Jetsun

On one hand there is the advantage of tradition, in that it gives a framework which has been tested and proven to work, but on the other hand life and the human psyche is ever changing, traditions need to change in order to continue to be relevant, fresh and to be able to communicate to modern minds with modern issues. Traditions only work if they are alive, and to be alive they have to be dynamic. Buddhists call it skillful means, otherwise they become dogmatic fossils which no longer serve the purpose which they set out to, which can be seen in the rigid institutions of all religions. There is also the problem of transferring a tradition and a teaching which is set out for one group of people from one era to another, for example the Western psyche is in many ways different than the Eastern. Many Eastern teachers have come over and failed to communicate their teaching to Western minds. For example the Dalai Lama is trying to use skifull means in his own teachings in the West by including a lot of secular teachings and neuroscience, whereas if he came with all the Tibetan jargon half the audience wouldn't be able to understand. Adyashanti is one who transcended his own tradition, he came to realise that there is inherent conditioning contained within Japanese Zen traditions that are essentially limited, especially to Westerners and if you want to be free you have to break free of such constraints not pay lip service to them just because they are traditional. In his own experience he had trouble connecting to the heart within Japanese Zen and it was through Christianity that facilitated his own heart opening, which isn't to say that that heart isn't in Japanese Zen it is because it isn't in Western culture it is hard for Westerns to get it. Which is one reason why he teaches more of a fusion. He also teaches in a way which is most likely to get through to his students, what use is a load of culturally alien jargon?. He also teaches a fusion because it works, which is proven by the amount of people who are being brought to realisations through his teachings. You can listen to his radio show every week where people are calling up to talk about their their realisations from his teaching, also there are a large number of students of his who are now teaching and holding their own retreats and writing books etc, I can give you a long list. Marlies Cocheret Stephan Bodian Jon Bernie Craig Holliday Sharon Landrith Loch Kelly All these people have their biographies on the web, most have interviews on batgap.com, you can decide for yourself if what they teach and what they realised through Adyashanti's teaching is legit or not. In the case of Loch Kelly he trained with some of the highest Tibetan Lama's including Tulku Urgen and is officially authorised to teach the Dharma by Mingyur Rinpoche, yet he holds Adyashanti and his teaching on the same level as these great Tibetan teachers.

If his way of doing things doesn't suit you there are plenty of more traditional Buddhist teachers around. All I can say from personal experience is that I went on a silent retreat of his last year and it is by far one of the most powerful things I have ever done spiritually, it actually took me about 6 months to fully integrate and understand what even happened there. Such a powerful force of awakeness comes through in his retreats that it can be overwhelming and there are a number of energetic transmissions throughout the week. My experiences led me to believe there is a whole load of "higher level" stuff he is a master of which he barely talks about.

He isn't a "self-proclaimed master", he was authorised to teach the Dharma after over 14 years of personal teaching from the Zen master Arvis Joen Justi and is the heir of her lineage which is authorised by Taizan Maezumi a lineage holder in Sōtō, Rinzai and Harada-Yasutani traditions of Zen. The name change is done for those who have died to their former self, so the person they were is effectively dead, the name change can help others to recognise that. Not that I would do such a thing myself, but I can understand it. I wouldn't say he is pseudo-asian at all, if he was he could have worn all the robes and kept all the Zen trappings, but he didn't. If you listen to his talks and watch his videos he is quite American in his approach, he talks to the western mind with western concepts most of the time. And if all he was concerned with was selling tickets and books he wouldn't set up his Sangha as a non-profit organisation or give away the book with his main teachings in for free. http://www.adyashanti.org/wayofliberation/ It seems to me that people often try to criticise him without even examining what he is saying with any sincerity, they just look at the surface and jump to conclusions.

If people are really sincerely interested in this stuff they will go and seek these people out in person. Its easy at home behind a computer, you aren't really challenged, you can constantly affirm that your existing beliefs and perceptions are correct without the risk of seeing the truth. There you can remain the king of your own domain.

While there are many teachers with amazing qualities is there anyone else who speaks with as much clarity as Adyashanti? I am yet to find anyone, and I have been looking for a long time.

The public ones are too busy, most decent public teachers receive hundreds of emails a day and are busy touring and teaching. With the Dalai Lama well he is 79 and still has a load of political and religious responsibilities to deal with but still finds the time to teach globally. Some private "high level beings" probably do post here, but the ego won't recognise them as it is blinded by preconceptions about what such a being should be and act like. If a reincarnated Jesus Christ turned up here most people would probably say he is a new age fake.

Many teachers will do 1 to 1 sessions by Skype these days. http://marliescocheret.com/contact Is Hakomi trained while also being an awake teacher http://www.michaeldamian.org/ A clinical psychologist also awake spiritual teacher http://stephanbodian.org/ Same as above But the fastest way to work with the mind I have found is probably the Work of Byron Katie, which I found to be surprisingly powerful and especially useful for those who find meditating difficult http://thework.com/do-work it is just a simple way to dismantle the thoughts and belief structures which cause most of your suffering and it can be done on your own.

Many cancers are modern diseases, so they are a byproduct of the imbalances of our time, which can be imbalances in all sorts of areas from diet, to environment and psyche. But in my healing training cancers are first treated on the emotional level mostly associated with repressed grief.

Oh god, its only been one day and they say they are going to now push through more state surveillance, the Tories now believe they have a mandate to do whatever they want, the right wing monster that was formerly shackled by coalition may have been fully unleashed

I went to Peru to do it, it is big business there and lots of frauds but if you do your research you can find decent places. But only do it if your prepared to die.

I guess a lot of men want to be more manly, whatever that means.

Through most of our lives when we get asked a question we have been taught to try to figure the answer out on the regular level of mind of thoughts and ideas, but when doing spiritual enquiry like the Ramana enquiry "who am I?" that is not where you are going to find the answer. Rather the purpose of the enquiry is to try to see something which is already there which you haven't noticed, so it isn't like figuring out a puzzle or necessarily attaining an understanding, it's about becoming open to what is already happening, seeing what is already present but have missed or ignored. I wish I had heard that years ago so thought I would share incase it helps anyone.

In Cambridge, not much goes on here, at least not much that I am interested in, I am not aware of any decent teachers around here so I have to get on the train to London.

Yeah in London, done through http://www.alternatives.org.uk/Site/Default.aspx . I don't live in London but I go down sometimes to go to meetings of various people, there is always something going on when you start looking. The alternatives site just does general talks which are a bit impersonal and short, the regular meetings organised by the teachers are much better. The meetings in Hampstead by Tony Parsons are quite interesting, just turn up and £10 in on the door, but you are likely to walk out very confused hehe. I am probably going to see Francis Bennett next week, who is an awake teacher come over from the US. I haven't heard of James Eaton, but the best people often aren't well known.

yeah it was good, it was a bit of a general meeting for newcomers so he was saying a lot of introductory and general stuff, but I would like to attend a more formal teaching of his some time, there he will probably go into things with a lot more focus and give more direct pointers. He also does a rare form of Kashmiri Yoga for the energy body which sounds interesting

Yeah , I went to one his meetings last month. Very English (I'll let you decide if that's a good thing or not), well spoken, articulate, gives a lot of good pointers and instructions as to how to go about investigating reality. He is "awake" to his true nature.

Pacquiao almost seemed disconnected from reality by saying he thought he won the fight. I do think some sportsmen can get into states of wu wei or flow though. I heard some quotes by Billy Jean King about the states she would get into playing tennis which sound almost mystical, talking about complete oneness with the surroundings and states of ecstasy. Michael Jordan too looked like he was in flow a lot of the time.

Everything perceptible is always changing, always moving, yet what that arises within/what is aware of the change is always silent and always still. If you can recognise that you are that silence then there is no longer any need to identify with all that changes. Therefore if there is always something silent and always still in our direct experience then what need is there of developing silence and stillness through meditation and practices? just become aware of what already exists. Just stop and relax into what is, or like they say "Be still, and know that I am God". But in reality nobody wants to relax into that silence and be that silence because it is shared, it isn't individual

There are all sorts of things that people can do to refine and improve themselves, energetically and psychically, yet they don't necessarily have anything to do with awakening or enlightenment, or they may happen as a natural consequence of awakening rather than as a means to get there, certainly I think it is worth questioning our deepest held assumptions about these things, then it may open more avenues which were closed before. I do believe in an energetic component to awakening, which is something I am working with myself, yet I have heard of many accounts of people waking up to unity with God out of nowhere, having not done any spiritual practice in their lives, whereas some people practice all day every day and it doesn't happen to them. So personally I have seen enough to convince me that this awakening stuff doesn't obey the normal rules we have been conditioned to live by where we do something and get a guaranteed result. That which is free of the mind doesn't have to play by the minds linear rules. Why so few people recognise who they are is a question people have been trying to answer for thousands of years. Just like there are few people who randomly wake up, there are millions of monks and nuns and laymen practitioners through the years who practice their entire lives and don't wake up. Personally I think normal people aren't often randomly waking up because they do all they can to put it off, just like most practitioners, regular folks are always busy doing something even if it just watching they tv they are distracting themselves and not being still and will do all they can to defend their beliefs rather than question them.

Maybe the belief that you need to refine and improve yourself is exactly what is preventing you from recognising what you already are.

Nobody has to earn it, a mass murdering psychopath could wake up to their true nature and merge with god right now. You can wake up right now, all that is in the way is what you believe is in the way. The whole issue around having to earn things and deserve them are based on mind/man made concepts and socially conditioned beliefs

Parts of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche I found useful, it gives advice on how to talk to people when they are dying, which you can apply to a lot of regular situations.

UKIP are basically Tories. They are funded by an old Etonian who used to fund the tories and Farage is a publicly educated banker.

Well Taoism mostly goes for the general principles behind things, if you want specific details you might have to look into other disciplines. But the general principles generally can explain quite a lot http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx/yin-yang-theory-in-sound-and-music-a-first-exploration.pdf?c=icmc;idno=bbp2372.2012.111

Well the Tories are mostly interested in getting themselves and their privileged friends rich, Labour still have people like Ed Balls who were largely responsible for screwing things up last time, the Lib Dems don't stand for anything any more. Whoever we choose unless you are a millionaire you are going to get shafted.