Harmonious Emptiness

Not entirely sure if it's the same thing as described here, but this sort of tingling cascading energy feels like it nourishes the cells of the body. I think it is a very good thing and can be part of a sitting qi gong. Relax the area where it happens so it can spread out maybe. This is when I don't feel experimentation with psychedelics is always bad since strange phenomena is not so frightening nor distracting; however, they may use up a bit of "juice" that some of the benefits can bring. Over all, these experiences tend to be more like landmarks.. worth exploring, but not the intended destination, although some who just want a groovy psychedelic experience seem to make them the overall goal. They won't enlighten you though they may be an early road sign that you're going in the right direction. "Don't mistake a glimpse of Reality for the Whole of Reality..." This is Fun-Da-Mental to real progress and success, though like any art we must work on it and work on it and work on it and.. It's always a work in progress.

So I've been thinking about how in the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is told that his final state of mind will determine what happens to him after death. Also, that it was said by Hui Neng and probably others that, essentially, one moment of hatred erases erases all merit and one moment of Buddha mind erases all demerit and they will continue to cancel each other out. Now, when someone is on their deathbed, it's not uncommon for them to be at peace with losing their worldly attachments. So, is this the purpose of Buddhism? To have this mind at the end of our lives so that we will not be tossed back into the cycle? If we don't cultivate during life, then perhaps if we die peacefully we will later think about our attachments and return for Samsara. If we can cultivate the same mind as we must have on our deathbed, perhaps we can find Nirvana in life

That is so riddled with subtle BS I don't even know where to start or even if I should.. First, those geographers were all between 100BC and 100CE, while Egypt changed hands several times around 500 or 300 BC so it's rulers at the time were no longer Egyptians but middle eastern, Greek, Roman, and others for about 300 years by that time. The original Egyptians were dark, and they lived in Africa, so they were Black Africans. A lot of people in African and Ethiopia, by the way, look basically white with dark skin. Not all Africans look like their from the West African countries. There seems to be some obviously prejudiced implications in your post, but I'll leave others to make their own assessment. I don't have time for those types of arguments with anyone on line...

I admit my practice tends to be somewhat intermittent, more like a basic maintenance than a progress regimen, but when I stop and come back it may take a couple of days with about 1.5 or 2 hours practice each before sensations are running as usual. I find good warm-ups and the right meditative state are very important. For warm ups I do "shaking the tree" and meridian slapping with torso twists + more recently yi jin jing, then sitting meditation before and or after the Qi Gong. 2c..

Into the Lion's mouth Out goes another youth's dream Super Wizard Queen

I was just going to keep it to myself, happy with my own knowledge of it, but I see it sort of adds to the conversation: For some reason when I answered I thought the number had to be between 1 and 100 rather than 1000. Later, when I realized it was up to 1000, I was walking down the street and asked myself what it might be, and, isyn, I had the numbers... however, I knew they were going to be big vibrant numbers by Ya Mu's "HERE!" so first, between 1-100 I thought of 88, then, no not quite that big, 87 felt right. 639 is a somewhat luminescent, fitting number but not extreme like 888. I've also dabbled in numerology so that may help to give the numbers a bit of personality for me. Why didn't I just change the number? My first instinct felt really correct at the time so I decided to trust it. Whatever, what's this worth now? making myself look like I would lie to convince people of this.. well.. wtv. That's up to you

I think Qi Gong is largely a practice for this. You purge stuck energies from the organs and meridians and then fill them with positive Qi. In the same way, suppressing emotions clogs up the meridians and can suppress organ function. When you manage to do what you're doing, be present, which is what Taoism and Buddhism seem to most often suggest for daily practices, there won't be much attachment to emotions, nor to desiring or suppressing them. Bliss is in balance one might say.. Qi Gong and Tai Chi are also really important practices for daily life because they entrain movements to move about 15-20% slower which allows for real attention. When the boss is staring over our shoulder, it feels like we need to both move faster and escape the situation, so suppressing the present may be the first step in the wrong direction.. It also takes courage to face the present unmitigatedly at times but that will make you happier and stronger also. more recently I've been learning to draw and find it a great yoga for being in the present just focusing where the pencil meets the paper unwaveringly when drawing straight lines and circles.. you will know when your attention dropped immediately by the waver in the line, and though this might seem like an intense thing to do, it's immensely relaxing since you can only be that concentrated when you're relaxed...

I'm not anti-Christian, but, like every other socio-political group, many have swallowed this kool-aid as if Christians brought morality to humanity. Many Christians believe that they had a revolutionary view of slavery, when in fact the Stoics were almost eliminating slavery before the Church came along and even had slaves themselves. And racial boundaries seemed to be much less in the days of Ancient Egypt where people from all around would go to learn, and the Ancient Egyptians (black Africans, if you look at the statues of the day) were highly influential on the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Now, one can say that African Americans were highly influential on white Americans in terms of music and the way that Christianity is practiced, while still being viewed negatively, but I think it was a very different story in Ancient times. It seems that the lines were drawn nationally/politically rather than racially up until about 300BC (so 3000 years or so). Maybe now the political elite are multi-national, so they need to divide and conquer by other lines.

The only notorious one's I'd say is anything Carl Jung was involved with as he and his translators had no background knowledge so they just sort of turned it into a support of their own theories (actually I believe Jung and Freud lifted a lot of their theories from Buddhism and Taoism which they were both relatively well read in.. but that's another thread.........).

Nice contribution Spelk! By Ati, you mean Maha Ati / Dzogchen? @rene glad to know there's an audience..

Hey Muqtada, I suppose depending where you live, there's often a lot of good books on Taoism at used and new book stores. Pretty much anything translated by Thomas Cleary is a GEM* though some feel he maybe over-translates a bit on certain terms. Cleary also has more than an academic knowledge of Taoism and Buddhism, plus he's read and translated so many many many texts that his footnotes are also excellent. I second 365 Dao by Deng Ming Dao. The I Ching is even older than the Tao Te Ching, and there are many varied and good translations, so you could there as well as Chuang Tzu and Lao Tzu. Also, don't miss the Neiye section at TTB -- another incredible early text . Personally, I suggest a fairly simple Chi Kung/Qi Gong form before learning Tai Chi, as the integration of body, breath, and mind is most important for the more complex Tai Chi forms, so it's best to start there, imo, though I would further recommend getting the personal feel for naturalness of mind and body from reading texts as well, since this will translate into your Qi Gong.

Tai Chi not of Taoist origins? Is there a thread I missed somewhere? Cheers.

King Curtis I'll bet this is just what they sounded like when Jimi was touring the chitlin circuit.

Leeward islands call Left behind my big suitcase More weight... forget it..

Selections from "365 Zen" edited by Jean Smith: "No matter how many years you sit doing zazen, you will never become anything special." -Zen Master Sawaki, in Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253), Instructions for the Zen Cook "Mind is the Buddha, while cessation of conceptual thought is the Way" Zen Master Huang Po (9th Century), The Zen Teachings of Huang Po "One moon shows in every pool; In every pool the one moon." -Soiku Shigematsu, Trans., A Zen Forest edit: capital "D" on Dogen

Nice. Makes sense now.. so not a mispronunciation of Dhyana as Ch'anna, leaving out final "na".. as believed by some. Ch'an also has meaning as repentance (of delusion, ignorance, arrogance, dishonesty, jealousy, and envy.. in Sutra of Hui Neng. [Hui is also phonetically similar to word meaning resolve after repentance]) but different characters..

Being ruled by the senses pulls us out of "the moment" or "suchness" I think. I mean, we can smell nice things, and see beautiful things, or conversely, smell bad things and see nasty things, but if they don't pirate our focus, then we are still detached. If I think, "oh, I want this, it will do this for me, I won't have to be like I was without it" then I'm in the future, the past, and all up in my mind, but no longer "there." I feel like this is a big slice o' the Dharma pie. Mmmmm.. Dharma pie.. ha ha.. never said I was perfect...

I'm sure the classical training paves many roads for the improvisation too, so knowing the one side while keeping the other is enviable. Some do complain of being worse off after studying jazz as they might loose some of the unconscious flow. I think studying percussion and emulating sitar is a good antidote for that. An interesting thing with Sitar (which I can only emulate) is that they gradually build up the scale, discovering each interval before moving on to the next, bending the note every which way, sort of like activating the 1st chakra fully before moving up and the same for each. They will play the other intervals in this process, but return to the interval focused in their sort of dragon dance up and down the scales. There are also 7 notes to classical scales, 7 chakras, some draw correllations. The is seen with singing bowls, where the larger ones activate lower parts of the body and smaller, higher, ones resonate higher up, so there's some possibilities to play around with there too if you and or your listener(s) are tuned in. AAUUUMMMMM.

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Hey Everything, I can relate to this. I've had some pretty cool experiences with sponanteous composition in dreams. The music was still only as good as what I put behind it, but the chord structures were good foundations nontheless. Do you improvise? I've noticed that a lot of piano players are not comfortable improvising as they were classically trained. This might be essential to being able to wake up and continue on in the same groove, figure out the chord foundations, and get the feel of it. Recording is generally better than writing for this, imo, but recording can also disturb the flow sometimes, so just record the basic and then put more feeling into it when you jam it out so to speak. Again, the melodies are usually phrases that you would naturally put over certain chord structures, so if you can figure out the underlying transitions then the melodies might be revealed and then some. However, doing this consistently is something else entirely if you want to get into that. When I was playing a lot I would dream more like this. One simple practice to have a sort of dream dialogue is to hold an unresolved feeling almost as a question to your subconscious as you're about to fall asleep. Sometimes dreams will turn it into images and scenarios which illuminate the issue and hopefully provide some solutions upon analysis of them. If you have a feeling, and you've been playing a lot, you might dream up a melody.. My dream interpretation skills are usually not too bad, so feel free to PM me if you want a second or third opinion. Also, the deeper the sleep the more memorable the dreams usually. There is a tea by Algonquin Tea called Lucid Dreaming which has sweet-gale, used by Native Americans for lucid dreaming. I suspect it gives a deeper sleep, at least that's what I seemed to notice. http://www.algonquintea.com/content/teas/lucid-dream-tea.shtml

I can relate to where a compassionate, lightened (though maybe not Enlightened), serene state fades when I neglect practices, and then the following condition seems worse in contrast. Though spiritual practice in many ways is about ease, easing physical mental and emotional tension, easing our relationships to people and situations, still it's important not to leave the "practice" out of spiritual practice, and holistic practice is probably most effective. For example, to fight a cold, you could rest, drink herbal teas, and do things that keep you in a positive frame of mind to keep you immune system strong. For a holistic spiritual practice, you could include reading and scriptures, sitting meditation, qi gong, and compassionate generosity, journal writing, etc The negative states can push you to be consistent in disciplined practice, so sometimes they serve a purpose too.

Once again: Simple: government stops wasting money on military to secure oil abroad and pretending to fight drugs puts that money to growing hemp everywhere rain falls - along highways, between houses, previously unusable land becomes usable when hemp is grown on it, so, ev-e-ry-where.. instead of coming up with useless jobs to employ people, employ them in harvesting and processing hemp ethanol (hemp produces, literally, 10 times the amount of ethanol per acre than corn, plus it harvests 3 times a year) all the land that was previously useless can now be used to grow food Follow wisdom of Taoism ..

Well, just look at the mask of King Tut.. Obviously African, as with all the statues inside the temples and even those outside one can still see that the nose and lips were surely African.

What is dancing with an elephant?