Maddie

Several times after reading about Christian mystics I have tried to be gracious with Christianity and see what cultivation gems there might be within it. It was like looking for water in a desert in my opinion. Every now and then you might find a puddle here and there but that's about it. Just based on my experience.

That is really interesting because in spite of what the text books say I always seem to feel it in the "womb" area.

The irony is that the "pagan" philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome considered the early Christians simpletons lol.

It would be more accurate to say Arabs and Hebrews were polytheistic since Muslim and Jewish are monotheistic religions, while the former are ethnic groups.

I think this is a common misconception about karma that it's made or kept somewhere outside of ourselves but according to the Buddha it's made and kept within our own minds.

Maybe so but every standardized textbook I've ever read and every professor I've ever had always places it at Ren 6 and you wouldn't pass your exams if you said otherwise.

From an acupuncture point of view it lies at Ren 6 which is a little below the navel.

For me this is something that I do differently now than I did several years ago. Early on I was taught to sit and observe the breath but this didn't really work for me. Eventually I began to practice mindfulness where I would observe what was going on in the mind but without involvement. As for "moving energy" if I ever feel like I need to do that these days I usually pop in a few acupuncture needles lol.

Yes and I think the key takeaway for this and in general is to not get so lost in the words that we talk past each other when it comes to meaning.

It's defiantly a possibility, or it could be logical deduction of cause and effect. My science half of my brain also protests this lol.

Bit's and pieces maybe but mostly piecing clues together.

If the law of karma is correct (and I think it probably is) then simply by logic I can not have been very kind to say the least in a past life. I actually think I have a lot of my past life figured out, but it is not flattering.

This is something I hear often. We don't like to think that what seems like a brand new being comes with "baggage" but its simple cause and effect (at least according to the Buddha's theory of karma and rebirth). I've used this analogy before. Let's says someone has poor short term memory like Dory from "Finding Nemo". Let's say our Dory steps off a cliff and is falling. Halfway down she forgets that she stepped off a cliff and is suddenly in an understandable panic. She might scream on her way down "this isn't fair! how did I end up here?!" but cause and effect does not care if she thinks its fair or not, it simply is, and she's falling because she stepped off a cliff whether she remembers doing it or not.

I think it's only horrid to think a child suffers from karma if we think that the child is brand new and fresh being. If we take a broader perspective picture then karma explains very well why people are born into such unequal circumstances. Karma is simply cause and effect. If you spent a lot of your previous life being abusive to other people then it doesn't seem like a shock that you would be more likely to be born into a family that's abusive. Conversely if you spent a lot of your life being kind and compassionate to other people it seems reasonable that you would be born into a family that's kind and compassionate.

Is that these guys?

Geez remind me not to break the rules at your house 🤭 *But seriously I'm a little confused as to what the issue was?

Why does every topic somehow end up with masturbation? 😵‍💫

The Buddha taught the value of making merit intentionally.

That's a good question. So based on my understanding of what the Buddha taught in regards to the five aggregates the first aggregate is form that is physical matter. The other four aggregates relate to the mind and how it perceives form. So I would say form or matter is objective and everything else relating to the mind is subjective.

Probably not which is specifically why I used the word objective. Life can absolutely have subjective meaning but of course that would be the meaning that we give it ourselves.

What if life has no objective meaning?

Okay admittedly an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered before.

I've never seen anything personally in the Pali canon about guru transmissions.

From one atheist to another I appreciate it!

Yes! This exactly!!