Jetsun

Yes sorry my memory of Tibetan names is not so good, More Pai guy has provided the link to the text I meant

I didn't say they did, I am saying that Je Tsongkhapa has laid out the path towards them in his Lamrim Chenmo. The 6 Yogas are the pinnacle Tantra training, you don't learn them from a book but you have to do many years of preparation with purification, meditative training and insight, so he is laying out the early levels clearly and methodically so then you are in the position to be taught the 6 Yogas of Naropa. You then still have to find a master to teach you but you are far more likely to be taught them if you have done the early levels of preparation, and those masters are far more available than those of Mo Pai, for example if you are a woman you can get training at Gebcha Gonpa http://gebchakgonpa.org where they do a Tummo exhibition every year.

Edit: I shouldn't be so sarcastic

All this fuss over something you can't even learn, Kosta Danos even said that you gain the same attainment through pursuing the 6 Yogas of Naropa and the whole path towards that has been systematically laid out for you by Je Tsongchapa in his great Trieste trilogy of books which you can get cheaply off amazon, its even on kindle these days. You may need a teacher for the actual yogas but the early levels of preparation are out there for everyone to access without being scammed or going astray.

I was amazed that a party which had been hijacked by religious extremists got that close to winning to be honest.

A lot of Sadghuru's words here sounds like Fourth Way teaching of Gurdjieff, where did he get his teaching from? is he from an Indian Lineage of masters?

Sounds like you are mixing up shamanic practices with meditation, if you get some spirit or voice talk to you in meditation you are meant to give it as much attention and valuation as the voice which starts thinking about what you are going to cook for dinner ie not very much at all, you recognise it is there and let it go or come back to your meditation focus. Typically in meditation spirits etc are just a distraction. The only method I know of contacting your spirit animal is drumming or maybe some dream practices. But a lot of what you describe will sound quite out there strange to the average reader, I hope you are aware of this, if not I would think about going to talk to someone more regular like a councillor.

This makes a lot of sense to me, I do exercises and try practice techniques to try bring the walls down, then spend the rest of my time building them up again so I get nowhere just going back and forth. Maybe I should stop trying to bring them down and build a nice wall, or maybe I should become a monk so I am dedicated to bringing them down completely, being stuck in the middle is sort of limbo, although when I die I guess the nice walls I build will be destroyed anyway so whatever happens the house will come crashing down.

If you can work up a sweat, then brush your body with one of those brushes you get from a health store which is not too hard but not too soft, then shower. As you fast you will be breaking down loads of toxins which will be brought to the surface of your skin, if you brush you open your pores and remove the waste otherwise the toxins can just be reabsorbed into the body poisoning it. This way you open the pores which releases pressure from the organs which are detoxing as well as the lungs and kidneys. I have heard the Ketsbah Sufis talk about the importance of this as well as others like Franz Brandon in his Hermetics. I can confirm the benefits of this myself too.

If you seek harder and more intensely it brings more into consciousness how exactly you are seeking, so you can stop doing it. As far as I'm aware you can't stop doing something unless you are fully aware you are actually doing it, which is why you have all these methods and practices to illuminate what you are doing. Very few historical masters and teachers just say do nothing, if this is the same approach as "do nothing" Zen then according to the Zen master Hakuin this will send you straight to hell, he sought enlightenment so hard and practiced so intensely that he almost killed himself.

Buddhist era Tibet was founded on a idealistic premise that the most spiritually advanced members of society were also the leaders, the people invited the Lamas to become leaders they didn't take it by force; imagine having people with genuine wisdom and compassion being the leaders of your country instead of the muppets we have to put up with. But that era is over and won't be brought back, but fortunately for us as individuals in the west we can go and learn from the knowledge that the Lamas have before it becomes exstinct.

If you actually listen to what the Dalai Lama says he says more or less the same as you that most of the ritual, ceremony and sectarian stuff isn't really necessary. I don't know why you keep banging the same drum about him doing it for the money, he could easily have retired by now with the money he made from just one of his books yet he continually travels non stop to teach out of compassion for others, just look at his schedule its non stop traveling and work year on year giving teachings in all sorts of countries even though he is in his 70's and could relax in luxury for the rest of his life. This year he completely sold out the MEN arena in Manchester, yet they made a loss overall because they decided to make the youth day completely free. Strange behavior from one motivated by cash

This old drum, people have been preaching this for hundreds of years, it may have brought some benefit but focus on what you perceive as good and holy then you may just be putting what you perceive as bad and unholy into the dark of your subconscious, where it becomes far more dangerous and destructive than it ever was before. Disowned emotions get put out into the world as projections which is how you create an enemy, so by trying to only cultivate holiness you may also be cultivating enaminity.So my tip is to cultivate consciousness and truth, if you focus on one side of dualistic thinking it also strengthens the other side, which is why supposedly moral institutions such as the church have a really dark and dirty underbelly and why they always need an enemy to fight and project their shadow onto. Hopefully we can advance above this level of thinking some day.

The dog has little or no self consciousness of what it is though... maybe.. so it may have Buddha nature but is not aware of it. Humans have self consciousness, which drives most of us insane, but has the potential for us to witness what we really are and what existence is all about.

Mark Griffin “In the region at the heart there is a structure shaped like a cave, the size of the thumb. Inside this structure is the secret essence of the Guru. What that is, is the anchor of the one single thread that goes through all hundred fibers*, up through the very center, bypassing all the hundred fibers to get to the three points, A, Ka and Tha, up through the HamSa. So it goes from the hundred, to the three, to the one. The one fiber threads through. From there, the one fiber threads the needle, it threads the needle, it threads the needle. The Sufis call it the Reed of God, because it is one fiber out of millions of fibers. There’s 72,000 fibers just moving off the three fibers and the six chakras. Of that 72,000, a hundred are important. As it hits the heart, it turns into a fan. All the data of your experience is stored there. But out of that hundred, there is one that originates from the secret seat of the Guru at the very center of the body. The heart is considered to be the center of the body: there are three chakras below, three chakras above. All of the fibers that flow out from the heart go to all the extremes of the subtle physical body and physical body: down the legs, out the feet into the earth; down through the center of the body, down the spine, between the legs and down into the earth; out the arms and hands, up the neck and head, etc. All of the various orbits, micro and macro orbits, up the back, down the front, etc., all key into the heart. The subtlety of this fiber is beyond description. Without the Guru’s grace, you would never find it. [it's like:] 'There is a needle, and I’ve hidden it in North America; you have to find that needle, and here’s a clue.' The Guru’s grace is simple. That thread becomes magnetized. You just have to look for it. You’ll find that there’s this magnetic throb pulsing down this infinitely refined fiber. That’s the Guru. It is the one fiber that penetrates through all four bodies, and moves into the space of emptiness."

Thomas Merton At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak his name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. . . . I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere. “Spiritual Homilies” of Makarios, The heart governs and reigns over the whole bodily organism; and when grace possesses the pasturages of the heart, it rules over all the members and the thoughts. For there, in the heart, is the intellect (nous), and all the thoughts of the soul and its expectation; and in this way grace penetrates also to all the members of the body Titus Burckhardt Among [the human] faculties, the heart (al-qalb) is central, for it is the “place” where the Transcendent Realities enter into contact with man; it is the organ of intuition and of Divine Revelation (attajallî). St Mark There is a breaking of the heart which is gentle and makes it deeply penitent, and there is a breaking which is violent and harmful, shattering it completely. Vigils, prayer, and patient acceptance of what comes constitute a breaking that does not harm but benefits the heart, provided we do not destroy the balance between them through excess. He who perseveres in them will be helped in other ways as well; but he who is slack and negligent will suffer intolerably on leaving this life. A self-indulgent heart becomes a prison and chain for the soul when it leaves this life; whereas an assiduous heart is an open door

I have thought about this too I don't understand how an animal can gain merit to become a human, it doesn't seem to make sense as an animal just does what it does instinctively. Although evolutionary and scientifically speaking humans are more advanced and higher than animals, this is a fact. I went to a Dalai Lama teaching recently where he was talking about karma joking about how those people who love their dogs so much that they spend all of their life looking after them that in the next life they are likely to become a dog, lol, so maybe if a dog spends lots of time with humans and becomes domesticated that they start thinking that they are like a human so they will be reincarnated as a human. So maybe if you spend your life doing base things like fighting and sex then you might be reincarnated as an animal as there is little difference between what you focus on as a human and what an animal focuses on, so there is little difference what body you take. So maybe if an animal spends all their time nurturing they might become a human through their compassion, who knows.

The problem in many of the original texts are the the translations are often inaccurate or don't convey the complete meaning of what was intended. Even the very basic terms like emptiness and suffering don't translate completely accurately, so personally I am not very confident with many other terms like illusion are what is meant to be conveyed 100%. If you speak the original language it is a different matter of course.

I have heard some people say excessive focus on the LDT is bad, people like Master Nan Huai Chin has said such things. I don't think the Buddha instructed people to use it, so it may not be the be all and end all of cultivation

I have heard a few healers say that it is not healthy to focus your meditation on your physical heart, but compassion energetic heart based exercises are good. Essentialy I think when you bring your identity out of your head it will help open your heart, so meditation on the ldt should help do this.

It's probably due to the fear of annihilation, fear of death

Personally from a noobs perspective I think the heart is the balanced place in the the human body because there are three chakras below and three above, it is where earth energies and heaven energies are most balanced.

The latest David Cronenberg film 'Cosmopolis' is more or less about this, how the world is being digitalised, roboticised and obsessed with money and the effect that has on our relationships and psyche.The actors talk almost robotic at times and it is not just because Robert Pattinson is the main character. Art reflects the times as they say.

I have studied a lot of Buddhism but I find myself drawn to Christianity a lot recently, but not in the way the Church teaches it. Meditation on Christ is not much different from Buddhist Tantra meditation on a deity, it may be even better for many Westerners as Christ is more of an architypal figure of unlimited compassion in the Western psyche than any Buddhist deity. You could say even that Christ did or is doing Guru Yoga for a large section of humanity, maybe even for everyone When the Dalai Lama teaches abroad now he always begins his talks saying that you should keep your own religion and you don't need Buddhism, I always thought he was just saying that out of politeness but i'm starting to think now that he is being genuine. If you have genuine faith, genuine prayer, it is very humbling to the ego which is what Buddhists say is the core of most of our problems. In terms of methods such as meditation if you look out of official Church lines you find methods of purification, the Eastern orthodox church is full of methods and processes like the Ignatian spiritual exercises are very powerful methods of development. Maybe you need the highest Buddhist teachings to make that final step to full enlightenment but most other religions can bring you to the point of high level compassionate Bodhisattva and they may bring you there faster than Buddhism could depending on your individuality.

You can look at where humanity is at from many different perspectives, but I think it makes sense that humanity in general goes through the same process of growth through the chakras as all us humans do. In previous generations the majority of people were rural dwelling people who worshipped nature and shamanic spirits, so essentially they were more centred in the lower chakras. Then there emerged relatively in the same time period all the teachings of the prophets and Buddha which were more heart based so humanity was on course to progression to a higher level of balance. It was said that on the day Christ was crucified that the rumour was spread that the great God of nature Pan had been killed, which signifies that the old Pagan gods had been replaced and people rapidly began to move to urban centres and the worship of nature was replaced with religion. It could be that the upheaval of the previous centuries is a result of the process of change of humanity to higher centres which is finally beginning to settle down into a more steady heart centred era, or it could be that humanity is about to go through the process of progressing to even higher centres and higher vibration now, as people are giving up on organised religion and developing more of a personal spirituality from a mix of teachings.