Jetsun

I wouldn't take the risk with that sort of stuff unless you know exactly what you are doing and why you are doing it. There are plenty of people who have caused themselves health problems through incorrect practice.

The work of Bruce Frantzis is a good place to start in my opinion, he explains things really well

Yeah they are a democracy now, their king gave up his his power which was a good thing otherwise they could get invaded on the pretext of liberation from a tyrant, but I think the King still has some sort of role in the state. They have no oil or resources and only a small amount of tourists are allowed in each year so they are a bit cut off from the modern world, but there still growing conflict between trying to maintain their traditional Buddhist culture and modernity.

Bhutan remains a Vajrayana country where the politics and ethics are influenced by Buddhist thought, what they are famous for is their measuring of Gross National Happiness as being as important as GDP "The Bhutanese grounding in Buddhist ideals suggests that beneficial development of human society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of sustainable development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

Babies think all is one and are merged with the world with no identity, then the process of maturity involves you first discovering that you and your mother aren't the same person and then the process of individuation proceeds which teaches you more and more that you are an individual seperate from others, you are meant to grow and seperate away from your mother, your family, your social group from others. Many of those who go around saying all is one haven't gone through the indivuation process properly and have poor boundaries with others, they take on others emotions and problems and give theirs to others which just confuses everything, because they believe all is one they feel responsible for things they aren't responsible for and pass on to others their own responsibilities. But yet we are all connected and have the same desires and have the same universal laws acting within us so in that sense we are all the same but we are still individuals.

I did Osho Dynamic meditations for a while, they ended up making me more angry and unbalanced and when I did a bit of research my experience seemed to be common, I couldn't find anyone who practised them long term with great benefit. His meditations were an experiment in the 60's where he meshed together Sufi, Fourth Way, Primal psychology and Buddhist meditation into one technique to try to create "Zorba the Buddha" out of his students, but it's unclear if he really knew what he was doing. I think you are better off going back to the source and practising the paths Osho took his techniques from which are usually created by knowledgeable masters of wisdom rather than Osho's mishmash of techniques put together.

Maybe your not closing down properly , give your body a massage or brush it but do it downwards starting at the top of your head, you don't want any energy trapped in your head, rub your joints like your shoulders, knees and ankles then the bottom of your feet, focus on your body while you brush will help to sink the energy while bringing you back into normal life more smoothly .

I wonder who will get to enlightenment first the softcore or the hardcore Buddhist? my bet is on the softcore

I don't know about enlightened but Pablo Amaringo is one of the best Shamanic artists

I guess it depends on where you live, most of the major industrialised nations do have the capacity to provide healthcare and certain levels of welfare which helps to create a more compassionate and calm peaceful society. Long term we shall have to see if it sustainable, it has been so far, but all things collapse in the end but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things as good as we can in the mean time.

All I know is that it is much easier to meditate when you are not in survival type fight or flight consiousness and those around you aren't in that consciousness either, which means ideally society provides decent levels of healthcare and safety nets so that even if things go really wrong you don't have to worry that it may lead to your death. It's all about Maslows Hierarchy if you want as many people to reach the top you need to do all you can to help get the foundations solid. Fear breeds fear so all weapons like guns should be banned, there should be severe restriction on advertising and there should be laws about advertising junk food similar to the warnings you get on cigarette packs.

Sounds like she may have turned Buddhism into a religion

I think the road to heaven is paved with good intentions too or maybe no intentions. I'm not even sure such a thing as an ultimately bad intention exists

Most modern interpretations of Christian teachings have good intentions but often lead to hell, for example some priests repress their sexual impulses with good intentions but end up as perverts, missionaries go out to foreign cultures with good intentions but end up imbalancing and ruining them, parents over moralise their children to try to make them good people but just screw them up. People like George Bush and Tony Blair may honestly believe in their minds that they act out of good intentions but they end up killing thousands of innocent people. I think nearly all intentions start off as good but when they lack wisdom they often end up doing the exact opposite of what they set out to achieve.

Hell is a state of mind and if anyone can end up there if you lack wisdom no matter how positive your intentions are. I may well be there right now.

From my own experience I found it very beneficial to meet a somewhat realised and spiritually purified person just because it showed me that all of this stuff is actually real and can lead somewhere genuine, which gives you the motivation to keep going with your practice and gives you hope.

I haven't got so far with Vedanta self inquiry myself but I have read people like Ramana Maharshi say the same thing that when you trace the "I am" you end up heading towards your heart. But when I investigate most of the things in my mind and trace them back they always originate as some sort of desire to protect or to try to make me happy, the problem being that much of it is based in the past so old heart based intents may not serve the present moment too well and cause problems. I think the ego contains fire because the ego is born out of the heart based intent to protect you, so it is using the fire of the heart as fuel but it is being directed and controlled through habits of mind conditioning and imagination rather than the heart in the present moment.

When you break things down everything we do comes from the desire to be happy and avoid suffering so everything we do originated from the heart, even our egotism and violence comes from the desire to be happy and avoid suffering. So the heart is the rightful king but we went up into our heads into imagination with our sense of identity as children in order to survive, but our natural stable centre of gravity of our identity is in the heart.

Taoism talks about the nature of yin and yang a lot and describes the way the forces change and interact but I don't hear a lot of reference to what it is which harmonises them and unifies the forces, whereas in real Christian teachings there is the concept of the trinity, so there is three forces yin, yang and a reconciling force which unifies both together, without the trinity and third force how can there ever be a harmonisation?

Thanks this is interesting, is there a book which discusses this information ?

What are the four books and five classics ?

"The Tao is natural. All forced manipulations and concoctions are in vain. Some people guard their minds and settle their ideas and thoughts, some people hold their breath and keep it in the abdomen, some people perform psychosomatic energy-circulation exercises. When these people come to the end of their lives and find everything they did was useless, they will resent the gods, also uselessly." - Liu I-Ming 'Awakening to the Tao'

If you are healthy a few days fast should be easy as long as you have water, theoretically you could go without food for weeks without any qi practices or anything

To clarify the quote is simply the Dalai Lama explaining the monastic rules, there is no admission of malpractice or suggestion that abuse by senior monks is not looked upon as a serious offence, the reason why that passage is in the book at all is to show the attitude difference between monks and nuns, the author ends the passage saying "nuns just wanna have fun" so he is basically using the quote to mock different sexual attitudes in a different culture to his own.