Jetsun

Its an interesting thought, do people who live up in high buildings have worse health or Qi than those who live closer to the ground? I think humans would look a bit different if nature intended us to be always grounded to the earth, we would probably have Hobbit feet so we wouldn't need shoes.

Nature must have some sort of sick sense of humor if the requirement of growth to the next stage of evolution requires you putting a metal rod up your arse

I quite liked it, I might have to watch it again now. Have you seen "Renegade"/"Blueberry", you might like it

A student went to see a Zen master and declared he wanted to become a master himself and asked how low long would it take him? The teacher replied: “Ten years.” The student, a bit impatient and not satisfied with the answer went ahead and said: "But I want to master it faster than that, I will work every hard, practice 10 or more hours a day if necessary. How long would it THEN take?" The teacher replied: “Twenty years.”

From the perspective of the healing practices which I have been learning pushing through a blockage may not work unless there is consciousness brought into the blockages in some way, pushing through may even be perceived as a sort of violence on the body which may cause it to contract around the blockages even further without the pattern being brought into the light of awareness first. I could give you the details of a practitioner in my tradition in Sydney, or they can work long distance if you wanted.

When I did my one and only fast I read that it can be a bit of shock for your body to go straight into just water, so I did a day of light food, then a few days juice, then water for a few days, then juice again before food so your body can adapt slowly. So how you do it depends on how long you do it for. I found after a day or two I stopped being hungry at all and then I started to smell really bad for the rest of the time, I think your body starts to break down a lot of toxins or muscle or something which is why you start to smell but all that toxic stuff is being released which needs to come out which is why I suggested sweating was important because it will greatly help purge the body. It is hard to sweat when fasting as you don't feel like exercising and could possibly be bad for you to over exert yourself but if I did it again I would definitely find a way to do it daily,maybe do some light exercise in a hot room wrapped up in plastic bags or something. Also a lot of what is being purged is coming out through the skin so you need to shower regularly and brush the pores or some of it might be re-absorbed into the body.

If you can sweat a bit it is good and brush your body with a reasonably hard brush it will help your body with the detox by unblocking your pores and removing the waste which has been brought to the skin, that way you remove some stress from the internal organs and support full body breathing.

A lot of it is rumours but I heard he was brought back to China after healed the first President Bush because they didn't want potential enemies learning their secrets and helping them. There is still a Yan Xin group at Harvard University which you can look up online and apparently he sometimes sends them bottled energy in the post for them to do scientific tests on, but as far as I know he isn't allowed to or doesn't teach abroad any more.

Go to events, courses and meetings where you meet people who are interested in this sort of stuff

Dorian I would remove that image quickly if I was you or I might have to put my mod hat on

Do you think John Chang would score high enough to join?

They already made one http://mopai.forumotion.com/ which is supposed to be Mo Pai minus the racism

In my experience it is the intuition which has led me the straightest way, for the most part the intellect has only puffed up my sense of separate self and brought about more suffering. I think you are more likely to be brought to non-dual awareness through the failure of the intellect to get you there than anything else. In terms of spirituality some skilful masters can use the intellect in a way which they describe in some Indian traditions as using a "thorn to remove a thorn" or as they say in Zen to shoot an arrow out of the air with an arrow, which basically means you use a concept to expose the unreality of another concept which just leaves the empty ground remaining. But that is a process of using the intellect to reveal its own limitations and uselessness when it comes to trying to figure out the truth rather than using it to try to think your way to reality. I'm not anti intellect though, i'm just of the opinion that it is impossible to think your way to truth/reality/enlightenment, by definition thoughts are representations of reality so you wont get to real reality searching through endless representations, it's impossible because you are searching in completely the wrong realm. But the intellect is a pretty useful tool if you want to program a computer or work or how many bombs you need to destroy a third world country.

My take is that I don't think you will ever understand life or understand yourself by intellectualising about it, because that intellectualising is always going to be one step removed from directly feeling, sensing, experiencing life. By the time you have created an intellectual concept around it the thing might have changed. Experiencing life directly things exist for themselves and are self explanatory, there is not necessarily any need to add anything to it The intellectual mind is a tool, but it isn't who you are and can't work out who you are. There is a primordial intelligent consciousness which arises before the intellectual mind.

The intellect works in concepts, and a concept is a representation of a thing not the thing itself, therefore the intellect is always one step removed from directly experiencing reality as it is, no matter how wonderful or genius the concept created is its never the real thing. To live in the intellect is to live in a virtual reality where the mind re-creates the direct experience of life and then adds a few extra meanings and thoughts in for the ride, and we mistake this re-creation for reality, which is why the world is insane and deluded because the majority of us live in this virtual reality simulator most of the time.

Sounds interesting, when you say you use the nature of the mind to heal can you explain any more about what you mean? There are Buddhists who are basically healing all of the time because the consciousness of being rooted in the nature of the mind automatically harmonises all that it comes into contact with, which is why there are sometimes "miracles" or healings that occur around masters without them doing anything, but not many use focused intent to heal anything they just allow everything to be as it is. Vortex is slightly different because there is intent but one aspect of the energy channeled is space or emptiness so there is a relation to using the nature of the mind in that healing form.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mod Warning ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Icedude this is a warning for a personal insult which is against the terms of service of this site, any more insults and you will be immediately suspended. Further action on this issue may be taken when the other mods log in ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For an uncomplicated safe way to do the MCO do the Small Universe meditation of Spring Forest Qigong, which is basically the same except you are guided through it and can call on the masters energy. You don't need to visualise in that version you only need to bring your awareness to each point in turn. https://soundcloud.com/rolf-h-corneliussen/01-sitting-meditation-small

I don't really see how it is a case in point. I am not a Buddhist and never said I was but I am open and receptive to living traditions. I'm just not sure if you and Malcolm are at the level where I can equate your own personal views with being some sort of official Buddhist view or being representative of any tradition. You can use the intellectual positions and traditional debates within Buddhism in many ways, the intent behind it is the crucial factor. Some common positions you see used by internet Buddhists are using Buddhist concepts to stand on an intellectual pedistool above others, as a form of elitism, or using them to denigrate other traditions or even other branches of Buddhism, all justified in the name of trying to teach the Buddhadharma in an accurate way. Really all they are doing is perverting the Buddhadharma by using it to try to solidify their own sense of individual self in opposition or in denigration of others. We have seen many of these things go on on this site quite a lot over the years. Last week I attended the teachings of Ato Rinpoche who is considered a master of a number of Tibetan lineages and he was talking about the way Buddhism is taught in many places, even in modern day Dharmasla, where it is used to create division and people talk about empowerments like badges to compare the number they have with each other, which is the direct opposite of the genuine intent of Buddhism, so if its corrupted there I guess we can't expect much better online.

With some I think its a case of the Dharma only penetrating into a small part of the frontal cortex of the brain, you can cram decades worth of book concepts and intellectual positions there if you want to, just look at all the cold scholars who talk about Buddhism. But really it is a shame if the Dharma doesn't penetrate any other areas of the body such as the gut or heart. My hope is that there is some sort of overflow and eventually with enough time it will seep into other areas where it can bloom into something beautiful, rather than remain in the dry arid land of the conceptual mind.

I don't know exactly, but his life story is in his book "Born a Healer" which is a book I liked very much, I think he was a child during the Cultural Revolution so probably not in his 70s yet

I have never done Bagua so what would the Buddhist monks get from Bagua they don't get from their meditation? I guess the only exercise many Buddhists get are prostrations, so there may be some decent health benefits for the physical body and organs and the turns must be good for the joints. I heard that a lot of nuns in the Drukpa lineage are being taught Kung Fu now as well as a lot of Vietnamese Buddhist nuns http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2003009,00.html so some Buddhists don't seem to see a conflict with martial arts

It is the egoic consciousness which perceives being united with god in a powerless dictatorial sort of way, like having you strings pulled, but that is a projection of that form of consciousness onto the unknown as a mechanism to try to preserve its own survival. It might be true that we are not actually in control but that isn't necessarily a bad thing in ultimate reality except from a specific constricting point of view not rooted in truth. If there is no seperate you then there is no you to be controlled or manipulated, there is just life happening. Perhaps its more helpful to switch it around, to say that being united with god gives you the ultimate freedom, while when perception is from the egoic state we are being controlled like a puppet by our egoic habits, patterns and old outdated imprints.

I don't think even the greatest masters who have ever lived can adequately describe what awareness is. Any definition arises within it and therefore can't possibly fully define it.

As Buddhism went into different countries its flavour was influenced by the existing culture and religion. Chan and Zen are very similar because it was Chan masters who created Zen, but traditionally Chan Buddhists are known to wander around the country going from place and from master to master, while Zen monks tended to be more institutionalised and stay in the same place. Taoism in its more pure form hardly exists any more, master Nan Huai Chin basically says that what most people consider Taoism is so influenced by Buddhism that it is more Buddhist than Taoist. My own personal take is that someone like Wang Liping probably represents a genuine Taoist lineage, the difference being that there is a lot of interaction with the energies of the environment and seasons and astrological alignments, while Chan and Zen are about liberation from the separate self right now.