Mark Foote

I did a three-day sit in the Santa Cruz mountains with Vanja Palmers, and the topic came up. Vanja mentioned that a practitioner he knew was discouraged, having sat thirty years with no significant spiritual experience to show for it; Vanja asked his audience if they didn't think that under carefully controlled circumstances, maybe entheogenic experience would be a good thing, for this person? I think the native American approach is probably a good one, and there's usually a leader, and people prepare; I don't know from experience that it's a good approach, but it seems like it worked for them for a long time and still works today. I am concerned with the source of my action, but it's not a question of ten virtues, it's a question of how action takes place without conscious volition. Can I witness it, out of the necessity of these bones in this breath and the place I'm in right now? Am I free to act? Close to home, no home anywhere, and yet.

There you go! I would add that I believe in cosmic serendipity, and argue that my body and mind are never actually under my full control. I would agree that without personal experience of something transcendent, life seems pretty meaningless, and yet the transcendent doesn't necessarily provide meaning; it's the return to transcendence in daily life that necessitates making sense of the induction of the experience. I read "Battle for the Mind" by Sargent when I was in elementary school, what an eye-opener for a 6th grader! It's about the common thread that runs through brain-washing and religious conversion. Turns out you can change a person's entire belief structure if you put them under enough stress, and the way the belief structure changes is the thing most folks guess wrong about: it's not a gradual thing, it's sudden, the person who is subjected to the stress and the suggestion just wakes up believing everything they've been told. I bring this up because it's important to recognize that the brilliance of religious conversion, or perhaps even kensho may be due more to a hidden facet of human psychology than transcendence. Psychedelics have tremendous impact, but it generally wears off, and where it doesn't or where that isn't accepted as the natural course of things I would be suspicious. To bring transcendence into daily life requires that we become familiar with trance, and trance states, apart from religious or political conversion and apart from psychedelics I think. At the same time, as the Gautamid said so long ago, "for whatever you think it is (with regard to the trance-states), it is other". That in a lecture about not priding oneself on the attainment of trance-states, from one who taught the induction of trance as the constant companion of well-being.

again freshness flows so many stars, all around so far yet so close

No answers, but more questions!- Seems like the better psychotropics were in the New World (so-called)- peyote and psilocybin mushrooms, and the leafy one with the twenty-minute high whose name I forget. Of course, there was also datura. In the Old World, it was, what- belladonna, amanita? The teaching of the Gautamid probably could not have come about without the emergence in India of an alienated middle class- the theory of Rhys-Davids, founder of the Pali Text Society, that. Not the same people who were the shamans and the gifted seers of the indigenous peoples, the healers who used psychotropic plants and shared them as appropriate. Just a thought.

Hey, Xabir2005, thanks for the note. Of the Shurangama Sutra, I have only read bits and pieces; the bits and pieces I have read struck me as unsatisfactory to me, but I realize that's a personal preference. I should confess that I don't regard the Gautamid as having been perfect, although I will prostrate myself over and over in this lifetime to his memory for the gift that he has given us all, I feel that way about it as do so many others. Not perfect, meaning he understood the relationships that are involved in well-being and taught about them but I think he struggled with how to teach others and with the social relationships at the time. I bring this up here because our struggle today, if you look at where civilization has taken humanity, is still how to teach others and the social relationships that go into keeping the planet alive. I personally need a practice that brings me back to these points, and that confesses imperfection and the complete knowledge of the student as well as the teacher. p.s.- great link! loved that debate, you can guess which side I come down on (ha ha!).

Maybe toss a coin leave it to chance, circumstance realize bone, breath

hospitality this fierce undoing of pain for a moment's peace (good luck with it, artform; our healing energies to you!)

but not the same way from one moment to the next and yet... coulda' sworn...

again-becoming in the cosmic play, the fool coyote sunset

now iridescent as human kind fouls its nest again-becoming

The Chinese depictions of dragons usually show the dragon reaching for the sun; my understanding is that the dragons are trying to understand the sun's mystery, how it does what it does, as it were. I love that.

The Pali Society translators gave them as right knowledge, and right freedom, this last which I enjoy more than right liberation. Freedom just is, for me, whereas liberation is always liberation from something. Well, I just threw it out there because you are keen on right view and the eight-fold path. Speaking of which, have you seen "the great six-fold (sense) field" lecture, at the close of the middle-length sermon volumes? I have part of it here: the great sixfold (sense) field So there's a whole different take on how the eight-fold path is developed and brought to fruition. I was writing Apepch7 the other day, we had a discussion about the last part of the pyramid texts, and the meaning of the Apophis, the great snake that represents evil and stops Osiris's sun-boat. Alright, lots of subconscious stuff going on there I think and fascinating indeed, yet the best for me was to recall that the fundamental of craving in the Gautamid's teaching was the desire for re-becoming. This I can relate to as I walk around (hopefully not walking into walls), and from this I have a clearer notion of the last of the four "fields" of mindfulness, sometimes translated as states of consciousness. Impermanence, yes, DO, yes, the craving to become again and attachment, aversion, and ignorance to follow, useful to me somehow. "The Majesty of the Pelican has fallen in the water; O snake, turn around, for Ra sees you", the close of the pyramid texts, I think.

Can you give us a link if you decide to write your story?- thanks! Best anatomy book for me was "Anatomy in Motion", by the dancer Blandine Calais-Germain; in particular, she has a fine set of illustrations of the ilio-lumbar ligaments, one pair of which supports the spine from the pelvis in flexion, the other pair of which in extension. My poor copy is here: the ilio-lumbar ligaments Here they are again, from the walls of the temple of Ramses at Luxor (this is a modern copy, but you can find photos of the original online): Hapis and djed For me this is the explanation of why the distinction between in-breath and out-breath was the mainstay of the Gautamid's practice; that's how the lower spine finds support, to free the motion of the sacrum in the cranial-sacral rhythm.

flying with the gulls diving like a pelican sun on the water

well, well, well. Hey, Taomeow, wasn't Maitreya supposed to be around about now? As to the anatomy and driving a car, I hear what you are saying, and absolutely nobody I know considers the study of anatomy and kinesthesiology important in the pursuit of well-being. Sounds funny when I say it like that, I guess, but when you are healthy it's true that you don't need medical science, it's irrelevant and possibly harmful. I myself felt that I didn't have something I needed, I felt that from early on, and although I don't think much has changed about me I don't feel I'm lacking anything anymore. I could use a lot of practice, but it's not clear that there's anything in particular that can be practiced. For me I could not see what I needed without the lotus, and I could not sit the lotus without understanding the relationship of place with the two respirations. For me, the key to it all is activity generated by fascial stretch without the exercise of volition, a subtle reality I learned to look for by reading a book. Not Buddhist, not Taoist, anathema to everyone I know. Hey, Mr. V., what about the nineth and tenth elements of the eight-fold way?

I like "Tao Bums" myself, because I feel Taoism offers a kind of open-ended teaching. I don't know this from teachers or readings, I just assume it somehow. "Dharma bum" and "dharma" used to have that connotation for me, before Buddhist institutions moved into the mainstream in this country; now I associate the words with teachers who have taught that the precepts are really the main gate. I know more of Buddhism, because I sat down and read the four principle Nikaya volumes in their Pali Text Society translations. And I've always wanted to learn to sit the lotus, and after finally breaking down and studying anatomy (and getting lucky with the discovery of John Upledger and cranial-sacral therapy), I've learned how to manage it as a morning and evening practice. I like Taoism, and the freer the translation the more I seem to like it. I also like the Egyptian pyramid texts, which I think are available on this site. The thing about the Pali Cannon texts is, they put forward a method by which to proceed. And the method is consistent, although it also says that one must "grasp after nothing in this world", and the teaching closes with the line "everything changes, work out your own salvation". I think a lot of what the Tao Bums site has to offer is the gems that people have found personally workable from the great legacy of ancient China, the methods and consistent frameworks of understanding. When the relationships that are important to human well-being are outlined in a consistent way, they seem to transcend any particular tradition; sometimes Tao Bums rewards me with such an outline. Sometimes I think it's just about taking the teachings we are already working with, Taoist, Buddhist, whatever, and drawing out the relationships that are outlined consistently. welcome back, Durkhrod Chogori.

sun-block creams can help mummification really preserves the best, though

knowing rodent ways, knowing own-nature, for cats- in the dark, shining

unseen, he sees us paws tucked in, tail curled close, soft up and moving, gone

by enlightenment only this, just this- nothing left to call one's own

lemon meringue pie in the summer time- ummm, um! Tao Bums in heaven

double negative x, x x; gotta git, boom squeeze out lemon life (better be butter...)

(something for Kate, between rounds- ha ha!- part of a screen by Kawanabe Kyosai 1831-1889)

Yes the potential for suffering is still there. Now for me, right view involves not only the recognition that attachment, aversion, and ignorance condition the place of occurrence of consciousness and result in suffering, but also the recognition that I cannot help being drawn to that which is marked by a non-material happiness. When I sit, I set up mindfulness of ji, chi, and shen, as it were, and then I let it go, if I'm lucky (must be why I'm so sore today, doing nothing!). The transition from the first jhana to the second is marked by thought no longer applied and sustained. I can't say that I can do even this!~ how can you claim to have right view?