beoman

Thanks for the reply! not directly related to your comment, but why are only 6 senses mentioned? Along with phrases such as "seeing, there is no seer". What about phenomenon that we can't directly perceive, like x-rays, radio waves, etc? Are there ever insights about that part of the universe for which we haven't developed sense organs to sense?

thank you for the links! i'll try reading that version as well. do you know what the "K2, L1, M1, N1, O1" numbers mean at the top? just curious, that was in my commentary too. also where did you get your name from? it's interesting =P. mine just sounded funny to me. "beo" is an onomatopoeia I made up for a strange echoing noise.

I don't think I read that part. I read part of Volume 1, then skipped to this part. I will go back and read it =).

where a Mayfly lands... there it stays for a moment and lifts off again

How exactly does one breath w/ the tan t'ien? Does that mean that physically, the tan t'ien area of my body should be expanding and contracting when I breathe in and out, respectively? I understand the difference between breathing with your chest and breathing with your abdomen. I used to move my whole chest when i breathe, but now when i breathe, my chest stays still and my upper abdomen moves. i'm not sure if I do it entirely correctly, though. I heard that the body gets much more oxygen this way. however, i feel i can take much deeper breaths if i allow my chest to move as well. the way it is now, if i breathe in deeply using my abdomen, i feel a hardness in my solar plexus, and if i insist on breathing more deepy my chest starts to hurt too. this is why I think i'm breathing w/ my solar plexus at the moment, as i clearly feel that part of my body. i can't clearly feel my tan t'ien when i breathe at all, though. any tips/suggestions/comments? does breathing w/ the tan t'ien just mean focusing on that area mentally and then breathing normally? EDIT: I can get my lower abdomen to expand on an inhalation if i really tense my abs when breathing, but this doesnt seem too natural. It also seems strange that lower abdomen would expand considering the lungs stop at your ribcage

Ahh thanks for this clarification. That makes sense, both logically and anatomically. I read in this book, T'ai Chi Qi and Jin, ( http://www.ebook3000.com/T-ai-CHI-QI-and-Jin--Ultimate-Guide-for-Developing-Internal-and-Intrinsic-Energies_80004.html ) that it was only useful to try reverse breathing once you got results with natural breathing?

Hmm interesting. if you do it with the movements, would you find it useful to also do the sitting with the mind one? i'm curious because i skimmed through this book, you can find it here: http://www.ebook3000.com/T-ai-CHI-QI-and-Jin--Ultimate-Guide-for-Developing-Internal-and-Intrinsic-Energies_80004.html . the book mentions that you should do sitting chi kung as well as all the forms. though i could see why doing it only sitting would not lead to best results. have you read the book before? maybe you'll find it interesting. i'm curious what your opinions on it are.

I tried it last night while sitting in (what I think is) half lots, and I noticed that my sides definitely expanded and contracted with my breath. My back also expands and contracts slightly. my upper abdomen moves a lot, and actually the sides and back around the upper abdomen are the ones that are moving. my lower abdomen also moves a good amount, but the majority of the motion is around the upper abdomen. i also find this easier while lying down than while sitting, and it's very hard to do while standing. if i try it while standing i usually get short of breath quite quickly.

Ah thanks for this clarification. I was definitely making these mistakes, thinking that things come from emptiness and go back to it.

Is the MCO that detrimental? How come? I tried doing it a few times.. it was even in a Tai Chi Chuan book I read, although they called it After Heaven Breathing and it was a bit different than that Spring Forest QiGong exercise (the small universe meditation). should i stop doin it?

How come? doesn't tai chi have a large chi kung aspect? (I'm assuming chi kung = qi gong)

I think I probably meant "breath into the tan tien". thanks for the comments about the diaphragm and the role of the chest in breathing, that makes a lot of sense to me. I also think I get the point of the exercise now - to have increased awareness of that area. i'm still not sure whether i should forcibly contract my muscles when doing it, but perhaps i'll try it both ways and see what I feel is best. I did at some point recently distinctly feel like there was a ball in that area.. maybe i should work on getting that feeling back! i also remember it being very easy to visualize a ball and feel something about 6 years ago when I was 15.. maybe it was something else, or maybe it was easier to do these energy exercises then. i hadn't heard about qigong or meditation or anything related w/ chi by that point, though, so i didn't try practicing

so i shouldn't attempt MCO at all until i can get a clear feeling of qi in my dantian?

Yep that's the one. What's up w/ that? I sometimes heard that the Buddha divided his teachings into those for his monks and those for the laypeople, and when saying things to the laypeople he often said things that weren't strictly true (like to scare people into doing good deeds, he'd say that they would suffer in future lives if they did bad deeds in this one). is this maybe an instance of that, just to get us to preserve the sutra because he found it important? also him finding something important.. wouldn't that be an attachment? =P

Maybe you are agreeing with each other, but one is calling it "No Self" and another, "True Self". The way you describe it sounds similar. By "True Self" do you mean that this self pervades the whole universe and is in fact the universe in a sense? From what I understand, Buddhists would say the same about emptiness/void/form. and that ends up being the same thing - if there is nothing at all, it's indistinguishable from there being everything altogether. there's no difference if it's all the same. well I'm probably just babbling, i'm not very familiar with these things.

Ah thank you for the link. I did think of enlightenment as a 'one and final' thing, due to many descriptions of it being like "it's as if you remember something so basic it's blatantly obvious, yet you didn't see it before", or likened it to waking up ("it's as sudden as if you were sleeping and now you're awake"). This stuff is pretty confusing sometimes. I'm not quite sure how to go about it. there are so many different views and theories with lots in common, lots not in common, a lot of admonishments not to study the wrong way. even just within Buddhism it's confusing. first I hear that the core is to remove all attachments and you'll attain nirvana. i hear there is no self. then I see sutras where I hear ridiculous sounding things like "if you recite even one word of this sutra, your merit will be greater than if you donated mounds upon mounds of gold and you will have good fortune for the next 500 lifetimes". then even though there is no soul they talk about rebirth (although i've started understanding that one, and the current thread on the topic did help too). and it's hard to reconcile that w/ the practice of just meditating. and then daily life gets in the way =P. hmm who knows? ill keep trying things. hopefully ill find a teacher at some point who will guide me.

What is self-realization exactly? Is it enlightenment / reaching nirvana as the Buddhists describe it? Is it realizing non-duality ? Something else? Are these all the same thing?

From what I understand, though, Buddhists believe that karma is also influenced by the present moment. Meaning that we can still affect our karma by the actions we take. So how does that fit in to the idea that every event is perfect and predictable ahead of time, given that some form of "free will" seems to be taking place?

Sometimes, after I meditate for ~15 minutes, when I lie down and close my eyes I see pretty high frequency white flickering light. It flickers maybe 3-4 times/second. It's not very intensely bright, but definitely noticeable. Does anyone experience this / know what it is? This has happened both when I meditated in Burmese and in Half-Lotus. I wasn't doing any qigong exercises or anything like that, but was just sitting (either that or counting breaths).

I sometimes get strange feelings in my head. I'm not sure what it is. it feels like some kind of energy whose movements I can kind of control, but not very well. when it intensifies, i feel like parts of my head become very stiff. this can happen to the whole head, just the top of the head, my jaw, my cheeks - i get a feeling of stiffness, something like being bound with iron. This happens at different points. When I'm doing Qigong small universe or after heaven breathing or things like that, and I focus on the head, I get this feeling, and it intensifies each time I imagine the qi flowing through the head. it also happened when i was just sitting in a bus on the way home. i don't know much about Qi yet, but thought it might have to do with that. i tried putting it in various places, thinking that might help. like i tried moving it to the tip of my nose, or to my third eye, and focusing it there. it usually doesn't help - even if i move it there, it spreads apart soon after. i tried imagining it as a straight line from my head to my neck and to the rest of my body, but i couldn't put it along that line - it kind of went from my forehead, went left to avoid my nose, and then back to the center, going through my left eye instead. i'm not sure what to do with it. it's not particularly pleasant. I kind of feel like I should be having a headache, but instead I feel the stiffness. (It is not as unpleasant as a headache). It seems like if it went on long enough it would eventually give me a headache. The only thing I can do is stop focusing and go about my day, and eventually it goes away. But, from doing the Qigong exercises anyway, it seems ideally I would move the energy down to the rest of my body and have it flow freely? If that's the right idea, what exercises can I do to be able to do this? should I just keep visualizing it going downwards and as I improve I'll be successful? Note that I almost never feel anything in the Lower Tan-T'ien, where it seems the focus should be. the feelings are centered around my head. As an aside this has also happened when I've smoked weed, but much more intensely. at times I felt an extreme rotating motion as if my whole head was spinning. not sure if it's related, but it felt similar. maybe mis-aligned Qi flow? it seems smoking would throw it more out of wack.

Reading the book, I dont think I went through the 1st 3 nanas..

note this happened after the strobing effect. (actually just yesterday). the strobing effect was from a few days ago, and a few weeks before that

hmm i'll take a look at the A&P thing. i don't think it was that, though, because really the only out of the ordinary thing was the strobing lights. and they're not particularly bright. Bliss - maybe. i had moments when I felt very good and felt i could see things very clearly =). But that also happened before, without the lights. lucid dreams i also have once in a while, but like my regular dreams, they're not very vivid, and i can barely control anything. next time it happens i'll try thinking of it as chi and as sub-moments and see if i can gain any insight that way.