Mark Foote

Thanks very much for the links, Drew. I saw a show last night on PBS where pyschologists were treating fear of heights with virtual reality experiences and some drug, I didn't catch which, but the drug improved the patients' ability to get over their fear dramatically compared to virtual reality and no drug. They were talking about trying it for PTSD at the close of the show, saying it showed promise. I wonder if it a psychedelic they were using, or ecstasy; sounds like it from the article you posted. What a wonderful day.

Dr. John Lee was a local author, retired family practice doctor; I heard him speak to a middle-school gymnasium full of women in Mendocino in 1995, about his experiences recommending skin creams with progesterone to women who suffered from osteoporosis but who were at risk for ovarian or mammarian cancer. He discovered that his patients had fewer health complaints in general, and he spoke of many patients who were on hormone replacement therapy at the time who developed precancerous conditions as a consequence of the estrogen in HRT, whose precancerous conditions went away after using progesterone. Two books, "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause", and "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Premenopause". I'm not sure, but I think the allopathic medical profession still regards progestins and progesterone as the same thing (the progestins are molecularly different from the human hormone, while progesterone is molecularly the same, even if it's synthesized); I believe as a consequence of this blindness on the part of allopathic medicine, the ointments with progesterone now carry a warning about being a cancer-causing substance. Dr. Lee was clear to differentiate between the progestins that the pharmaceutical companies have come up that can be patented but are molecularly unreal, and progesterone, which can't be patented (at least not yet). The test results he saw were not the same. I know several women who had various physical discomforts that disappeared when they started using Progest, which is one of the brands out there. Might be something she could try, but she'll have to decide if Dr. Lee was right about western medicine going with the pharmaceutical companies for the quick buck over real science on the hormone progesterone (last I heard there had yet to be a national study with the natural hormone- no funding).

now it is raining cats and dogs, half way around; here, dragonflies snort.

where do you guys come up with it, I am moved so often by these lines! Thanks, Rainbow Vein; thanks, all. death's rightful embrace who knows, who knows; courage, now take what's here, be done

meeting at one point those five crows, the walnut piece and the dance with death

Yes, quite lovely the sentiment there, I agree; reminds me of this horse, for no reason at all: horse kung-fu ok, just kidding about the kung-fu part...

an illustration of the anatomy: Isis and Nephthys, illustrating the role of weight on the sacro-spinous:

I have done the first part of Cheng Man-Ch'ing's tai-chi set, with a group that met Saturday mornings in a local park, but mostly I just sit at home in the mornings and a little in the evenings. I sometimes end up a little numb in long or repeated sittings, so my sitting is a work in progress. That's where I'm coming from. The teachers who inspired me to sit zazen taught that the teeth should be just touching. I don't usually find my teeth touching, but when my sense of place rests my weight in the stretch of the sacro-spinous and sacro-tuberal ligaments with the motion of the sacrum, then I do. That's as near as I can come to describing it, and of course I feel like such a sense of place should be mine all the time when I sit (because of the words of these teachers), which mostly results in my losing my touch. So for me, the results are not in.

sudden day from night open secrets, out in the light look again, they're gone

How 'bout this?- "Then a reasoning arose in the mind of a certain monk thus: 'it is said, sir, that material shape is not self, feeling is not self, perception is not self, the habitual tendencies are not self, consciousness is not self. Then what self do deeds affect that are done by not-self?' Then [Gautama]... addressed the monks, saying: 'this situation exists, monks, when [some man here]... may deem to go beyond the Teacher's instruction thus (repeats the question as above). You, monks, have been trained by me (to look for) conditions now here, now there, in these things and in those." (MN III 19, Pali Text Society volume 3 pgs 68-69) Ok, this is not exactly your point, but I have tended to regard all such questions about the interchange between not-self and self as beyond the Gautamid's analysis of suffering, along the lines of Godel's incompleteness theorem (which says that if your axioms don't allow any contradictions to be derived from them, then you cannot generate the entire known structure of mathematics from that set of axioms). Thus, the Gautamid's analysis allows the phenomena in the five groups to be described as not self, and he says "for one who knows thus, sees thus by means of perfect wisdom, there is no "doer" with regard to this consciousness-informed body". At the same time, his analysis is intended to describe the origination of a station of consciousness from ignorance, and the subsequent chain of events that leads to grasping in the five groups, and his analysis doesn't extend beyond the cessation of suffering. That's why he responds to the question above by disallowing it, and then saying "you monks have been taught to look for conditions now here, now there, in these things and in those". The conditions he refers to I assume are the conditions of each link of the chain of dependent causations, and the things are the links in the chain themselves. What does it mean, that he saw past lives and future rebirths, in the wee hours of the morning? What does it mean, that he sought escape from suffering through the pure life, and spoke of once-returners and non-returners? I can only assume that he was accutely aware that extending his analysis beyond the conditions and things associated with suffering could result in contradiction, and that the distinction that was made in the recording of his teachings between truths of suffering and the fundamentals of a pure life (sutta versus vinaya)reflects an accommodation between the consistent and incomplete analysis of suffering and the inconsistent but complete overview of known relationships in the human phenomena. choke me with a spoon, if I've said too much! ha ha!

Yuanwu (12th century China) and others around the same time stipulate that after the initial awakening, there's a wait of about 20-30 years before a positive and substantive contribution can be realized. If I want to realize the connection between consciousness and my sense of location in space, all I have to do is start to lose my balance; to have the occurrence of consciousness empower reciprocal and other activity in the body through the sense of location as consciousness takes place, requires rewiring synapses to accept the lack of a doer other than place with all that implies.

I'm sure MH has already responded to this further down the chain, but I gotta kick my two-cents in on first read. We are all elaborating here for our own benefit, invoking the attention of sentient beings everywhere in the hope and with the prayer that they will aid us to speak with one voice that which we especially, and through us all sentient beings, need to hear. Something like that? If I didn't get clarification of the signs that I find vital in practice through the words that come out in concert with the tribe here, how would I find the inspiration to return?

sleeves, don't fail me now nothing up my feet- a hat, out of a rabbit!

I think this cuts to the heart of the difficulty in the inner life, if I may call it that: the verification of the reality of the relationships that are experienced. It's a lot like physics, if I may, or mathematics; when we can describe the relationships we have intuited from our internal experience, then we are in a position to verify our description and to begin to discover "an apparent realness quality" with regard to internal experience. It's just a little trickier than the external world; sort of like navigating around the side of a mountain in the dark, in the dense fog. Speaking of which, apparently there are Polynesians who can navigate from one island to another island that's over the horizon in the dark without a compass or map. I heard this in a class at UC Berkeley on left brain-right brain phenomena about forty years ago, and the instructor added that they explained how they did it, but it was gibberish. Like most of the suttas and Taoist manuscripts, if you ask me; there are varying degrees of mastery, varying abilities to communicate mastery, and different explanations of the correct physical postures or movements. I do accept that it's up to me to work out my own salvation, and I'm grateful to those who really did verify relationships and stick with describing what they verified. You know.

pot the mind holes please don't mind the muggles, Harry sleeves, don't fail me now!

The plane of infinite consciousness, like the plane of infinite ether and the plane of "no-thing", to me are signs of the concentration connected with the ability to breathe, i.e., without a return to the sign (which has no "returner") the breath feels physically impeded. Shunryu Suzuki said that when a person reading a book is not disturbed by the sound of a bluejay, the sound can enter that person's heart, and lo and behold the sound of the bluejay reads the book. This is the experience of the location in consciousness as consciousness takes place "hitting" the fascial stretch already in existence to generate action, action necessary to breath, action that opens feeling. who is it that thus comes?- to say it is something doesn't hit it.

I'm still waiting here legs that rock and roll, back straight, here, and here, and here

Interesting. The door to unknowing, the true person going in and out of the holes in our face. It may be that there's a mobius strip in thought that turns to the experience of mind rather than the content. The source of experience, the source of action beyond doubt. Not the same as "do, or not do; no try"; action beyond doubt has no point of reference, it's not that there is no practice and verification, only that practice and verification are undefiled! Chocolate chip, use Gittard chips, rapadura sugar, and substitute 1/8 cup brandy for the vanilla.

five syllable luck seven-syllable crap-shoot five crows on a wire

ashes of desire burning little holes out of five syllable luck (couldn't resist! )

Most historians regard the Pali Cannon, and especially the first four volumes of the Nikayas, as the source closest to the actual words/teachings of Gautama who was later called the Buddha. Here's a passage from the Digha Nikaya volume two, the Maha-Parinibana sutta, which is the sermon material connected with the Gautamid's decease: "What more does the community of bhikkhus expect from me, Ananda? I have set forth the Dhamma without making any distinction of esoteric and exoteric doctrine; there is nothing, Ananda, with regard to the teachings that the Tathagata holds to the last with the closed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back. Whosoever may think that it is he who should lead the community of bhikkhus, or that the community depends upon him, it is such a one that would have to give last instructions respecting them. But, Ananda, the Tathagata has no such idea as that it is he who should lead the community of bhikkhus, or that the community depends upon him. So what instructions should he have to give respecting the community of bhikkhus? Now I am frail, Ananda, old, aged, far gone in years. This is my eightieth year, and my life is spent. Even as an old cart, Ananda, is held together with much difficulty, so the body of the Tathagata is kept going only with supports. It is, Ananda, only when the Tathagata, disregarding external objects, with the cessation of certain feelings, attains to and abides in the signless concentration of mind, [19] that his body is more comfortable." I took this from the "accesstoinsight" website, here: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html

the hunters have come in a dream; not unkind, they just attuned to death

Wow, never knew any of that! Thanks, Drew! "In 1951, Gödel demonstrated the existence of paradoxical solutions to Albert Einstein's field equations in general relativity. He gave this elaboration to Einstein as a present for his 70th birthday.[13] These "rotating universes" would allow time travel and caused Einstein to have doubts about his own theory. His solutions are known as the Gödel metric." zum beispiel... hey howdy.

Godel I think was the most profound philosopher of the twentieth century, and he was a mathematician, not a philosopher. If I understand his theorem correctly, any axiomatic system that can generate all of what is known to be true in mathematics will also generate contradictions, and any axiomatic system that doesn't generate contradictions must be incomplete as far as the sum of mathematical knowledge. Yet we can escape this double-bind of logic and reality, I'm convinced, as the activities cease. That would be the exercise of volition or habitual activity in speech, the exercise of volition that affects the movement of breath, and the exercise of volition in perception and sensation. What I'm trying to get at here is that when the breath depends on the free occurrence of consciousness, feeling, and impact, there is an attunement with things out of sight, out of hearing, untouched, and unrealized that transcends the limits of logic and yet includes logic, and this is our well-being. The double-bind I am thinking of is escaping thought through thought, is that similar to what you are stating?

and winter's coming agapanthas mostly spent California brown