Astral Monk

Connecting the thumb and forefinger pads in the hamasaya mudra can give you a feeling of deepening the breath, as they connect the lung and large intestine channels keeping the breath in and internal circuit. Something one can do to close off the world partially and temporarily to get a moment of deepness and dissolve anxiety stimulated by external factors. 8)

Terrible, terrible. One of the causes of the excessive and purposeless waste of our civilization. One might say that humans themselves are planned obsolescences, due to our gentic program of aging and dieing to be replaced by new and hardier if not more docile stock. 8)

My feeling is that Taoism or its antecedents are the only true natural 'religion' of human beings, while later theist religions are alien impositions whose purpose is in part to divorce humanity from nature. 8)

Earth is a torus. There are no spheres in nature. 8)

Well Heraclitus had a point. A is A is not an ontological principle, merely an epistemological one. There is no real distinction between acorn and tree, only a seamless continuity. What is beef made of? What is grass made of? What are men made of? A deep analysis of these will reveal nothing--literally. To look deeply at grass is to see that it is made up of entirely non-grass substances; or, that there is no enduring 'thing' that 'is' grass outside of the circumscription of an act of discernment. The deeper we look into grass and cows and men the more they slip away into nothingness. The 'object' is actually a forced division and distinction from a manifold that cannot actually or factually be divided. 8)

thats gross. not saying its why I dont drink cow milk anymore, but I dont drink cows milk anymore..certainly not chocolate milk!!

Acting without acting...like a boss! 8)

We might say we see things as we are--since those things are not separate from our perception of them. To see 'things' as they 'really' are is only to see ourselves as we really are, whatever the highest, most fulfilled awakened awareness can reveal. So perhaps the clearest view of reality is actually up our own asses, lol. 8)

Some thoughts... There are no 'right' conclusions because there is no objective reality; there are only infinite subjectivities each defining a unique non-overlapping phenomenal manifold. We dont experience reality as an external relationship, we are reality. There are potentially unlimited perspectives that could define a phenomenal manifold, hence there are unlimited realities. Each subjectivity IS a reality, they dont exist IN a reality. oh no, not the old bent stick routine... What cheese is that? The cheese in A's mouth is not the cheese in B's mouth. So we have two entirely different cheeses and never an objective cheese remaining the 'same'. Not too mention that if neither A nor B existed there would be no cheese to be tasted. The cheese is inextricably tangled up with A and B's being as things that chomp on and critique appetizers. 8)

Interesting. The taiji form I practice has san cai as a philosophical foundation. We use a mudra with the forefinger and thumb pressed together and the other three fingers tight and erect making 'heaven, earth, and human in one formation'. These threads are great for bringing all these concepts into focus. Always interesting to discover how certain ideas appear and reappear until they finally start making sense! 8)

Sounds not so far off from our 3-D printers. Probably a true story. 8)

A micro black hole at the center of the energy body...the emptyness from which all forms flow. At the center form becomes formless and from the center formless arises form. 8)

Also, dont confuse this philosophizing about the concept of ownership for making proscriptions about how society works or should work. I havent gotten to the 'therefore <insert ethical proscription here>' yet and probably wont. I reckon a philosophy that rejects the concept of ownership might just as easily lead to anarchy as communism and maybe not either of those. 8)

'Ownership' is violent appropriation pure and simple. Oh it may not always result in actual violence where agents can come to mutually beneficial agreements, but the basic principle remains, forever unaltered. It is a claim by an agent that some thing external to themself is 'theirs' exclusively, which is quite clearly nonsense. Especially when you discover that there is no 'self' to which such a claim can be affixed--that said 'self' is just as empty an delusional as the claim it makes. Which is why 'ownership of self' is patently absurd. If the world is a series of processes then there is nothing but processes, each one flowing seamlessly into the next, with no primacy to any one--in fact it is impossible to isolate a 'one' except arbitrarily, which is, you guessed it, a kind of violence. Its like as if one could pluck a single drop of water from a great raging river, hold it up and declare 'THIS drop, THIS drop is THE key drop that moves the river'. Little does one guess that in plucking the drop to make such an assertion on is in fact creating the drop be separating it violently from the stream. 'Ownership' is just another fiction without any foundation in reality that we use to self-justify our actions. Its a kind of bootstrapping. Of course it is a form of violence because it cannot be supported without recourse to arms. We make make a claim to 'own' something but that means absoltely nothing when a bigger stronger person comes and takes it. And nature laughs it ass off at the empty claim. Sure we can agree to respect each others space, but thats just a practical navigation of social reality. We make those decisions to avoid getting beaten up and killed by bigger stronger agents. 'Violence' here refers to the exercise of a greater power over a lesser one. To say, for example, 'I own this land' means absolutely nothing unless one is willing to fight off others who want to make the same claim. And in terms of nature it means nothing at all. So what if I feel good about killing you and taking your land, crops, and livestock? Emotion is not a particularly solid basis for an ethical system, nor is it necessarily the root origin of value. No, not at all. The truth of the matter is that 'ownership' just like 'rights' comes to absolutely nothing without the threat of consequential enforcement by a superior power or agency. Its all a fiction of course, but we choose to adhere to it because it is practical. Not my points, not my argument, sorry. Besides, havent you heard--environmentalism and feminism are all the rage these days. 'Ownership' is one of the biggest problems of humanity and responsible for all that death and murder you speak of. Its quite clear that war and killing starts when two 'owners' desire each others 'property'. Ownership is nothing but a delusion propped up by the threat--real or implied--of violent retribution. It can only be thus because it is a made up fantasy drawn out by beings desparately clinging to existence in a harsh and uncaring universe. 8)

Do parents 'own' their children which they 'co-create'? To inquire after ownership is to ask 'what is MINE?' To ask what is mine is to ask 'what is ME?' To look deeply into ME is to see nothingness, to see no immutable center from which things flow and no grounds for any claim of appropriation. We only say 'this is mine and that is mine' because we collect it about ourselves and guard it against appropriation by others, not because there is any special metaphysical connection binding 'me' and 'these things'. It is force, not participation, that grounds the concept of ownership. Creators give birth. Owners appropriate. On the one hand we have a blossoming forth that adds to the diversity of nature. On the other a forceful segregation that arbitrarily divides nature. Again, if everything is a process, where is the primary process upon which all depends? 'Ownership' is a uniquely human problem. It goes beyond causality. Even if multiple processes produce a new process that new process stands on its own; or, we have to consider that it is not really separate from its causes--which implies that no thing is seaparate from anything else and the distinctions are arbitrary or at best convenient practical fictions. Ownership goes beyond mere factual reporting of cause and as such is a pretty haughty puffed up violent possesion attempting to connect one moment of a series to all subsequent moments while neglecting the fact that no moment is or can be primary. 8)

This doesnt follow unless there is an owner. If the world is processes then how can there be a stable non-processes point that also somehow is responsible for all processes? This is the problem of responsibility. It disappears into the stream of causality, and no point can be drawn out or held apart except arbitrarily. The idea of ownership requires a stable immutable Self that can make claims on things. But these things are always outside said Self, hence, no claim made upon them is ever valid. Claims are only the violent enforcement of will--the imposition of power over external circumstances and beings. And, once you strip away all those parts of the Self that are conditioned by external circumstances, you are left with literally nothing. Thus, even the idea of owning behaviours is an idea of violently imposing a will upon the phenomenal world. One can choose to take responsibilty, but this is a fraudulent self-imposed burden because the causal stream is one, and no segment can be abstracted and isolated. As Hume might say, we might want to do this anyway for social reasons even if it is a complete fantasy without solid ground. A wave moves a grain of sand. The wave does not own the sand, though its force was the proximate cause of the grain's motion. Are we waves or grains? Doesnt matter since both reduce to nothingness anyway! 8)

We define 'aliens' in terms of our current paradigms. Lately because of our modern idea of the cosmos, we tend to think about 'space travellers' because that reflects our most recent 'travels' in and around the world. In the past we explained these experiences with a more religious eye, and in the future it will certainly change. I dont think we are nearer the truth yet, if there is a 'truth'. The fact is that 'ufo' experiences have always been part of human experience, so whatever the root cause it is not something that will happen in the future as if aliens will one day find us or vice versa. They are here now and have been, maybe always. Knowing more about them will help us know about humanity. 8)

These things write themselves 8)

There are no 'rights' in the absence of social structure, just as there is no private language. A person could yell all day about hesh rights to no avail--nature doesnt hear or respond. The result is eat or be eaten, as usual. A 'right' is a social agreement, not a fact about existence of certain types of beings. It is attended by further agreed upon consequences for transgression, and a host of good faith assumptions about all parties involved. Meanwhile, the concept that one can own one's body or worse still--have a right to so own it (inplying that your ownership must be verifiable somehow), is absurd. We are our body--we do not merely employ it from time to time. And alone against the tide of Nature we can only live in and through it with no recourse to a greater power than these ten fingers and ten toes. There is no owner and nothing to own. 8)

This seems at best unverifiable and at worst fraudulent. 8)

mantras are meant to be uttered as opposed to passively listened to. OHM MANI PAD ME HUM is a wish fulfillment chant, so use it wisely. It does seem powerful just in terms of sound quality alone. I find anything connected to Guan Yin fairly soothing...activating that feminine energy 8)

Reminds me of the tale how great swordsman Mushashi defeated a superskilled opponent with an extra long sword (the drying pole) with an oar, which was slightly longer than that sword by smoking him in the noggin. Everything is a weapon. 8)

Sex is life. If any part of sex under any context is disgusting then all life is disgusting. And maybe it is...if you live in a rainbow body or something... 8)

Is that TCM or CCM...? Either way I think youre on your way to making a positive impact on the workd. 8)

Great thread. Chunyi Lin makes a lot of use of the healing sounds in his book 'Everyday Healing', where they are combined with massages of key points and other gentle exercises. This I see as a way to add value to, say, an accupoint maasage. Also, Im considering changing my name to Dragon Roargasm, cause that is awesome 8)