Cheshire Cat

This is really interesting: please find the article I can practice full lotus very very comfortably for hours in a row, but I think it is a bad posture because it straightens the spine with the muscles of the back, neglecting the abs. Thus creating imbalances. The big-belly syndrome common for meditators (especially dan-tien people). So, I'm working for seiza which is better for the spine... but really hard at the present moment: I can sit for no more than 30 minutes with unbearable pain. I wonder if it is really possible to seat that way for at least a couple of hours. To read that article would be very inspiring.

If he's dead, it's even worst since they'll investigate if it was an excess of self-defence: in short, if he has a knife, you can't shot him because it's excessive. You should fight on equal terms and then be able to demonstrate the facts

In my country, if a robber walks into a store with a gun in his hand and, by chance, he gets hurt seriously stumbling in a box inside the store ... then he can sue the store owner for damages. Even if a thief enters your house at night and he gets hurt, he can denounce you. There were cases in which the store owners shot the robbers: they were persecuted by the law of my country.

"What the daoist master ordered at the hotdog stand?" Daoist Master: "The hot dog that can be spoken is not the one that I ordered" A disappointed Mopai practitioner come out of a bush radiating yang Qi and told the daoist master "Now, I'm level 6: I will use my laser-sight to turn your hot dog into dust" The daoist master was scared and started turning his microcosmic orbit faster and faster to assimilate the pure qi of the hot dog into his dan tien. At the same time, he practiced a rare qigong form called "Three phoenixes kill the dog-demon on top of Kunlun mountain" . The mopai practitioner started the practice of mopai level 2 to raise the qi from his belly. A buddhist monk passed by and upon seeing that the fight was imminent and that the two opponents were equally strong, he prayed Amithaba to eventually carry them to his pure land... but to leave the hot dog there for him to eat. In the end, there were the mopai guy and the daoist master moving weirdly around a bush and the shaved monk bowing down repeatedly in a compulsive manner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicani

How is it that we can read this story in the Chuang Tzu that distinguish between shamans and wayfarers?

In my opinion, a mo-pai forum is quite useless since the school is closed and all we have are books, legends and pop-corn. A lot of qigong people started to re-create a western mopai school: something like neo-paganism or rune revival. Probably, they have very little of the original thing. So, what's the point of discussing something that... nobody actually practice in the original school? There are many in delusional states of mind that think to be in the real thing because they feel something, they dream of JC, etc... They want to promote their weird views and teach their reconstruction-ism for fun.

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Postures open qi channels in a way that the body produces more (sexual) energy to fill the new routes. When you end the posture, qi channels return to their normal size squeezing the Qi and thus one feels that he has a stronger libido.

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I started the practice of buddhist meditation without reading a single sutra. I had an open mind that wanted just to see if it works. After some time, I was really fascinated with this matter and I wanted to have a look at the marvelous and profound sutras. Reading the sutras, their fantasy-stories, their philosophical assertions that have nothing to do with the real nature of practice... I lost faith in the buddhadharma. Nonetheless, I still practice shamata and vipassana and not a single bodhisattva appeared to me to show that the mahayana-sutra stuff is real. I have faith... in the Nature of the mind. I may have faith in a teacher... if someday one will show up. I don't have faith in scriptures.

Yes, he learned from living masters with some sort of realization: he didn't study a "canon of text". Today, we are told to study dead words and to believe miraculous stories that depict a world full of bodhisattvas eager to help people to fulfill some vows taken somewhere in the past eon. The real world is not like that: haven't seen yet a bodhisattva appearing in Burkina Fasu to save people from sufferings.

Good to read, but it's essential not to believe

A chance to dispel delusions

Well... A male pretending to be a female: certainly it's not the worst thing that you can find on a public forum

Yes, I find it quite annoying since it disturbs my meditation. To lock the arms, I use this posture: Both arms like the left arm of the yogi. A method to control involuntary movements of the neck is to be found.

A monk asked Chao-chou: "Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?" Chao-chou replied: "He does not." It's not a teaching, it's a Koan. Who cares if the dog has a buddha-nature or not? If he hasn't buddha nature, you cannot teach the dharma. If he has buddha-nature, how can you teach the dharma to a dog? On the other hand, cats have Buddha nature because they can use the Force as this gif clearly demonstrates. May the force be with you, Buddha-cat.

Don't mess with ghosts: you'll get trouble!

The concept of the water path practitioner in whom the energy flows downward, is like saying that one can invert the blood flow so that clapping the hands pumps it to the hearth. From the perineum, one can reach the spine or the bladder. If the energy goes to the bladder, it is mostly wasted since it can go no further: this is the front path. In qigong training, the reverse orbit is a mean to facilitate the opening of the real MCO. imho.

Thank you Tibetan_ice. This is an excellent thread. I've read many times about seeing a bright light in meditation and visions spontaneously arising from the light. From time to time, I get some brief vision if I reach the hypnagogic state, but in that place my mind is very scattered. :-)

I'm looking for the original version in the canons. Teachers always change stories to convey different meanings (especially to present difficult things to westerners). The original story is much more enigmatic and has nothing to do with sexuality, but only with meditation: there's a state called "emptiness without substance" and it means that meditation had gone wrong. It's purely a meditation matter. Nothing to do with desire.

Hui Neng the famous monk who embraced dozens of young maidens? ... or maybe was he a celibate? This is not the original story. I've never heard of this version.

Yes, I've heard that people practice sex as a form of spiritual cultivation, but it's done in a tantric context in which sexual desire is skillfully transformed into the mind of enlightenment. So, it's the "hard" way to deal with the strongest grasping of all. The Dalai Lama teaches that in order to become a Buddha, one should have a strong desire to become a Buddha. This is tantra. Speaking about Nature of Mind and "being aware" sounds more like zen buddhism which is fine. It's my favorite form of buddhism... But the theory here is different: desire must be radically destroyed. The ideal advanced practitioner may appear to have "erection problems" in the eyes of ordinary people, since his mind is beyond lust. There are stories of buddhist saints tested by kings in all manners to see if they still retained sexual desire in their hearth. Good point. Celibacy was conceived as a skillful mean, an expedient to conquer sexual desire. Since almost none can conquer sexual desire today, the method doesn't work well in the traditional sense.