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Basic but effectual mudra tutorial for anyone starting out to learn the fundamentals.

"Opinion is the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world." ~ Bill Bullard

polishing his knife this dragon-slaying surgeon cuts without humour....

there is no brass ring but the gears are working fine just a bit rusty...

Whats essential is knowing that elaborations are mere mental constructs of habit peculiar to the individual. Mental constructs are those things we think we know, like how we think we know a tree, and therefore, also how knowing ends. To know that the word is separate from the actual thing, as you mentioned, is already considered 'higher knowledge'. Most people dont care to exercise such discernments. They prefer the easy route. The familiar one. They tend to be fixated by thoughts of permanence and unchanging reality. Hence, a tree's a tree's a tree.... We all know how spiritually defeating that can be, But we also know not a whole lot of people have affinity with spirit, And so they continue to call a tree they see in the winter... a tree... in spring, a tree.... in summer, a tree.... in autumn, tree. Till they die, a tree will never be anything but. And this is how potential dies. How freedom dies. How, eventually, the world dies. But everyone, when asked, wants to be happy. To have no suffering. To be without strife. How strange and wonderful, the mind.

just to let some in for sure some will bend backwards birthing a turncoat...

I think he did well to say what he said to a civil audience, and an American audience at that, who could have reacted in much the same way as you have. I didn't see anything shitful or dismissive about asserting the point about the strength of tradition. After all, its not like the US is currently some paragon of virtue to be lauded over as the current trajectory the US is on can hardly be called 'inspiring'. One cannot be choosy about the importance of experience and tradition. I would personally have taken your subsequent narrative more seriously had you opted to exclude the opening dramatics, but to each his own, I guess. I should not have strayed off topic, so apologies to the OP.

into this moment blares Hotel California so much rain outside....

~ Paramito Ladakh ~ The illusion of "self" is established on the basis of the five skandhas, and thus it possesses no intrinsic reality of its own. We may be entertained by the illusion for a while, but eventually we will be left disappointed, because there is an obvious discrepancy between the illusion and reality itself.

to shed holy light deep within Hades' belly tickle him silly....

Mao's (4th) wife, Jiang Qing, comes to mind What little I know of her history hints at being some such individual. Her famous words, "There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts."

Interesting indeed. Curiously, Im wondering if the move to empower women was intentional, or a somewhat perverted outcome coinciding with his mass culling of landlords (called Classicide), which must have meant huge numbers of suddenly husbandless, bereft women who choicelessly had to seek provenance somewhere, and Mao conveniently took on the "provider" role, on his own terms, naturally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_of_landlords_under_Mao_Zedong

The idea is not just about becoming aware of faults, but to investigate why the default response is usually one of attaching an "I" to them, as in, "I am so damn angry" vs "There is anger", or "I'm thirsty" vs "There is thirst". Much can be said about the usefulness of being mindful of such patterns of association and identification with arising feelings, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, and so on.

~ Paramito Ladakh ~ Of course the Dharma can be confrontational...how else could it challenge and cut through the habitual flow of afflictive emotions.

They may have shared a similar vision in some respect, but Mao's ideology was pretty much influenced by what he thought was lacking in traditional communist thought. It was so unique the term Maoism was coined to give it identity, and from which came the infamous Little Red Book.

Elaborating on the point made: “Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

such total cutups straddling donkeys to the fair, dreaming of dragons...

Anyone interested in mudra instructional vids and other Buddhist resources can check out three-vajra.com

@Nungali The dark tide of oppressive totalitarianism is slowly but surely gathering a swell. Australia is not without her own problems, if the words of my buddies there are anything to go by. They relate often the challenges they encounter daily as immigrants, but after a while, they learn how to pace themselves and not get overwhelmed. Not sure how accurate it is, but they say its gradually getting better, they feel more at ease, racism on the wane, discrimination not as rife.... hopefully its true, and not simply some idealistic wish they harbour and then imagining to be true.

Im just not ready to accept the very real potential threat of AI technology in the grand scheme. Imo, its inevitable. May not be apparent now, but the ominous clouds can be seen gathering in the horizon.

Maybe its the illusion of goodness that keeps inflating the bubble, making it bigger, but not necessarily stronger. This in turn leads to a weakening of the foundations.

America's fundamental misunderstanding of China today ~ interview with Kishore Mahbubani (A key politician/statesman that helped push the meteoric rise of Singapore, at one time touted by Huff Post as "the most successful city" in the world). "What makes you think a society with a 240 year history knows whats good for a society that has a 2400 year history?" ~ K. M. Link to Huff Post article https://www.huffpost.com/entry/singapore-world-successful-society_b_7934988?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACJknj8ls9oKM0tzXj5QWaAwgj6VGxW4MrB5iVwtsYFzf0dfrZurldXJM_GTjoP3d7OVUv16cRmMaExFXhjzxMEBNd8VQ_Y-yHJ2Xg1pVzr3_aVfMQaZzuRZTJ8WFV55Ek535XnqlqPFpLWr-apZj0H3PH0wR_hYNw4x170eZm7Y Additional reads on Singapore's rise against the odds, from abject obscurity in 1965 when it gained independence from Malaysia to be the economic, financial and social powerhouse it is today. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-32028693 http://ibe-infocus.org/articles/singapore-unravelling-success-factors/ Its always interesting to contrast Singapore's success story, practically just a red dot on the map, with zero natural resources to rely on, and Malaysia, its one-time twin, a country with enormous natural resources (rubber, tin, palm oil, agriculture, etc.) and yet today, Malaysia's underperformance is stark comparatively. There's a rather sad but true 'joke' among some that Malaysia's lack of real progress despite its massive edge over its puny neighbour in terms of potential, is the very blueprint for Singapore's success. All they had to do was to be smart in avoiding the pitfalls in the policy decisions made by Malaysia

Master Sayadaw is drawing attention to the purpose and usefulness of investigating what he calls the true nature of phenomena, including the mind that observes the phenomenal world. He claims that everything is in constant flux, varying only in terms of gross or subtle states of manifestation and dissolution. If it has been determined that indeed all things are in a state of flux, how then should one relate the ideas we have of a self to that determination? The master then asks if establishing a correct understanding is the way to loosen the grip of reflexive habits where tendencies to impute an "I" onto things observed happen with a steady frequency. In the teachings that clarify what is termed as The Chain of Interdependent Origination, one will be informed that this tendency to associate "mine-ness" is quite stubborn, and it is also the root of ignorance that keeps recycling because "mine-ness" is effectively a flawed basis with which most use as an approximation to inform their relationship with the external world. Whether or not it is actually flawed, as claimed, is where meditation (comprising the combined effort of Vipassana and Shamatha) enters the practice and hopefully clarifies the investigation. Such an undertaking is the precursor to the realization of Sunyata, and the realization of Sunyata paves the way for the dissolution of the first link in the chain that binds one to the cyclical wheel of existence (aka suffering aka samsara). late edit: The Aggregates explained https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Five_skandhas

Something to that effect. This may soon be visible again if the situation in Hong Kong gets any crazier.

~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche ~ Meditators' Wind Imbalance (Lung) https://www.meditatorswindimbalance.org/advice-page/advice-on-the-path-tsoknyi-rinpoche/ "Its very important to do ngondro, lojong practice, and the generation of compassion and bodhicitta. If a Dzogchen practitioner practices like this, I have no worries for the person. If a student doesn't practice lojong and bodhicitta and only practices a dry kind of Dzogchen, this is not so good. Dzogchen needs to be juicy. But without an understanding of emptiness, Dzogchen is still dry, and liberation will be difficult."