Cheshire Cat

I guess that you believe in the existence of such a thing because of faith... But in the meanwhile, you rely on mental speculation to know what it is. If you get somewhere, let me know.

Love isn't the most powerful force in the universe and it's not the fundamental nature of your mind. This is just ignorance handed down from one generation to the next. But love is the most pleasurable experience that - as a human- you can have. And it's cultivated in many spiritual paths because it has a profound psychological effect. When people say that they cultivate the central channel, they basically visualize rainbows, unicorns and shit running along the spine, in the spine, in front of the spine, etc... When a tactile sensation kicks in, they stick to that and they proceed from there. This is basically what you do in neigong, qigong, etc. You cultivate tactile sensations and dream of becoming immortal, or at least more healthy. In cultivating the heart field aka the loving heart, the tactile approach could - at most- be a support for the first meditation session because the bulk of the work is psychological and it's done in the realm of emotions. For example, you may visualize someone you love until the emotion appears in your consciousness and you proceed from there (Guru yoga). Now that you know what it is, it's much easier to understand why Damo Mitchel made such a distinction.

It was the Jeenna where they use tu burn trash... and it was also a place useful for getting rid of corpses in the mafia style. Jesus message was " if you don't practice metanoia (changing your mentality and join us), you'll end up in Geenna"

Can you tell us more about this type of eye work? Thank you I tried something similar a few years ago, but with a "dissolving" intention not trying to move the objects. I had no vision improvements.

There are many different understandings of emptiness in Buddhism.

The Golden Age myth changes its shape, but it's still here alive and well... To actually get beyond that myth would set us a span above all other civilizations of the past, IMHO.

Share the picture

Dear friend, you call it "heaven" and it definitely is if we take into consideration the amount of time required to find something that you already know. But unfortunately, I can't find anything about the mentioned experiments that I've never heard of before. I'm sure that the heaven's standard of quality will allow you to provide a link or two without much effort. Otherwise, I'm afraid that your claim will reside in the realm of urban myths for the purpose of this discussion. Please don't be eager to assign me a label and define what I should think in relation to that. I have a few valid arguments that can be discussed very briefly without speding hours on them. The first one is that the basic common qigong effect that can be easily attained by anyone and that is usually the one that gives people a reason to trust the various system is... Qi perception -in qigong interpretation-, aka tactile sensations triggered by the mind alone. This very effect is in the category of placebo therapy results. Another point is that of the various martial arts, kung fu styles and esoteric forms almost nothing has the ability to withstand a test in a real fight. As a matter of fact, combat sports discipline doesn't rely on bagua, kung fu or karate because they doesn't work as martial arts. Think about MMA or -better- the chinese army: they fight with sanda and play around with kung fu. ATP cycle and efficiency of glucose use for energy production is a result of breathwork and proper oxygenation of the blood: the Wim Hof breathing method provides the strongest scientific evidence for that. In simple qigong systems which are composed of movements and breathing, you can't really find efficiencies because apart from blood oxygenation, everything else is placebo as described above. As such, it depends on the quality of one's concentration. I'm aware that many people achieved the sensation of warmth in the lower abdomen as a result of various manipulations, but before pondering about immortal fetus and Qi stored in spiritual inner oceans, it would serve the purpose of preserving one's health to observe the masters of the art and study their achievements: if pot belly and average lifespan is what you hope to achieve from a lifetime of sincere practice, the methods are all correct. But if you hope to -at least- prolong your life, it's required to be very cautious of what you practice, in my opinion.

I don't know what he's saying and I hope there are no secret tricks. But hey... This is telekinesis

Can you provide some articles about the mentioned highly observed experiments? Assuming that -as you said- placebo is a powerful thing, it must have an impact on one's practices and -given the fact that most qigong/neigung results may fit very well into the category of scientifically recognized placebo therapy benefits- that impact must be strong. If personal belief plays a major role in determining what you can get from a system, how much is relevant to ask about intrinsic systems efficiencies?

Is there a placebo component?

Is there anything that an anonymous guy on this board could say to discourage you from pursuing this kind of practice?

Does that mean that the Buddha had only 31 special signs? Are pictorial and iconographic sources less important that textual sources? Why?

Why the buddha didn't shave his head? General answer is that he didn't need that discipline as much as his other monks, but according to this logic the Buddha doesn't do if he doesn't need to... and it supports the idea that the Buddha's regime of life is essential to enlightenment, even after enlightenment itself. I think that there must be a positive reason for him not to shave his head.

Some say it does, but none managed to provide scientific evidence for that claim. I feel that Bates' book (available for free) is worth reading. There are many different neigong philosophies, but they all have the ambition of creating an immortal body with the substances of the mortal body. The mortal body is the cauldron and it must be healthy in order to be useful for neidan. All of the "nourishing life" methods have the specific purposes of curing/preventing illness and prolonging life. The idea is that any illness prevents the practitioner from achieving the result. The subject of vision is not widely explored because IMHO this could very well be the measure of the efficacy of specific qigong routines... but people are more interested in developing bizarre tactile sensations in their MCO's points.

This might be the case, but the current situation which leads people into believing that any qigong will do as long as it triggers some sort of tingling sensations here and there... could as well confirm my idea that quality is so diluited in the industry that you can't expect anything more than "Qi flow" aka tactile sensations and subtle muscle movements. Unless it's really foolish to expect something more. Teachers who work in the industry -unlike anonymous forum commentators- have businesses to run and I would not expect a fair exploration of the subject coming from them for obvious reasons. Also, I live in a country where you can't advertise anything as a treatment that can have a major impact on uncurable health problems, unless you have solid scientific evidences... and cultural habits may influence my view on this matter. That said, I can't understand what you're saying in your last post. Why should a teacher abandon his tradition? After seing what?

That's just because I'm not a Mopai Warlord

According to the theory and practice of bates method, myopia and astigmatism are caused by chronic muscular tensions. Those tensions can be cured with the practice of simple eye exercises. But apparently, meditation -with all its power to relax- can't cure eye problems. There are many neigong books which stress the importance of having healthy eyes and even suggest improbable exercises in the attempt to offer a cure. I think that the book "the secret of the golden flower" is very significant because it plainly states that the eyes are "the handles of the big dipper" and the Ming version of the text goes even further by explaining that it's not easy for the blind to achieve the result. The eyes are connected with the energy system and if your vision is impaired, your energy system is equally impaired: certain pathways may be inactives and the currents may run in different directions. it's not easy to heal the eyes and MCO can't surely do it.

To say that any practice of dubious origins which proclaims itself "Qigong" can have a major impact on uncurable health problems ... is a bold statement. Don't you think?

The industry favors quantity over quality. How do I know that? It's extremely rare that a qigong/neigong teacher criticizes another teacher: there's enough business for everyone and a critic-train could have an high chance of damaging the industry for good.

When your practices manage to heal your eyes to the point of perfect eyesight, you can progress and work for real on the nervous system. MCO cannot heal your eyes and that should tell you something...

Suppose that as the flame reaches the bottom of a candle, we put the wick of a new candle to the flame of the old candle and catch the flame from the old candle to the new one. The flame on the old candle goes out and the flame has now been transmitted to the new candle. Is it the same flame or a different flame? From one angle we can say it is the same flame because it follows in continuity, it belongs to the same series. But now the flame is burning with a new physical base, with a new candle as its support. It is burning up new particles of air, new pieces of wax, a new section of wick. We say it is the same flame as the flame of the old candle because it caught fire from that and it continues the succession. But there is no absolute identity of one flame with the other, because of the conditions contributing to that flame. But we can't say that it is a different flame. To call it a different flames would not be in conformity with conventional usage.

The Buddha would agree with me that if there's no rebirth, then there's no need to leave your luxurious sakya castle, suffer penances for an indefinite number of years.... in order to be free from suffering for the last decades of your life. You can play around as much as you like, but if you're serious about this quest, just ask to real Buddhists if they believe in rebirth or not. That's just heretic Daemon's Buddhism. BTW... Discover what? :-)

Buddhists believe in Rebirth and Hindus believe in Reincarnation. I never asserted that reincarnation is intrinsic to buddhism

It sounds good on words and I'm glad that you don't need any of the beautiful things that you deserve in life in order to be happy and content, but I'm pretty sure that you won't easily give away any of those very things to the first stranger who comes knocking at your door. You ponder that for sure you're not overly attached nor dependent upon the outcomes and it feels good to think like that, but in my opinion the truth is that -at most- you're just more grateful for what you already have and obviously not willing to renounce anything in particular. It's a sound state of mind, but you don't really need buddhism to achieve that: it' enough to travel and see the world outside of the U.S. In my opinion, this is the narrative of the 5% engagement buddhism that it's widely spread in the West. It's not bad. It might be beneficial and it's a nice way to meet good hearted people. A buddhist practice is considered to be no different, nor necessarily better than a rebirthing session, a reiki healing or a weekend seminar to become a fully functional shaman. Of course, this is not a real buddhist view. As long as buddhism stands in a well defined margin of consideration in your life without threatening your other hobbies and passions, it'll make for a wonderful recreative activity. But the truth is that you absolutely need to believe in rebirth just for the basic teachings to make sense and if you're inclined to spirituality, there's the risk that you fully embrace buddhism and the good things won't be there anymore. I'm familiar with many of your friend's ideas, but my conclusions are different. It's true that we all suffer and it's true that it's possible to strongly embrace buddhism with meditation practices to get rid of suffering (or most of it). There are strong evidences that suffering is an integral component of the beautiful condition of being alive and the consequences are that if you get rid of suffering, you necessarily get rid of the experience of living fully. I feel that it's much more worthy to live than not to live. I agree that a westernized superficial practice of buddhism might be a very nice thing to do, but I should object about the extreme usefulness of doing it.