Jetsun

Lots of different people have been predicting the end of the world for thousands of years but it never happens,I get Jehovas Witnesses knocking on my door all the time saying the same sort of stuff, but usually in my view it is just a symptom of an internal psychological collapse being projected onto the outside world like in that film "Collapse" about the end of petroleum, or it is a tool used to instill fear into people by a cult leader to make them obedient to the one who holds the key to survival, so it is like a recreation of the child parent relationship.

Not all but probably the majority of Qigong sets I have learned incorporate breathing with the movements, such as 8 Brocade, Dragon and Tiger medical Qigong, Jenny Lambs Qigong set all involve breathing with movement, but none have involved forced rough breathing like you get in some pranayama.

On his return from the Long Rong valley, the Lama entered an arid region which he named Lokthang Kyamo (Arid Land). Here he met an old man called Apa Gaypo Tenzin. The old man's sons had left home and all but his youngest daughter had married and gone to their husbands' homes, leaving him bored and with nothing to do except follow his devotions. He prostrated at the Lama's feet. 'I am most fortunate to meet you,' he told the Lama. 'My elder sons have established their own homes, my youngest son has entered a monastery, and my daughters have married. I am bored with life and need the teaching that will prepare me for death. Please instruct me.' 'Yah! Yah!' said Kunley pensively. 'I will teach you a Refuge Prayer` which you must recite whenever you think of me. There is one stricture which accompanies it - never discuss it with anyone.' And he taught the old man this Refuge which gives release from samsara. 'I take refuge in an old man's chastened penis, withered at the root, fallen like a dead tree; I take refuge in an old woman's flaccid vagina, collapsed, impenetrable, and sponge-like; I take refuge in the virile young tiger's Thunderbolt, rising proudly, indifferent to death; I take refuge in the maiden's Lotus, filling her with rolling bliss waves, releasing her from shame and inhibition.' 'Remember to recite this Refuge whenever I enter your mind,' repeated the Lama. 'I thank you with all my heart,' Apa Gaypo said fervently. 'Now please teach me a prayer that will strengthen my aspiration.' The Lama taught him this: 'The branches of the Great Eastern Tree grow and grow, But the foliage's spread depends on the tree's roots' extent. Drukpa Kunley's penis head may stick, stick in a small vagina, But tightness depends upon the size of the penis. Apa Gaypo's urge to gain Buddhahood is strong, so strong, But the scale of his achievement depends upon the strength of his devotion.' 'Keep this prayer in your mind!' Kunley directed him. The old man returned home. 'Did you meet the Lama?' his daughter asked him. 'Did you receive his instruction?' 'He gave me a Prayer of Refuge which I learned by heart,' he replied. 'You are neither intelligent nor educated,' said his daughter. 'Was it short and concise? Please repeat it for us.' Apa folded his palms in prayer and began, 'I take refuge in an old man's chastened penis. . .' and so on, in exactly the way that the Lama had taught him. His daughter ran away in embarrassment. 'Are you crazy!' demanded his wife. 'A Buddha Lama's words are always quite pure. Either you misunderstood the Lama or you have forgotten what he told you. And even if you have remembered the words correctly, it is shameful to imitate the Lama. You must never repeat this in front of the children!' 'The Lama told me to repeat it whenever I thought of him,' Apa insisted, 'and that I will do.' Later, when the family was gathered for their evening meal, Apa folded his hands and again repeated the prayer.'The old man has gone mad,' they whispered to each other, and taking their bowls with them they left the table, so that when Apa reopened his eyes he was alone. When his wife returned she told him that he must stay in a room apart if he persisted in his madness. Apa insisted that he would continue even at the cost of his life, so the hayloft in the roof of the house was prepared as his room of confinement, and he moved in there and continued to pray day and night. About a month later on the evening of the full moon, strains of lute and piccolo were heard through the house. Apa's wife, unable to hear her husband's voice in prayer, grew apprehensive, thinking that perhaps he was crying and moaning in nervous depression. 'Go take your father some chung,' she told her daughter. The girl went up to the loft with the chung and found only a heaped quilt on the bed. She threw off the quilt and found a sphere of rainbow light with the syllable AH in the centre of it, shining white and radiant. 'Apa! Apa! Apa has gone! Come quickly!' she screamed in superstitious dread. When the family and neighbours had gathered, the sphere of light flew off into the western sky, trailing behind it the voice of the old man. 'Drukpa Kunley has delivered me into the Potala Mountain Paradise of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. You prudish people must stay here! Give the Lokthang Kyamo to the Lama as an offering.' When the Lama visited that house, he built a stupa over the spot where Apa had died and put the old man's rosary inside as a relic. Later the abbot Ngawong Chogyal built a monastery around the stupa, and today that monastery is called the Khyimed Temple.

So shall I start a whole load of threads about all my interests like the Chelsea v Man U football game i'm watching right now because Taoists might like sport? you realise if everyone was as egotistical as you to think that their interests are so important that they should be shoved down peoples throats despite the relevance to the board then this wouldn't be a Taoist board at all, it would just be full of all sorts of crap.

That's nice, you do realise you are on a Taoist discussion board right?

Just try doing your practice with the boddhisatva intention and see if there is any difference. I'm not a vegetarian or a boddhisatva but I find switching my mind into a natural compassionate mode helps a lot, also there are some ego contractions I get secondary gain from and if I was practising only for myself I may not want to let them go, but practising for others benefit helps in this situation. You don't have to dedicate your merit to all beings in the beginning just for the people you care about like your family and friends, then if you experiment expanding it to other people it is beneficial for you and your practice.

I was thinking of getting some moccasins with leather soles to help with this, it gets a bit cold to go barefoot all the time

Well I can't speak about enlightenment but I find it difficult and maybe even impossible to open up my nervous system and work through some of my blockages without compassion. Even on the very basic level if I start my practice with the compassionate intention to dedicate any benefits I get to help all beings then I find my practice is far more effective than when I practice only for myself.

How about how open your heart is

Not reading all that, can you do a one line summary?

I don't know but I would start with Water because the downward flow will ground you to the earth stabilising you so you can release some of the larger blockages, rushing into fire with lots of nervous system and emotional blockages could just drive you a bit insane

Although this is nothing to do with Taoism I thought it was pretty inspirational so thought i'd share an example of a healthy spirit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMnAmRa4NYw&feature=player_embedded

From my own experience the Water Method is very good but you have to keep in mind your own character and constitution as I when I practiced I would get some negative symptoms like extreme cold in the body as I think I was already watery by nature, so I would have to balance it out by going on long walks and exercising which was a sort of fire method, while someone like Bruce Frantzis is already a very fiery person by nature so most probably wouldn't have any negative symptoms as it would bring him into natural balance. Although for some people they may try use strong fire methods to try to escape from the vulnerable yin emotions exposed by the water method so you could undo all the potential benefit from facing upto those vulnerable states. So I guess I'm saying only you can decide what best suits you at the current time, personally I didn't find trying to balance out my symptoms from water with fire worked so I gave it up, but I may one day go back to it once I'm in a different state in my being.

That's an interesting thought, perhaps Buddhists also believe in de-evolution in the spiritual spheres, for example we are supposed to be in the dark ages or the Kali yuga which means things have devolved. Also there were periods like the European "dark ages" where things got worse. In Fourth Way philosophy this is explained by the law of octaves where things evolve upwards until you reach a specific crucial point where things can begin to devolve towards destruction unless there is an extra input of energy to keep things evolving upwards. Apparently the earth is at this critical juncture in the evolution of the universe and human beings are at this juncture at the evolution of the earth, so it is our responsibility to add that extra impetus to help the earth to progress to a higher octave and keep the upward movement of evolution. Which is why we have developed consciousness to provide the extra energy and momentum from our own will at a critical point in evolution.

Evolution describes the process, it doesn't have the answers why survival is important and where evolution is going and whether us as humans have a role in this process. I see no conflict at all between evolution and spirituality and I would have to adjust my spiritual beliefs if I did because evolution is a fact.

Forget sound bites from other men and look at the actual evidence for evolution and it is completely overwhelming, take a look at the evidence of fossils and the records of development of animals like birds or horses and it shows evolution, there are numerous account of evidence such as the fact that you get more dark coloured moths in areas with high industrial pollution, and look at the evidence derived from scientific induced artificial selection and you can pretty safely say evolution is fact. At least you can say evolution is a fact when describing WHAT happened and a theory when describing HOW things happened.

I would be careful, hate when built up and dammed does gain great power and for someone like a bully victim it can end up empowering them to stop the abuse, but the danger is when it gets to that stage it can become indiscriminate as to where it lashes out, so you can easily end up hurting the people you care about most like your wife or children because when it gets to that level all it wants is an outlet and it doesn't care much what that is.. Plus it can create all sorts of problems for example what happens when you encounter a situation where you need a small amount of anger or force, you end up ripping the other persons head off with an inappropriate response. The mistake is to think that you will be able to control the hate if you dam it up. But yeah anger is different and gets a negative rep in some circles but a healthy relationship to anger is necessary for growth in my view, and if you have a healthy anger there is not usually any use or purpose for hate

From my own experience I found the extreme negative emotions like hate and rage come about through energetic blockages or frustration of your own power, usually frustration of healthy anger and fear, so to cultivate those states would mean blocking your own energy which can only lead to weakness.

He must have removed them because the links don't work

What I learned through practising Buddhist Chod is that often your negative emotions like anger and hate are covering up more vulnerable emotions like fear and sadness, so I wonder if some of those emotions are even natural, well anger is natural but I'm not sure about hate and bitterness which may just be twisted versions of anger and fear, so focusing on twisted emotions is not good I think. In Chod you are taught to feed your demons but the key in that practice is to feed what your demons need rather than what they want which is a crucial difference, as you may contact a demon of hate who on the surface wants to destroy everything but when you investigate what it really needs it's often a softer emotion like reassurance and feed it that then it becomes your ally rather than your opponent. If you were to feed a demon of hate more hate you would never be able to conquer it so it's energy is on your side rather than potentially working against you.

Yet you are trying to help Non, you think you have the insight to know what is good for him.

It appears to me that the harder my ego clings on and tries to control reality the more my muscles tense especially in the face and head, so I wonder if the ego tries to make itself real and permanent through body tension, yet the body will die so one day those tensions will be released which is why we try to avoid all thought about our own physical death. What the ego actually is I wonder if it is just an attitude to life or an opinion about the way life should be. When we are very young we have no ego but then we start to learn that some things are more acceptable than others so we try to get rid of the things less acceptable by willing them to be different through repression, so it is like an set of beliefs which believes in its own power to mould reality in the way we like. It requires force to try to mould reality so I wonder if the essence of the ego is aggressive energy.

Poem about happiness by master Drukpa Kunley I am happy that I am a free Yogi. So I grow more and more into my inner happiness. I can have sex with many women, because I help them to go the path of enlightenment. Outwardly I'm a fool and inwardly I live with a clear spiritual system. Outwardly, I enjoy wine, women and song. And inwardly I work for the benefit of all beings. Outwardly, I live for my pleasure and inwardly I do everything in the right moment. Outwardly I am a ragged beggar and inwardly a blissful Buddha

Not perfect but more natural and psychologically balanced. I guess I get this knowledge from studying Tibetan Buddhism for a few years and reading many accounts of that area of the world from many different sources and meeting some Tibetan Lamas, even if you go to places like Bhutan today you will see how much more natural things are especially with regards to the primal energies. When the first Tibetan Lama's came to the West it is clear from their writings that not many of them fully understood the western psyche, for example Chogyam Trungpa thought he could cure mentally distressed people by putting them into certain body positions to balance their energies, but none of it worked because he didn't have a grasp of just how deep some of these problems went as it was so alien to him; there is that saying that in the Tibetan language there is no word for self hatred and from what I can see it is only the Lama's who were born in the West or have spent a great many years here really understand how deep the guilt and concepts like original sin permeate our psyche. That's the impression I get from my readings anyway.