Jetsun

Not sure if this should be in the Vedanta forum, but it is an interesting topic. The Vedanta teachings have a lot of usefulness for many individuals but it depends on your level of understanding. The whole point of Vedanta is that you are what you are looking for, you are what you are seeking. So any method just takes you away from who you are because it is just another way of seeking, so instead of using step by step methods you just stop seeking altogether and then you find. But (stealing this line from one of the vids) if you tell this to a lazy bum sitting on the sofa with a beer its unlikely to have any benefit, but if you say it to someone who has been struggling hard and striving for many years they might have a breakthrough. There is no direct introduction as such but if you just abide in the silence of the teacher you can be directed to rest in the ground of being. Many of the internet videos can instruct you to just examine the nature of your basic consciousness, which surprisingly enough not many people have really considered to any depth.

There is a good chance the Buddhism we know today is heavily corrupted from the original source, there is even a sutra which showed that one of Buddha's main disciples corrupted the teachings within one generation of the Buddha's death and had to be corrected by the other disciples, so what chance is there that we have a pure message so many generations and translations later? There is even a law of nature which demonstrates how religious teachings get corrupted which Gurdjieff wrote about. I doubt this guy has any better understanding but it's worth keeping an open mind I think.

Yeah, the Tibetan line could change too when he dies, many think that despite what the Chinese government say about him the Dalai Lama is the main guy who is actually preventing a lot of further bloodshed with his approach of non violence, so if there is a change in strategy things could get a lot worse in terms of violence of unrest.

The way it is talked about in these circles is that you can have an initial awakening which then expands, unfolds and stabilises and much later you gain full enlightenment or complete awakening. The initial awakening is significant because it is a fundamental shift out of a limited confined sense of self and once it has happened the sense of being an individual "I" is never again as convincing no matter how strong your existing habitual energy or contraction comes back afterwards. I know in many traditional paths they say you do all the work first and gradually wear things down to finally arrive at an awakening at the end after you have prepared the ground, but all across the globe people are having these realisations first at the beginning and then all the beliefs and habits are dropping away and energy development is happening afterwards. I don't know if this is backwards to the way it once was or whether it is just backwards to the way the linear mind expects it to happen, but this is the way it is happening now for most of the people in the videos. Which is why I think it is worth examining what our beliefs are about the process towards enlightenment, because the way things are going to unfold for us may have absolutely nothing to do with the way we currently believe they are.

This is what I thought but doing some research AH Almass says that the Lataif are energy centres in the chest near the heart which are like subtle forms of love consciousness or levels of the heart, which I haven't heard of in any other system. But then other articles say the Lataif are the same thing as the Chakras

This is an interesting topic, I agree with you that the Chinese approach isn't very strong on the emotional side which is probably due to societal influence on practices as many of the practices originate from times of repression. You might have to explain what the Lataif is though as I have never heard of that before.

Yeah I've been watching some of those videos after you recommended them to me the other day, its a good site. Another good site recommended by one of the interviewees is stillness speaks website. The stories put into question a number of assumptions, such as the whole concept of levels in practice, there seems to be no evidence of linear progression in that you do this practice for a certain amount of time it leads to the result of spiritual awakening. Many of the interviewees had their awakenings through failure, either failure in spiritual practice or just failure in life in general. The advantage of failure is that it is a state where you don't know what you have to do, you stop thinking you know better than God or the Tao about where you are and what should be happening to you, which creates the opening. You are forced to surrender with life playing the role of tough guru. So it appears one moment of surrender to what life is giving you could be more powerful than hundreds of thousands of hours of trying to get what you want, or think you should get, or think you need to do to awaken.

With many preliminary practices there is a narrowing of the mind, a fixation on something usually with the ultimate purpose of creating a favourible trance state to weaken the power of existing unfavorable trance states. But ultimately you are still dreaming and continuing to create new dreams even if its a better dream. Whereas in liberation awareness is completely open and unfixated free from all trance, so both states are of different taste and nature. I know I'm probably in disagreement with many masters but the nature of the two modes of awareness are in contrast as far as I can see so its possible they may not have anything to do with one another.

For some becoming too one pointed can create a barrier because the awake state is open, so if you have trained yourself to be too one pointed that habit may be something you have let go of so you can see the wood from the trees, so shamatha may not necessarily create only positive qualities for your progress. Within certain paths it helps to develop those qualities of mind but I think it is a stretch to say that it should be a fundamental for everyone, it is only a fundamental within certain Buddhist paths. Ramana Maharshi for example said that if you have those qualities of mind it will help with the enquiry into the "I" thought by giving you more focus and stability, but he never recommended his students to do it, he said just go for the liberation practice. Which is the quicker method to do years of fundamentals or go straight for the liberation? Each master seems to differ in their opinion, even in Buddhism.

Any barrier to awakening is one created by your own mind, so if you say to yourself you need to master a breathing technique to awaken that is a barrier you have yourself created, if you say you have to sit a certain way that is a barrier you have created, if you tell yourself you have to master the jhana states or fill the Dan tien or master energy levels in the future, or heal the ego, or achieve alchemical fusion, they are all obstacles you have put yourself in front of your own goal. Doing all that stuff is great but you don't necessarily have to do any of it.

Gift

If you look at the history of all religions they assimilate the previous existing religions of the land into their own faith rather than completely destroy them, so I don't see why Islam is any different. There will have been already existing mystical traditions assimilated into Islam who will take on Islamic beliefs and later get called different names like Sufi in order not to be persecuted, so there were certainly mystical traditions predating Islam they will just have another name, then they take on Islamic customs in order to avoid being beheaded by the narrow minded.

I much prefer this video Shows the general dissociation these people in the media are in when they completely crumble when someone doesn't play by the usual rules "Shaft grasper" lol

I like Brand and think he is a really interesting guy and so often a breath of fresh air, but I don't agree with him about not voting because basically all that does is mean that the politicians can ignore the wishes of young people. The old people get free bus passes and heating and stuff from the government because they vote so they get listened to, while young people don't as much so they are ignored. He us calling for a revolution but without some sort of even vague idea of an alternative it us just mindless destruction. Also I don't like all these guys talking about awakening like its some awakening to not being controlled by the Illuminati or something like that. Not being controlled by the media is all good but real awakening us out of your own identity so it is out of your own chains in your own mind, it isn't about awakening out of the power of Rupert Murdoch. There is a whole movement now propped up by people like Brand, Alex Jones and David Ike who are being tricked into thinking they are going through some sort of spiritual awakening where they think they have woken up out of the system, but it is a fake awakening because they just use it define themselves against the system so it is another trick by the ego to try solidify identity. Whereas real awakening is out of individual identity altogether. Brand is doing spiritual practice so he might escape out of that trap, but the others I doubt it, they have too much identity and sense of self invested in it.

I think this is another reference to non-dualism, it is similar to what in Zen they call the unborn awareness. If there is awareness before you were born then it is not born of woman, it is primordial.

The Gospel of Thomas is probably the most non-dual of all of the Gospels, so I don't see how it was written by dualists.

Edit: off topic

On a basic level reincarnation and karma are belief systems which are meant to help you in that most of our suffering and problems comes from our resistance to and fighting against whatever happens to us in our lives, so believing in karma and reincarnation helps to reduce that resistance. Many other religious belief systems were also created for this same purpose ultimately out of compassion, but if they don't help and even make things worse for you as an individual then just throw them out.

Hardly, all I commented on was my impression that people weren't emphasising bodhicitta very much, its hardly taking a shit, any offence is your own projection onto what I wrote. How do you know who here is and isn't a practitioner of the buddhadharma? you don't need to have an elaborate intellectual understanding of it to be a practitioner or make valuable contributions to a discussion about it.

I have read Tsongkhapa's Abridged Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and some of his Great Trieste series, but for my Buddhist interest I am more of a follower of the Dalai Lama than anyone else as I have seen he is someone with real wisdom and compassion. Sure logic and analysis has it's place but when you get overly concerned with it then it is just another case of being fixated on the finger rather than what it is pointing at.

Yes the infinite aspect is an important point, the regular thinking mind can't grasp infinite beings

Yes often it seems that just allowing things to be as they are is one of the most compassionate things you can do. Allow yourself to be as you are, allow others to be as they are, without arguing in your mind that things should be different.

I used to do Tonglen but not so much any more. There is a similar practice I sometimes do where you use any suffering you are going through to generate compassion for all those going through the same thing and visualise taking on their suffering and giving them your merit. Before I do meditation it helps to take the perspective it is being done for others which helps avoid self fixation, but once it is somewhat familiar in your mindstream it is possible to apply that perspective to almost anything, which I think is the real practice. But I can't say I have developed it to a significant degree.

It is my impression from reading forums like Dharma wheel, you are free to disagree. I don't think that is the part of the post worth focusing on though to be honest.

Thanks for the invite, but I would quite like a stick like those Zen masters have to whack people around the head when they get it wrong please