Cheshire Cat

And this Master Nan teaching to hold after inhale Minute 2:15, activate English subtitles Your quotes refers respectively to 1-sound of breathing 2-focus on exhale 3-a mind state No actual anapana methods

If that were the case, a person with an open mind should be able to spontaneously know everything about his environment, since everything has a form of consciousness. But knowing the medicinal properties of plants by talking with the plants themselves and gain knowledge of what's going on far away by listening to the wind are no ordinary wisdom at all. I don't think that we're in communication with different forms of consciousness, that's why tribesmen need a shaman to talk with the spirits for healing.

It's called wisdom eye for a reason. People believe that with an open third eye, a practitioner can see spirits, gods and demons and talk with them. Once a person start to communicate with non-human forms of consciousness, he gradually obtains guidance in life and actual knowledge: for example, the indigenous tribes of the Amazonian rainforest have shamans/elders who claim to have knowledge of the therapeutic use of hundreds of medicinal plants and they say that they received this actual medicinal wisdom by communicating with the plants themselves. A real third eye opening allows you to gather knowledge beyond the human realm of existence and - most importantly-- to apply this knowledge in our world for practical and tangible results: this is wisdom. This means that an "opening" that allows you to describe heavenly realms, but doesn't bring real meaningful wisdom... is just an opening of the imagination.

Can you provide an example or two of actual lineages of pure daoist philosophy to clarify the distinction?

Most of us are interested in daoism because of energy practices, namely Qi channels cultivation and martial arts. Qi cultivation is the area of expertise of many who happen to know very little about daoist religion and philosophy. TTC has nothing to say about martial arts and Qi cultivation, apart from a verse or two that need to be heavily interpreted. In my opinion, a TTC app should include a commentary from an ordained daoist priest who can explain the meaning of the text his own cultural background. I think that a daoist priest would help you for free because they love to spread daoist philosophy. If you need help finding one, send me a PM.

This is incorrect. Master Nan taught to hold after inhale and Wim Hoff teaches to hold after exhalation AND inhalation.

It's good for the guy who sold you the paint and it's evil for the environment to produce the paint. You're favoring the growth of a peculiar ecosystem in your lawn, isn't that good for the small living beings who are trying to build their lives in the grass?

I think that if you benefit from something, it's good by definition. Can you expand on this with actual examples?

Isn't "evil action" the definition of a good action seen from an opposite perspective?

The idea of Buddhist cultivation is that enlightenment is an actual word-less experience of a transcendental state beyond the realms of both thinking and not-thinking, while the perception of an Atman is mostly deductive reasoning and rational analysis.

The tradition says that he was enlightened to interdependent origination and inherent emptiness. In my opinion, the fact that many people today take the cause for the effect, meaning they try to understand interdependent origination and inherent emptiness in order to get enlightenment is indicative of the fact that we don't really know how it's done. But the "myth of enlightenment " is still there: he did not experience the atman.

The goal of daoism? Simply to live (or maybe to live simply) according to the principles of the Way which are said to bestow contentment, longevity and a mental attitude to perform better at whatever you're doing... then possibly to ascend to heaven after death... But it is said that those who are really advanced don't even need the medium of death to get there.

If you sit on the ground, it's no longer Zhan Zhuang

Can you expand on this? I'm not sure which type of tantric practices you are referring to... Regarding prajna... I've often heard the concept of prajna, Buddhist wisdom discerning reality, developed through the medium of pure dedicated practice of meditative absorption. I'm familiar with the gracious teachings of mahayana and I know that there are various "flavors" in exploring this subject, but I think that we should also mention the other "half" of the meditative system, named samadhi in order to get a proper idea of the role of prajna. The method of dual cultivation of prajna and samadhi seems to be consistent in many forms of buddhist cultivation. Samadhi is the development of stability and absorption through the exercise of directing the undivided attention of one's mind to a specific subject. According to buddhist belief, many different religions and sects cultivate this ability of the mind and it's a sort of universal practice. To concentrate on the dantien point and cultivate inner winds, to recite prayers and to chant a non-buddhist mantra are all means to cultivate samadhi. Buddhists believe that you can't reach enlightenment with samadhi only and that samadhi doesn't lead to prajna. Cultivation becomes buddhism only when the disciple cultivates Prajna as well. How is prajna cultivated? The method involves the dogmatic acceptance of a number of elements that comes from Buddhist philosophy: rebirth, anatta (no-self), impermanence, etc... Those elements must be internalized, studied and pondered deeply. They must be understood firmly on a conceptual level and then experienced in daily activities with the power of samadhi. In Tantra, all of those philosophical elements are structured in meaningful imagery, rituals and mantras. One of the reasons of the higher status of tantric buddhist practices is that one needs a profound knowledge of buddhist philosophy to get all of those associations of visualized objects, mudras and mantras. For example, if you are well versed in buddhist philosophy, it's enough to visualize a curved fish-knife in your practice (and through the day) to stabilize in your consciousness a very specific buddhist understanding. If you know little of buddhist philosophy, a fish-knife remains a fish-knife. What about all of those energy practices in Tantra? As many probably already know, the energy practices are performed after the preliminary visualization training and the tantric practitioner is stable in visualizing himself as a deity. Therefore, the energy practices which are forms of pure samadhi meditation are engaged in combination with prajna meditation. This should clarify why I said that beliefs and perspectives are so important in buddhism and subjective experiential knowledge ...

In the past, I've practiced according to no-self doctrines of buddhism and I experienced the reality of no-self. In a different period of my life, I've followed true-self doctrines and I experienced the tangible reality of the Atman. It's just a matter of perspectives and beliefs. Now, I advance the hypothesis that the real purpose of the various schools is to help people attain a state of absolute detachment... and to believe in the self or not isn't that important after all.

Yes, the canonical gospels are clear about those things. In fact, the religions that originally used them (and probably made them) teach nothing different. Regarding the gnostic gospels, we don't know precisely how they conceived Jesus because the sects that used them no longer exist and the texts aren't clear enough to be reliable outside of their traditions. In this scenario, to interpret the gnostic gospels to derive a presumed "teaching of Jesus" is hazardous because they were probably made up with the same intention (that the catholic church also had when making its gospels) to convey specific theological ideas. To integrate portions of the gnostic gospels and canonical gospels to derive the teachings of Jesus would be like trying to get a working magical system from the Harry Potter series of books. I believe that far from being a text carved in stone, the gospel was a functional tool for practicing Christians both for liturgical reasons and for teaching reasons (a sort of compendium so that preachers could repeat the same quotes and thus be more accurate). It wasn't the collection of words pronounced by a man none could possibly understand transcribed out of reverence, but the living vibrant expression of the growth and evolution of a peculiar faith. I believe that the expression "one with the father" was added only after the churches embraced the trinity of God. I believe that this was added to give a textual source to the theological idea of the double nature of Jesus: in the catholic church, he's considered to be fully human and fully divine at the same time. How? None knows, but probably this was the only way to get out of the Council of Nicea without injuries. The gospels are like a town rebuilt many times: sometimes, you're looking at an old wall and at other times you're looking at a new tower. You can almost read the historical evolution of the Christian faith in the gospels.

You are wrong.

During his lifetime, Jesus often spoke of God as “my Father in Heaven.” For the Jews, this was a common poetic expression, and one that is still used in Jewish prayers.For the pagan gentiles, however, it had a much more literal connotation. The Greeks already had legends about men who had been fathered by gods who had visited mortal human women. Legends like these had even sprung up about such eminent men as Plato, Pythagoras, and Alexander the Great. Why should Jesus be any less? They therefore interpreted his poetic expression quite literally, to mean that he had an actual genetic relationship with God. Jesus therefore became the “son of God,” conceived when the Holy Ghost visited Mary. As the “son of God,” Jesus was not susceptible to sin or even death. The death of Jesus was therefore only temporary. The only reason why it was needed at all was to atone for the sin of Adam. His followers taught that Jesus was resurrected for eternity and ascended to heaven. There he sits at the “right hand of God,” even higher than the angels. This was the first step toward the deifiication of Jesus, and it was not very difficult for the pagan world to take the second step. Jesus was credited with such statements as (John 10:30), “I and the Father are one.” He had also spoken of (Matthew 28:19), “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” It was easy for the paganized Christians to look at the three as equal and identify Jesus with the “Son.” To say today that such statements about the oneness with the father were an unprecedented realization of man's potential of such a profundity and innovation that people needed to study buddhism and vedanta 2000 years later in order to understand him, is a reasonably questionable idea. More likely, in the spirit of the times and contexts in which the text was written and originally intended to be used, it was about Jesus actually being a God and the physical son of the Jewish God.

Why not? What if I take well known verses from the Dao De Ching and use them to explain catholic theological concepts like the Day of Judgement, the resurrection of the deads and the Trinity of God? And trust me, that could be done very easily. Then, I will tell you that in all honesty my heart feels that Lao Tze was talking about those things, he was a Christian and that the poor Chinese people couldn't possibly understand the depth of my views, but that's OK because Lao Tzu is an energy that represents the higher aspect of ourself. Isn't that my personal Stereotype of Lao Tzu? Is that different from taking Jesus' words that were specifically written to explain specific theological ideas and then saying that the real meaning is dzogchen/vedanta/whatever? Wouldn't you call my approach "mistranslating Lao Tzu"?

As I said in an earlier post, I believe it would be a significant misunderstanding to hastily make parallels between the historical structural transformation of buddhism (from hinaya to mahayana) and the creation of the Christian faith out of judaism. To apply the categories of buddhism to other religions will prevent you from understanding anything about them: I know because I did that exercise too a few times.

Why not? What if I take well known verses from the Dao De Ching and use them to explain catholic theological concepts like the Day of Judgement, the resurrection of the deads and the Trinity of God? And trust me, that could be done very easily. Then, I will tell you that in all honesty my heart feels that Lao Tze was talking about those things, he was a Christian and that the poor Chinese people couldn't possibly understand the depth of my views, but that's OK because Lao Tzu is an energy that represents the higher aspect of ourself. Isn't that my personal Stereotype of Lao Tzu? Is that different from taking Jesus' words that were specifically written to explain specific theological ideas and then saying that the real meaning is dzogchen/vedanta/whatever? Wouldn't you call my approach "mistranslating Lao Tzu"?

Stereotypes are heart based too and living by them is the oldest tradition ever. My teacher is an older greek man. He keeps a picture of Pocahontas on the dashboard of his car. When I saw that... it reflected what native americans are all about for me. A personal and heartfelt idea of profoundly spiritual people, guardians of nature that live in harmony with wild forests and rivers. They were peaceful and with high moral standards, they helped white men. The good savage exists and I know it in my heart. I’m sure the picture brought him comfort, and later I realized that it was a porn DVD cover. I wouldn’t want to question the tenets of his beliefs, as if native American women were all sexy girls with huge tits. Why would I question *his* native Americans Stereotype ? Maybe you can appreciate that it is a heart based tradition, and it probably differs from one person to the next. Perhaps the porn DVD covers aren't as important as the energy Pocahontas represents - the higher aspect of native American culture, the connection to the divine, nature and tits. I hope this is interesting too.

Yes, this idea of an eternal covenant that cannot be randomly replaced with a new one is consistent in all forms of Judaism. Have you read the Quran?

No, I'm not Christian, but I was raised as a Christian.