somewhere else in your body in order to calm things down or "close your chakras." This is bull. Any extra stimulation of your energy body with your awareness will only intensify the sensations.

Makota - It is very true that Robert Bruce gives some excellent techniques that will turn you into an energy healer in very shot order but just following the practices that he explains on the internet. But you should also take a moment and read his other book, Practical Psychic Self Defense. When you dabble with energy healing without some kind of teacher... well you are just asking to get burned. Robert's personal experiences should prove that. There are ways to minimize the danger, like not working with people with extreme depression issues or with those who are using heavy/psychedelic drugs. But even with those precautions, there can be a lot of danger, which a skilled teacher can help you to avoid or can come to your rescue when you are waste deep. When I first began reiki I worked on a friend of mine who had a serious eating disorder. During the treatment I felt a very horrible burning sensation go from him into me and up my arm. Moments later I heard a voice in my head which said some pretty terrible things. I ended the treatment, of course, but the damage had been done. For four nights I experienced a string of the most vivid night-terrors imaginable. On the fifth day I had the opportunity to go to a community of healers who were able to remove my "problem" and I had my teacher who was able to show me many ways to protect myself. After that I did not experience anything more. I don't know what I would have done if I was just dabbling in these things on my own when this happened. My post was not intended to scare off any potential healers, but just to say that there are many potential dangers and a well trained teacher can go a very long way to helping. I specify with well trained because I have met many gifted/natural born healers who did not really understand how their power worked and could not offer very sound or specific advice when questions arose. Of course, most of these dangers can be avoided if you develop the positive vibration of your energy body to a very high degree before you start working on other people. What I mean by this is that you do a lot of meditation for a number of years, learn yourself and the feel of your own energy very well, and become very emotionally balance, and you will be immune to things with a lower, more gross vibration.

Read the book "Opening the Dragon Gate: The Making of A Modern Taoist Wizard" translated by Thomas Cleary. This book is the biography of Wang Liping's life and it is a very fascinating read. Whether or not you believe all of the remarkable things that Master Wang said he did or said his three teachers were capable of doing is true... you decide, but you must still admit that he seems like he would be a very interesting person to talk to and to learn from. It is understandable that after reading this book many people would be interested in having the man as a teacher; he is like the aspiring Taoist alchemist's dream come true. Wang Liping has been called a Taoist Wizard (one who is capable of many supernormal feats), but not an immortal. If by master you mean someone who is a teacher and who has mastered many different techniques and tools for the path, then of course he is a master. If you mean that he has mastered "the Tao," then I think you have to reexamine what the Tao means to you and maybe reread the first line of the Tao Te Ching. Really I think that the English word master is a pretty terrible rendition of Sifu (honorable teacher) from Chinese or Sensei (teacher, literally "born earlier") and sometimes Roshi (venerable teacher) from the Japanese.

Other: I think that the wording of this poll might actually distract from what it is trying to ask. It asks about "goals" to the practice, and for some people true closeness to the Tao or finding enlightenment can only happen when the seeker/goal, subject/object dichotomy has been released. Also, you might want to add "peak experience" to the list. For many years when I was first beginning my practice the peak experiences, i.e. spiritual breakthroughs and sudden psychic phenomena, was what kept me practicing.

Taoist - "The Original Tao" (Nei-Yeh) translated by Harold Roth "The Book of Lieh Tzu" translated by A.C. Graham "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine" Buddhist - "The Sutra of Hui-Neng - Grand Master of Zen" translated by Thomas Cleary "The Lankavatara Sutra" translated by D.T. Suzuki "The Vimalakirti Sutra" translated by Robert Thurman "Zen Training" by Katsuki Sekida "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi, translated by Thomas Cleary Hindu "The Yoga Sutra" Patanjali Sankaracarya's commentary on the "Brhadaranyaka Upanisad" translated by Swami Madhavanda "Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man " by Gopi Krisna Christian - "Meister Eckhart - Wrom Whom God Hid Nothing" "The Cloud of Unknowing" Unknown Author Other - "Astral Dynamics" by Robert Bruce

Really? Controlled by masons huh? Ya know, I just don't understand why I don't get let in on any of these super secrets. Apparently being the Worshipful Master of a Lodge of Freemasons is not good enough to get into the world domination stuff these days. *Sigh* The Freemasons don't have any secrets that cannot be found in two minutes and a Google search. It is a fraternal society that uses symbolism and ritual to help people discover inner truth... which should sound a whole lot like what we are doing here to those who are paying attention. Oh, and in the years I have been doing Freemasonry, I don't think I have ever met a brother who was independently wealthy, let alone "elite."

Oh and EFT and TFT are tapping techniques that are designed to break up energy blockages. This is just like shiatsu, only it uses sudden repeated pressure rather than extended deep pressure. Also with these emotional freedom techniques, you can tell that they are working when the person has a sudden, unexpected emotional outburst. Basically the blocked up or suppressed emotion is pushed free. Edit: Paul beat me to the punch.

To give you a little more straight forward information, most energy healing modalities are just different ways to project your chi out of your hands and to a client. In medical qi gong this is done just through practice alone and mentally directed qi flow. Pranic Healing and Quantum Touch are basically the same as qi gong, just with slightly different techniques to trigger the healing response. Also, Quantum Touch focuses a lot of tracking the energy around the patient. In order to do reiki you must be given a series of attunements, where a master practitioner does a ritual and adjusts your energy closer to the reiki "frequency" that they are emitting. This is basically the same way that shaktipat works in the Hindu tradition. After a number of attunements and practice, the student is able to produce as much healing energy as their teacher. In any of the many forms of reiki (Usui Reiki is basically the original) it is important that you have a teacher who has had a lot of practice and is very good at channeling the energy, as it will greatly speed up your development. Though I do forewarn: I was very energetically sensitive, and when I received my first reiki attunement, my entire energy body was thrown open and I was bombarded with psychic impressions for months. This experience was traumatizing to my ego (which was a good thing in the long run), but way too much spiritual growth for me all at once. But I don't mean to scare you away from reiki, it is a great system and that does not normally (what is normal?) happen to most people PS: If you do qi gong with reiki, it will make the energy flow much more smoothly and powerfully, I have found.

If you want some heavy (and mind blowing) zen philosophy, you will want to pick a translation of some of the essays of Zen Master Dogen. The Moon in a Dew Drop is a very good text as well as the more academic Shobogenzo, which is translated by Maso Abe. Dogen is a genius at describing the indescribable, though his writings take a long time to fully absorb. For philosophy/dharma that is a little more contemporary and approachable, I would defiantly go with Thich Nhat Hanh. He is a living Vietnamese Zen Master, and he has some amazing insights to impart to anyone who is willing to listen. I recommend starting with The Heart of Understanding, which is his commentary on the Heart Sutra. Really though, I have never read a bad book by him, so anything you pick up will be useful. Here is a quote of his on emptiness and interdependent arising that really gets to me: "If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper....So we can say that the cloud and the paper 'inter-are.' We cannot just be by ourselves alone; we have to inter-be with every other thing." If you are more interested in the practice end of things, you will want a copy of Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida. He has some the most detailed examinations of zen meditation, koan practice, and kensho/spontaneous awaking that I have ever found.

You might want to look into Lieh Tsu, who lived at around the same period as Chuang Tzu. His writing style is very similar, if you like Chuang Tsu, but he tends to focus more on some of his lucid dreams and astral projections as metaphors for his Taoist philosophy. It is one of my all time favorite books. While he does not list any methods, he does give some very interesting stories. I also recomend reading the Songs of Chu (also translated as "The Songs of the South" or "The Lyrics of Chu"). These songs predate Chuang Tzu, but many scholars believe that the old hermit came out of this tradition since he was also originally from Chu. Granted, their songs seem to be more about astral projection than lucid or clear light dreams, but it is still in the same vain. Here is an example of one of the songs: We gazed down of the Middle Land [China] with its myriad people As we rested on the whirlwind, drifting about at random. In this way we came at last to the moor of Shao-yuan: There, with the other blessed ones, were Red Pine and Wang Qiao [famous immortals]. The two Masters held zithers tuned imperfect concord: I sang the Qing Shang air to their playing. In tranquil calm and quiet enjoyment, Gently I floated, inhaling all the essences. But then I thought that this immortal life of the blessed, Was not worth the sacrifice of my home-returning. (tr. Hawkes 1985:240)

I think your problem lies in one of the oldest philosophical divides in the world: between the Confucians and the Taoists.... And you, my friend, are a Taoist at heart. In the Confucian world view, you are only a true and benevolent man if you follow the societal norms, including your hygiene and fashion for your particular age, rank, and profession. The outward appearance of conformity helps to mold the inward conformity of mind (rectified virtue). When everyone knows and follows their roles, from the king to the peasant and the father to the son, the world will achieve perfect harmony...

I would beg to differ on this point. The Buddhist and Jain idea of vegetarianism (which appeared before the masses picked it up in Hinduism) was originally a radically new idea. When the Buddha preached about vegetarianism, this was not a wide spread idea. People were as likely to disavow all food as they were to turn away from meat in particular. And yet the idea of karuna (compassion) still appeared. Someone, in a society like the one you mentioned, was still able to say that the act of taking away the life of another being was intrinsically wrong. And logically it is not a big step to say that since we value the life of humans, we should then also extend that value, that sympathy, to other mammals, etc. The Jains went so far as to bar men from harming even an insect, least it generate bad karma for you. This could be taken to its utmost extreme, as it is at the highest level of Jainist practice, where the person stops eating anything whatsoever (except chi ). I am not advocating this perspective. Nor do I personally practice vegetarianism. I am just startled that some people would take such a one sided perspective on an issue which clearly has more at stake than simple economics or feasibility (and you must admit that your "example" is unrealistic even in an ancient society, since vegetarianism has been around throughout the world for many thousands of years longer than the packaging and shipping methods that you cited, and it still worked just fine). At stake here is spiritual compassion; the ability to see the divine in another being and choose that you would rather not snuff it and thousands of others like it out just to satisfy your pallet. You could also, as I think you were trying to do, argue that it is unnatural to not eat meat, and denying yourself this is to go against your biological nature and to remove yourself from the natural order. This is a fine argument for someone living in a hunter-gatherer tribe who is a vital component of the food chain. This is not such a tenable argument for one who lives in a society where animals are grown and harvested as a commodity to be slaughtered rather than as an independent, living being worthy of some form of respect.

You cut out #12, Fight Club, but I would argue that it needs to stay in. Granted the Buddhism is much easier to see in the book, but it is still in the movie. The initiation into the fight club was written specifically to mirror initiation as a monk into renounced life at a Japanese Zen monastery. Also, the ways in which the characters deal with illusion, desire, attachment, and identification with the self in order to become liberated and free from ego... makes this defiantly a Buddhist inspired film. When you look at it this way, the final scene, where the (now whole) main character silently watches as the samsaric world collapses, carries a completely different meaning. Granted, I would never want to follow that particular path to enlightenment... And #61, Spirited Away, is Shinto. So it is not Buddhist or Taoist, I admit, but I would not dismiss completely. It is still a very moving, eastern, spiritual film.

One of the most common longevity practices throughout the history of Taoism has been to abstain from the five grains. This particular method was said to starve the three worms, a set of parasitic organisms that live in everyone and effect your life span. The religious belief was that the worms reported back to the underworld on how you lived your life and so years were added or deducted from your life register (the official form that said when you would die) by Yama due to what they reported. Killing the worms was like scratching your name out of the Grim Reaper's books. You could still die, but now Death would not come looking for you at a predestined time. This practice was recently found to have real word validity, because we now know that such a diet would, in fact, starve any intestinal worms that a person might be carrying around. In modern America, around 1 out of 4 people are said to have some form of intestinal worm. In ancient China, I am sure that this number would have been MUCH higher. By killing the worms, you would be able to digest more of your own food and would not be loosing blood to them, and subsequently you would live much longer. Also your colon would be able to operate much more freely. The Taoists examined their bodies carefully and developed many methods to extend their lives, even if the theory was not always spot on. If you wanted to go beyond the bounds of the natural (more than ~130 years) you would have to master the ability to live purely off of chi, since any food that you ate would eventually wear down your body. They would work up to this by switching to a diet of only water, pine cones and tree bark, until eventually they ate nothing at all (other than chi). Their was a very common practice for many hundreds of years in which those people who ate off of tree bits, but were not able to cut off food altogether, would spontaneously auto-mummify upon death. There is a lot of archeological evidence for this phenomena in China and Japan from the 1100-1600s. Scientists still do not understand how they were able to do this upon death, since the remains appear to have automatically vacuumed out all of their fluids at the moment of death (as if all the jing suddenly vanished). Of course we only have anecdotal evidence of people who learned how to live off of chi and thereby gain physical immortality.

My uncle used to speak in tongues when he was young. The Catholic church brought in a priest who specialized in the phenomenon and the priest translated what he said. On that occasion he was speaking perfectly in classical Latin and then in ancient Hebrew. He had no idea what he was saying and said that it felt like a positive force (the holy ghost) was speaking through him. The church declared it a genuine case and many people came to see my uncle for several years. The gift disappeared by about the time he turned 17.

I tried watching this movie in the hopes that it would be as good as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring... but I just couldn't get past the first 30 minutes. If it gets better as it goes along let me know and I will give it another try. I would like to give an extra vote toward Avatar: The Last Airbender. For a cartoon, this was surprisingly good. Also in the animation category, you should see the movie Princess Mononoke. This film depicts Shinto beliefs perfectly while expressing some very powerful and beautiful Buddhist and Shinto philosophy. For Taosim, you must see the Zu Warriors movies. The first movie was from 1983, the second from 2001. Both are very good, but the older film can be a little cheesy because of the 80's graphics, while the newer movie is visually stunning. The movies take place in the Kunlun Mountains and follow the high flying adventures of a number of powerful Taoist immortals. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286098/

I highly recommend the book Practical Psychic Self-Defense by Robert Bruce. It has a slew of excellent physical and spiritual techniques for repelling and combating all of these types of negative entities. All of these techniques were developed by Robert Bruce after many years helping people with possession, hauntings, poltergeist activity, and worse from a variety of beings. He has a number of the countermeasures as articles on his website: http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/ps...ense/index.html