Maddie

So in a nutshell are you saying that Vipassana helps you to understand and apply the eight fold path, while Samatha can give you samadhi and powers?

The Zhi: Our Will. http://www.fivespirits.com/zhi.php http://yang-sheng.com/?p=35 The Zhi lives in our Kidneys and is related to the water element. It's emotion is fear, its virtues are wisdom and gentleness.Its function is to house our will and willpower. The kidneys also have the unique and important function of storing our pre-natal jing (essence) and are also capable of storing a large amount of qi, so much in fact that there is a saying in TCM that "the kidneys are always deficient". The kidneys also rule over the bones, and the bone "marrow". The concept of marrow is important in TCM in that it differs significantly from the concept of marrow in western medicine. Marrow in TCM not only includes what we commonly think of as bone marrow but also the spinal cord and brain. This is why we often see in old people who's kidney pre-natal jing is low that their kidneys are not able to nourish the marrow sufficiently anymore and thus become forgetful. The brain falls under the domain of the kidneys in TCM, Various aspects of brain function fall under all the various organs, but the physical substance of the brain itself is under the kidney's domain, as well as parasympathetic fight or flight reactions or anything else that involves the Adrenal glands, as they are classified as part of the kidney's in TCM. This also explains the kidney's relation to the emotion of fear. The lack of willpower is related to the kidney's as well. If you know what needs to be done, know how to do it, but lack the motivation (especially between the hours of 3pm-7pm) this indicates a kidney deficiency. Lack willpower? work on your kidneys. Stressed out because your never sure what next disaster life is going to bring your way (fight or flight)? work on your kidneys. Want to be more calm and gentle in life? work on your kidneys. Forgetful, or have a hard time remembering stuff? work on your kidneys. Want a pizza? call the pizza place lol, just seeing if your paying attention lol.

Hey I'm curious, so there are monks who practice excessively Samatha or Vipassana? What are the different effects on these monks who practice one type of meditation exclusively?

Makes a lot of sense actually. In my own case and it seems in the case of others who post on here about increased attractiveness arising from cultivation the common theme is that we do the jing-qi-shen converstion type practices. What I notice just about every time I meditate is that I feel a lot of energy moving into my upper dan tien area. The upper dan tien is the abode of shen. It's also after meditation and feeling a lot of energy movement in my head that I seem to notice the most dramatic instances of the attraction situations that I've been talking about lately. Also all the models of Taoism that I've studied say that for qi to convert to shen first the middle dan tien has to be full of qi. So this would suggest that if there is shen conversion taking place then there would be a significant amount of qi in the middle dan tien/heart area as well. From a more psychological point of view, I've found that cultivating shen allows insight into the ego. When one has made progress with their ego and thus feel more comfortable with themselves then naturally the people around them are able to pick up on this, and someone who is pretty comfortable with themselves is usually pretty comfortable for other people to be around as well. On the other hand its usually the people with the weak ego that act awkward and thus make other people feel uncomfortable with them. Oh yea lets not forget jing haha. When you cultivate jing it heals, strengthens, and nourishes your physical body. All those women at the party last night thought I was at least 10 years younger than I am haha, so I'm sure that does not hurt the cause either

how does one determine that?

That's a good question and one that I have been pondering as well. I know that I really enjoy listening to Ajahn Braham talk and its not just the content (which is excellent) but also just listing to him in and of itself is very nice too. He definitely has an appeal and a draw to him that makes him very likable IMO. The Dali Lama is also very well liked. Listening to Chunyi Lin also feels very good. I've noticed many of the talks by monks and nuns that I listen to online have a wonderful feel to them. It does seem to be uncanny the radical change in the way people relate to me as I continue to meditate. *last night's adventure did make me really see the wisdom in the precepts that monks have which in the past I thought were the kind of "kill joy" rules I had escaped from when I left the church lol.

What if I raise another question, is there evil in the world? As to how matter or form is experienced by consciousness it is through the 6 senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch, and thought. Matter or form if the first of the 5 Skandhas and therefore the first delusion that we must see through clearly to progress to the next Skandha (which is sensation). If we identify ourselves as being our body then that is the delusion of form, thus the first barrier to the ego understanding itself.

So basically keep up the meditation and things keep happening. Last night was the first social gathering I'd been to for a while, and first one since my kundalini experience last week as well. So some students had a backyard party with lights in the trees and such and that was very pretty. But you know when something gets so over the top it freaks you out? lol. Well (I'm trying to think of how to put this) ... no matter where I went I found myself surrounded by females, and they were all talking to me eagerly and touching me when they talked a lot, and then as the night went on and they had had more to drink lol, they all started telling me how they loved me and I was the greatest and it was starting to get embarrassing and surreal, and they kept wanting to hug me over and over and one picked up her guitar and in front of the entire party dedicated a few songs to me and I got beet red and just wanted to turn invisible lol. But it was so weird. I mean I remember in the past when I actually wanted to meet a girl at a get together like that and tried I was invisible and now that I don't want to find a girl they everywhere... life can be so ironic haha. So having a bit of a sense of humor I decided to mess with them and told them about how I'd really been enjoying listening to Ajahn Brahm and how it made me want to become a monk, and then they all gasped and were like "noooooo!!!!" haha that was funny. But anyways you know when something is just so over the top its no longer fun or flattering but freaky? lol

This is something I have pondered as well. It seems that one of the major differences between Buddhist and Taoist cultivation is that Buddhism places most if not all its emphasis on cultivating the mind and the body is seen has having very little importance. Taoists on the other hand cultivate both body and mind. Brodi said that master Nan reached enlightenment so quickly at an early age that he had to spend several more years then cultivating his body. The mind in his case outpaced the body. Part of the explanation for the Buddhist outlook on the body, or lack of outlook on it is that the first of the five Skandha's is form. Form being one of the Skandha's is seen as a hindrance to enlightenment. This is precisely the problem that Bodhi Dharma ran into when you first came to Shaolin. The monks were sickly and in poor health, and his effort to find a solution to this was to come up with the qigong and kungfu that has made Shaolin so famous. This is also the primary reason that while my primary focus is Buddhism I continue to do certain Taoist practices. Meditation is a lot easier when your body is healthy lol. Buddhists do want to help people but their take on it is more along the lines of teaching them the dharma so that they can escape Samsara and thus no longer suffer. Alex Anatole the Russian Taoist master made a good point in his book "The Truth of Tao" when he said that if your weak and sickly this is going to be a distraction to meditation, while if your in good health and have no trouble sitting still for long periods of time then meditation will come much easier to you. (I paraphrase).

How was it that you got the feeling of the various parts of the inside of your brain in the first place. The only one time I can remember where I actually felt my brain was that instance a few weeks ago when I felt sensation radiate from my heart up the left side of my neck and into my head and then eventually inside to my brain, but even then while I was able to feel the left side of my brain I was unable to distinguish the various parts of it. How did you get to that point. As I was saying since I can't distinguish my pineal gland I could not tell you what was going on with that, but there have been times when I felt a lot of buzzing in my lower dan tien and it was at these times that I would also get a lot of that buttocks display behavior from females in public places as well. I was in the book store once a few years ago and I'm sitting there checking out some books and I notice my lower dan tien buzzing big time. During the time I was sitting there at least three females just happened to come at various times to the same section of book shelf which was right in front of my face and stop there to "check out books" while sticking their ass in my face. By the third female the buzzing had dissipated and then no more females did that lol. So how is it that you got to the point where you were able to feel your brain with enough sensitivity to distinguish the various parts of it?

Though its not Hun nor Po, I thought this article about the Yi would be interesting nevertheless. http://www.fivespirits.com/yi.php The Yi is our intellect and intention, and our earth element and resides in our Spleen. It's emotion is worry and over thinking. It's virtue is fairness, trust and openness. It's function is to apply the thoughts of our heart and the will of our kidneys into the real world. It takes a feeling, a desire, a want, a notion, and forms it into a mental/intellectual concept that can then be applied to the physical or conceptual world. Worry therefore arises when the Spleen gets stuck and can not preform this function and instead keeps going round and round trying to form a desire into a mental construct but is unable to do so. Difficulty in concentration can also arise if the Spleen is busy working on one mental task when we are trying to focus on another. Hesitation can arise when the Spleen has formed a mental construct but is having difficulty figuring out how to apply it to the real world.

I'm not sure how one "flexes" the pineal gland? but I'd like to know how. Since I don't know how to do that, a few years ago I had another trick that I don't use anymore because I realized it was manipulation. So a few years ago after my divorce I went dating crazy. Having done energy healing through my hands I did know how to project qi that way. So what I'd do on a date is if it got to a "make out session" but if the girl still seemed reluctant to go "all the way" I'd place my hand on her sacrum. Then I'd super charge her sacral chakra with qi. Then all of a sudden she'd suddenly be in the mood haha. Then (as I was still doing Chia's method at this time, which is probably why I was so sex crazy in the first place) I'd do the power lock and big draw and circulate my yang qi through her MCO and that would give her orgasms in each chakra as it passed through them, and then draw in her yin jing on run it through my MCO which would also feel very good for me. The draw back to this method though was the next day I would feel a lot of her emotional issues and have do deal with them. But anyways how do you flex the pineal gland?

I'm curious. I assume that now you are focusing more on storing the energy in your dan tien. In doing so do you find that females notice the energy less now? I ask because as you know a few weeks ago I was having more of the kinds of problems you were mentioning about the display behavior. Then you suggested storing the energy in the dan tien. Since that time I've noticed that while the issues has not totally gone away, it does seem to have lessened. Of course that could also be that this past week my kundalini was exorcising all sorts of emotional blockages which was very unpleasant, and I am pretty sure it was having this effect on all who got near me (which is why I mostly holed up in my apartment this week like a hermit lol). I went to the nature trail earlier this week when kundalini was still in full force, and I stopped at the cliff wall where some rock climbers were climbing to watch with a few other people. Well as soon as I show up the other spectators all start looking "fidgety" lol and uncomfortable and leave after about a min.

Actually its very interesting being at her bf house and watching the interactions between him, her, and his friends. More often than naught their latest gossip conversations that they have every single time they get together get very boring for me very quickly. So we are all sitting around his living room, and they are all talking about pointless crap, and I just start meditating haha. Anyways after a few min of meditation I become sensitive to the qi interactions going on in the room. I feel her bf's friends lusting after her, and being jealous of him for having her haha. I'll feel her ego wanting a boost and then a second later she'll make some sort of comment to get an emotional reaction out of her bf, and when he reacts on que he releases some qi and she absorbs it and feels pretty good from the experience. Of course she has no idea that shes trying to milk some more qi out of him, so does not understand why the reactions she gets out of him makes her feel good. lol Then its like his ego feels the qi loss and wants it back, so he'll say or do something to get a reaction out of her, and then you get a reverse exchange, and back and forth and back and forth it goes. Its kind of like ping pong haha. Then one of her bf's jealous friends will tease him and that will get a rise out of both of them and now he gets the qi, and it goes on and on and on.

This is the aspect that I notice in class as well. I might choose a table that is relatively isolated and class starts and the professor is talking and I'm taking notes and no big deal. Then like 30 min into the class I start to feel my qi being drained and I'm like "?". So I turn around and a female classmate had just come into class late. I noticed the qi first, her being there second. It's more noticeable if I'd done a lot of meditation before class.

Haha that made me laugh (the Tarzan part) lol. Well she was draining my qi, but it sort of made me realize where that legend about how a "vampire can not enter your house unless you invite them in" came from. She took the qi, but only after she subconsciously affected me in such a way as to sort of want to donate it lol. I think that's why in the past week I'd gotten better at not allowing her to drain my qi, cause I told myself I wasn't going to fall for it haha.

Very much agreed, as this common theme has been very much a part of my realizations this week as I see into this ego thing more deeply. Today I feel very good, so I hope that I'm through the worse of this thing. I helped a classmate move yesterday and I'm wonderng if the heavy physical labor helped to burn off some of the excess?

How unusual lol

I'll agree with you to a point. Granted things that someone else has that are similar to your own issues will allow that person to trigger your stuff much more easily. On the other hand my professor at said that the problem of picking up your patients sick qi can be a real danger and was showing us ways to avoid it. His family has a TCM lineage that goes back generations and his highly respected in Taiwan. It's very common for me to hear students complaining of feeling what their patient feels after needling them. I even had on student ask me to help her needle a patient once. I had no idea what this patient was there for, I was just helping the other student. After we finished I felt lower abdominal pain in a way I had never felt before. I asked the student what her patient was there for and she said "menstrual cramps" lol, and I can assure you that's not something I've had haha. When I first started internship I always had to go take a nap after clinic cause I was so tired, and many other new interns have this same experience. When your new and don't know yet how to stop getting your qi drained off it makes you so tired.

She does not even realize consciously what she is doing at all, its just sort of instinct for her and a lot of people. Later that day she gave me a classic example of how she does it. So at the time she was draining off m qi I was helping her change her bike tire. It was kind of tricky and at one point we were contemplating taking it to the bike shop down the road, but we eventually got it. After that we went to lunch and as we were talking about the bike tire she was telling me that if we had been unable to get the tired changed that her next tactic would have been to go to the bike shop and play "cute and dumb" in hopes of getting the tired changed for free. I asked her why she would act dumb. She said because if she went in there being smart and serious and saying "I am having a hard time getting this bike tire on" then they would most likely view her neutrally and charge her. Then she said but if I go in there and say in a high voice "oh can you please help me I don't have any idea what I'm doing" and acting like a dumb bimbo that they would want to run to the rescue lol. Now on my end this was VERY enlightening. When she said it the first time I felt nothing in particular. The second time she said it I could actually feel my "male hero empathy" aroused and my qi drained off by her for the few seconds she was talking that way lol.

One of my TCM professors held the belief that there are no accidents. He had mentioned how often angry people will just happen to stub their big toe where the first point on the Liver channel is (ying spring) as their subconscious attempts to vent out excess heat from the liver. That is just one example.

that made me laugh so hard

I found this interesting article about the Po http://taoofnourishment.blogspot.com/2011/09/po-corporeal-soul.html and this too http://www.fivespirits.com/po.php I had a great Lung/Metal element meditation today and it made me feel super good, which is quite a relief after having a rather rough week of Kundalini symptoms. Anyways the reason I wanted to comment on this is because the most common diagnosis in TCM for depression is the Liver. While it is true that the liver can and does cause a lot of depression I think its important to differentiate the various types of depression, as the word is a western one and can be somewhat ambiguous. So let's consider a few different types of sensations that are called "depression" in the west. So you have the Liver/wood Hun type of depression for sure. I consider this kind of depression to be the more yang type of depression. If you break it down to its "aggregates" or component parts you will find a mixture of stress, anger, frustration, vengeance, and unfairness. Granted its easy to see how these feelings can definitely make someone feel bad. Since the Liver is responsible for our plans, and decisions if any of those don't work out like we would have hoped we get stressed. Since the liver is also in charge of problem solving, if it becomes overwhelmed people tend to feel "hopeless" as they can no longer see a solution to their problems (the problem solving aspect of the liver has broken down). On the other hand this is another type of depression that is more yin in nature and that is Lung/Metal Po depression. This kind of depression has a more "empty" feel to it than the Liver/wood Hun type depression. The emotion of the Lung/Metal Po is grief, loss and longing. An obvious example of this would be mourning the death of a loved one. You have lost this person who was previously in your life and resistance to letting go causes grief. Just in the way the Liver is responsible for planning, decision making and problem solving, the Lung is responsible for taking in what is needed (oxygen) and letting go what does not serve us (CO2). We can see this function in the other metal element organ the Large Intestine as well. It takes in what the body needs (water) and releases what we do not need in the form of solid waste. One way then of viewing Metal type grief would be as emotional constipation. Not being able to let go of grief and things that no longer serve us. On the flip side the virtues of the Lung/Metal Po are Dignity and Respect. If our metal element is strong then we feel very good about ourselves and we feel go about others. If our metal element is weak then we lack these feelings of dignity and respect for both ourselves and others. A few other interesting aspects about the Po/Metal/Lung is that it relates to boundaries. What you let in and what you keep out (O2 vs CO2) (water vs solid waste). It also governs the skin and wei qi (defensive qi) so we can see how there is another example of boundaries there too. The Po is our instinctual animal nature so all things relating to such things are contained in the Po. Being that it is the instinctual part of our animal nature it represents the more primitive and automatic parts of our brain such as the limbic system. The limbic is the part of our brain that relates to emotions and smell. (This is why aroma therapy is effective in treating emotions). The Po is also very much about feeling and touch and we can again see this in its governing relationship to the skin. From a more personal experience point of view, I realized earlier today that after doing the Lung meditation that not only did I feel much better and less bummed out from this week of Kundalini hell, but that this great feeling of "chaos" was replaced by a very nice feeling of "order" which is also a metal aspect.

You had a very profound insight, that's great! Like Ajahn Brahm says all the time about figuring out not only what you know but finding out who is the knower lol.

I watched that other Matrix video the other day, and last night I watched the Matrix again haha. It was very interesting to watch it after having seen that talk on it.