Jetsun

This is true but the foundations for bringing the Dharma to a foreign culture are usually done by extraordinary masters who have the capacity and skillful understanding to adapt the Dharma to the native culture and know what level of teaching the population require, for example padmasambhava had to do a great deal of groundwork to prepare Tibet for Buddhism then there are others like Boddhidharma who went to China. The current Dalai Lama is actually trying to do this to a certain extent for the West at the moment.

If you are looking at things from a Buddhist perspective I would be careful about those who say you should be happy alone and you don't need other people, really the truth of interdependence means that we are deeply connected to others and through much of our lives completely dependent on them for our welfare and survival. I think the more healthy approach is that of some lineages of trying to become a Bodhisattva so all of your practice is to benefit others and for other people. In such approaches you are taught to completely cherish other people as precious beings and love then with the same heart that you love your own mother, time alone in seclusion is useful but it is not so you can become separate from others like a separate lonely island, it is so you benefit others when you reenter the world with them and be closer to then , so going to a temple and seeking out community isn't clinging otherwise taking refuge in the Sangha wouldnt be one of the cornerstones of the path.

Things like mantra meditation are certainly forms of hypnosis, but they are positive beneficial ones which help to clear out other hypnotic scripts which may be running. There are deeper questions which can be asked though such as what really is hypnosis and is the sense of self or the sense of "I" just a hypnotic suggestion?

I heard a story about a student who went to his master to get a mantra for healing, the master was in the middle of an intense practice and impatiently told the student to "go away" in Tibetan, the student was so pleased that he had finally been given his sacred mantra and went away and diligently practiced chanting every day and gained a reputation for his healing ability. Belief isn't everything but it certainly plays a big role.

The reality is that there is no security, everything you cherish or plan for could be gone at any moment, so in light of that the only refuge is to sink to your heart and try to follow it, otherwise you could spend your life living somebody else's life or living your life out of a place of fear, neither of which leads to growth or happiness.

I agree a lot with what he says, personally I love and study Tibetan Buddhism but I can't relate to the cultural trappings or even the deities really, the problem is that do you risk diluting the transmission of wisdom if you take the teaching out of the cultural framework it has lived in and proved successful in for many generations? A real genuine high master could probably do this effectively but I doubt your average Dharma teacher could.

It is an interesting topic of discussion, personally I think music like modern hip hop is more destructive than outright angry music because even though its not as violent now its all about money money money ego ego ego, then these fake untalented shallow guys are considered stars or heroes to emulate , whereas at least the angry folks are legitimately singing about what they feel.

I think music can be sort of magical in a way by connecting with parts of you which feel disconnected from the whole, so say you feel miserable in some sort of way then a musician creates something which vibrates exactly with the emotional state you are in then suddenly that part of you which felt cut off and unwanted is connected to and legitimized. For example If you feel sad and hear a sad song you may suddenly feel less lonely and isolated as you recognise that the state you are in is a universal shared experience. So imo Nirvana were just resonating with a certain state or vibration of anxiety and anger not many others had done so successfully before, so people listen to them and feel less wrong about themselves as they see others share their experience and are brave enough to shout about it to the world.

I don't know about jing gain or loss but it will probably make you go a bit insane

I'm.not sure Kurt had any solutions to the problems he was singing about or he woukdnt be dead now

Depends what you mean by transmission, all schools have a certain transmission for example if you go to Eton you probably leave there having absorbed some of the elitist transmission of the school and think you should be running the country.

I watched that a few years ago and thought it was really good, although I never realised how heartbreaking being picked as a lama can be for the family.

Within the Fourth Way system Gurdjieff describes scientifically the process of transformation of energy within the human body/mind system; when a person is given genuine spiritual teaching and correct instruction the fundamental sexual energy in the body is transformed into a higher vibration whereby it creates a sort of coating for what he calls the Kesjan body otherwise known as the astral body, which is a subtle body connected to our physical body at a point at the lower Dan Tien. If the astral body begins to be coated then it can be called an immortal foetus because if it is fully coated then it has the capacity to survive the death of the physical body, although he says nothing is truelly immortal as all things die in the end. This isn't anything to do with the inner child or really anything to do with enlightenment, its a spiritual process which evolves out of correct cultivation and practice.

I think they got jobs playing extras in Conan

Sounds mysterious, how would you go about finding your element and bending it? Where do you begin.

It may bring some temporary pleasure to attach to certain thoughts, but the thought will pass away and then you will experience fear and loss as you cling to that which is transient. In my experience anyway I gain far greater sense of joy and peace when I am able to not identify with my thoughts.

I used to fish and every time the fish was brought out the water it would shit itself in what I assume is outright terror, so I don't think it is the most compassionate pursuit.

I think the fastest route would be to get a top university to do a study on measuring how qi projection influences individual cells. If you could for example have a Harvard study showing how qi projection shrinks cancer cells then it could be a game changer.

Maybe your own life and death follow the same principles of life and death of a thought, so it may be helpful to study where thoughts come from and where they go to, how attaching and identifying with a thought brings suffering and how they self liberate if you let go your attachment and anxiety, and whether "you" and your identity are located any more in your thoughts than in the space they arise in. If "you" are as much the space in which things arise as the form which emerges then do you ever really die?

I think the problem is if people bring a sexually neurotic attitude to retention practice they aren't actually doing anything spiritual rather they may just be reinforcing their own problems and strengthening any repressive conditioning they may be under.

I always thought that Mastering book by Daniel Ingram was quite good on his experience of retreats and Buddhism http://www.interactivebuddha.com/mctb.shtml He says that many people go into them and get fixated on their psychological issues and spend all their focus on their childhood things and other issues which come up, but all that stuff isn't the point of the retreat or of Buddhism at all really so many people don't get the most out of it, so he wrote his book to hopefully guide people better.

If you want to understand the best way for you to cultivate it is very useful to understand why the various traditions come from differing perspectives and understand their differences. They may all end up at the same place but the means to get there are not the same and it could be that for you as an individual one route might be twice as fast as the other, but unless you understand how the paths are different how will you know which one is best suited for you?

In the modern age martial arts aren't anywhere near as important now as they were when these systems were developed to protect yourself, times change but often traditional attitudes are slow to keep up and adapt.

Your sexual energy is the raw power in your body, just see the difference if you shout or punch from the lower centre; one of the main ways that social repression has occurred is that they have turned this source of power against us making people feel ashamed of it so they cut people off from their main source of power, so you civilise a population and make then obedient but at a cost to the balance and health of the individual. All of the guilt and neurosis you see on this site around semen retention is a symptom of this, its a hangover of hundreds of years of negative conditioning, so I suggest people deal with all those feelings and conditionings first before they get worried about sublimation and retention.

Yeah i'm still trying to master that, but I keep interfering