Sunya

yep. good advice. but, these two herbs are safe for everyone with no negative side effects.

today is Guru Padmasambhava Day [or rather its maybe tomorrow but starts tonight when the moon rises]. one of the most important days of the year for Tibetans, especially those in the Nyingma and Dzogchen lineage. Guru Padmasambhava brought Buddhism and Tantra to Tibet and was a great Master. this day doesn't just celebrate the historical occasion, it's more about the astrological alignment and this day having special energetic associations. I don't know how it works I need to learn more about Tibetan astrology. but Chogyal Namkhai Norbu gives his Dzogchen transmission every year on this day. i'm fortunate enough to be able to participate tonight.

ask on the AYP forum..

well so far i've been taking agar 35 for the past 3 days. I take it at night, and it knocks me out, and makes me really tired the next day.. quite groggy. very relaxed but I dont like the grogginess. Someone that I spoke with who tried it said he took it for 3 weeks and the first couple days he was groggy then felt 'blah' then after about a week he balanced out and felt great. he thinks the first days its balancing you out and makes you feel tired. I guess i'll have to keep holding on hoping this goes away i've also felt sore throats and have been sneezing, so maybe its bringing to the surface latent sicknesses oh im going i'm going at 9 for the explanation class beforehand. Dzogchen land here I come!

i suggest you read more AYP Lessons its obvious you haven't at all lol, since the 2nd main practice of AYP is Spinal Breathing is exactly "clearing channels or moving chi around" http://www.aypsite.org/MainDirectory.html and you know they have a forum on that site, right?

Alaya Vijnana is mentioned in the Pali suttas, it just wasn't elucidated as it was later by Asanga. Walpola Rahula who write the famous, and amazing, book What the Buddha Taught is an excellent Pali scholar, and he studied this and basically asserts that there aren't much differences between Theravada and Mahayana, just semantics and emphasization. "According to Walpola Rahula, all the elements of the Yogacara storehouse-consciousness are already found in the Pali Canon.[3] He writes that the three layers of the mind (citta, manas, and vijnana) as presented by Asanga are also used in the Pali Canon: "Thus we can see that Vijnana represents the simple reaction or response of the sense organs when they come in contact with external objects. This is the uppermost or superficial aspect or layer of the Vijnanaskanda. Manas represents the aspect of its mental functioning, thinking, reasoning, conceiving ideas, etc. Citta which is here called Alayavijnana, represents the deepest, finest and subtlest aspect or layer of the Aggregate of consciousness. It contains all the traces or impressions of the past actions and all good and bad future possibilities." an article about Alaya in the Pali cannon - http://www.purifymind.com/StoreConsciousness.htm It is this alaya Vijnana or citta that is considered by men as their "Soul', 'Self', 'Ego' or 'Atman'. It should be remembered as a concrete example, that Sati, one of the Buddha's disciples, took vinnan (vijnana) in this sense and that the Buddha reprimanded him for this wrong view. Citta or Mind (Tibetan: Sems) is completely formless when experienced in deep meditation or lucid deep sleep, there is no sense of duality. and the spaciousness is incredible. very space-like. and it does truly feel like you're one with everything. But. according to Buddha, and the countless enlightened masters of the many lineages of the Dharma, that is the wrong interpretation. as the article above states, "The attainment of Nirvana is achieved by 'the revolution of alaya Vijnana' which is called asrayaparavrtti. The same idea is conveyed by the expression alayasamugghata - 'uprooting of alaya' - which is used in the Pali Canon as a synonym for Nirvana. Here it should be remembered, too, that analaya, 'no-alaya', is another synonym for Nirvana." this is related to Nirvana meaning cessation, blown out, like a candle. this is related. this does not mean simply clearing away all thoughts and resting in Citta, this means blowing out the candle of attachment to Citta. Claiming pure luminous awareness to be the True and Ultimate Self is grasping and attachment.

not the only way, just the way to realizing emptiness. i'm tired of repeating myself and if you haven't yet understood how emptiness does not equal objectless consciousness or samadhi or Brahman or whatever, then you don't have the karma to understand it, so be it. it really would be fruitful for you to drop your baggage and actually study Buddhist thought. you're very flip floppy, first you say the goal is the same and then you say Buddhists are wrong about everything, they misinterpret everything. so make up your mind, do some studying. You're going to teach what Nagarjuna and Buddha really meant now? maybe you should write a book. this is interesting! the Anatta that Buddha talked about says that there is no Self beyond the 5 skhandas. nothing whatsoever that can be identified with. so how then, can you sit there, identifiying with Atman, and say that Anatta points to the same insight? There is NO Absolute Self in Buddhism. you sit there and say 'beyond concepts and percepts' and then you say 'Absolute Self', and then you say 'Atman' which MEANS Self. you reek of concepts and you worship non-conceptuality? what a confusing mannerism you have.

Umm,, yes. they disagree with you. are the quotes provided for you not enough? maybe they were misquoted and you met the individuals personally and they whispered in your ear the New Age fable you hold so dearly to? Shunyata is not pure non-conceptual consciousness. nor is Shunyata self-existent or self-aware. Non-dual awareness is reached by Buddhists but that is not the goal of Buddhism nor is it the same as the insight of Emptiness. you say that your goal is non-conceptual but then you are still stuck in concepts such as consciousness, self existent, self aware, self-illuminated. No Buddhist will ever describe Shunyata this way, because the two fingers are pointing at completely different moons. but why do you still hold so dearly that its the same? because of an idea that you hold very strongly to. this idea is that a non-conceptual reality exists and all one has to do is go beyond intellectualism and access that reality. That is an idea, that isn't truth. Buddhism will never agree with you about that idea. as stated to you 100 times before, right view is necessary in Buddhism to truly reach insight beyond concepts. Right view is not a conceptual framework but a conceptual framework dissolver.

ah, Dwai. again you show off your true colors, pretending you have a deeper understanding of Buddhism than Buddhists. pretending you understand Buddhism better than Buddhism, Nagarjuna, the Dalai Lama, and many other Masters who throughout the ages have understood the deepest insights. its really amazing what kind of bullshit the ego will concoct to justify its ridiculous habits. yes it is you who has the deeper understanding, yet you can't communicate it. you can't explain it. all you can do is brag about your family lineage and attack people and say the same things over and over again which are constantly pointed out to you to not be true. Keep clinging, tiger. you haven't said anything.

whats with the sarcasm? we're just having a discussion here that you started.

non-dual awareness is not unique to Buddhism. Hindus got it (Vedanta and Kashmir Shivaism, though the latter I think is clearer), Sufis got it, early Christians, Jewish Qabbalists, Taoists, probably some Shamans as well. But its the interpretation of that experience and seeing that pure awareness as empty of essence, no self-nature, and interdependent with phenomena that sets Buddhism apart and thats why its the Middle Way. Buddhists do not take that experience of non-dual awareness and worship it, call it God, and say everyone is One with it. Taoists seem much clearer than other traditions about this, but Buddhism and Taoism very heavily mingled. I don't know what the original Taoists had to say.

after weeks of trying to explain to you how Shunyata could not possibly be pointing to the same realization as Brahman, you still cling hopelessly to your fixed ideas. I hope they help you sleep better at night

I just installed windows 7. I got the newest version that was sent to manufacturers (its basically the final retail version, don't tell anyone. .. i'm just...testing it..) it rocks. here's why first off my laptop fan wasn't working too well for the past couple months in XP. and 2 days ago it just shut off and stopped working. I thought the fan was just dying so I was worrying about getting a new one, and replacing it.. which would be such a pain with this laptop. I decide to install Win 7 anyway and the laptop fan works perfectly and my system runs much cooler! strange... this is what windows Vista shoulda been. its not that different than Vista, but there are many new features. it looks really great, is super fast, really stable.. has excellent compatibility so basically any program should work. the task bar is completely different. its kind of like a dock and a taskbar in one, you can attach icons there. and the backgrounds that come with the OS are really cool! im really happy with it. boots up really fast, shuts down really fast, the new windows media player is really good, im sure the new internet explorer isn't bad but I just can't stand IE and use Firefox. and Win 7 is great for that since it allows you to completely remove internet explorer from the system. networking is a breeze...installation was super quick and easy.. what else what else.. hmm... I attached a screenshot so you guys can see what its like.. hovering over the taskbar icons shows a preview, and thats what im doing, so you can see a preview of the browser which is minimized... trying to upload some more screenshots

it came with windows 7 it comes with many cool backgrounds Marble, heres an article about how windows 7 improves upon vista http://hubpages.com/hub/4-major-difference...a-and-windows-7 when it comes down to it though, an OS is an OS. and I'd never pay 200$ or however much it costs. if there was no way to pirate windows I'd just stick to Ubuntu which is free. I used it for a while but prefer the new windows. if you don't mind pirating, i think windows 7 is great, or if you have money to blow (i'm a broke college senior). if you don't want to pirate, and don't have money, i think Ubuntu is worth a look.

what is 'real' ? and what is 'true' ? for the universe to be not real, there has to be something that is real. real and not real are diametrically opposed ideas. Buddhism does not say that the universe is not real. Buddhism says that the universe is made up of phenomena, all of these phenomena are interdependent and impermanent. the nature of phenomena is beyond 'real' or 'not real', but in your experience the universe appears real. when, in actuality, whatever you experience is conditioned based on past experiences, ideas, conceptions, etc. the mind is very powerful. so what you actually experience is like an illusion. to say that everything IS an illusion would deny the relative experience of the deluded observer. we cannot do that. your experience is real, nobody can deny your experience, but since you are experiencing the world with impure vision, it isn't true. so there is truth in buddhism and truth is seeing the universe free of conceptions. dharma is also truth and these are the ways to get to pure vision.

http://www.inch.com/~shebar/gold/gold1.htm interview with an anthropologist who did years of research and lived with Navajos and Tibetans, he talks about the relatedness of the two cultures and their spiritual beliefs

can a dream character not realize his utterly illusory-like state of being?

Serene, I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers. i'm still unsure of all this as well. i'm just trying to give you another perspective. if you're truly curious about the Buddhist position and want to speak to someone who actually knows a thing or two, i'm sure there are qualified Buddhist masters in your area. about the girl...well, it happened and now she has to move on. she suffered immensely and thats really tragic. believing in karma does not mean that you think she deserved it. although some people do feel this way. and this is wrong view. none of us deserve to suffer, ignorance is just the state that we are in. no God put us here in this state. we are all, except for a few, completely ignorant. and we will continue to be until we realize the true nature of things. we will all, and we have since beginningless time, experienced the ups and downs of samsara. the ups are wonderful, and the downs are terrible. was it her karmic effect to suffer in that way? this is important to contemplate.. but I think whats more important is to contemplate that since beginningless time we have all experienced what she experienced, and much worse too. you are no different, you will suffer immensely in the future. it might be better to think about how this all relates to you. If you have suffered, do you think its possible that you caused it? how does the idea of 'past lives' sit with you? and if your situation is good right now... you have to wonder what you did in the past to cause this situation. you have an interest in all this, and a pretty sincere one it seems, do you think this interest came out of nowhere? spontaneously? I don't have meditative insight into my past lives, but I'm only 23 and have had a big interest in spirituality for a while, and ever since I was a kid I would always be very inquisitive and want answers. I could never settle for what most people believed in and I even questioned the existence of others as a child. Being a natural solipsist when you are 5 years old is a strange way to grow up. i'm not interested in what most people are interested in, and i've had a pretty normal upbringing and grew up next to friends who ended up getting jobs in finance and law while i'm heading towards a PhD in Buddhism (maybe). so how can I explain this interest? how can I explain my mannerisms and the choices I made? Is it just genes? I think its more complex than that and I can't definitively explain it. I won't until i gain true insight which is beyond concepts. so in the example of the girl who was tortured. her karma was to suffer because of a previous act where that mind-stream (in a past life, no doubt) caused suffering to another. but the conditions of her specific torture such as where it happened, how it happened, when it happened, etc were caused by different conditions than karma? and what about the person who tortured this girl? did they have a karmic connection?

since karma are mental patterns, yes it can rub off on you but not as a physical substance rubbing off on you haha.. more like, if someone is next to you and they have really negative energy. you can intuitively pick up on that and that can awaken some latent negative imprints in your psyche. but if you've purified those negativities already then no, the patterns are already gone. you will only feel compassion for that being because you will recognize his suffering lol yes. great example. but Jesus was pure. people like us... we have a long ways to go, and hanging out with the rejects will no doubt bring out some latent tendencies. this is an open discussion, anyone is free to participate you make a good point that karma is not separate from the individual. but... you can take this further, as I said above, if you can see that the individual is basically made up of karmic patterns, thats what the self is that we cling to so strongly.

fate has no opportunity for the individual to change the future because everything is already determined. there is no free will. karma, the future is entirely up to you, in your hands alone.

Karma is not fate. fate is that everything is determined already by a supreme being, and there is no free will, there is no choice. in Buddhism there is no supreme being writing your fate. you are the supreme being, well not the supreme being, but you do have the power to create your circumstances and your situation.. more or less. not in an individual egoic self, and this is the catch really since good 'karma' really is just acting in an unselfish non-dualistic manner. It's not that you do good acts and good things happen to you.. it's more like doing good acts with the intent that you are no more important than others leading to the insight that there is no 'you' separate from 'others', you and others are interdependent. so acting good towards others, not with the intent to 'gain' anything really, karma isn't something physical to be gained like money, but rather acting unselfishly for the sake of others sends out a wave of compassion and this wave comes back. why? because it interdependence. fate is one extreme, and unconditioned free will is the other extreme. karma lies in the middle.

that is not equivalent. lighten up

religions are all based on the experiences and insights of mystics and yogis.. some had deeper experiences than others... there is evidence of transmigration being taught in early christianity and by the essenes (i think), also its mentioned in Kabbalah, ancient Jewish mysticism. mostly every religion has some form of rebirth, though this doesn't mean that it's 'right'. karma is different in Buddhism than in Hinduism because Hinduism still posits a God and karma is just a facet of that God, while in Buddhism karma is just the way things are, a natural law like gravity. there are infinite amount of mind streams and these mind streams have infinite power but due to their ignorance they take the energy experienced through the 5 senses as separate from themselves, and acting in a dualistic manner is the cause of their suffering. I highly doubt that. it is very easy to ignore death while sitting safely in your home, being completely healthy and sipping on a cold beer. it is a completely different matter to be confronted with death head on. evenwith your relatives around you, they cannot help you. you are alone, and the body is about to stop functioning. you will experience real fear right then. and simply being 'open minded' will not lead you to experience a favorable rebirth, or to achieve liberation. like it isn't possible to achieve lucid dreaming simply by wishing it to happen once with no practice. right now this is your conscious mind talking, this completely shuts off upon death. and the deeper unconscious aspects of psyche are illuminated, since you haven't practice you have no control. So karma, which are just imprints on your mindstream, will carry you away like a gust of strong wind. you're on a forum of mysticism and you're still agnostic? don't you meditate?

Karma does mean action and it refers to the law of causality. theres no such thing as 'right or wrong' really. its more about, the intent behind the action and whether or not the intent was that of dualistic (selfish) or nondualistic (compassionate). having a dualistic intent creates an effect that leads to a dualistic cause.