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Everything posted by Mark Foote
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Should be a picture button in the tiny editor that would let you insert a link to the picture, if you already have it up on the web somewhere; if you can see it by inserting the http address in a web browser, then you can put that link in the pop-up and TBs will display it on the page (I don't believe Tao Bums has an upload function). fer instance:
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I agree with what he said about "If you let go of your body, you’re not holding on to it. Hence all your chi can start arising in your body and opening channels because you’re not holding onto any muscles or sensations that would interrupt or block that natural flow which you just allowed to happen." Actually I let go of body and mind, and let the location as my awareness occurs act, through the effect of location on balance. A lot of letting go, a state of falling asleep or waking up I would say. Speaking of which sounds good and I think I'll sit. I had a vision of sorts two mornings ago. Just waking up, on my side and eyes open and there hovering over my girlfriend was a little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, luminescent in blue, smiling. I was aware that my eyes were open and I was not dreaming. The cat meowed and wanted affection, and the vision vanished. Haven't done that since college days, when I was watching flashing Christmas lights behind two sheets of the plex stuff they use for flourescent lights, and I saw a woman and two kids next to a Studebaker near a beach for a few seconds. No idea what it means, although my family did own a Studebaker in the early days and my mother and father did take my brother and I to the beach sometimes. Jesus said, the vision comes from the mind, which is between the spirit and the soul- hmmm.
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coffee's on, let's go got a lot to learn, quick-like out the way we came
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I'll have to let the circumstance roll me there, if that's going to happen. I see your ambition, it's a good one, yet I'm not sure you can follow in their footsteps. What do I know, I'm at the edge to sit 40 minutes most of the time, and my feet are not tight to my abdomen- but I've always felt like I could explain the odd kind of action that comes without thinking to others, and mostly myself of course. Not so easy, as I'm convinced now that it is a hypnogogic experience, and I don't know if it's possible to be present in that state without pushing the borders between awake and asleep a little bit. And once you've pressed that border, fasting and living to feel spiritual energy, it stays pressed. Well, anyway, you not only have to go up the mountain, you have to come down, and you have to find a way to communicate what you have experienced to others. Chunyi Lin provides a model of how to make a living at it if you succeed, and I realize making a living at it is the last thing on your mind right now. Nevertheless, it's clear that your mind is looking for the explanation at the same time, and it's not really the Eastern wisdom tradition that you are exploring. This is our task, here in the West. And it's not worth a thing, as a dhamma teaching.
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Yeah I was skeptical about Cantor's proof of infinities of different magnitude, and hence proof by induction. Looked up "mathematics" in the Encyclepedia Brittanica one day, and discovered there was a whole group of mathematicians who have the same skepticism, and are working out what can be proved without it. Length in geometry is not distance as number, an error of type- I like that. The music listens to itself, like that, I'm not aware of sounds and light the way you are when I sit, just motions and place. I'm rewriting my essay "Waking up and Falling Asleep", as the hypnogogic states, so called, seem vital to my ability to go from stretch and activity to feeling and absorption. I perceive that as a balance with my thought-absorption. Chunyi Lin may be present with the exigencies of the situation, but is he celibate in his marriage? Don't answer that, Drew- I'm just curious, you know, that you put so much energy toward trying to have these experiences of pure energy and you feel that retention is crucial. Music that listens to itself, and then unfolds-refolds? I guess I gave up on retention, but experiences of pure energy just made people think I was crazy, mostly. I had nothing on you. Thanks for the math and music stuff, I'm in and out with what you say but I appreciate it.
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scuba gear and all I'm coming, brother of mine down into the waves
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Thanks for the triangles, I'm trying to follow the music but for now I have to let it ride. The book by Hawking I may have time for, in about 6 months- thanks for mentioning it, it would be my cup of tea, I think. A friend gave me a copy of "Notices", Dec 2008, and it's about formal proof using computers. First thing they proved was Godel's incompleteness theorem, maybe because the logic suited formal proof, I don't know. Stuff you wrote about Godel sent me to Wikipedia, where I learned about the rework of Relativity he gave Einstein for Einstein's 70th birthday, proving that if relativity is correct then time travel is possible. Which caused Einstein to doubt his own theory, or so it says. Maybe the UFO's aren't aliens at all, but just humans from another time, is my conclusion. Ha ha. Well, yer an inspiration. yer gonna have to give it up, and get a girl friend, so start gettin' yer perv on there pal- cross up, and I know you got it in you! Ha ha, look forward to more.
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I gotta thank you, Drew, for your dedication and your insights. Wonderful stuff to read and ponder, and I get that the small universe practice can be automatic in the lotus, although for me I am dangling by the ropes when I experience a loop in the basement (as it were). I don't get the tetrahedron with the arms as one set of triangles and the way the transfinite numbers can be just the limiting process in finer and finer motion- I wish you could draw the triangles on that. I would really recommend to myself and others to look for the twisty action of the sartorious coming out of the stretch of the ilio-tibial tract, and the stretch in the gluts from the tract, as well as the hammocking by the obturators that sets the piriformis in action, but realizing that it's just a sense of place that happens to fall forward in the lower abdomen. the stretch that has absorption as a tail-end. Rough sketches, I hope to redo them someday. I like to dance more than I like to sit in the lotus; it's easier to feel connected when I'm falling down with someone else, like that song by David Grey about "falling down the mountainside"- love that.
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Well I know that I've read descriptions of people drinking poison in gradual doses in an attempt to cause their bodies to be preserved after death, and I've read stories of bones found upright in the full lotus. All that can make it appear that being upright is just balancing the bones, and that it's even possible for the bones to remain balanced upright long after death. Having said that, the movement of breath means that there's a constant give-and-take in the paired muscle groups that hold the body upright. It's a balancing act, that most of us don't even think about it; folks who suffer a stroke or other illness or injury might have to think about it some as they retrain themselves, but otherwise not. Being upright is the natural coordination of many muscle groups that reciprocate activity of pitch, roll, and yaw in space. I believe it's a known fact that the stretch of ligament or fascia tissue can generate nerve impulses to contract muscle tissue. That's the activity I'm talking about, the activity of muscles generated by the stretch of ligaments and fascia, involuntary activity based on the weight of the body in a particular posture. Tai-ch'i is a single-weight posture, and that generates the stretch that engenders the activity of Tai-ch'i. The lotus also generates a stretch that engenders the activity of the posture. What did Chunyi Lin do in the cave for seven weeks?- he was where he was in the cave, that caused sufficient stretch to generate the necessary activity. And where else would he be?
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You've mentioned a lower orbit practice, this doesn't sound like what I was imagining, but I haven't read Taoist Yoga. I notice piriformis highlighted on that last set of illustrations. For me, accumulation of chi in the tan-t'ien is a reference to the consciousness that occurs naturally in the vicinity of the tan-t'ien, and sometimes that consciousness almost seems like it's continuously at the tan-t'ien but I don't believe it is just that. It's an inclusive thing, around the tan-t'ien. Reciprocal innervation of the piriformis muscles, from the femur to the sacrum on either side, results from the "hammocking" of the hips from the pelvis described in Calais-Germain's "Anatomy in Movement", which in turn stretches the ligaments associated with the piriformis muscles and generates piriformis activity. I think that activity also comes out of the stretch of the ilio-tuberous ligaments from the sacrum to the front sides of the pelvis, in the motion of yaw at the sacrum. Anyway, the piriformis rotates the sacrum around the vertical axis, and I believe generates activity in the extensors up the back of the spine in three sets to the temporal bones and the parietals. The movement of the parietals affects the nerves that control the volume of cranial-sacral fluid in the skull and down the spine into the sacrum. The changes in the fluid volume cause flexion and extension of the sacrum, and of the sphenoid bone in the skull, in the middle of which sits the pineal gland. But as to how consciousness or the heart-mind occurs naturally in the vicinity of the tan-tien, that is falling down while waking up or falling asleep, and never hitting the ground; the action of being upright is generated in the stretches engendered in falling down, directly. Does awareness at the tan-t'ien seem more natural and come more often to me now in the lotus? Yes, but storing this depends on the natural attractiveness of a state of absorption in the body, not on something I do. Has to be something I just can't help because it is my own wellness that I'm feeling, no?
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and at 1:17 approx, a young Jet Li, who does a fantastic drunken sword after his cup o' noodles. Wow. I did sleep sitting up in a chair for awhile, for the same reason. But I attributed it to my lacking the coordination that my housemate at the time had. I'm a real geek. I first learned martial arts out of books, you know, and when I started Judo my instructor had me show his senior students what I had learned of judo. I found out later they thought it was so funny! Anyway, I slept sitting up for about six months to avoid the occasional surprise dream, my housemate was sexually active and had an innate coordination that I would have to say I lacked. I fall asleep in the lotus sometimes, but only for a few seconds, if that. FYI, Master Hsuan Hua of City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmadge, CA (and of Gold Mountain Monastery in S.F.) could do the one-finger hand-stand as well. I understand they sit 50 minute periods and then walk almost like running for 10 minutes. Get about three hours sleep in sesshin. My hat is off; don't think I'm going to ever do that, I will be happy to do another 3 days' sesshin in a relaxed style sometime- maybe! I think that looks like a good exercise, and I will try it sometime. Maybe it's pandiculation, I understand why Hanna uses that description but I guess until I try the exercise I won't really know if the feeling matches the feeling of stretching in a yawn. Hard to just sit where I am, this morning; I'm sure the sight of me would drive a lineage teacher to get off their cushion and come over and correct my posture, but I still have faith that the posture is self-correcting, from the place consciousness occurs. That's my path, and sometimes it gets up and walks around; how will a teacher correct my posture as I rise to walk, then?
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Well thanks for that, but I actually got that from reading your previous link. Devil's in the details, you know! I like Feldenkrais's exercises in "Awareness through Movement", for sure he inspired me with his observation that people hold their breath getting up off a chair and his exercises in three directions to allow rising with a natural breath. Was right after I read that, that I read "Letters of Yuanwu", where Yuanwu said "be as one who has 'died the great death'; when the breath is cut off, you return to life." Hope I'm remembering it right. I sure can't sit the lotus like that yoga teacher's teacher that mantis put up. That's flexible! The exercise I return to is setting up mindfulness of pitch, roll, and yaw wherever my awareness happens to be. Maybe it's Feldenkrais, once removed, yet the difficulty in finding the completion of the breath I sometimes experience ("breath is cut off"?) responds to the activity generated out of the place of consciousness. That activity comes out of stretch, and as Feldenkrais noted the stretch is in three directions. So on pandicular response, are there any videos up that show how it's done, as an exercise or something? You've probably seen my gif of stretches on the ligaments of the sacrum, which is not something that is done so much as something that is realized out of pitch, roll, and yaw at the place of consciousness: I forgot that this gif is also about the ilio-lumbar ligaments, and a carving on the wall of the pyramid at Luxor.
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What are somatic principles, what is a practical exercise in pandiculation?- if you could just explain it here without a link, I'd like that very much, but I know these things usually are not considered elevator-speech suitable (the one-minute presentation, you know). Coming from a great appreciation for the Gautamid's teaching as recounted in the Pali Sutta volumes, I have a deep suspicion of any advice to aim at voluntary activity. Coming from a great appreciation for Ch'an and Zen, I have a deep suspicion of any practice that is not identically human nature, when you get right down to it. In my own sitting, I investigate reciprocal innervation of the muscles that hold the body upright, that's reciprocal action generated by the stretch of ligaments and fascia (it's involuntary), and the relationship of the movement of awareness in hypnogogic states to that action. Might be the same thing, but it's not so obvious as pandiculation, which I see is defined as the "act or stretch of yawning". Thanks.
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I read Sargent's "Battle for the Mind" when I was in 6th grade, I think, and it really set me off. The assertion Sargent made was that the kinds of things that happen in Christian conversions and voodoo ceremonies are basically similar to what happened in North Korean brainwashing of soldiers during the Korean war. He said, it's not that a person gradually adopts a different belief structure; instead, it's a sudden experience, brought on by stress and usually a lack of food and sleep. Illness as a stressor helps induce the conversion. Suddenly one day, the person being brain-washed or converted falls down and gets up believing everything they've been told would relieve their situation. Now I read on Wikipedia that Sargent was a big advocate of shock treatment for mental illness, and of surgeries. He was apparently a bit heavy-handed advocating for his beliefs in medicine, and they are no longer widely accepted. I don't know about his beliefs on brain-washing. Still, I think it sheds some light on the persistence of religious cults, if Sargent was right. Individuals with charisma and charm have been able to lead children from good families astray for millenea. One of the most attractive things about Taoism and Chinese Ch'an is the emphasis on low-profile empowerment, the notion that it's better not to stand out from the community at large. I guess that presumes one has a community not to stand out from, ha ha!
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This is interesting to me, this debate right here. We live in an age of information. Part of the information is the lore of Western science, part is the lore of the Eastern and Native American wisdom traditions. We are not limited to experts, we are not limited to evangalists, but we can hope to make sense of it all. I struggle with this. I have learned to sit the lotus, and in the Japanese Soto tradition, just sitting is the practice (but traditionally in the lotus). The Soto tradition goes so far as to say, when a person is just sitting, the function of enlightenment is there. I first learned that sometimes just sitting gets up and walks around, which was a surprise, and then I started trying to write about it. I am still writing about it. I write primarily for myself, but along the way I have come to believe that we can develop a vocabulary to describe the relationships involved in just sitting that Westerners can adopt. I'm not saying that the experience of just sitting can be transmitted in words, only that the experience can be described in such a way that a person who was truly interested in just sitting and had reached a point where they felt just sitting was necessary in their life could make use of the words. Gautama the Buddha claimed that the miracle was teaching, was passing along the insight and the practice, that was the profoundest of all miracles. I had to study anatomy and kinesthesiology to learn to sit the lotus, but of course that wasn't enough; I also had to develop a way to describe the relationships in just sitting that would enable me to accept my own experience. What I find is that I'm no show horse, and I have no miracle to perform apart from being where I am. There's currently a thread on the full lotus on Tao Bums, and there are some great descriptions from Drew Hempel of miraculous supernatural phenomena he's observed in the presence of Chunyi Lin. There is some of my best writing there, too. I am more fascinated with his observations of ghosts and energy apparitions than with my writing; my writing is only necessary to me, and his observations are the stuff of wonder that tell us there is another world beyond the one we know through the 5 senses. Does anyone want to learn the lotus, does anyone look to just sit and to share the relationships involved in that experience with others? I love Tao Bums, because there are others immersed in describing the same relationships and in relating the descriptions of other cultures of those relationships, and I think we can all benefit from that. I know I'm writing for myself, but sometimes I wonder if other people take the opportunity we have to describe these relationships in Western terms that everyone can understand as seriously as I do? That reminds me of Shunryu Suzuki's famous one-liner, "life is much too important to take seriously."
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I didn't say there was a Jesus as reported in the Bible, I only said that there was someone who gave descriptions that are unique in the religious literature of the world, to my knowledge (which I confess is very limited!). At the same time, they have some similarities to statements in the Pali Canon and the literature of Chan and Zen, and I find them useful. I took a class on right and left hemisphere stuff in the 'seventies, and the instructor spoke of Polynesians who could navigate over the horizon to the next island. When asked how they did it, they had a lot to say, but none of it made sense to the people doing the study. The conclusion was, a person can do things even though they cannot explain how they did them. Very few can actually put words to the relationships of the human experience, words that make sense, words that free another human from their own ignorance to any extent. Lots of people have managed to free themselves from their own ignorance to one extent or another, but that doesn't mean they can actually convey the means of their escape in words to another person. Most people are confused about that, I think; they assume that if someone has an amazing presence or can perform a seeming miracle, or even an amazing feat of physical coordination, balance, or endurance, most people assume when that person opens his or her mouth that what comes out must be an accurate description of how it was done. There's amazing stuff on the walls of the temples of Egypt. There's amazing stuff in the Gospel of Thomas, in the Pali Canon, in the writings of the masters in India and China. Some of the voices are unique, and useful to me; the voice in the Gospel of Thomas is one of those, and I have no idea if that person is the same one described in the Bible as Jesus or not. If you strip away the miracles and anything that was written after Mark, Luke, and Matthew, maybe there was person there.
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There can be a sexual energy connected with the balance forward in the lower abdomen; Kegels with the pubo-coccygeus would be connected with that. There are three motions at the sacrum, pitch, roll and yaw, that translate into three stretches in the ilio-sacral, sacro-spinous and sacro-tuberous ligaments respectively. The pitch motion, forward and back, not only stretches the ilio-sacral ligaments allowing the sacrum to move to a lower horizontal pivot on the pelvis, but stretches ligaments connected with the pubo-coccygeus muscles, and generates activity in these muscles that carries into the pubic bone and the rectus muscle of the lower abdomen. The external oblique, internal oblique, and transversus abdominals have ligamentous connections to the rectus, and these connections are of equal mass at a point about two inches below the navel. I'm still learning about "as before, so behind; as behind, so before" but I think it has to do with these stretches and the activity that results. Fuxi's poem is a great guide for me: "The empty hand grasps the hoe handle walking along, I ride the ox the ox crosses the wooden bridge the bridge is flowing, the water is still" The practice of "as before, so behind; as behind, so before" is I think connected with the first line. The second line would be about the stretches and activity from the stretch of the sacro-spinous ligaments, side-to-side. The third line would be similarly the stretches and activity from the sacro-tuberous ligaments, out of the motion of yaw at the sacrum (on the diagonals). Last line concerns action solely from the place of consciousness as it occurs and the cessation of action through the exercise of volition. All the steps are linear, and simultaneous, so I might as well just be where I am, and hope to "tower up like a mile-high wall and see that there aren't so many things". Shunryu Suzuki said all a person can do about the practice is to be grateful. He also said, "only zazen can sit zazen". Kobun Chino Otogawa said, "you know, sometimes zazen gets up and walks around!"- this experience is still my only light.
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I stretch both legs, first one then the other; I just wait until I can grab my toes and then ease a stretch on the hamstring until I feel I can breathe. I suspect it's years of half-lotus on both sides that now enables me to get into the lotus, but there are specific coordinations that I call to mind to stay in the lotus and relax. The hamstrings and the quads reciprocate activity out of stretch, and that puts a stretch on the ilio-tibial tract. Stretch in the tract generates activity in the sartorius muscles that pivots the pelvis on the hips, left and right; with that pivot and stretch in the ilio-tibial tract, activity will be generated in the gluts that also pivots the pelvis left and right on the hips. Not volitive activity, activity generated by the stretch of ligaments and fascia that translates into different motions. The left and right pivot of the pelvis on the hips puts the balance forward in the lower abdomen, and that slight stretch generates activity in the obturators that extends the hips slightly from the pelvis. This allows the activity of the legs from the soles of the feet to travel up the back of the spine to either side of the skull and the top of the head in inhalation; the return from the top of the head to the soles of the feet depends on the free movement of the mind , technically the free occurrence of consciousness, and the stretch and activity occasioned as consciousness takes place for the complete exhalation. That's because it's really about the generation of the cranial-sacral rhythm by nerves at the sagittal suture, so the real return is in the motions of the sacrum and the way the rhythm extends through the body. In short, it's the sense of place, the one that moves in falling asleep (and in waking up, although that's harder to see). That's the source of the action. The more you see it, the more you can rest in it, and so you gain it. That's how I sit in the lotus. Why it took so long to be where I am, I can't say!
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Pretty amazing tales, Drew. Do you think you can do it, what you are looking to do?- I'm not well-educated in Taoist lore and practice. This is a great site for me. Taomeow, I always appreciate you down-to-earth advice and info. I have taught myself to sit in the lotus. I sit 40 minutes in the morning, and maybe 20 at night. My understanding would be that the two autonomic respirations, pulmonary and cranial-sacral, use the sense of place in the occurrence of consciousness to effect reciprocal innervation in the fascia and muscles of posture. This just means that the stretch in the fascia on one side of the body generates nerve-impulses to contract muscles to relieve the stretch, which causes stretch in the fascia on the opposite side; so there's a back and forth of muscle activity that's not generated from the cerebral cortex, it's coming out of the reciprocal stretch of fascia and ligaments. The two respirations can place the occurrence of consciousness to effect activity out of balance, and that activity creates an alignment of the spine that opens feeling in real time. That's my practice when I think of it. Lately I'm focused on the hypnogogic state in sitting, the place where feeling becomes continuous even in the face of involuntary muscular activity and stretch that always borders on painful in three directions. I had to learn to feel three pivots at the sacrum, I have to learn to feel the reciprocity between the extensors on two sides behind and the psoas on two sides in front around the tan-t'ien. Here's a great thing from Shunryu Suzuki someone posted on Warner's Hardcore Zen blog, about "have to learn"'s: "That is the most important thing for me: to stand on my feet and to sit on my black cushion. I don't trust anything but [laughs] my feet or my black cushion. This is my friend, always. My feet is always my friend. When I am in bed, my bed is my friend. There is no Buddha, or no Buddhism, or no zazen. If, you know, you ask me, "What is zazen?" you know, my answer will be, "To sit on black cushion is zazen," or "To walk with my feet is my zazen." To stay at this moment on this place is my zazen. There is no other zazen." That's from Chadwick's shunryusuzuki.com site, the lecture of July 6th 1970. Here's the way I feel it, on a good day- ha ha!- "Simply by being where we are, we can come to forget the self. The sense of place engenders an ability to feel, and each thing we feel enters into the sense of place- even before we know it. This being where we are with each thing, even before we know it, is shikantaza." Can't sit two hours in the lotus, and mostly I don't know that I ever will, but this transmission is consciousness from sense organ and sense object, impact, and feeling as it really is, and it's right where my mind as in heart-mind is now.
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I just thought I'd share when the chips are down, that's when the buffalo's empty
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you are quite blessed! MOOOOOOOOOO Bye Bessie! Ma, magic beans! (thrown out the window...)
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tinted sky goggles wrapped in manila paper mailed to everyone