Maddie

I certainly hope my testosterone's not at a high school wrestler range or I would think that my HRT is not working very well LOL.

No thanks for sharing. I find the Chinese energetic systems complicated as well. But I'm also on hormone replacement therapy and I wonder what effect that has as well.

Lol. Although clearly the teaching of non-self does not negate conscious choice.

It was recommended that I turn a question I asked in another post into it's own post, so here goes. Buddhism basically ignores the body in cultivation and focuses on cultivating the mind with the mind. My question is aside from systems like Qigong and Yoga asana being healthy for the body, can they be used to cultivate the mind and if so, how so?

well at the very least you have the ability to be aware of and respond to stimuli either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Yes I agree that quieting the mind is an important means to an end, but I think the misunderstanding comes in because people hear that and then think that they are supposed to "make" their mind quiet and since this is not how it works then feel frustrated when it does not work this way. We can not make the mind directly quiet because according to the teaching of no-self the mind is not the self and therefore we can not control it as self. We can only set up causes and conditions that facilitate the mind becoming quieter (which it will if given time) but we can not make it quieter, and this is where most of the frustration and misunderstanding comes from.

You are a being are you not?

First of all not a dumb question at all, in fact a pretty good question that I ponder quite a bit actually. In short karma has a LOT to do with rebirth. Inclination plays a role as well, but while we can think of inclination as where you want to buy your plane ticket to, karma is the money in the bank that actually gets you the ticket. So for example everyone wants to be born wealthy and healthy right? but clearly not everyone is born into this situation. It's obviously not for lack of desire, rather its for lack of karma.

My understanding of reading the Buddhist sutras is that what makes a precept or any action moral or not is whether or not it does or does not bring a being suffering.

Very interesting, I've never heard that before. This has to be by FAR the most common misconception of what meditation is. Meditation isn't stopping the mind, it's knowing the mind.

One other thing I noticed for not just myself but my daughter as well as as an acupuncturist sometimes that also use herbs that enter various channels to cultivate and they also seem to have some of the same emotional side effects as meditation or mantra. Has anyone noticed this? Without wanting to start a new thread I was also wondering if anyone has cultivated through the intellect as in studying texts and what not?

I was so open-minded when I was younger that I ended up in a cult LOL

So I've been paying more attention lately and I think I've noticed that even from doing yoga or Pilates I get some of the same emotional side effects as I do when I meditate or do mantra.

That is a good question.

One example of side effects that I just thought of is when I am mindful a lot of something that I had previously not been mindful of I feel like I become very tired and sort of fuzzy minded for a while. I wonder if this is my brain rewiring emotion or mental aspect that I'm being mindful of? Because typically after I'm mindful of something that I hadn't been mindful of before after all of those affects clear up the issue tends to be much less than before.

Well cheating means breaking the rules so if monogamy is expected and one word to stray outside of that dishonestly that would be included. If the relationships open then those are the rules and no one's cheating.

As the Buddha defined it for a lay person there's a couple definitions. First is not to cheat on your partner. Second is not to have sex with anyone under the protection of their parents which I guess these days would be translated as don't have sex with minors. Non-consensual sex would not be allowed either.

Well that's a pretty big detail to leave out of the book don't you think?

Yes very good explanation! I feel like in the West when I mention Buddhism the only thing that most people think of is meditation.

The pacifism versus self-defense moral dilemma has been one that I've often wrestled with.

On the topic of morality one thing I find interesting is when I tell people I'm Buddhist they always bring up meditation for the most part and yes that's definitely part of Buddhism but on the other hand there are some suitas like the one I read yesterday the Sallekha Sutta suggest that the main progress is to be found in morality as opposed to meditation. To me that's really interesting because it's so different than how Buddhism is perceived in the West.

I think the timing of this post is very interesting because just yesterday I was reading Sallekha Sutta. To summarize this sutta basically the Buddha says that the way to make progress in cultivating the mind is not through meditation but it's through moral precepts.

Sure. It turned me into a sex obsessed maniac LOL.

Yes the 10 precepts are a further step up from the eight precepts.

I feel like this question is a bit vague to give a specific answer to. And most hypotheticals like that I would say it's a case-by-case basis. It's also important to remember that in Buddhism the morality is training precepts as opposed to commandments. A commandment is basically like saying how dare you break this rule you'll be doomed and it connotates a lot of judgment. A training precept is more like you know this would be a good idea to do this in your life will go better if you do. There's definitely a difference in tone.