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In the book The Stranger, Albert Camus tells of a man named Meursault, who is in prison for killing an Arabic man on a whim. In his cell, a few days before he is due for execution, Meursault was able to touch Life, and connect with reality for the first time. Lying flat on his back, he looked up, and, through a small skylight near the ceiling, he saw the blue sky for the first time in his life. How could a grown man see the blue sky for the first time? In fact, many people live like this, imprisoned by their hurt, anger, frustration, hopelessness, nonchalance... or coasting on the beliefs that happiness, peace and love awaits somewhere over yonder. Meursault had three days to live before being asked to pay his dues with his life. In that one moment of complete wakefulness, the blueness of the sky came alive for him, and he was able to touch it. For the first time, he saw that life is beyond whatever meaning a person can assign to it, and that to see life in its totality, one has to live each moment as it comes, deeply, with no thought of the past or the future. For Meursault, the last three days of his life was his life truly lived. Its like being in the world, fully alive, for just a few moments. (recalling something i read in one of Thich Nhat Hahn's books) I wish you, kind friend, many good moments in this precious existence - may you find the strength to use these moments to benefit others who need life but cannot have it. Inspire them, lend them hope, give them what you can, send your best wishes to the desolate, the terminally ill, victims of discrimination, go and offer help at your local retirement home, offer cheer to the homeless... while your heart is bleeding, tis the best opportunity for reaching out to others with arms outstretched, because your pain allows you to touch another's pain, and genuinely feel what suffering is. There is unspeakable goodness you can offer to others while your dark night is at its most brightest. After it ends, love and charity will never feel the same again. When you know what suffering is beyond mere words and thought, you will reawaken the will to bloom once again. Taizan Maeshumi Roshi once said, "Just live this life. It does not matter if it is a life of hell, or life of a hungry ghost, or life of an animal - it's okay. Just live the life you have - and see. As a matter of fact, no other way. Where you stand, where you are, that's where your life is, right there, no matter how joyful or how painful it is in that moment - there is life. That is what it is."

Eyes opened so wide listen to a heart unborn clean socks feels cleaner!

:wub:

Sound advice above. Great fan of all foods bitter. Best thing for ridding the blood of toxins. My favs are watercress and bitter melon. For cooling, i like to make clear soups with winter melon (available exclusively in Asian food marts, but if seeds can be bought, its an easy enough fruit to grow). Here is a handy soup recipe that combines winter melon with chinese red dates and goji berries: http://www.penangfaces.chanlilian.net/cheap-good-and-nutritious-chinese-soup/ Additional info: Bitter melon is claimed to contain compounds that are of great benefit to (type 2) diabetics. Related article here: http://diabetes.about.com/b/2008/03/26/can-bitter-melon-really-help-type-2-diabetes.htm

floating Bumble Bee stings sweet humming bird's bottom Nature's wonderment...

Going downhill is not to be despaired though... most awakened folks gather at the lowliest places where others despise and fear to trod. Its there that they can offer the greatest support to folks like me. They be like the wind beneath my wings, yes? I think lowly places are gems! Why? Two reasons - less competition, and fakes don't like hanging out there.

I tend to agree with Sartre. Its been said that at the epitome of self-consciousness stands a complete narcissist.

If you need a healing method that has been proven to address the condition, i'd suggest acupuncture. With organ malfunction, or ones that require tonifying, what good is it to ask which is a legit practice and which is not? That is simply fixating on a mistaken course of action, as far as i can see. If its me, i would look to cure the malady with an already proven system. I would also look into dietary patterns before taking the matter any further. Most times a combination of stress and lack of proper diet would be the simple causes. If you're into contemplative practices, that would address the stress part. If its the innermost energy body where the heat is stagnated, then i think any help given here, even if its the right one, should not be self-administered. You would be best served to seek in-person professional guidance if this is the case. Traditionally, Sound healing is useful for tuning the innermost energy body blockages, although currently it appears to be much sought after as a general purpose feel-good/stress busting service incorporated in most alternative therapeutic/massage centers. Here is a TCM/Acupuncture guide - http://www.yinyanghouse.com/theory/chinese/liver_meridian_disharmonies All the best!

great video series on Youtube on Tibetan sound healing by Tenzin Wangyal - introduction here:

I am so happy you have decided to re-visit the forum, Strawdog. You bring with you a sense of peaceful presence. Its an admirable quality.

I think space is empty - yet full of potentiality. Even particles and energy move within space. Without space nothing can connect - no thing will birth. I also think not all is one. Only space is one. Space is that which permits the cause to rise. Cause and effect in turn allows the manifestation of diversity. Its hard to imagine the diverse forms as all one. That is confusing the matter. Diversity is many. Space is one. From one the many arise in relative forms, again, thru cause and effect. When the energy of effects run their course, the relative many again return to one. Everything is not connected to everything else while existing in diversity, experienced by the senses. If indeed all is one, how can experience arise?

tears in the ocean storm brewing in a tea cup you are most gracious... you are most gracious gentleman and a scholar open heart and mind... open heart and mind empty pockets each pay day nothing to cling to...

Nah... me thinks we need more focus to stay meditated. (sorry M!)

specious reasons i know not the way of Dao and Dao knows me not... ...and Dao knows me not scrambled eggs with beans on toast throw Dao to the wind...

...ecstatically blissful and wet she tiptoed amongst the greenest bamboo grove; save for the whispers of old leaves and an old cricket's chirp the only other harmony she discerned was the faintest 'plip...plip...plip' as droplets of the softest rain trickled down a million hollow bamboos.

From (the real) Tulku Urgyen: "Superficial knowledge of metaphysical words and their meaning cannot prevent your mind being clouded over by the disturbing emotions of conceit and jealousy, competitiveness and ill will. A person in such a state is a practitioner in name only. Since the real purpose of the Dharma is to soften our rigid character, the benefit will have amounted to nothing. It is for this reason that we should unite View and conduct." The Buddha was extremely poor during the later part of His life. His only worthy possessions were his robe, a begging bowl, and a strainer for filtering water. A member on this forum has a great signature - it says, "Whatever you possess end up possessing you." Expect nothing. Just practice. Then you will never be disappointed. The world becomes your playground.

Not by a mile, VJ, but thank you for the kind words - much appreciated. I am only a lowly tea-maker on the bobbing raft in the vast ocean of samsara! I hope to serve everybody well, but i do realize not everyone likes tea. I will try to find some supporting info for you and will send on a PM when its compiled. No point putting them up here or starting a new thread on it as there wont be much interest anyway.

I'm afraid to say that the only disparity that exists is the one you are desperately attempting to create and make real, and the good news is that you are not alone. A big raft for this one. And i am the tea-maker on it okay? Seriously though, as one delves deeper, there are no discriminations whatsoever. Within every single so-called unsurpassed teachings, whether they be Dzogchen or Mahamudra or Madhyamika, there exists representations of all three Yanas. Ground - Hinayana / Path - Mahayana / Fruition - Vajrayana. All intricately linked and supports each other. If you want i can dig for evidence from Vajrayana lineage holders who can verify this.

Raft... Can be a great example. These old dead guys have given humanity 'rafts' to navigate the choppy seas. Being obsessed with the rafts, of which many of us are guilty of, isn't the same as being obsessed with the Raftmakers, eh? I dunno... merely reflecting on the red words i typed up earlier. I put them there as a raft for myself, a sort of precursor to something i wanted to contemplate upon. Now that contemplation has been effected, do i need to return again and again to stare at them red words? I'd be silly to do so... Yet at the same time, they do form the basis for contemplation, so they are not completely dismissed altogether. One could say these red words are empty, yet not empty in the same instance. Empty because they are already downstream, yet not fully empty because without them a stream (of thought) would not have manifested. As the Buddha says, With our thoughts we create our world. Not the world, but our very own personal world. Amazing that within this one earth-world there exists 6,775,235,700 other worlds. I am flummoxed... so many old, dead people that came before this existence, and the existence before that. Man, i gotta go take a nap. Brain's buzzin'.

spirit awakens breakfasting on oranges i wiggle my toes...

Obsession with old, dead guys......

:) so nice.... you are blessed, Michael.

Did i say that? I said Jalus is not an attainment. Just as calm-abiding or contentment is not an attainment. These are fruitions or effects of a spiritual life well lived. One simply keeps practicing and practicing until one day the perception of dualistic forms as separate from one's mind dissolves. How pure the body becomes is directly related to how far one reaches in stabilizing the Non-dual view of Great Equanimity, and most importantly, if this great view can be maintained at death. One can practice in non-dual awareness all of one's life, or cultivate all the siddhis in one life, but if at the point of death, there arises an ounce of doubt, or fear of loss, or that one has not done enough, or regret for losing all the siddhis gained, these become the very mindstates that will hamper the ultimate transference (phowa), which is the basis for Jalus to take place. I agree that simply reading books cannot lead to any real realizations. Yet its foolish to ignore the words of the great adepts who have been there done that. And one of the greatest adepts of all, Longchenpa, has this advice for you: "We should cast aside all childish games that fetter and exhaust the body, speech and mind; and stretching out in inconceivable non-action, in the unstructured matrix, the actuality of emptiness,where the natural perfection of reality lies, we ought to gaze at the uncontrived sameness of every experience, all conditioning and ambition resolved with finality." "Pure mind is like the empty sky, without memory, supreme meditation; it is our own nature, unstirring, uncontrived, and wherever that abides is the superior mind, one in buddhahood without any sign, one in View free of limiting elaboration, one in meditation free of limiting ideation, one in conduct free of limiting endeavor, and one in fruition free of limiting attainment. Vast! Spacious! Released as it arises! With neither realization nor non-realization; experience consumate! No Mind! Open to infinity." "In the universal womb that is boundless space all forms of matter and energy occur as flux of the four elements, but all are empty forms, absent in reality: all phenomena, arising in pure mind, are like that. just as dream is a part of sleep, unreal in its arising, so all and everything is pure mind, never separated from it, and without substance or attribute. Experience is neither mind nor anything but mind; it is a vivid display of emptiness, like magical illusion, in the very moment inconceivable and unutterable. All experience arising in the mind, at its very inception, know it as all-empty!" Longchenpa speaks of ultimate freedom: "Freedom attends reality: free at the core, any effort is wasted; timelessly free, no release is needed; free in itself, no corrective is possible; directly free, released in the very seeing; completely free, pure in nature; constantly free, familiarization is redundant; and naturally free, freedom cannot be contrived. Yet 'freedom' is just a verbal convention, and who is 'realized' and who is not? how could anyone be 'liberated'? How could anyone be lost in samsara? Reality is free of all delimitation! Freedom is timeless, so constantly present; freedom is natural, so unconditional; freedom is direct, so pure vision obtains; freedom is unbounded, so no identity possible; freedom is unitary, so multiplicity is consumed. Conduct changes nothing - our lives are already free! Meditation achieves nothing - our minds are already free! The View realizes nothing - all dogma is freedom! Fruition demands nothing - we are already free as we are!" These words alone will take lifetimes to permeate the conditioned mind which yearns for spiritual awakening, yet if due to meritorious ripening of karma from previous moments or lifetimes, one's wisdom mind at once realizes the profundity and utter simplicity upon reading these words, what is left to do?

I disagree. Jalus is not an attainment in the normal sense. Individuals whose ultimate experience lead to the rainbow body arises due to being guided by a serene indifference to all things and by leading the simplest, non-harming life possible. There is nothing to do - in other words, there are no formulas or teachings that will guarantee this ultimate fruition of non-distractedness. Even leading the life of simplicity and non-harming is no assurance of jalus, but will present optimum conditions for its experience. In simplicity, needs are allowed to subside and gradually let go of altogether - in non-harming, one gains compassionate insight into the true nature of all things. The beginning of the experience of jalus is the insight and development stage of relative equanimity, leading to it culminating as a realization of the union of both relative and absolute equanimous views. In 'completion stage' equanimity, in the absolute sense, the tiniest distinguishing impulse to create even the subtlest separation between two things ceases and falls away - when this view becomes one's total experience without any distractions whatsoever, pervasively stable in sleep or awake, then the conditions are in place for jalus to ripen and bear fruit. When a master blesses a student with a peep into his or her own nature of mind, at that very point, the student gets a taste of the ultimate equalness of all things, realizing the fundamental sameness of a buddha's mind and one's own. This, however, is not a realization, because the taste has to be experientially developed and made to function on the relative level of daily existence. Its upon developing deeper and deeper stability in the first peep that realization begins to dawn. Any attempt to 'get' jalus is already self-defeating. 'Hope of gain' is a form of arrogance, in the Buddhist sense. If one's goal is to dissolve the body into rainbows at death, then it goes against the teachings to actually harbor any such desires at all. Jalus is the pinnacle of the dissolution of identification with the body. Who is left to attain anything? This is why in the stories of Tibet of yogis who leave in the rainbow bodies, most of these individuals live lowly lives - peasants, farmers, herders, that sort of people are the ones whom the learned teachers speak of when they talk about those who 'attain' jalus. On the surface its almost impossible to see how realized these simple folks are. So the development of siddhis/powers is definitely not in line with rainbow body fruition. Rainbow departures will always elude those who crave power. For further clarification, go read up some commentaries by Patrul Rinpoche (the secret Lama!!) and Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. The latter-named wrote a great book aptly titled "Rainbow Painting" which touches on this subject quite a bit.

Animals communicate their vulnerability all the time. We could learn to listen more, and learn more from listening. And they never complain about mistreatments. Why? Is it because they are dumb or they lack intelligence? Hardly. My dogs says more to me with one look than a person can with a thousand words. Its just that we are overly self-absorbed most of the time to pay attention to what these animals have to say. Even the wild ones communicate their nature all the time. They do not know how to pretend to be what they are not. The mambas, rattlers and cobras are deadly, they scream with their fangs that they wish not to be disturbed, yet fools get bitten all the time despite all the historical lessons; the box jellyfish are the deadliest creatures in the sea, and humans who doggedly hang around their grounds deserve to be stung. We have all been issued with enough insight to learn how to respect the animals, yet we have made a big mess, on a global scale, somehow. Are we the dumb ones? I think very often we are. That's why we seem to be the ones frequently found moaning and griping when things get a little rough. How different it would be if only we domesticated ourselves more instead of thinking we have done a great favor to the animal kingdom with our shrewd and wily ways. If we did, perhaps the world will indeed be a better place. My blood boils each time i think of how many animal species we have driven to extinction or to near extinction due to our need for progress and development. One of these days we will reap what we sow. Wake up world.. smell the raccoon poop before we get dunked too deep!