Jetsun

There is a general nihilistic slant in many westerners interpretation of Buddhism probably due to issues with translation of terms into English, for example the word emptiness doesn't fully convey the meaning of what is intended to be communicated when talking about that subject, but there isn't a word in the English language that exactly fits so you have to use the nearest approximation, which may scew the precise meaning.

I was just making the point we are not dealing with an idiot. The conflict has been going on for two and a half years and they are saying he waited this long to use chemical weapons at the point in time when inspectors had just been allowed in the country, knowing that a bad report would probably result in his own death, none of this makes any sense!! They are saying he chose to use the weapons a few weeks after he allowed in inspectors to check he's not using them in an area 20 minutes drive from where the inspectors were staying. Why are people believing all this?

There may be Chemical weapons used but there is no evidence that Assad used them. Assad isn't stupid, he is a highly educated doctor and he knows that if he used chemical weapons it would be effectively signing his own death warrant, so why would he do it? In Syria there are many different factions and groups, one group may use chemical weapons on another who are on the same side just to try get air strikes. They even found chemical weapons in the hands of some of the rebels already http://rt.com/news/sarin-gas-turkey-al-nusra-021/

There is no evidence that Assad has used chemical weapons, this is so much like groundhog day it is depressing that the politicians can just repeat the exact same lie and the public don't seem willing or able to do anything about it.

I don't know. Whatever it is the mind can't pin it down, the names I like are ground of being, stillness, ultimate potential. Emptiness has too many negative connotations for me. Often the mind will project its fears and annihilatory concerns onto that stillness which is why most people avoid it and spend their lives trying to ignore it.

The ego arises within something and is permeated with it. We just focus on or are hypnotized by the ego content and ignore what it arises in.

Mine are: 1 - To try to make myself feel better, I don't want to suffer ever or even feel bad for any length of time 2 - I want to be special, whether it is wiser or more compassionate or spiritual, basically I want to be better than others especially my friends and family How about you?

Yeah that's exactly what it is, I fooled myself for so long that I was in it for more noble or higher reasons. But what I have discovered is that you don't get what you want. You get baited in with thoughts of getting what you want and once you are deep enough the rug gets pulled out from under your feet and you see that you won't ever get it, but you have gone too far to back out. Which suggests that there is a deeper intelligence than your surface desires, a force more powerful than ego driving the whole process.

Maybe many have to go through the process of being a kultivator in order to become a cultivator

We are part of the evolutionary drive for existence to become aware of itself.

Yeah, I suspect its a blessing you never get what you want out of all this though

Why do you want to make physical and spiritual progress?

For those who have never seen him Louis Theroux is a BBC documentary maker who makes a lot of interesting programmes about sub cultures, his style is that he aims to expose peoples strangeness just by being really straight and letting people talk. In this programme he tackles Indian Gurus and there is a kind of mocking approach to a lot of it and he obviously doesn't believe any of it and is trying to expose it as false and weird, but what is interesting is that at the end he goes to see Amma the hugging saint and she decimates his defences and blows him away with her power just through one of her hugs lol you can literally see how his mind is grasping to make sense of his experience as he tries to hold back tears. Thought it was pretty interesting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gun8lI2rTvw

Its the centre of gravity in your body, so in that sense it can be felt as a place

Adyashanti says some interesting things about this, he studied with Zen masters for about 20 years but when he talks about opening the heart he generally talks about the Christian mystics more than the Zen or Vedanta masters. Where the Christian path differs and has its strength is that it brings your entire life onto the path, there is a complete embrace of your entire humanity; the essential gist from his interpretation of Christianity is that life/god/tao is always bringing you towards the things you need to confront and the things you try to avoid in yourself through your regular day to day life through the tough people and experiences we have to deal with, yet we tend to try avoid these things brought to us or resent these problems, I have noticed this in my life how I seem to draw towards myself the things I most try to avoid or are scared of. Anything you have failed to embrace and love is going to be constantly drawn towards you in day to day life until you have embraced it, life itself it trying to bring you back to harmony and wholeness yet we always curse our luck and resent life when we are confronted with exactly the thing we need to grow and label it a problem. So the Christian path is a way to start to say yes to all of life to embrace it all with all its problems, the life of Jesus is an example of this, he didn't have a nice quiet life sitting in the mountains meditating, he went from one catostrophe to another without friction without saying no to whatever he was confronted with. There are others like St John of the Cross and Dag Hammarskjold who embraced life no matter the problem or stress involved in a similar way, saying yes to it all it opened their heart to it all.

http://www.razorianfly.com/2013/07/30/camerons-new-uk-internet-policies-to-include-the-blocking-of-esoteric-material/ There has been a lot of fuss recently about David Cameron introducing filters to the internet in the UK to block hardcore porn and violent websites, which has gained a lot of support from many groups such as mothers, but what has also been included hidden in the subprint is that there are also going to be blocks on other areas such as websites associated with alcohol as well as blocks on "esoteric material". So that could mean that Qigong websites, alternative health, Taoist websites including this one, pretty much all the websites which talk about the real truth could be classed as "esoteric material" and blocked in the UK within the year! What the hell, the thought police are coming!

A while ago I bought one of the expensive grounding bed sheets so you sleep grounded, but when I used it I had weird intense dreams and would often wake up in the night disturbed so somehow it seemed to make things worse. Then I read somewhere that such things could even amplify emf interference in the body, so I stopped using it. I don't know if I was somehow using it incorrectly or my plugs were wired up strangely but such grounding devices seemed to have to opposite effect they were meant to with me. Now I just go bare foot on the ground when I can.

What races do you think are higher? Why do you think they are higher? There has been strains of this sort of thinking in the past in Theosophy and others that certain races have advantages, but one of the consequences of this line of thought from such esoteric teaching was Nazi ideology, and I see no evidence there is any sort of truth in such teachings. Although it is difficult to talk about without sounding racist there are differences in race, it might be true that black Africans have more kidney energy for example. Europeans may have more jing than Asians. The highest number of teachings and enlightened beings come from India. How this all correlates to real spirituality I don't see any difference in race as I believe it has little to do with energy or jing or anything like that, its more about having the karma to come into contact with legitimate teachers and teachings which is individual rather than racial.

Huxley was a student of the Fourth Way of Gurdjieff and Ouspenskey and I think his criticisms of the intellectual life are very valid, I have seen in my own life how people retreating into the intellectual can be a running away and avoidance, it is incredibly common and then those same people are treated like kings and rewarded by society for their retreat which reinforces it. There are so many ways we can avoid living a direct life, we can retreat into our minds, we can retreat into spiritual pursuits and meditation to try avoid life, and going into solitude away from others could be just another method of this aversion.

I think Tonglen can be just a natural extension of logic in that there are billions of other people and just one of you, so the welfare of billions is logically of more important concern than the welfare of one person; plus your individual life is finite but there will be potentially infinite generations of people who will live after you so working for their benefit is logically more of a concern than your own. So I understand that many cultures and individuals can practice Tonglen naturally without ever hearing of the official practice.

You can be in solitude when around others, I have come to the conclusion that when some masters talk about solitude they are talking about not taking ideas, beliefs and perceptions with you rather than actually being physically alone. To go into solitude within yourself is to go into yourself with a completely beginners mind with no attempt to change anything to look squarely in the eye whatever is there without any help from any outside force, it may help to get away from others to do this but not necessarily.

You don't get it. Obviously the view of the ultimate does not need the view of the contrived, but what the lower vehicles are trying to do is engage people where their minds are at in order to bring them to the ultimate view. They are an attempt to engage people where they are at. Why do you think the Dalai Lama hardly ever teaches Dzogchen even though he is fully qualified and empowered to do so? he has taught Dzogchen on a few occasions and is fully aware of the teachings of Dudjom Rinpoche , but he mostly teaches things like the Kalachakra and the 8 verses of mind training and other things, he didn't suddenly give up all the other paths as valid methods for people to realize the view soon as he mastered Dzogchen, why do you think that is?

He is talking about a view from the summit of the teachings, yet you are applying it as a blanket statement, which is the problem when you take the teaching or quote out of the context it was given.

Its quite common with the internetbuddhists these days but I don't know how they can't see that trying to turn one select branch of Buddhism such as Dzogchen into a superior elitist path is just another manifestion of ego, it is a highjacking of the Dharma by the ego. Its so obvious its right in your face for everyone to see! Yet they don't see it, such is the power of our minds to fool us I suppose.

You probably need less advice than more, so I will add to the potential confusion with my 2c which is that if you are trying to do anything then you are not resting the mind. The inclination to do is a difficult one to relax especially in our culture and when most of our spiritual training has involved doing. These instructions by the great Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche I find very precise http://www.turtlehill.org/ths/dilgo.html "The everyday practice is simply to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions, and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself. This produces a tremendous energy which usually is locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away from life experiences." "Don't mentally split into two when meditating, one part of the mind watching the other like a cat watching a mouse". "Everything is perfect just as it is, completely pure and undefiled. All phenomena naturally appear in their uniquely correct modes and situations, forming ever-changing patterns full of meaning and significance, like participants in a great dance. Everything is a symbol, yet there is no difference between the symbol and the truth symbolized. With no effort of practice whatsoever, liberation, enlightenment, and buddhahood are already fully developed and perfected. This is natural perfection." "The everyday practice is just ordinary life itself. Since the underdeveloped state does not exist there is no need to behave in any special way or try to attain or practice anything.There should be no need of striving to reach some exalted goal or higher state"