Jetsun

Even if you are not Buddhist it can help to take the Bodhisattva intention into whatever other practices you do, so before you do qigong or whatever other things you end up doing i find it helps practice a lot to start your practice by dedicating it to help all beings and then end by giving away all merit you may have accumulated. But I do agree if you want to stabilise any realisations you probably do need to become a monk or a least go on a number of long isolated retreats which is not practical for most modern people, most masters in Buddhism seem to have gone on long retreats at some point in their training.

I had not heard of Dolano, but she says she obtained her realisation through Gangaji in the Advaita tradition, maybe Osho was a necessary stepping stone like he may have been for many other people to prepare them to meet their real teachers.

Osho would hypnotise his followers constantly, often when I watched him I would fall aslesp, but thinking back now I think using hypnotism in that way is pretty manipulative. Some of the meditations he prescribed were good because they were usually ripped straight out of another working tradition but then he would confuse things and mix things up, for example his more famous dynamic meditations was a whole mix of Sufi, Buddhist, Fourth Way and primal therapy techniques all squashed together and unsurprisingly it didnt work very well. For a general introduction to many of these areas of thought Osho is excellent, he was incredibly well read in so many of the traditional esoteric traditions as well as modern psychology and he could link up their ideas and find their common threads better than almost anyone, just don't turn to him for your actual practice and development.

Osho and Krishnamuti were great thinkers and had wonderful intellects but I do not know of anyone they actually led to realisation, where are their accomplished students? I was into Osho for a time as his writings about so many things seems so right, but then I did his meditations and I found the common reaction was that they actually made peope more sick and angry rather than less, he had thousands of students at one time but I do not know of one who as emerged as a credible teacher of his ideas. Krishnamuti had a great mind but he was completely stuck in his intellect. I was reading Lama Yeshe recently and he was saying sometimes these guys who are stuck in their intellect would be instructed by real masters to go and receive dharma teaching from beggars who had never read a book, so I wouldn't confuse someone with a great intellect with having any spiritual achievement or teaching ability.

Why would you know that? The world seems pretty corrupt to me, most religions are corrupt, most governments are corrupt, capitalism in general is pretty corrupt and most peoples have been corrupted in one way or another to believe they are what they are not.

Freaky coincidence but I live in the same town as you

I wouldn't say I am that creative but I am quite sensitive, so I don't think the two necessarily go hand in hand, although maybe my creativity is just blocked at the moment. But for me so far my sensitivity has been a curse in my life as the world in general is so insensitive.

I think the mastery programme gives you a lot of information you can work at whenever you like and you can practice the steps you have learned from the previous lesson as much as you like before moving on as you get a lot of instruction manuals and dvd's etc you can study to make sure you are doing it right, although of course a teacher is better. It appeals to me because I like walking and I like being in nature, but I don't really like doing still or standing meditation in nature I prefer to be inside so would like something Taoist or spiritual I can do outside to connect with the land.

Do you know what texts say that? Other groups like the Essenes considered bread as the most holy food you could eat.

If you are into writing the one thing I can think of is that when I go to London I always go to Watkins bookshop which may well be one of the best esoteric bookshops in the world and they sometimes have events and talks by authors and they have a flyer section for esoteric stuff going on in London http://www.watkinsbooks.com It looks like they have a load of New Age authors in this month talking about angels which isn't my cup of tea but sometimes they have some interesting authors there giving talks.

I'm probably not the best person to give advice here as I am quite isolated myself at the moment but I do understand how lonely London can be but on the up side there are a huge amount of groups and societies you could possibly join in London which you don't get in many other cities in the UK, depending on what your interests are I know there are a number of Buddhist groups and other esoteric societies and there are probably a fair few decent teachers of the Taoist arts somewhere if you look in the right place and I know there are loads of martial arts teachers. Although I don't follow my own advice regarding this so I know it's easier said than done.

From my own personal experience compassion isn't that complicated, you just need to get your identity out of your head and reactionary defensive egoic mind and your heart will radiate compassion naturally. But there is small compassion which we all experience every day which discriminates where it shines it's light and there is big compassion which does not discriminate, i'm guessing Robert Thurman is talking about big compassion here, which I see plenty of evidence of Jesus showing in many of the scriptures. But if you read the Dalai Lama's autobiography he says the most important compassion he has received in his whole life came from his mother when he was a child, which strictly according to Buddhist and Thurman's definitions would be classed as small compassion yet it was the most important and it had nothing to do with the Bodhicharyavatara or Buddhism or emptiness, so I wouldn't underestimate small compassion just because it has no grounding in dependent origination.

The psoas is related to the fight/flight survival mechanism, so if your kidneys are overstressed and you are pumping out a lot of adrenaline you will be in fight/flight a lot so your psoas will be tense ready to run to escape danger, so by relaxing it you break the feedback mechanism.

"Jesus worked for the enslavement of sentient beings by indoctriating them to submit to the God of his religion." What you call enslavement may well be liberation for some people depending on how you understand the teaching and the concept of God. You seem very sure about many concepts historians and theologians have been debating for hundreds of years. But I am perfectly happy with my understanding of what a Bodhisattva is thank you and nothing you have said has changed my opinion that Jesus was a Bodhisattva. This is nothing to do with the Christian church rather I look at things more from the Fourth Way perspective, there are many teachings and paths which don't talk about emptiness and dependent orgination in the same direct way Buddhism does but that does not mean that it is not ever talked about in some way or another and it doesn't mean those paths lack compassion.

I've not read the book but it's not a very hard concept to reconcile, Jesus radiated Bodhicitta just like the Buddha so in that regard they are brothers

Thanks I will look into what you suggest here, I too am interested in studying everything I can get my hands on. I agree simple is good, I was looking at the Wild Goose form but for me having over 70 moves makes things too complicated as I would be focusing on trying to remember the moves rather than what's going on with the energy. Unfortunately for the people I know who have developed cancer I doubt I can persuade them to take up Qigong as two are elderly and resistant to such foreign concepts like energy healing and the other is a doctor so I doubt he would accept advice from me, but you never know perhaps the illness will change their perspective. But I expect to encounter cancer again in my life considering how common it is and would like to be able to be in a position to offer advice from a place of genuine knowledge and be able to back up my words rather than just to vaguely recommend Qigong.

Thanks this is really interesting to me. Do you or anyone else know of any good resources or books I can find out more information about medical qigong and the different styles and approaches? as a number of people I know have recently developed cancer so my interest in this area has been rekindled. On looking through some of the Wild Goose Qigong websites they suggest this book is the main text to study: "Chinese medical Qigong therapy: A comprehensive clinical guide" - Jerry Alan Johnson http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-medical-Qigong-therapy-comprehensive/dp/1885246080/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt , which seems to be pretty in depth being over 1000 pages long, the problem being it is about $400 which is a bit steep in price for me.

How do you classify Medical Qigong? do you have to be able to project Qi to the patient? The healer I mentioned earlier Yap Soon Yeung does a form of healing which hard to describe as anything but Qigong healing, he calls it Qigong healing himself but he does not intentionally project any Qi and he has seen success in serious medical cases such as stroke victims and paralysis.

It is true that practically none of the countries involved actually meet the Kyoto targets but that doesn't mean that it is worthless because your government policy on a macro level helps dictate the social and political climate around this issue on a micro level, for example in this country since the government has become more proactive around green issues more recycling and social projects have sprung up, there is more stigma around individual wastage and pollution on the individual level and the government is far more able to pass laws which punish polluters and help clean industry and they are able to tax the most polluting cars more. There are other factors come in like supermarkets feel more pressure to make biodegradable packaging, farmers have to advertise their sustainability, car manufacturers work at producing more fuel economic technology, we even had a Green party mp elected to parliament for the first time campaigning on environmental issues. It would be far more difficult for much of this to emerge if the governments stance on the big issues of pollution was in opposition and denial and the effect of this is that it creates an awareness and political movement towards respect of the environment on all levels of society. So even if at the very minimum Kyoto is a symbolic gesture that doesn't mean it's not important as it helps shift perspectives which can have far reaching consequences long term.

I'll just say that my father is a scientist who works for the UK government and he used to say that climate change wasn't a big deal and didnt like the tone of the debate how they were calling those apposed as "deniers" as it harmed impartial scientific evaluation. But then he was given the job of evaluating the evidence and data and he completely changed his mind, he even had to go to the north pole to evaluate that the tests were being conducted properly and he has convinced me that this is a big issue and practically all of the serious scientists who aren't paid by big business agree also. Most of the developed world countries with their own independent scientific departments also agree apart from the US. Recently the leaders of 16 of the largest NGO's in the world including Greenpeace, Oxfam and the WWF made a joint statement saying that the US is actually the biggest obstacle to any progress because they purposely block any attempts at talks, so personally I think it is about time the US grew up around this issue and start behaving in a responsible way in their relationship with the planet. Even if you don't agree with the science 100% I don't see how you can argue against becoming more harmonious and less harmful to the environment, why would you want to shit in your own backyard? If you do any sort of Taoist practice it must be clear how pollutants interfere with the functioning of the system of your body on many different levels and the earth is just a macrocosm of this.

CFQ Qigong by master Yap Soon Yeung

I'm not sure if I fully understand the question you are asking but if you are looking for more information about approaches for developing spiritually in normal life rather than as a hermit then there is an approach called the "Fourth Way" developed by G.I. Gurdjieff which is all about using the struggles of normal life as fuel for practice, or rather it was rediscovered by him as he didn't invent it as it is ancient knowledge. Idries Shah had connections to the Fourth Way and tried to claim it consisted of ancient Sufi Knowledge and although it is influenced by Sufism it is not a Sufi path like he claims. As for living representations of this path I can't point you to individual living masters as most of the work is done in groups but unknown to most people there are Fourth Way groups in almost every large city in the world, you just need to know where to look to find them. From Cleary's writings I have only found this working in normal life approach emphasised in Liu I Ming's work while most other Taoist and Buddhist approaches seem to emphasise the importance of going into isolation and retreat, although I do wonder how much Taoism has been influenced by the Buddhist monastic tradition regarding this issue.

I don't think I can handle 3 hours of anything

Is this the same Lama Yeshe who wrote the "Bliss of Inner Fire"? I am reading that book at the moment and unlike many Buddhist authors Lama Yeshe really seems to understand many of the problems and blockages westerners have so I think he is a good source of teaching.